Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners

Quotes of the Day:

"Life appears to me to be too short to be spent in nursing animosity or registering wrong."

– Charlotte Brontë

"If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader."

– John Quincy Adams

"It is the nature of man to rise to greatness if greatness is expected of him."

– John Steinbeck

1. China’s Push to Master the Arctic Opens an Alarming Shortcut to U.S.

2. Opinion | Did Ukraine Target Putin’s Residence?

3. Chinese Military Drills Send ‘Stern Warning’ After U.S. Arms Sales to Taiwan

4. Advice for advisers - 14 lessons for making government work

5. Opinion: Ukraine’s Victory Is the Answer to a Better Future for the World

6. America Needs Economic Warriors

7. Russia’s Descent Into Tyranny

8. The National Security Strategy Paper on China

9. The Quantum Era Crept Up While You Were Watching AI

10. China and US need new ways to engage in push for stable ties, Wang Yi says

11. Trump ‘not worried’ about Beijing’s military drills around Taiwan

12. Why Singapore is the only Southeast Asian country in Pax Silica, the U.S.’s new AI 'inner circle'

13. A Country and a World Out of Balance

14. The Houthi Model – Non-State Actors and Multi-Drone Capabilities

15. From Khorramshahr to Hezbollah: How Iran Learned to Win by Not Winning

16. The Cyber Wars That Weren’t

17. From Restraint to Readiness? Germany Considers Conscription

18. If U.S.-China AI Rivalry Were Football, the Score Would Be 24-18

19. The 2025 Festivus Report from SEN Rand Paul is now available

1. China’s Push to Master the Arctic Opens an Alarming Shortcut to U.S.

Summary:

China is rapidly expanding Arctic access and expertise, using research submarines, survey ships, and icebreakers to operate under polar ice and near Alaska in unprecedented numbers. Western officials assess these “scientific” missions as dual-use, gathering seabed topography and oceanographic data that can enable safer, stealthier submarine operations and reduce U.S. undersea advantages. Beijing frames the effort as lawful “near-Arctic” participation and a Polar Silk Road, demonstrated by faster trans-Arctic commercial voyages and planned energy links with Russia. China–Russia cooperation, including joint patrols near Alaska and potential technology transfer, risks opening a new military approach route to North America and the Atlantic, driving NATO and U.S. reinforcement of Arctic defenses, patrols, and icebreaker capacity.

Comment: Access and expertise? Someone studies geography. Map at the link. Have we sufficiently prepared for this threat and develop the necessary capabilities to compete in this region? (Rhetorical question). Did we fail to anticipate the threat? Or did anticipate the threat but could not get the decision makers to make it a priority?

China’s Push to Master the Arctic Opens an Alarming Shortcut to U.S.

WSJ

National-security officials say Chinese submarines and icebreakers pose a new military threat from the High North

Daniel Michaels

and

Sune Engel Rasmussen

Dec. 29, 2025 9:00 pm ET

https://www.wsj.com/world/china-arctic-military-submarines-b4e988b9?mod=hp_lead_pos7

Chinese research submarines for the first time traveled thousands of feet beneath the Arctic ice this summer, a technical feat with chilling military and commercial implications for America and its allies.

U.S. national-security officials say the Chinese undersea expeditions offer fresh evidence of a growing threat from China in the Arctic region, known as the High North. This year, Chinese military and research vessels have operated around Alaska’s Arctic waters in unprecedented numbers, the Dept. of Homeland Security reported in November.

For China, mastery of Arctic travel could yield valuable data about the natural resources awaiting below melting ice caps, significantly reduce travel time for commercial shipping and position nuclear-armed submarines closer to potential targets, including the U.S., say Western marine strategists and military officials.

“The Chinese are being more and more aggressive” across the High North, said U.S. Air Force Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, the top military leader of North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Chinese vessels on research missions often give cover to military purposes, he said.

China has declared itself a “near-Arctic power,” an informal designation Beijing hopes will place it alongside the U.S. and Russia. China’s Foreign Ministry says its activities in the Arctic are reasonable and lawful, “contributing to the maintenance and promotion of peace, stability, and sustainable development in the region.”

Beijing views future sea routes through the High North as a shortcut for global commerce, a so-called Polar Silk Road. China this summer sent a cargo ship to the Polish port of Gdansk by skirting the North Pole, a route twice as fast as travel times using the Suez Canal. Chinese officials have said they plan to expand trans-Arctic cargo traffic with Russia, particularly imports of liquefied natural gas.

During the Cold War, the Arctic marked a front line dividing NATO members and Moscow. Its waters offered Russia gateways to the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, which the U.S. and its allies closely patrolled until the early 1990s—and are now policing again.

Soldiers training in Joint Viking exercises near Bardufoss, Norway, in 2023. Danielle Bochove/Bloomberg News

Arctic waters provide a military advantage because of the North Pole’s proximity to other nations. The U.S. in 1959 sent the world’s third nuclear submarine there to pop up from under ice, delivering a potent warning to the Kremlin. Moscow reciprocated in 1962. Today, the two rivals are again dispatching submarines on Arctic exercises.

Tensions over the High North, renewed by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, are being amplified by China’s reach. The U.S. and its allies expect Beijing will be able to send armed submarines to the North Pole within a few years. China already has military-grade surface vessels in the Arctic region while expanding its fleet of ice-breaking ships.

The U.S. and allies are training more Arctic troops in response to new dangers. They have beefed up sub-hunting patrols out of Iceland and other locations. President Trump struck a shipbuilding deal with Finland to expand the U.S. icebreaker fleet and has pressured Denmark into expanding defenses on and around Greenland.

Grynkewich in December put NATO members Denmark, Sweden and Finland under the alliance’s Atlantic and Arctic command to bolster the defense of the High North, citing “the alignment of our adversaries.”

Chinese and Russian military planes last year flew patrols near Alaska for the first time, with Chinese long-range bombers operating from a Russian air base.

Such cooperation not only gives China new abilities to strike North America but raises the prospect of a joint attack by America’s most powerful adversaries, Air Force Gen. Gregory Guillot, commander of the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or Norad, told Congress in April.

Mountains in the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard in the Arctic Circle. Andrea Gjestvang for WSJ

‘Basically warships’

China in 2015 updated its national-security law to include defending national interests in polar regions, seeking unfettered access to new sea lanes and resources, said Ryan Martinson, an associate professor at the U.S. Naval War College’s China Maritime Studies Institute. There is much evidence, he said, that China’s goal is to conduct naval operations in the Arctic Ocean.

Beijing says its commercial and research vessels in Arctic waters are peaceful. That was accurate until recently, according to Rob Bauer, a retired Dutch admiral who served as one of NATO’s top military officials until this year. Beijing, in addition to staging joint air patrols with Russia, is now sailing coast guard vessels that resemble frigates near the Alaska coast, he said.

“They’re basically warships, but they’re painted white,” Bauer said. Joint patrols with Russian navy ships indicate China’s aim is gaining military advantage, he said, not coastal security. When more ice melts along international waterways in the High North, the same shortcuts used by commercial vessels could speed China’s navy into the Atlantic, he said.

Arctic travel by Beijing’s commercial and scientific vessels benefits China’s navy by gaining experience and data about a region relatively new to its military leaders. China’s policies merge its civilian and military spheres, aiming to strengthen its armed forces through collaboration with universities, research institutions and defense companies.

Beijing’s polar exploration echoes its military expansion in the South China Sea. China launched research expeditions and published academic papers about the region almost 20 years ago. In 2013, Beijing used what it learned to begin building artificial islands that now hold military air bases, according to intelligence officials from the U.S. and Pacific allies.

A U.S. Coast Guard airplane crew spotted two Russian border-guard ships and two Chinese coast-guard ships about 440 miles southwest of St. Lawrence Island. U.S. Coast Guard

In the Arctic, the U.S. and NATO worry most about subsea warfare. Submarine navigation relies on detailed knowledge of ocean-floor topography and undersea conditions. China is cataloging the world’s oceans to build computer models to guide submarines and help them evade detection, military experts say.

“China doesn’t field the world’s largest fleet of oceanographic survey ships because they want to save the whales,” said Hunter Stires, a naval strategist who until this year advised the Secretary of the Navy. “China aims to take the lead in marine and climate science because understanding the ocean and the climate is a critical enabler to success in naval operations, particularly in anti-submarine warfare.”

U.S. analysts say data China gathered from its Arctic dives north of Alaska and Greenland isn’t just about studying climate change, as Beijing’s state news agency reports, but also to educate the Chinese navy, which operates relatively noisy submarines that are easily tracked by U.S. forces.

Arctic ice impedes airborne submarine detection that works in other oceans. Water temperature layers and changing salinity from melting ice interfere with sonar. Icebergs colliding and the chatter of marine mammals generate sounds that complicate submarine detection. Information gathered on Chinese Arctic voyages enables its scientists to build computer models of undersea conditions, which its navy can later tap to plot routes allowing them to operate more freely in the open sea.

China’s ultimate aim, said Adm. Samuel Paparo, head of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, is to end “American undersea dominance,” he told a conference in Canada in 2024.

To help Beijing reach that goal, Paparo said, “I expect Russia to provide submarine technology.”

A Chinese deep-sea submersible during the Arctic expedition this summer. Liu Shiping/Xinhua/Zuma Press

Partners of convenience

Beijing sells Russia electronics and components for military equipment Moscow needs to wage its war in Ukraine, and ships civilian products restricted by international sanctions over the war.

Western military officials believe Russia is repaying China’s help, in part, by sharing advanced technologies in space, stealth aircraft and undersea warfare. Russia’s nuclear-powered, nuclear-armed submarines, and its agility in deploying them, have kept the country a superpower, despite its economic decline since the breakup of the Soviet Union.

China is already mastering other complex naval domains. It now deploys three aircraft carriers, among the most demanding surface warships to build, manage and deploy effectively. Only the U.S. has more.

Both Beijing and the U.S. are short of vessels capable of navigating thick Arctic ice compared with Russia, which has more than 40. China last year commissioned its fifth icebreaker. The U.S. has only two such vessels in operation, and Trump is buying more.

After years of development, China launched its first domestically built icebreaker in 2019 with Finnish help. Last year, it built and deployed its first domestically designed icebreaker in 10 months, a swift accomplishment noted with worry in Arctic countries.

Russia also has advocated for greater Chinese involvement in governance of the High North and invited China to develop infrastructure in Arctic Russia. The two nations created a working group in 2023 to develop northern sea routes. They agreed to coordinate Arctic maritime law-enforcement, initiated by their recent joint patrols.

“China wants to shape rules before they are settled,” said David Cattler, a former U.S. intelligence officer and NATO Assistant Secretary-General for intelligence and security. “Early presence shapes future influence.”

China’s expanding presence and influence in the Arctic helps Russia now, but it might prove to be a problem for Moscow later, Western military officials said. Since the Cold War, the Arctic has offered Russia a remote sanctuary for much of its nuclear arsenal. Until now, only the U.S. could seriously threaten Russian bases or military assets there.

Chinese vessels operating north of Russia could complicate matters for Moscow, especially if the national interests of the two countries diverge and the current “no-limits partnership” breaks down. “Chinese operations in the High North are as direct a challenge to Russia as to any other power,” Stires said.

For now, Western countries are the ones sounding the alarm about China’s naval advance in the Arctic.

French Adm. Pierre Vandier, who oversees NATO’s efforts to prepare for future warfare, sees the possibility of China’s navy sailing from the Pacific to the Atlantic over the Arctic, bypassing more easily observed and defended routes through the Suez or Panama canals or around South Africa.

“For all of us, for NATO and the U.S., it means the threat that is in the Pacific is ubiquitous,” Vandier said in an interview. “If we have Asian forces in the Atlantic, it would be a huge game-changer. And we need to be prepared for that.”

Write to Daniel Michaels at Dan.Michaels@wsj.com and Sune Engel Rasmussen at sune.rasmussen@wsj.com

WSJ

2. Opinion | Did Ukraine Target Putin’s Residence?

Summary:

Ukraine’s alleged strike on Putin’s residence is unverified and widely denied by Kyiv, which calls Moscow’s claim a fabrication to derail peace talks with the United States and weaken support for Ukraine. Russia alleges 91 drones were intercepted; no evidence has been offered. Independent analysts say such a strike would be strategically unlikely. The episode risks escalating rhetoric and complicating negotiations.

Comment: Russian deception operation to gain further leverage and justify more demands for concessions while continuing to strike Ukraine in response to this perhap alleged attack? Or make allegations simply to complicate negotiations? Or did Ukraine believe they had sufficient intelligence to risk a strike? Would they really try to decapitate Russia and go after Putin? Just think if they get him. It will be a world changing event.

Opinion | Did Ukraine Target Putin’s Residence?

WSJ · Did Ukraine Target Putin’s Residence?

Kyiv denies an attack, but Moscow is already using it as an excuse against peace talks.

By The Editorial Board

Dec. 29, 2025 5:39 pm ET

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/russia-ukraine-drone-attack-vladimir-putin-volodymyr-zelensky-donald-trump-a39fcd9a

Russian President Vladimir Putin chairs meeting to discuss Russia's 'special military operation' in Ukraine on Monday. Mikhail Metzel/SPUTNIK/KREMLIN POOL/EPA/Shutterstock

President Trump seemed pleased after meeting Sunday with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. So right on time comes Vladimir Putin’s claim that Ukraine launched a large drone attack that same evening on Mr. Putin’s residence. The question to ask is who benefits from this story?

Not Ukraine, since Mr. Trump said Monday he had heard of the alleged attack directly “from President Putin today. I was very angry about it.” The U.S. President added that “it’s a delicate period of time,” and “it’s one thing to be offensive” but “another thing to attack his house. It’s not the right time to do any of that.”

Blowing up the Trump-Zelensky bonhomie may have been Mr. Putin’s intention. Mr. Zelensky said Monday that the “‘residence strike’ story is a complete fabrication.”

The Kremlin claimed no damage or casualties from the attack as Russia destroyed all 91 drones allegedly headed for Mr. Putin’s home. But Moscow said it is preparing retaliatory strikes against Ukraine—oh, and because of the alleged attack, “Russia’s negotiating position will be reviewed,” the Foreign Ministry posted on Telegram.

There’s reason to doubt the Russian claim. When Ukraine conducts a deep strike against Russia, there are normally “reports from local civilians and government about drones or drone debris, footage of drones flying overhead or air defenses activating, and footage—often geolocated—of fires, smoke plumes, or explosions,” says Grace Mappes of the Institute for the Study of War.

But as of Monday “we have not yet observed any of these with the claimed strike targeting Putin’s residence,” she added.

Speaking of targeting heads of state, Russia has repeatedly tried to assassinate Mr. Zelensky, including on NATO territory. In September a Russian cruise missile struck Ukraine’s Cabinet of Ministers building in Kyiv.

Mr. Zelensky has nonetheless continued his efforts to negotiate an end to the war. Mr. Putin has refused to stop fighting until Ukraine and its partners agree to every Russian demand. The challenge for Mr. Putin has been how to say no to Mr. Trump’s attempts at a peace deal while still portraying Ukraine as the obstacle. Mr. Trump is onto something when he talks about the timing of this story.

Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky meet to work out an agreement to end the Ukraine war, but what security guarantees is Zelensky looking for? Plus, Benjamin Netanyahu comes to Mar-a-Lago to discuss the next phase of the Gaza cease-fire plan.

WSJ · Did Ukraine Target Putin’s Residence?

3. Chinese Military Drills Send ‘Stern Warning’ After U.S. Arms Sales to Taiwan

Summary:

China launched large-scale air and naval drills around Taiwan, branding them a “stern warning” against outside interference after the U.S. approved more than $11 billion in Taiwan arms sales and Beijing sanctioned U.S. defense firms. The PLA said forces would operate in close proximity and rehearse “blockade and control,” with live-fire activity planned. Taiwan activated rapid-response deployments and warned of major flight disruptions. Analysts read the exercise zones as rehearsals to sever Taiwan’s links to Japan and deter U.S. reinforcement, reinforcing Beijing’s gray-zone pressure campaign amid rising China–U.S.–Japan tensions.

Comment: Are we shaking in our boots or are we gathering some useful intelligence? Of course the training exercises could be showing us what they are not going to do but they want us to think they are going to do. No matter what we are gathering useful intelligence (just as they try to do during our exercises).

Chinese Military Drills Send ‘Stern Warning’ After U.S. Arms Sales to Taiwan

WSJ

Beijing directs message at foreign forces with exercises around island

By Joyu Wang

Updated Dec. 29, 2025 9:52 pm ET

https://www.wsj.com/world/asia/chinese-military-drills-send-stern-warning-after-u-s-arms-sales-to-taiwan-1a835994

A still image from a video released by the Chinese military shows a ship firing during the drills. Eastern Theatre Command/Reuters

TAIPEI—China launched major military exercises in the waters and airspace around Taiwan Monday in what it called a “stern warning” against outside interference in Chinese affairs, as tensions grow with the U.S. and Japan over the security of the island.

The drills follow the Trump administration’s mid-December approval of one of the largest packages of U.S. arms sales to Taiwan. The approvals, valued at over $11 billion, led Beijing to impose sanctions on Friday targeting 20 U.S. defense companies and 10 executives.

Beijing is also immersed in a weekslong pressure campaign against U.S. security partner Japan, after Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi suggested in November that her country’s military could get drawn in if China tried to seize Taiwan by force.

The Chinese military said Monday that its naval and air forces would “approach the island in close proximity” and carry out “blockade and control” maneuvers—the kind that would be needed to strangle or seize Taiwan. China said it would conduct live-fire drills on Tuesday in the waters around Taiwan as part of the exercises, which it named “Justice Mission 2025.”

China’s military said the drills were also intended as a warning for what it called Taiwan separatist forces. Beijing claims the island to be its own territory, to be seized by force if necessary, and considers Taiwan affairs to be an internal matter. Taipei says it isn’t subordinate to Beijing and resists what it describes as annexation by China.

A jet fighter approaches for landing at an air base in Hsinchu, Taiwan. Ritchie B Tongo/EPA/Shutterstock

Taiwan’s military said Monday that it had deployed forces and initiated rapid-response drills, vowing to “be prepared to defend ourselves.”

The island’s civil-aviation authority said it expected China’s drills to affect flights coming in and out of Taiwan, after it received an alert notice from Beijing designating a “temporary danger area.” Taiwan expects more than 100,000 travelers to be affected on Tuesday.

The Chinese drills appear to be focused on stopping any military effort to defend the island, analysts said. This, along with Chinese state media “openly connecting these drills to the recent U.S. arms sales, is a direct message to the U.S.,” said Ben Lewis, whose research organization, PLATracker, documents Chinese military activity.

The drill zones designated by China, particularly those north of Taiwan, indicate how Chinese forces could try to cut off sea and air traffic between Taiwan and Japan, where U.S. forces are based, said Chung Chieh, a Chinese-military analyst at the Taiwanese military-backed Institute for National Defense and Security Research in Taipei.

A commentator on Chinese state broadcaster China Central Television emphasized the message, noting a designated no-fly area to the east of Taiwan, facing the Western Pacific. “On the one hand, we ensure Taiwan independence forces have nowhere to escape. On the other hand, we make sure external aid can’t get in,” Meng Xiangqing, a professor at the PLA National Defense University, said on CCTV.

Washington is committed to supplying Taiwan with weapons for its self-defense, but it is U.S. policy to remain ambiguous about whether the U.S. military would act to protect the island from attack.

President Trump, asked about China’s exercises at a news conference in Florida on Monday, said he wasn’t worried and that China had done such exercises in the past. “I have a great relationship with President Xi, and he hasn’t told me anything about it,” he said, adding “And I don’t believe he’s going to be doing it,” an apparent reference to a military move on Taiwan.

Trump has previously said he had received assurances from Chinese leader Xi Jinping that China wouldn’t invade Taiwan while Trump is in office.

China periodically carries out large-scale military exercises, which are seen in Taiwan as rehearsals that could swiftly turn into an actual attack. Taipei classifies such drills, which last took place in April, as “gray-zone” tactics intended to pressure the island to avoid a military conflict by submitting to Beijing.

Taiwan’s military said that it had spotted 89 Chinese aircraft, including drones, near Taiwan as of 3 p.m. Monday, along with 14 naval and 14 coast guard vessels. The zones designated by China for the drills cut into Taiwan’s legal jurisdiction, the military said.

Taiwan’s presidential office on Monday condemned what it said were China’s military intimidation tactics, and accused Beijing of disrupting the security and stability of the Taiwan Strait, the 100-mile-wide body of water separating Taiwan’s main island from China.

Japan’s cabinet approved a record defense budget on Friday for the year beginning April 2026, calling for spending equivalent to $58 billion, including on hardware such as drones and antiship missiles to protect against a Chinese invasion of Japanese islands near Taiwan.

China’s Foreign Ministry assailed the budget as revealing “Japanese right-wing forces’ motive to remilitarize Japan.”

With the drills, Beijing “intends to show Tokyo what a Taiwan contingency”—an armed conflict over the island—“could cause in terms of real troubles,” said James Yifan Chen, who teaches diplomacy and foreign policy at Taiwan’s Tamkang University.

Following Takaichi’s remark in mid-November, China deployed its naval fleet along what is known as the first island chain, a string of archipelagoes linking Japan, Taiwan and the Philippines, with as many as 100 ships at one time, according to Taiwan national-security authorities.

The U.S. displayed its support for Japan earlier this month with a flight by two U.S. B-52 bombers in formation with Japanese fighters over the Sea of Japan.

That exercise came a day after Russian and Chinese warplanes conducted their own joint patrol around Japan’s southern islands.

Moscow would back China in the event of a Taiwan conflict, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov emphasized this weekend, saying the treaty partners have vowed “mutual support in defending national unity and territorial integrity,” according to a transcript published by his ministry.

Write to Joyu Wang at joyu.wang@wsj.com

Appeared in the December 30, 2025, print edition as 'Chinese Military Drills Send ‘Stern Warning’'.

WSJ

4. Advice for advisers - 14 lessons for making government work

Summary:

The article argues that advisers fail when they treat government like a machine with levers, because delivery chains are long, authority is diffuse, and incentives are misaligned. Drawing on UK experience in No. 10 and departments, it offers “14 lessons” on how to get things done inside the existing system, and it tries to correct myths about what advisers actually do. The key theme is practical statecraft: set a clear direction, understand who owns delivery, build coalitions across officials and ministers, and manage friction and tradeoffs rather than wishing them away. Note: the full list of 14 lessons is behind a paywall, so this summary reflects only the publicly visible preview.

Comment: Since there are many advisors on my distribution list (among the current 1262), hopefully they will find this useful. Although this from a UK perspective much of this advice is useful in any democratic government. This is interagency operations 101 from a UK perspective. But there are a few things that are new to me: e.g., "a write-round."

Advice for advisers - 14 lessons for making government work

Henry de Zoete

Dec 30, 2025

∙ Paid

https://samf.substack.com/p/advice-for-advisers-14-lessons-for?r=7i07&utm

We have one final guest post this year from Henry de Zoete who wrote for us a few months ago on “How to Make Government Work” with a case study of the AI Security Institute. It’s been widely read across Whitehall. In this follow up he offers some more general guidance to those working with government on how to make things happen.

Henry was the Prime Minister’s adviser on AI in No10 Downing Street between 2023 and 2024. Before that he co-founded and sold a Y Combinator backed start up called Look After My Bills that automatically saved people money on their gas and electricity bills. Previously he was a non executive director at the Cabinet Office, 38 Degrees and Hornby PLC. He worked with me (Sam) in the Department for Education between 2010 and 2013. He is on substack at this link.

Recently Prime Minister Keir Starmer said he is “frustrated” because “the action from pulling the lever to delivery is longer than I think it ought to be”. This is a familiar refrain. I’ve heard similar from advisers working in this and many previous governments. Reflecting on his time as an adviser to Tony Blair, Jonathan Powell, now the national security adviser to Keir Starmer, wrote: “When you arrive in No 10 and pull on the levers of power, you discover they are not connected to anything.”

Here are 14 lessons for getting things done in government as an adviser. It serves a dual purpose: for those in government, it is advice; for everyone else, it attempts to dispel some myths about what advisers do.

It is a follow up to the piece I did for this substack on the rare British success story that is the AI Security Institute and the lessons it provides on how to make government work. Those lessons are fairly high level. This is more micro.

There are different shades of adviser. In 2010, I was a Special Adviser (SPAD) in the Department for Education. That means that I was a political figure, appointed by the Minister. I left in 2013 to build a start up and returned to government in 2023, this time as a direct ministerial appointment, working as the Prime Minister’s AI Adviser in Number 10. This second sort of adviser are civil servants - they aren’t political - although like SPADs they are likely to be recruited from outside the civil service (Sam was one of these). It’s more commonly the route through which academics or people from the private sector are brought in to lend their expertise. My advice applies to all flavours.

Please note that this post is based on how the civil service and the Government currently works. I’m not giving a view on whether it should be reformed or how (I may come back to that). But rather how best to make things happen within the confines of the existing system.

Also this is just my take having been a SPAD and a civil servant working with SPADs. Others will have different, quite possibly better, views. I’m keen to hear them.

Know what you want and set a direction. It is surprisingly common for Ministers to reach the end of their tenure and discover that they never asked for anything. The civil service flooded their time with advice and questions, and the Minister responded. But the Minister never put a fresh demand on the system. They never invented something new or decided to go in a new direction, said it had to happen, and forced the civil service to reorganise itself to deliver.
As an adviser, you have to save your Secretary of State (SoS) from this trap. Carve out dedicated time, sit down with the SoS, and ask them why they came into politics, why they are doing this job, and whether that motivation is reflected in how they are spending their time. What do they want to make happen?
This isn’t just about being ‘demanding’; plenty of Secretaries of State know how to fuss about small items of business. They can splash around on the surface while the river carries on its usual course. What’s hard, and rare, is for Secretaries of State to redirect the river. Think Andrew Adonis or Michael Gove in Education, Alan Milburn in Health, Barbara Castle or Ian Duncan Smith at DWP. Each of them has supporters and critics. There are a great many Secretaries of State who have neither, not having achieved anything worthy of comment.
Take the Bletchley Park AI Safety Summit of November 2023. To his great credit Rishi Sunak prioritised an issue that wasn’t at the top of voters’ concerns but he and the team around him intuitively understood its importance. This was a new direction, imposed by a Minister. The civil service was never going to suggest a new leader level summit itself.
Redirecting the river is a lot of work. The first reaction of the civil service will be fatigue - they are already busy. When we started telling officials that we wanted to deliver an AI summit and get an actual agreement, the most common response was that this was “for the birds.” The view was that it takes at least 18 months, preferably 24 months, to prepare for a leader level summit. We had six. It takes a lot of conversations to overcome this initial rejection. The system wanted to push back the summit. Ideally forever. The fact that the Prime Minister wanted it and announced it publicly alongside the President of the US didn’t matter.
Eventually, we got there. And it was a success. Deep down, all officials know that Secretaries of State with clear demands make for happier departments. The civil service craves that direction. Without it, they float in the wind, buffeted by external events, the media and whims.
Be willing to upset people. The status quo presents a stable set of winners and losers. If your new Secretary of State decides to redirect the river then they are going to upset that balance. There will be new losers. The civil service - incentivised to be risk averse - will raise this as a reason to take no action. This fear of “new losers” is one of the common reasons for Government inertia. Being a good adviser is about looking past these concerns, making the trade-off, telling people you accept the downside and that there will be costs but we have to get to a new position. You have to provide the political cover for unhappiness.
We had exactly this scenario with Bletchley. There was a fight over which countries should be invited. The Prime Minister’s view was to keep it to a small number who actually have AI so there was a proper discussion and we could reach an agreement.
The FCDO argued it would be a diplomatic disaster to invite some countries but not others. They disliked the summit because it would create “new losers” among the uninvited. This debate went on for some time. Sunak and his team internalised these costs and then gave the political cover and steer to keep it small. But not without a battle and precious time lost.
He was proven right. The Bletchley Declaration was signed, including by the US and China. Sunak didn’t get everything right by any means but on AI he was the first major global leader to understand the importance of the technology and act appropriately. He set in train the conversation by which humanity might actually get to grips with what is happening.
The doubters inside Whitehall - perhaps I could even say blockers - became Bletchley’s biggest advocates. Success has many fathers…
(For the record, when it became clear that Bletchley was happening the civil service team, particularly in DSIT, Number 10 and key embassies around the world, swung into action and delivered under considerable pressure. Huge thanks to all of you who worked so hard on it. You know who you are.)
Making it happen is your responsibility. If you don’t project manage something then it won’t happen. This isn’t what people think of advisers as doing: many assume they spend their whole time practising “dark arts”, or wooing MPs and conspiring with the media. But in 2010 I was technically a communications SPAD and yet spent three quarters of my time managing the department.
Before entering the Department for Education in 2010, the team set out its policies in detail. When we got in I naively assumed that officials would crack on. Some to their credit did but others didn’t. Weeks passed but little progress. It became clear that unless a Minister and / or an adviser project managed a priority then it wouldn’t happen.
What does that mean in practice? It’s basic stuff. Meet the team responsible on a Monday afternoon. Then meet them again on a Thursday. And then again on a Monday afternoon. And then on Thursday and on and on until it’s done. If the Secretary of State cares about it, you should be spending lots of time with the relevant team translating that care into scrutiny and pressure.
Both the political world and the civil service massively underappreciate the importance of operational and project management skills. Policy trumps all. It’s no wonder that government projects often fail, wasting billions. SPAD roles tend to fit into three categories: policy, communications and parliamentary liaison. Ministers would be wise to consider bringing in advisers with a project management, operational and tech background. A company’s C suite is made up of a CEO, COO and CTO for a reason.
People, people, people. A good start up CEO spends 80% of their time recruiting. Why? Because getting stuff done is downstream of having the best people. As Steve Jobs said: “the most important job of someone like myself is recruiting”. I can guarantee you that a Prime Minister or Secretary of State spends no more than 10% of their time on recruitment. That is madness. They should be identifying the best civil service talent and persuading them to move to their department. They need to constantly be talking to brilliant external people and persuading them to join. The vast majority of Ian Hogarth’s time when he set up the AI Security Institute was spent on the phone and meeting potential hires. That’s how he got great people to leave OpenAI and DeepMind to join government. Something that most people thought impossible.
Only ever write “good” on a Ministerial submission. Ministers receive a red box of memos at the end of each day. These memos - submissions - have a covering page in which advisers can pass their commentary on the material within (‘the box note’). The Minister takes the physical red box home, reads the submissions with their box notes and then scribbles on to the piece of paper their decision.
The only thing any adviser should write on a box note on a sub is the following: “I’ve worked with the team on this. I am happy and agree with their approach and recommendation.” Anything else and you haven’t done your job properly.
That doesn’t mean you are going easy on the civil service. On the contrary: it means that you have been up in their business for weeks getting the advice to the right place. You asked them to take you through the model, the options disregarded, the assumptions made, the assumptions rejected. Now, you’re able to give your endorsement to the place they’ve reached.
You’d be surprised by how few go deep with the team. It’s how you build mutual respect and trust. And always celebrate success as a team. When you do great stuff, make sure the civil servants get the credit. Get the junior officials who did the hard work in front of the Minister. Make sure they feel it’s their win too. You work with the civil service, not against it.
Advisers who use that little comment box to slag off the advice aren’t helping their Minister. They’re signalling to the Minister that they think the role of an adviser is to pass comment, not to help get things done. The Secretary of State has a role here in not indulging this mindset. They should ask advisers who are disappointed with a submission: “well, what have you been doing to make it better?”
Some will respond that there will be legitimate occasions for SPADs and the civil service to differ, when the Secretary of State is best served by presenting two, conflicting opinions. In my experience, this is rare (<10% of the time), and when it does happen, then there’s nothing stopping the SPAD view from being inserted into the advice itself. Box notes rubbishing the advice therefore almost always represent a failure of the SPADs to get up stream and work with the civil service team.
Do as little as possible cross government. The state is interconnected: health outcomes are influenced by educational policy which is influenced by welfare policy… etc. The division of government into 20-odd departments is somewhat arbitrary.
That means that there is always an argument that a given policy would better be delivered through multiple departments. It can sound alluringly grown up to launch a cross-departmental, cross-cutting policy initiative. But you and your Minister have limited time, and any action requiring other departments to do stuff is 200% harder. Getting stuff done in your own department is hard enough.
So apply a heavy discount to any course of action based on cross-government working unless it has strong personal and ongoing backing from the PM. Focus on what is in your control because it is within your department. One of the reasons No10 often gets frustrated is that it has little capacity itself and is reliant on departments doing what it wants.
Never do a write round. A write-round is when one department sends a letter to all the other departments inviting them to veto its proposed action. It’s a tool for getting nothing done.
The Department for Education asking the Department for Transport for permission to make changes to A-levels is obviously ludicrous. It’s a disaster waiting to happen. It slows down policy making and worst of all it turns into cross Whitehall negotiations.
Departments refuse to ok a write-round unless they get what they want on something else. Often in another write round or just negotiations on something else. DON’T DO A WRITE-ROUND. There are no actual rules for when you have to do a write-round. The idea that write-rounds ensure collective responsibility is, to use the civil service’s own parlance, “for the birds”.
Officials will always suggest one because it seems like protocol and is a way for everyone to cover their arses. Push them on why you have to. Ask for the written protocol that says you have to. It doesn’t exist. So just make sure No10 (and HMT sometimes) are happy and crack on. The Government is making noises about reforming this process. Good.
Not doing a write round is just one example of questioning the system. Sometimes you will be presented with protocols or told that you have to do something a certain way. Why? Often the answer is that this is how this has always been done. Push back politely but persistently. Ask why. Ask the dumb question. Ask what happens if you don’t do it.
Legislation is a last resort. Do not legislate unless you really have to. It takes forever. And once every MP and Lord has their say you won’t get what you wanted in the first place.
The Online Harms Act was first proposed in 2017. It received Royal Assent in 2023. Some of it came into effect in 2025. Some of it doesn’t come into effect until next year. I pass no judgement about the quality of the bill but one thing is for sure, technology has changed a LOT in the eight years since it was first proposed. ChatGPT didn’t exist until three years ago.
You can get a lot done without legislation and a hell of a lot quicker. If officials say you need primary legislation, ask them why? Keep asking them. More often than not the reasons will fall away. Use other techniques like statutory instruments, guidance or whatever is appropriate.
Find a forcing function. Government moves slowly. You need ways of forcing the system to act. Events, summits, ministerial speeches etc. Nothing concentrates minds more than saying that this needs to be done by X date because the PM / SoS has to have something to say. Use forcing functions to drive things through the system.
The Bletchley Park AI Safety Summit in November 2023 was the forcing function that led to the AI Security Institute, the Bristol Isambard data centre, the creation of AI tools for teachers to cut their administrative workload and the Bletchley declaration signed by 30 countries including the US and China. Without a summit none of that would have happened or it would have taken years longer.
No Machinery of Government changes unless you really really really have to. The average Machinery of Government (MoG) change sees everything grinding to a halt for 6 to 9 months. Precious time to get stuff done. Only do a MoG change if it’s absolutely necessary.
This isn’t a private sector versus public sector thing. Smaller orgs can do big changes quickly and relatively painlessly. Larger ones tend to be in a constant state of organisational change. This is often a sign of dysfunction. Joe Hill put it well in this X post: “Medium - > large organisations seem to be in a constant state of reorganisation. No sooner is one completed than a new one starts. Usually discussed as being about ‘strategy’, but in reality they are almost always about managing the careers and personalities of senior players.”
Do not over claim. Too many advisers say things like “the SoS or PM wants X” or “this is their top priority”. If that isn’t true then you will be found out and you will lose credibility. Yes, an adviser needs to know what their principal thinks and act on their behalf but nothing kills their ability to get stuff done than overstepping.
Conversely, it can help an adviser early on in their tenure if their principal makes it clear that the adviser speaks for and on the Minister’s behalf. The civil service will look for and want these signals. Equally a SoS should never undermine their adviser in front of officials. Even if they disagree they must wait until behind closed doors. An adviser that officials suspect doesn’t speak for their principal loses their ability to get things done.
Control your diary. Seems obvious but it’s shocking how many people complain about their diary. Do not let it be filled with things that are not your priorities. Similarly control the diary of your Ministers. Make sure they only focus on what they want to get done. There is a tendency for the private office to fill ministers and advisers’ diaries up. That is their job and it is legitimate for them to do so. I have no sympathy for anyone who says they have too many meetings. Instead make sure the private office knows what you care about and sort diaries appropriately.
It’s always cock-up not conspiracy. It’s easy to think the worst but remember it’s nearly always cock up, not conspiracy. The larger the organisation the more likely this is the case. And the Government is very big indeed. So if something leaks don’t immediately jump to conclusions. Overreacting will make things worse.
Stay upbeat. Government is painful and slow. It gets you down. It’s vital to bring optimism, agency and energy to every meeting. Often the default answer is no. Good ideas die beneath a roll of the eyes. You need to push through with a positive attitude. Yes, government is hard. But there is no other place in the world where you can affect so much positive change.

Being an adviser in government is an extraordinary privilege, and I’m fortunate to have done it in a few different guises. Some of the above will sound like an attack on the civil service: instead, I’m explaining how I think differentiated roles between Ministers, advisers and civil servants lead to a more productive approach. No one pole would succeed on their own. And, indeed, I’m confident that most of the above is the same advice that senior civil servants would give advisers themselves.

My final reflection is that a lot of these measures apply in any large organisation. They aren’t unique to government. I’ve worked in many different private sector orgs. From tiny start ups with a handful of people to companies with thousands of staff. I’ve been lucky to experience it from the perspective of a junior executive to a startup co-founder to a PLC board member.

The real divide in performance is not public versus private but small versus large.

As an org gets bigger it gets slower. More bureaucratic. And crucially incentives skew. Promotion becomes less about outcomes and more about who you know and appearances. Having a bigger team and accruing resources is more important than delivering meaningfully. Small p politics becomes the way to get ahead.

This is not unique to either the public or private sector. Most large organisations suffer from this malaise including many of the supposedly fast moving tech companies.

So while I wrote this as advice for advisers in government, I hope a lot of it applies more broadly than that.

5. Opinion: Ukraine’s Victory Is the Answer to a Better Future for the World

Summary:

Viktor Yushchenko argues that Ukraine’s victory is the hinge for a safer, more moral global order, because it will determine whether freedom, sovereignty, human rights, and justice remain foundational or become decorative. He warns that solidarity has frayed and that Ukraine’s resilience is being twisted into a claim it rejects peace, while pressure is misdirected onto the victim rather than the aggressor. He rejects “quick-fix” drafts and says Russia uses diplomacy as a tactical pause before renewed betrayal and expansion. He urges a broad coalition, internal unity, and creative military and diplomatic innovation, and he frames the struggle as a clear moral choice for democracies.

Comment: A bold statement? Can we make the case to support it?

Opinion: Ukraine’s Victory Is the Answer to a Better Future for the World

kyivpost.com · Viktor Yushchenko · December 30, 2025

https://www.kyivpost.com/opinion/67127

A diplomatic solution to the war in Ukraine would not only form a decisive factor in international security, but a manifesto of morals and values as the basis of a new 21st century global order.

Viktor Yushchenko. Photo by Press Service of the 3rd President of Ukraine.

The world is locked in an unprecedented crisis, and the erosion of international law is only the tip of the colossal iceberg of transformation. The prolonged inability of the world’s leading nations to find a common, strong, and legitimate solution to stop Russia’s criminal aggression is a further ominous sign of the crisis we find ourselves in.

The unity of partners that existed at the beginning of Russia’s war in Ukraine is under serious political attack, and Ukraine’s moral advantage as the victim has been devalued. It may not be possible to fully restore the once-relied-upon solidarity of the democratic world against Russia in the coming years, as new lines of division emerge and democracy loses its leading position.

Ultimately, however, the outcome of the war will determine where ideals such as freedom, democracy, state sovereignty, human rights, justice, and humanity will be placed in the architecture of the future world. Will they form the foundation, or will they serve as old-fashioned decoration?

“We will win this war – not by force, but by the moral fortitude of our people and creativity, innovation in military affairs and diplomacy.”

Ukraine faces the daunting task of building the broadest possible coalition of true allies around itself, maintaining its circle of friends, and inventing creative new formats for partnerships. This cannot be done without internal unity, strength of spirit, a clear national goal, and motivation to fight, proving every day that we will not give up – neither on the front lines nor in the rear.

‘Putin Told Me’ – Trump’s Trust Test as Russia Revives Familiar Playbook

The US president’s offhand comment at Mar-a-Lago rippled through Washington and Europe, reviving old questions about whom he believes – and what that means for the war in Ukraine.

Ukrainians everywhere must stand together in their belief in their own future. We will win this war. We can win it – not by force, but by the moral fortitude of our people and creativity, innovation in military affairs and diplomacy.

We can win it by making the world fall in love with our culture and traditions, by showing class in entrepreneurship and invention, and by never forgetting our identity and our homeland, even in the far corners of the world.

Unfortunately, however, the phenomenal resilience of Ukrainians, which has formed the basis of international support, has been misrepresented as Ukraine’s lack of desire for peace.

This challenge should not be underestimated – it is not a game of words, but an attempt to conceptually change international relations between states.

“The world must take the real Russia into account and build a new, adequate common policy toward it as an aggressive, problematic empire.”

Naïve illusions of a quick solution

It is incredible how, on the global chessboard, attempts are being made to manipulate the roles of victim and aggressor – Russia being the initiator of the most unprecedented armed attack in Europe since World War II. Simplifying the historical conflict between an imperial, authoritarian, militarized, fascist, colonizing country and an independent democratic nation-state with a European choice has created a naïve illusion of a quick solution consisting of several dozen points written on a draft document. It is supposedly just a matter of pressure and price. It is shameful that this pressure is being exerted on Ukraine.

The ashes of these drafts must be scattered to open the way for real diplomacy in the search for true peace and its guarantees for Ukraine from strategic partners. And one of the first arguments against this delusion is Russia’s real willingness to go further in the coming years – to the Baltic states, to Poland, to the countries of Northern Europe.

What points will Russia then propose? Where will it draw new borders within NATO and demand placement of the Russian language, Russian schools, and Russian propaganda in certain countries of the EU?

There are no easy solutions and there will be none when it comes to Russia’s instincts to occupy prosperous territories.

The world must take the real Russia into account and build a new, adequate common policy toward it as an aggressive, problematic empire. One must not romanticize Russia’s “greatness” through the pages of Tolstoy’s novels and Bolshoi Theater performances, but see its essence through the lens of historical practices of genocide, colonization, corruption, war, and prisons, through the resurrected Russian ideology of fascism, restored nostalgia, and political assassinations.

All this has already been formalized in the relevant state security strategies and foreign, cultural, information, technological, and demographic policies of the Russian Federation. Read carefully, because in the hundreds of pages of appendices to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decrees, there are no steps toward peace – although there are many words about peace. “Russian world.”

[Note: “Russkiy Mir” can mean “Russian peace,” or “Russian world/universe,” or a purposeful, perhaps sinister, equivocation. – Ed.]

“Russia skillfully turns diplomacy into a tactical maneuver and the Kremlin’s strategic goal remains unchanged.”

Betrayal – built into Russia’s DNA

Russia trades on its favorite technique of fear, and the grand myth of an immeasurably great power with strength and influence. Russian mercenaries in Ukraine, committing war crimes, often say that they just want Ukrainians to “respect Russia.” This is what the Russian leadership wants too – to force the world to respect it. But there is no need to fear such a Russia. It does not exist.

Inside, you will see an institutionally weak state – an economy that produces 1.9% of global GDP, which it literally digs out of the ground. Don’t go on a tour of central Moscow, but take an interest in what is happening further away from the Kremlin. There you will find a vast country of degraded human capital, short life expectancy, a destroyed environment, ruined infrastructure, a neglected territory without roads, and internal contradictions at risk of exploding into political, ethnic, or religious conflict. Accept the collapse of this construct in the 21st century as realistic and desirable.

Without this new vision, confirmed by dozens of international indicators of economic development and the state of society, negotiating with the Russians is just playing into their hands.

Russia skillfully turns diplomacy into a tactical maneuver and the Kremlin’s strategic goal remains unchanged. Following Russia down this winding path could lead to a truce, a pause, a lull, through humiliation, but after that, betrayal and war will inevitably resume. This is how Russia works; it is in its DNA. The war in Ukraine since 2014 proves this with dozens of tragic examples – from Ilovaisk to the broken promises not to kill Ukrainians at Easter.

Without a profound rethinking of Russia and all its internal “secrets,” the flawed new “philosophy of partnership” will drag us into a pseudo-negotiation process, the result of which can be nothing other than “Munich-2,” when the sovereignty of a nation is openly turned into a bargaining chip.

Furthermore, any presumption of the aggressor’s “rightness” can only open Pandora’s box and spread the war to Europe.

Russia will continue to bluff, citing its geographical size as an argument for its strength, and will again seek a simple and profitable solution for itself through bargaining, pressure, and occupation. This will be a major strategic loss for the free world.

“We will prevail and defend our freedom and our values, for which thousands of Ukrainian heroes have died over centuries of struggle.”

A moral choice

Geopolitics today has become a fundamental choice between good and evil. This moral choice for the Western world will be reflected in its position on Ukraine. Some will have the courage to stand firmly on the side of good, while others will see this as an opportunity for bargaining or compromise.

A new axis of evil has already formed around the Russian dictatorship and offers a version of the world where the strong allow themselves everything, and the weak are doomed to be dependent on the will of the strong.

This is an attractive proposition for some. But in reality, such a world will not be safe for anyone, as it will marginalize democracies or force them to renounce their fundamental values for the sake of domination.

In autocracies, the state’s course and interests are determined by the will of one person. In democratic countries, strategic decisions are made by nations, generations, and citizens who have a voice and a decisive influence. Therefore, I believe that we will not be alone in this struggle. We will be surrounded by true allies.

We will prevail and defend our freedom and our values, for which thousands of Ukrainian heroes have died over centuries of struggle. And for our generation, it is a struggle for which our soldiers have been defending our territory on land, at sea, and in the air, for far longer than the last four years now.

The views expressed are the author’s and not necessarily of Kyiv Post.

To suggest a correction or clarification, write to us here

You can also highlight the text and press Ctrl + Enter

Please leave your suggestions or corrections here

Viktor Yushchenko

Ukrainian politician, statesman, banker. Third President of Ukraine (January 23, 2005 - February 25, 2010).

6. America Needs Economic Warriors

Summary:

Navin Girishankar argues the United States is fighting a de facto geoeconomic cold war with China but lacks the people and institutional muscle to use tariffs, export controls, sanctions, and industrial policy coherently. Recent U.S. moves have been energetic yet uneven, sometimes provoking Chinese adaptation and retaliation, because Washington improvises while Beijing runs a coordinated “engineering state” with trained cadres and long-game planning. He calls for a professional “economic security” corps, stronger recruitment and rotational pipelines with industry, and tighter interagency coordination, backed by Congress-funded fellowships and research priorities. The aim is to produce economic “warriors” who can link markets, technology, and national power at scale.

Comment: I had not thought of it quite in these terms but the author is right that we need strategists with economic expertise.

America Needs Economic Warriors

flip.it · More by Navin Girishankar · December 30, 2025

A New Era of Statecraft Demands a New Kind of Strategist

Navin Girishankar

December 30, 2025

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/america-needs-economic-warriors?utm

For the greater part of the last decade, the United States and China have been locked in a cold war, fought as fiercely over economic and technology advantages as over military advantages. In Washington, there has been bipartisan support to respond to China’s dumping of subsidized goods, its acquisition of dual-use technologies, its rampant intellectual property theft, and its coercive practices. As a result, the last three U.S. administrations have deployed a slate of economic security policies to safeguard U.S. markets, supply chains, and assets, and to rebuild the U.S. industrial base to gain the upper hand on Beijing.

The first Trump administration, for instance, levied tariffs on China to rebalance trade and halt discriminatory policies related to technology transfer, IP, and innovation. The Biden administration then dramatically expanded export controls—tools originally designed to prevent weapons proliferation—to restrict China’s access to advanced semiconductors that are critical to the artificial intelligence race. Upon returning to office in 2025, President Donald Trump has more aggressively used tariffs to reset economic relations with China. All three administrations, meanwhile, embraced industrial policy, with varying approaches to state intervention in markets to promote supply chain resilience: President Joe Biden used subsidies and tax cuts to encourage the reshoring of chipmaking and Trump has taken government equity stakes in a number of companies in strategic sectors, including chipmaking and critical minerals.

Despite these dramatic shifts in economic policy, however, Washington has struggled to achieve its stated economic security objectives. Trump’s current tariff strategy has extracted investment commitments from allies, including Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, but it has also produced widespread economic uncertainty, Chinese retaliation against U.S. industries, and a long list of trading partners looking to hedge their bets. Neither did his first-term tariffs reduce the U.S. trade deficit with China. Biden-era incentives under the CHIPS and Science Act did expand domestic chip-making in several states, and export controls appeared to temporarily preserve the United States’ advantage in leading-edge chips. But these measures also fueled China’s drive to develop indigenous advanced chips and inspired Beijing to deploy its own export controls on rare earth minerals as a coercive tool against the United States and its allies.

Washington’s mixed track record reflects more than simply individual policies gone awry. It reflects a competition between one rival that struggles to play the long game and another that has mastered it. The United States has deployed existing tools to new challenges, often without fully anticipating the consequences. It has yet to demonstrate its ability to systematically connect dots across policy domains, develop economic war-games, and devise strategies as part of a comprehensive and effective approach to economic security.

The United States, in other words, has improvised piecemeal policies and hoped for the best, while China has fused strategic vision with institutional coordination and dedicated resources to developing the human capital needed to pull off such an approach. Washington needs to raise its economic security game. To do so, it needs to nurture a new class of economic warriors adept in the new tools of national power, resilience, and global influence.

HOW TO BUILD A PIPELINE

Beijing is prepared. China has matched U.S. tariffs and export controls move for move. It has weaponized its dominance on rare earths processing, exploited U.S. supply chain vulnerabilities, and poured immense resources into dominating strategic sectors, including shipbuilding. China’s fingerprints are on offensive cyber campaigns such as Salt Typhoon, which mapped Western telecommunications networks, and Volt Typhoon, which prepositioned malware in U.S. critical infrastructure. Beijing also outspends the United States and allies in industrial subsidies and basic research in emerging fields, and it bundles infrastructure finance and technology transfer with guaranteed market access as part of an attractive offer to the global South—as the United States begins to withdraw.

What many in Washington often overlook is that China’s competitive success is a function not simply of party diktats but of the resourcefulness of its trained personnel, as well. China’s 2023–2027 National Cadre Training Plan calls for officials to master global economics, supply chain resilience, dual-use technology, and financial risk via mandatory training programs using online self-study and in-person “collective training” sessions. At the Central Party School, cadres study international political economy, the Belt and Road Initiative, and China’s framework for assessing national strength. Elite universities extend the pipeline: the Seven Sons of National Defense, a grouping of public universities affiliated with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, trains technologists for strategic industries. Tsinghua University and Wuhan University offer research, advisory, and training activities related to BRI. The China University of Labor Relations trains foreign trade union leaders on Chinese economic and labor theory and practice to build solidarity among BRI partners.

This institutional architecture embodies what Dan Wang, currently a research fellow at the Hoover History Lab at Stanford, has called China’s “engineering state”—a system that channels technical talent toward national economic objectives, forming an ecosystem designed to produce officials who can “win wars without fighting” by mastering markets, logistics, and technology. Chinese decision-makers have long understood that winning the geoeconomic long game requires cultivating a pipeline of top talent with breadth and depth across technology, economics, and investment.

OWN WORST ENEMY

Building economic security capabilities for a complex market economy is more challenging than Beijing’s task. When U.S. efforts have combined technology and markets expertise, actionable economic intelligence, and the right policies, they have been successful. In 2019, for example, the first Trump administration successfully pressed the Dutch government to block chip equipment maker ASML from selling advanced chipmaking equipment to China. But as the chips race accelerated, applications of the same tools produced uneven outcomes. Biden administration officials, for instance, did not fully anticipate that Nvidia could (and would) engineer a workaround when it announced semiconductor controls in 2022; within months, the company had rolled out export-compliant chips that it continued to sell to China.

Building and retaining economic security capacity is a challenge for the U.S. government in part because of civil service rules and difficulties attracting top private-sector talent with relevant skills. To implement the manufacturing components of the CHIPS and Science Act, the Biden administration had to work around around civil service pay rules in order to rapidly recruit technologists and investors into the Commerce Department. The second Trump administration tried to improve some of these operational inefficiencies in federal agencies with its Department of Government Efficiency, but it ultimately undermined its own goals with a chaotic launch.

Neither bespoke nor sweeping reform efforts have yielded a coherent economic security apparatus or, as H.R. McMaster and Andrew Grotto have pointed out, a professional corps with a distinct identity. This basic insight is not lost on U.S. decision-makers. Government job postings advertise open positions that would form the backbone of an economic security corps: export-control officers, technologists, and investment officers across the bureaus of the Commerce Department, sanctions analysts and economists at the Department of the Treasury, and scientists at the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy. But without the right mix of skills, institutional setup, and esprits de corps among economic security professionals, business-as-usual recruitment will not meet the moment.

Washington urgently needs to build competencies in these areas, but the talent pipeline from universities and the private sector is weak. At the undergraduate and graduate levels annually, U.S. universities award about 6,000 degrees in public policy, more than 250,000 in engineering, and 550,000 in business with about three percent year-on-year growth over the past decade. U.S. degree programs that explicitly combine economics, technology, and national security are few and far between. Without intervention, the United States is doomed to repeat its mistakes: leaky export controls, evaded sanctions, and industrial policies that miss their mark. Building an economic warrior class should be a national priority among government, business, universities, think tanks, and philanthropies. The challenge is not unprecedented; the United States government has mobilized expertise to meet national challenges before. The question is whether Washington will provide direction, mobilize support, and marshal resources to do so again.

UNCLE SAM NEEDS YOU

Washington need not model this effort on Beijing’s. In fact, it should take some solace in the advantages that the United States’ decentralized knowledge ecosystem affords: its ability to adapt quickly, encourage debate, and weed out bad ideas. When faced with major national challenges, the U.S. government and independent research institutions have reinvented policy research and training time and time again. During the New Deal, the Social Security Administration established training programs for administrators managing a novel national social insurance system. After World War II, the RAND Corporation pioneered systems analysis for complex defense problems, methods which Defense Secretary Robert McNamara introduced to the Pentagon. By 1970, universities were offering graduate programs training policy analysts in these approaches.

Universities have also incubated creative approaches to policy challenges, particularly in response to moments of crisis. After the Cuban missile crisis, political scientist Graham Allison developed the decision sciences, which are now taught at policy schools. Similarly, the oil shocks of the 1970s spurred the development of energy economics expertise; the post-Soviet transition created demand for market reform specialists; the 2008 financial crisis elevated systemic-risk analysis; and most recently, COVID-19 highlighted the need to study supply chain resilience.

China’s top-down system may appear more efficient, but America’s distributed innovation has proven more adaptable—as long as leaders set clear priorities and mobilize resources. At its best, the U.S. ecosystem benefits from the relationships between public and private sector. Government funding, foundation support, and market demand create conditions for universities to respond and redesign curricula. Federal agencies signal workforce needs, DARPA partnerships train scientists, and grants from the National Institutes of Health develop the research workforce.

There are, to be sure, early signs that this is happening already with economic security. The graduate school at Johns Hopkins University, for instance, offers a concentration in economic security. And Georgetown, Harvard, MIT, Stanford, and Yale offer courses linking technology, energy, and statecraft. George Mason University offers an M.B.A. in national security, Purdue offers a certificate in Innovation for Public Service, and Carnegie Mellon offers advanced degrees in engineering and public policy. The National Defense University provides training on economic security topics including political economy for security practitioners and modern economic warfare. And among U.S. allies and partners, Korea University, Yonsei University, the University of Tokyo, and Sciences Po offer graduate-level courses in energy security and economic statecraft.

But much more must be done. Business and engineering schools that teach familiar frameworks—cost-benefit analysis, systems modeling, scenario planning, finance, microeconomics, and national security—should encourage students to apply those frameworks to pressing practical questions; for example, how tariffs affect strategic supply chains or how export controls affect innovation. Philanthropic organizations and corporations should also step up and fund economic security scholarships with the same urgency that they have at times devoted to climate and public health. Think tanks can convene researchers across allied countries to share insights on economic security topics including modern industrial policy, technology protection, and national security investing. These platforms can advance allied coordination without the need for new multilateral structures.

Economic security is here to stay.

Government must also lead here. Trump should issue an executive order establishing a professional corps of economic statesmen. It would include the creation of a standing Economic Security Committee, modeled after the Deputies’ Committee within the National Security Council, to direct strategic economic security priorities and coordinate across the Departments of Commerce, Treasury, Energy, and Defense and the intelligence community. The Economic Security Committee, working with the Office of Personnel Management, should define economic security competencies, tag federal jobs accordingly, and prioritize filling those vacancies, sending clear signals to the labor market about the government’s needs. The executive order should also direct departments to partner with universities on curriculum development, offer faculty sabbaticals in government, and create rotational programs with industry.

Of course, executive action without legislative backing (and dedicated resources) will not work. Congress should establish an Economic Security Braintrust Foundation, modeled on the Department of Energy Foundation for Energy Security and Innovation (FESI) authorized by the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act, to more effectively leverage private resources. It should also direct the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy to designate economic security as a research priority, making grants available to create incentives for universities. A pipeline of approximately 1,000 new graduate students per year would respond to demand for economic security talent in government and the private sector. At an annual cost of roughly $180 million, congressional appropriations and private matching funds could help mature economic security as a field of study by supporting graduate fellowships, endowed chairs, paid internships, and applied research in areas such as supply chain resilience, investment screening, sanction, industrial policy, and economic intelligence.

To be sure, building government capacity faces political headwinds in an administration seemingly hostile to expanding government or funding research. But the Trump administration has demonstrated an appetite for ambitious economic security initiatives, typically by leveraging private sector resources to meet public ends. For instance, the administration’s recently announced Genesis Mission aims to double U.S. scientific productivity within a decade by mobilizing scientists and federal scientific data across the Department of Energy’s 17 national laboratories, alongside industry and university partners, to meet grand scientific challenges, including in AI and quantum computing. The administration has downsized the federal workforce and dismantled several federal technology units, but it has also floated plans for a U.S. Tech Force of 1,000 early-career technologists, who would serve two-years stints in government through partnerships with 25 tech companies. In some areas, the administration has even expanded funding. The Department of War’s Office of Strategic Capital has grown from a $984 million pilot in the Biden administration into a $200 billion lending powerhouse.

Economic security is here to stay. The United States must prepare to win an economic contest worth trillions of dollars. China has prepared itself with cadres and systems to follow through on its economic warfare strategy; the United States has not. Just as the Cold War was won by strategists who mastered deterrence, today’s economic competition will be won by professionals who can leverage interdependence in service of national strength and resilience. It’s time to train them to wield economic power as skillfully as their predecessors wielded military power.

flip.it · More by Navin Girishankar · December 30, 2025

7. Russia’s Descent Into Tyranny

Summary:

Nina Khrushcheva argues four years of war have pushed Russia into a tightening, improvisational dictatorship that echoes Orwell’s 1984. Early selective repression hardened into a larger security apparatus, broad censorship, and expanding “foreign agent” designations, while citizens learned to self-censor in a fog of unclear rules. The Kremlin tries to trade consumer normality for political submission, then demands sacrifice through taxes, tariffs, and near-mobilization, yet popular appetite for endless war is falling. Repression now targets even loyalists, vigilantes, and pro-war media. Despite pervasive fear, pockets of dissent persist through small, risky acts and cultural workarounds.

Comment: My question is can (and should) this information contribute to useful theme and message development to support our information warfare campaign? (assuming we have one).

Russia’s Descent Into Tyranny

Foreign Affairs · More by Nina Khrushcheva · December 30, 2025

How Four Years of War Have Remade Society

Nina Khrushcheva

December 30, 2025

Russian President Vladimir Putin onscreen in Moscow, December 2025 Yulia Morozova / Reuters

NINA KHRUSHCHEVA is Professor of International Affairs at The New School.

Print Subscribe to unlock this feature or Sign in.

Save Sign in and save to read later

After February 2022, when Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his so-called special military operation—a full-scale invasion of Ukraine—the popularity of George Orwell’s 1984, a dystopian novel about a totalitarian regime built on mass surveillance and constant propaganda, soared in Russia. As Christmas approached that year, one Saint Petersburg bookstore tied together copies of 1984 as a garland above the cash register. Another set up an entrance display of patriotic books—along with a mug depicting Orwell’s face and a caption referencing the novel’s shadowy, supposedly omnipotent leader. “Let Big Brother think that there is tea in this mug,” it read.

The trendy Moscow bookshop Respublika placed Orwell’s works all over the store. In a quiet protest against the Kremlin’s demands to reject all cultural products from “unfriendly countries”—including France, the United Kingdom, and the United States—Respublika continued to sell Ed Sheeran’s new album and the Rolling Stones’ old vinyl. Its bestsellers included American and British authors, along with Russians who had fled the country, such as Boris Akunin and Dmitry Bykov. But in the years since the war began, Akunin and Bykov have been accused of “extremism,” their works added to an official list of 5,000 banned titles. Respublika took those books off the shelves and relocated the not-yet-forbidden Orwell to the second floor, in case a government inspector checked in.

Restrictions of all kinds have expanded over the past four years—not just book bans but reduced access to social media, crackdowns on protest, and measures to render the LGBTQ community invisible and feminism illegitimate. Russia’s “foreign agent” law, established in 2012 to identify individuals and organizations that received international funding, has become a tool to criminally prosecute and ban from public life anyone who disagrees with the state. In early 2022, 300 people and organizations were on the notorious list of foreign agents; now, the number is over 1,100. But even as the screws have tightened, Russians haven’t stopped reading. One bookstore chain reported that 1984 was its most stolen book in 2023. In the first half of 2025, according to the same bookstore, it was surpassed only by theft of copies of the Russian constitution, which forbids censorship and guarantees freedom of thought, the right to speak, and access to information. “We read Orwell for his reflection of reality, and the constitution as a beautiful utopia,” Russians grimly joke.

To visit Russia over the past four years has been to observe the consolidation of a dictatorship in real time—to answer the question readers confront in 1984, wondering how Big Brother’s gaze became so penetrating and relentless. At the start of the invasion, the state lacked the means to quell all possible opposition, and so it suppressed selectively. People self-censored, even as many found ways to express their distaste for Russia’s path. But in the time since, Moscow has built a larger repressive apparatus. It has cultivated a climate of fear and uncertainty that encouraged many Russians to silence not just themselves but also one another. The accumulation of subtle changes on the part of both the state and society has led Russia deeper and deeper into tyranny—a cycle that seems unlikely to break as long as Putin’s regime pursues the kind of total control that until recently seemed only to exist in Russia’s communist past or in Orwell’s fiction.

DUAL REALITY

Before February 2022, Russian society was fairly open. Official media was under state control, but independent outlets flourished, the Internet had no restrictions, and people could read or watch what they wanted. When the war broke out, mass protests ensued; people were dumbfounded that Russia would launch an invasion of a neighboring country.

Dissent was immediately met with retaliation. In the first few months, more than 15,000 antiwar protesters, including more than 400 minors, were detained. Russian citizens found themselves under de facto martial law. Access to Meta, Instagram, and Twitter (now X) was criminalized. Foreign news sites offering opposing views, such as the BBC and Radio Free Europe, were blocked. Russia’s own independent media outlets, including the radio station Echo Moskvy, Dozhd TV, and the newspaper Novaya Gazeta, were banned within weeks. Sharing anything about the war other than the official Ministry of Defense’s narratives was immediately made punishable by up to 15 years in prison.

In the spring of 2022, there were many incidents in which the state responded with full force to mild displays of disobedience. One Muscovite, Konstantin Goldman, was detained for holding a copy of Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace at a stone memorializing fallen soldiers from Ukraine during World War II in the Alexander Gardens, near the Kremlin. He was accused of potentially planning to overthrow the Russian government, detained, and fined. In Saint Petersburg, a young artist, Aleksandra Skochilenko, was sentenced to seven years in prison for crimes against the armed forces because she replaced store price tags with hand-drawn antiwar messages. (She was released in 2024 and flown to Germany as part of an international prisoner exchange.)

War became an ever-expanding presence in Russians’ reality.

These protests failed to move Putin. The president continued his fight on behalf of what he calls Russia’s “distinct civilization”—the idea that Russia, although partially located in Europe, must keep its distance from the West. Many writers, journalists, scholars, artists, IT specialists, and other white-collar workers who disagreed with the Kremlin’s interpretation saw no point in protesting and fled the country. Most everybody else pretended to fall in line. In December 2021, according to the independent pollster Levada, less than 50 percent of Russians believed the country was going in the right direction. In March 2022, 70 percent tamely reported their support.

Initially, the Kremlin made efforts to pacify the public without resorting to near-total suppression. Putin expected a small, quick, and successful war to keep Kyiv in Moscow’s orbit, so he used the term “special military operation” to avoid the word “war.” Any fighting, Russians were assured, would happen elsewhere. The government’s system of control was not yet prepared to handle widespread discontent, so it settled on a social contract of sorts: citizens who submitted to the state, even just by tacitly accepting its war, could go on about their daily lives. Soon, everything should return to normal. This created a dual reality: Stalinesque oppression awaits those who step out of line, but those who do not protest can read Orwell and carry on with their lives.

Yet war became an ever-expanding presence in Russians’ reality. Shelling has increased, Ukrainian drones fly all the way across the country, oil refineries are attacked, airports are closed, trains are blown up and delayed. In stores, prices are up and choices are down because of sanctions and other international restrictions. Many people have been hiding in bookstores to dissociate, or escaping to museums, where visitors can stay for the whole day and pretend that normality persists. Moscow’s GES-2 art center, redesigned in 2021 by Italian architects, makes Russians believe they are still part of the West. This year, GES-2 was able to circumvent the Kremlin’s call for patriotic art, installing Pop Art founder Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen’s famed sculpture Plantoir—a giant red garden trowel—which the exhibition announcement proudly notes was first displayed at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Such duality is not unusual in Russia, a country that sprawls all the way from Germany to Japan. Even on its coat of arms, the double-headed eagle looks both east and west. People have lived before with Orwell’s doublethink, holding two contradictory beliefs simultaneously and accepting both as true. The Soviet Union was deemed a “paradise” while people were dying in the gulags. In 1935, amid mass arrests of the perceived enemies of communism, Stalin declared, “Life has become better, comrades, life became more joyous.” In such an environment, people also become well versed in doublespeak—saying one thing and thinking another.

A HALF WAR

The same contradictions pervade Putin’s Russia, yet Russia is not the USSR. It has no ideology to bring the public together. The government only continued to placate its citizens with capitalism and Western lifestyles because the fighting was supposed to be brief. When the conflict turned into a multiyear war, Moscow began demanding the population make sacrifices. A new 22 percent value-added tax hurts small businesses to fill state coffers. There are tariffs on everything. Even a study by the state media conglomerate RT admits that at least 70 percent of Russians are cutting back on groceries, travel, or dining out.

But few want to make sacrifices without a reason, and so there are attempts at developing an ideology that can provide one. In 2022, Putin signed a decree to “preserve the traditional spiritual-moral values,” essentially rejecting everything that comprises Western civilization. Russia promotes those “traditional values”—nuclear families, Orthodox religion, gender inequality, opposition to abortion, and so on—and smears social progress as a Western plot against it. In the Soviet Union, too, the lack of personal freedom and dismal quality of life were explained as part of the struggle against the injustices of capitalism and for communist equality. But the Soviets’ oppressive ideology had a recognizable origin; it grew out of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, when workers and peasants fought aristocrats and the bourgeoisie for a more equal world. Putin’s quest for a traditional, religious civilization, in which girls are encouraged to procreate as early as high school and priests advise women to give up careers to become men’s “helpers,” hearkens back to the preindustrial era. Such outdated mandates make little sense for contemporary Russians who have lived with technological progress, traveled the world, and in recent years excelled in the service economy. The widening gap between the message and reality is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain.

Putin wants an unreserved devotion to the war, and patriotic slogans glorifying Russian and Soviet heroism have filled TV screens, giant billboards, online ads, and the Kremlin’s own statements. Digital displays all over Russian towns feature camouflaged soldiers defending the motherland with captions demanding potential fighters to “join ours”—pitting ours, the patriots, against those who are not ours, the unpatriotic. Putin has declared that “unity, support for the army from the people, makes Russia victorious.”

Russian conscripts at a recruitment center in Saint Petersburg, October 2025 Anton Vaganov / Reuters

Yet his propaganda has not entirely caught on. Fewer and fewer Russians want the conflict to continue, because the longer it goes, the less it remains in the background and the more it consumes their lives. People are worried about experiencing another shock like the “partial mobilization” in the fall of 2022, which required 300,000 men to join the army. After the announcement, many prospective soldiers fled abroad. That October, 66 percent of Russians told Levada that they feared a total mobilization, and 57 percent wanted to start peace talks (today this number stands at 66 percent). The government, wary of overplaying its hand, instituted a nominally volunteer-based recruitment system instead.

All over Russia, young men have been recruited to go to the front. Their families receive the equivalent of $2,000 to $20,000, or more, depending on the region. In three years, the government spent almost $38 billion, or 1.5 percent of Russia’s GDP, on these payments. The defense ministry said the army received almost 500,000 new recruits in 2024, and 450,000 in 2025. Some are coerced; some are criminals who would rather go to war than to prison. In addition to getting paid, they are absolved of their crimes. Thousands die, but thousands more come back. As the years pass, more and more maimed and wounded men are seen on the streets of Russian towns. Passersby treat them with apprehension, as mercenary soldiers of fortune.

Putin has tried to fashion the campaign in Ukraine as a defensive war, putting it on par with World War II, in Russia known as the “Great Patriotic War.” But that effort has failed. Bellicose rhetoric from Kremlin apparatchiks and pundits has not created a national fervor. Rather, the more militarism is pushed on the public, the more actively people resent the message. Last year, I heard two teenagers mocking a recruitment poster in Moscow’s subway. It featured soldiers asking the viewer, “Who if not you?” “Who if not you? Putin, of course,” the boys laughed.

GRAY AREAS

No one in Russia quite knows what is forbidden and what is still allowed; the Orwellian reality is full of holes. The West is canceled, yet this Christmas season most shopping malls greet visitors with the English word “JOY” in giant letters. The weekend culture guides regularly review episodes in the latest season of White Lotus, explain why the film Conclave is worth the hype and Avatar: Fire and Ash is not, highlight an Italian brunch at the Four Seasons hotel near the Red Square, and promote English-language education in Moscow’s British School—while mixing in patriotic poetry or an advertisement to download a video game called “Ask Stalin.” Some religious organizations and members of the Duma, meanwhile, have demanded a ban on the Harry Potter stories on the grounds that they promote black magic; those calls grew louder this summer, when Russia’s Supreme Court declared Satanism a forbidden “international movement” (no such movement exists). Yet on the travel page on Yandex, Russia’s answer to Google, Russians are offered trips to Harry Potter theme parks and museums around the world. This December, a favorite event is “Harry Potter, or the Hogwarts New Year” in Moscow’s Art Club. In Kazan, the capital of the remote region of Tatarstan, a cute Harry Potter–themed cafe sells gingerbread with the faces of popular characters.

Other targets of the traditionalists, however, have not been able to escape such attacks. Last year, the LGBTQ community was deemed an “international extremist movement”—like with Satanism, it doesn’t exist—and acknowledgment of these identities was purged from public discourse. Same-sex couples are barred from marrying or having children. Roberto Carnero’s biography of the beloved Italian poet and director Pier Paolo Pasolini, who was openly gay, ran afoul of the new LGBTQ policy. Its brave Russian publisher circumvented censorship and released it in 2024. Instead of simply cutting the forbidden parts, the publisher made the book look like a Cold War–era CIA dossier, with hundreds of pages blacked out, showing the reader the ridiculousness of the regime.

The gray area leaves people in a state of perpetual uncertainty and becomes a form of oppression itself, encouraging individuals to police their own behavior. In the theater, there is an informal guideline—the result of a suggestion from the top—against presenting foreign authors’ works on stage, so few dare to put them on. Some theaters delete names of actors and authors deemed “unpatriotic” from playbills. Renowned director Dmitry Krymov left the country in protest of the war, so the production of his drama Seryozha—a take on Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina—at the Moscow Art Theater excluded his name from publicity materials. The credit in the program read: “Director: Director.” Last year, one young director staged Hans Christian Andersen’s Thumbelina at the Moscow Satire Theater. In the story, the young heroine wants to fly to warm southern countries, seeking freedom. But the director was told not to mention “southern countries”—Ukraine is to the south of Russia. The word “freedom” was to be avoided, too, so as not to give people the wrong idea. The director proposed to end the performance with a Latin choral. “Is Latin from a friendly country?” the theater administrator inquired.

Some examples are even more farcical. The ancient Roman marble statues of naked human figures in Russia’s museums now violate Russia’s “deep moral traditions,” according to the Kremlin. Even under Stalin’s brutal regime, antiquity was not a threat to the state. Meanwhile, the popular plush toy Labubu, created by a Hong Kong–born artist who was raised in the Netherlands, has been painted as an enemy of the homegrown Soviet-era cartoon character Cheburashka. One Russian lawmaker suggested in all seriousness that “those following traditional values at the Ukraine front would choose Cheburashka.” His audience nodded as if this was a reasonable statement.

No one is in control of their own lives anymore. That much became clear in December 2023, when the telecommunications company MTS held an “almost naked” Christmas party in Moscow. Celebrities on the guest list showed up in skimpy outfits, as they had done in previous years, still thinking their private lives were private. But Putin’s patriotism took that protection away. The attendees were accused of lacking national pride, “disgustingly” mimicking the West while the country fights for its “traditional soul.” Since then, parties and performances have been raided all over Russia in search of LGBTQ “criminals,” “Satanists,” or music and plays written by “foreign agents.”

THE MAKING OF A DICTATORSHIP

In his 1993 article “Working Towards the Führer,” the British historian Ian Kershaw explained how authoritarianism takes over: through the use of ideology to justify individual and collective actions, through voluntary societal complicity, and through state repression. The leader outlines repressive requirements, then everyone else—starting with his entourage but extending to businesses, governmental and political organizations, schools and universities, and volunteer groups and individuals—make up the rules of behavior. The uber-patriotism of Putinism follows the same script. Ordinary citizens are not just passively complicit but co-authors of repression as they attempt to please their leader and police members of their communities. Officials eager to outdo each other become ever more aggressive in their crackdowns. The result is absurd spectacles as apparatchiks hone the craft of making the abnormal seem normal, and vice versa.

It is not that the authorities stopped recognizing absurdity. They see it when it suits them. Ella Panfilova, the head of Russia’s Central Election Commission, was incensed when a concerned lawmaker reported that the official symbol associated with the 2024 elections was similar to the logo of the Anti-Corruption Foundation, once headed by the late Alexei Navalny, the Kremlin’s main nemesis. Panfilova reprimanded the lawmaker for his “paranoid imagination.” He was later declared a foreign agent for his comments.

In his more than 25 years in power, Putin has instilled in the Russian collective the idea of Russia as a “besieged fortress”—pundits on television have pushed this message for years. People in villages and small towns, living paycheck to paycheck, can draw inspiration from belonging to the great nation that stands up to Western pressure. Wielding the Great Patriotic War slogan “Victory will be ours,” Putin justifies to this public the losses and cruelties they suffer along the way.

The more militarism is pushed on the public, the more people resent the message.

In return, Duma members and regular people alike invent suppressive rules as if consumed by collective madness. When the communist system collapsed, the practice of denouncing one’s friends, family members, or coworkers for subversive thinking died down, but it reappeared in 2022. In fact, it became normalized, even encouraged, within the broader society. By 2024, proud patriots produced well over 3,000 reports accusing others of discrediting the armed forces, supporting LGBTQ rights, or criticizing the Kremlin.

Some inform out of conviction, some want to get recognition for assisting the state, and some squeal on others out of fear of becoming victims themselves. Ivan Abaturov, an undistinguished PhD student from Yekaterinburg, became known for making up fantastic accusations against journalists who, for instance, used the word “war” instead of “special military operation.” Within six months in 2023, he wrote 1,357 denunciations under the pseudonym Anna Korobkova.

Others, such as the Russian Commune, an ultra-right pro-war group, fight domestic enemies outright. Originally a vigilante movement, since 2022 it has been aiding official security forces, participating in raids that target ethnic communities or “undesirables” at university lectures or music concerts. Volunteers interrupt talks at Moskva, a bookstore minutes from the Kremlin; they promise trouble for speakers they disapprove of and threaten to burn books and break windows. When the store calls the police asking for protection, officers often refuse, citing limited resources.

TIGHTENING THE SCREWS

It came as a surprise in July when the Ministry of Internal Affairs sought to put a stop to amateur vigilantism. In an indirect reference to the Russian Commune, the ministry issued a warning to Russian citizens about nationalist groups that “use patriotic slogans as a coverup, searching for false enemies, and inflaming ethnic conflicts.” Since then, even the most nationalistic apparatchiks, such as Kirill Kabanov, a member of the Presidential Council for the Development of Civil Society and Human Rights (a name that is now an oxymoron), insist that such organizations must be fully incorporated into “government structures.”

These moves are part of a new phase of repression and control that targets not only the opposition but also the superloyal. Levada pollsters found in December that only 26 percent of the population somewhat agrees that Ukraine’s “military operations should continue,” the lowest level of support since the war began. The proportion of those who insist that Russia should fight until complete victory has fallen from 29 percent in 2022 to 15 percent at the end of 2025. The current mood is a threat to the Kremlin. It has responded by leaving less of its authoritarian project to citizens, shifting the burden of suppression to the state. It aims to eliminate all independent political activity—anything that could slip from its control.

The government has even turned against regime insiders. Since the summer, there have been daily detentions of once-trusted government officials, politicians, and high-ranking army officers, who now stand accused of corruption. June and July also witnessed the brutal arrests of journalists from the online news outlet Ura.ru and the Telegram channel Baza, both hyperpatriotic, pro-war publications that had been obediently hateful toward “the enemy”—Ukraine, foreign agents, Kremlin critics. In the fall, a few of the most faithful were labeled foreign agents, including Sergei Markov, a pro-Kremlin political propagandist, and Roman Alekhin, a prominent pro-war blogger. The reasons are subject to speculation: Markov dared to offer Putin advice, or perhaps he was too cozy with Azerbaijan. Alekhin could be critical of the Russian battlefield situation. The highly militant Crimean-born blogger Tatiana Montyan skipped foreign agent status altogether and was labeled “terrorist and extremist,” apparently because she criticized certain Kremlin-connected patriots. Now, no independent evaluation of Russia’s actions is tolerated, even when it comes from the most loyal of followers.

The Kremlin’s repression is deepening. Internet access has been shrinking: first, YouTube was made too slow to use, and calls via the messaging apps Signal and Viber were blocked. Then, in September, drastic new regulations came into force: calls via WhatsApp and Telegram were restricted, and anyone searching for any banned website would be fined for participating in extremism. This digital censorship was so far-reaching that factions in the Duma that are normally oppositional in name only voted against it. Only Putin’s party approved it without any dissent. It even sparked a rare protest: former presidential candidate Boris Nadezhdin led a group to a parliamentary building with a cardboard placard that read, “Orwell wrote a dystopia, not a manual.” Yet the restrictions keep coming. WhatsApp is all but unusable, and mobile Internet is now blocked daily all across Russia—at least 11,300 shutdowns have been reported in different regions since May—allegedly to prevent its use for Ukrainian drone strikes, but really to sever Russia’s connection to the rest of the world and to control the population.

No one in Russia quite knows what is forbidden and what is still allowed.

Disillusionment is swelling. Zealous war supporters are angry that Russian society ignores the military’s sacrifices. They are dissatisfied with the slow advances in Ukraine: since February 2022, Russia has occupied less than 12 percent of Ukrainian territory. Others worry about inflation, now around seven percent, and complain about the rising prices of food, utility services, gas, and medicine. Economists are gloomy about the struggling economy. The 2025 budget deficit is more than $53 billion; military spending has risen 38 percent compared with last year, while most businesses—in a variety of industries, including construction, automaking, and travel—have seen significant decline. Russia’s shift to more labor-intensive sectors rather than the “focus on high-level technology” that Putin promised back in 2020 is unlikely to help. And the country increasingly has to reckon with the loss of the hundreds of thousands of soldiers who have died fighting.

If there is no peace, then full war is only a matter of time. Earlier in December, Putin’s annual question-and-answer session for the public and the press was overwhelmingly focused on the country’s necessary sacrifices for the “special military operation.” Staying committed to the war could potentially mean total mobilization and martial law. If, instead, the conflict ends next year, the regime will be bombarded with difficult questions. Both possibilities are laced with uncertainty, so the Kremlin’s control needs to be absolute.

Yet entering 2026, Russia’s recreation of 1984 remains incomplete. The final rules are not fully set, and dissent slips through the cracks. Dmitry Muratov of Novaya Gazeta—himself labeled a foreign agent—regularly raises his voice against repression. His reporters continue to work as they did before 2022. The newspaper is officially closed, but it is available online via VPN, and Russians can order a hard copy online under the alternate title Novaya Gazeta Journal. Some anchors and analysts from the YouTube channel Zhivoi Gvozd (formerly Echo Moskvy) have also remained in Moscow; evicted from their prestigious headquarters, they now broadcast from a few modest rooms on the outskirts of the city.

These people resist repression every day. So do countless others in acts of defiance that expose the ludicrousness and brutality of the regime. A few months ago, a brave man in Saint Petersburg painted graffiti with the 1960s Soviet slogan “Peace on Earth”; he is now being investigated for extremism and terrorism. Walking the grounds of the Saint Savior Transfiguration Monastery in Yaroslavl, an ancient town 160 miles north of Moscow, one encounters a large stone on which someone painted a bird in yellow and blue—the colors of the Ukrainian flag. In the town of Murom, 200 miles east, a clothing store attracts visitors by displaying clusters of balloons in eye-catching colors—black and purple, white and red, and yellow and blue. When I asked if the last pairing was deliberate, a saleswoman winked and said, “Well, if an official comes in, I’ll do a Marilyn Monroe smile and say, ‘These colors look so pretty together.’”

Foreign Affairs · More by Nina Khrushcheva · December 30, 2025

8. The National Security Strategy Paper on China

Summary:

Mel Gurtov argues the administration’s new National Security Strategy treats China less as a strategic adversary and more as an economic rival, while implying a drift toward spheres of influence. He says the document repeats familiar complaints about subsidies, IP theft, supply chain coercion, and rare earths, and it calls for partner coordination, tech investment, and allied burden sharing in the Asia-Indo-Pacific. Yet he sees contradictions, including relaxed Nvidia chip restrictions amid trade deal hopes and signals that leave Taiwan policy uncertain. He concludes the strategy is less a blueprint than a snapshot, because POTUS can reverse course quickly if a China trade deal collapses.

Excerpt:

But as a guide to policy of the moment, especially concerning China, the strategy paper must be considered of limited value. We have a president who is capable of 180-degree policy turns at any moment. If Trump gets his big trade deal with China, he’ll abide by the main guidelines in the NSS. But if not, expect a return to Cold War-style competition and tariff hikes.

Comment: It seems like POTUS' desire is to treat China as an economic rival and not so much as a strategic adversary. And I do think POTUS wants a return to spheres of influence. The troubling part though is that doing so will damage our alliances and remove our capabilities to project power effectively when we need to do so. It seems to me that it would be in China's interest to give POTUS a big trade deal as that might provide china with time to advance its military capabilities with little interference from the US as long as China remains in its sphere of influence.

The National Security Strategy Paper on China

flip.it · Mel Gurtov · December 30, 2025

https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/12/30/the-national-security-strategy-paper-on-china/?utm

Image by Winston Chen.

The Trump administration’s National Security Strategy paper, released this month, is filled with nasty, nativist language and half-truths straight out of the Project 2025 playbook. But amidst the bluster about historic success in strengthening national security and claims about resolving wars is a stark reminder of the direction US foreign policy is taking, which looks to be a world divided into American, Chinese, and Russian spheres of influence.

That would explain why Latin America receives so much more attention in the NSS paper than China or Russia. The theme of strategic competition with those two countries that was emphasized in Trump’s first national security overview has vanished. Now, China is viewed mainly as an economic rival. That is surely welcome news in Beijing.

Competing with China

The NSS paper, like Project 2025, decries previous Democratic efforts to bring China into a “rules-based” international system. The NSS offers an alternative that really isn’t: to “rebalance America’s economic relationship with China, prioritizing reciprocity and fairness to restore American economic independence.” In other words, seek what previous administrations have sought with China: get it to abide by rules of fair competition.

The paper offers complaints we’ve heard before: China’s “unfair trade policies” such as state subsidies, intellectual property theft, industrial espionage, and “threats against our supply chains that risk U.S. access to critical resources, including minerals and rare earth elements.” To counter China, the NSS says the administration will work with partners such as India (no reference to US tariffs that have undermined that relationship), protect critical infrastructure, invest in “research to preserve and advance our advantage in cutting-edge military and dual-use technology . . . ,” and urge Europe and Asian partners to adopt “trade policies that help rebalance China’s economy toward household consumption . . . ” Nothing new there.

Despite those statements, the Trump administration has removed export restrictions on one of Nvidia’s most advanced AI computer chips, the H200, apparently in anticipation of a “big deal” on trade. Those are not the most powerful Nvidia chips, but they might have military as well as commercial value.

Yet, in announcing the deal, which includes giving the US government 25% of sales, Trump assured one and all that the deal will be “under conditions that allow for continued strong National Security.” Evidently, not strong enough: The announcement coincided with another one from the US attorney for the southern district of Texas: interception of $160 million worth of Nvidia H100s and H200s that were destined, he said, for China and other countries.

Further undercutting the Nvidia sale is China’s reported decision to turn down the H200, preferring to use semiconductor chips it has developed on its own. Jensen Huang, the CEO of Nvidia who would be the chief beneficiary of the deal, blamed the last two US administrations for this unexpected Chinese decision. “It’s clear that three years of overbroad export controls fueled America’s foreign competitors and cost US taxpayers billions of dollars,” Nvidia said.

In other words, Trump, like Biden, hasn’t paid attention to the Chinese push for greater self-reliance in advanced technologies.

Deterrence By Other Means

Economic competition, the NSS says, “must be accompanied by a robust and ongoing focus on deterrence to prevent war in the Indo-Pacific” and “preventing domination [in Asia] by any single competitor nation.” Achieving those goals is largely left to Japan, South Korea, Australia, and other partners: “America’s diplomatic efforts should focus on pressing our First Island Chain allies and partners to allow the U.S. military greater access to their ports and other facilities, to spend more on their own defense, and most importantly to invest in capabilities aimed at deterring aggression.”

What is new here is not the goals but the means to achieve them as the US shifts naval power away from Asia and into Latin America.

What does that shift mean for the two main arenas of tension with China: Taiwan and the South China Sea? Trump has wavered on US policy on Taiwan.

Sometimes he has aligned with traditional strategic ambiguity over what the US might do if China sought to absorb Taiwan. And just the other day the administration proposed a $10 billion arms sale to Taiwan, larger than any under Biden.

At other times, however, Trump has said that Taiwan wasn’t doing enough in its own defense while raking in money from its dominance in the semiconductor trade. The NSS paper recognizes Taiwan’s economic value to the US; hence “deterring a conflict over Taiwan, ideally by preserving military overmatch, is a priority. We will also maintain our longstanding declaratory policy on Taiwan, meaning that the United States does not support any unilateral change to the status quo in the Taiwan Strait.”

But that’s not what Trump said as recently as a week ago when Xi Jinping thanked him for supporting “one China,” or what Trump did when he restrained Japan’s prime minister from repeating her unprecedented pledge to counter a Chinese attack on Taiwan. The Taiwan leadership is pressing for a major increase in military spending, both to satisfy Trump and to hedge against uncertainty about US support.

As for the South China Sea, its value to the US is also cast in economic terms: the sea lanes that run through it. Thus:

“Strong measures must be developed along with the deterrence necessary to keep those lanes open, free of ‘tolls,’ and not subject to arbitrary closure by one country. This will require not just further investment in our military—especially naval—capabilities, but also strong cooperation with every nation that stands to suffer, from India to Japan and beyond, if this problem is not addressed.”

Nothing new here.

So What’s New?

Two things strike me about the China section of this NSS. One, as mentioned, is that it is more consistent with the China policy of recent Democratic administrations than it cares to admit with respect to trade and deterrence. Where Trump has diverged from past policies is a willingness to engage in a tariff war with China (which he has clearly lost) and a lower valuation of traditional allies such as Japan and South Korea. Even personal diplomacy with China, favored by Trump’s predecessors, is back in vogue as Trump anticipates a visit to China in April 2026.

The second point has to do with strategic papers in general. All administrations issue them, but whether or not they are followed is another matter. The previous Trump NSS gave no hint of Trump’s leanings toward Russia or his strongly negative views of the EU and NATO. The current NSS is surely accurate about the administration’s absorption with commercial factors: tariffs, investments, technology, and defense spending.

But as a guide to policy of the moment, especially concerning China, the strategy paper must be considered of limited value. We have a president who is capable of 180-degree policy turns at any moment. If Trump gets his big trade deal with China, he’ll abide by the main guidelines in the NSS. But if not, expect a return to Cold War-style competition and tariff hikes.

flip.it · Mel Gurtov · December 30, 2025

9. The Quantum Era Crept Up While You Were Watching AI

Summary:

Catherine Thorbecke argues quantum is advancing faster than most leaders noticed while AI dominated attention. The UN labeled 2025 the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology, and major players accelerated hardware roadmaps and claims: Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and IBM all announced chips or fault-tolerant timelines, while investment momentum builds for 2026. She frames a tightening geopolitical race in which the US still leads but China is closing quickly, backed by far larger public funding. Utility timelines remain uncertain because error correction and qubit stability are hard, yet the near-term risk is clear: “harvest now, decrypt later” threats to today’s encryption, and preparedness for post-quantum security is lagging.

Comment: I have a hard time spelling quantum let alone understand it. Seriously, we do not get our hands around quantum. It is still he who controls the data controls everything. But he who controls the encryption of data probably holds the keys to the kingdom.

The Quantum Era Crept Up While You Were Watching AI

December 30, 2025 at 5:00 AM GMT+9

By Catherine Thorbecke

Catherine Thorbecke is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering Asia tech. Previously she was a tech reporter at CNN and ABC News.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2025-12-29/quantum-era-crept-up-while-you-were-watching-ai?sref=hhjZtX76

A Rigetti quantum computer displayed at the Nvidia GTC in October.Photographer: Kent Nishimura/Bloomberg

Takeaways by Bloomberg AI

Hide

The United Nations dubbed 2025 the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology, marking a flurry of announcements and investments in the field.
Quantum technology has the potential to transform sectors from medicine to finance, with estimates suggesting it could generate up to $97 billion in revenue worldwide by 2035.
A global race is underway, with the US currently leading but China rapidly narrowing the gap, and companies and policymakers are urged to build new quantum strategies and talent pipelines to address the risks and opportunities.

Step aside, artificial intelligence. Another transformative technology with the potential to reshape industries and reorder geopolitical power is finally moving out of the lab: quantum.

The United Nations dubbed 2025 the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology. It’s been marked by a flurry of announcements — and a mountain of hype — around a mind-boggling field of science long dismissed as perpetually a decade away from usefulness. But that’s how people talked about AI, too, before ChatGPT spurred the current global arms race and investor euphoria.

BloombergOpinion

Quantum technology taps the odd mechanics of quantum physics — how particles behave at the atomic level — to create computers, sensors and communications gear that are exponentially more powerful than today’s. Classic computers process information in bits, which can be represented as “0” or “1.” Quantum computers use qubits, which — bear with me for a moment — can exist in a superposition of both states at the same time. That allows them to evaluate a vast number of possibilities at extraordinary speed.

As mystifying as it seems, quantum technology has the potential to transform sectors from medicine to finance. McKinsey & Co. estimates it could generate up to $97 billion in revenue worldwide by 2035. Bain & Co., looking at the broader ecosystem, says it could unlock as much as $250 billion in market value.

AI soaked up most of the attention this year. But if you weren’t watching closely, here’s what you may have missed in quantum, and what I’m watching out for next.

The year began with something rare in the field: a viral moment. In February, Microsoft Corp. unveiled its first quantum computing chip, touting a path to fitting a million qubits on a single processer. A sleek YouTube video broke down some of the jargon usually associated with the science and culminated with the declaration: “We’re at the cusp of a quantum age.” Some researchers later questioned if the PR hype machine was going too far, perhaps overselling the underlying science.

But Microsoft’s splashy announcement followed Alphabet Inc.’s Google late-2024 unveiling of its own quantum-computing chip, dubbed Willow. And that was quickly followed by Amazon.com Inc.’s cloud unit teasing its Ocelot chip, which it claimed can reduce the costs of quantum error correction by up to 90% compared to previous approaches. Reducing error rates is one of the biggest challenges given how sensitive qubits are to even the smallest changes in their environment.

By June, International Business Machines Corp., a pioneer in the sector, unveiled an impressively detailed framework for launching a fault-tolerant (that is, less error-prone) quantum computer by 2029. And in October, Google said that it ran a “verifiable” algorithm on its Willow chip — meaning one that can be repeated on another quantum system. The algorithm, dubbed “Quantum Echoes,” ran 13,000 times faster on Willow than what’s possible on the world’s most powerful supercomputer, according to Google.

The sheer pace of quantum activity from Big Tech and startups in 2025 would have been unthinkable even five years ago. Investors are taking notice and capital is flowing. The momentum is unlikely to ebb in 2026.

The Willow chip.Source: Google

The US still leads, but China is rapidly narrowing the gap. I recently wrote about this, looking at a surge of patent filings — the same kind of data that analysts previously used to anticipate the nation’s leadership in other sectors, such as electric vehicles. John Martinis, one of this year’s winners of the Nobel Prize in Physics, warned earlier this month that China is mere “nanoseconds” behind.

A new geopolitical race is underway. Beijing has earmarked $15.3 billion in public funds for quantum computing, more than eight times the $1.9 billion the US has pledged. The West was largely caught flat-footed by China’s rapid advances in AI. It cannot afford a repeat. The stakes in quantum are arguably higher, but there is no excuse to be surprised by new breakthroughs coming from there in the new year.

Still, for all the excitement, the limits of today’s machines are just as real.

At the start of the year, Nvidia Corp. Chief Executive Officer Jensen Huang predicted that we’re about 15 to 30 years away from quantum computers being very useful. He later said he was wrong, and by June declared the tech could be applied to “solve some interesting problems in the coming years.” But he’s not alone in hedging. Amazon Web Service’s head of quantum hardware had a similar 15 to 30 year timeline in August. Even some of the most aggressive projections inside the industry put meaningful utility at least five years away. The spread in forecasts underscores how hard it remains to stabilize qubits and suppress error rates at scale.

Yet that uncertainty is precisely why business leaders should pay attention now.

Get Matt Levine’s Money Stuff, John Authers’ Points of Return and Jessica Karl’s Opinion Today.

By continuing, I agree to the Privacy Policy and Terms of Service.

One of the most immediate risks stems from one of quantum’s most famous algorithms. In theory, Shor’s algorithm could allow a sufficiently powerful quantum computer to break much of the commonly-used encryption by banks and governments on today’s internet. New “post-quantum” cryptographic standards are being developed, but the question of existing systems becoming obsolete is increasingly a “when,” not an “if.”

A Bain survey this year found that 73% of IT security professionals expect this to be a “material risk” within the next five years, and 32% within the next three years. Yet only 9% said they have a plan to address it.

This disconnect is the real story of quantum going into 2026. Timelines have compressed, money is pouring in and a global race is underway — but preparedness is lagging. Now is the time for companies and policymakers to build new quantum strategies and talent pipelines, beginning with a serious plan for post-quantum security. The hype is getting louder; the quiet story is how unprepared we are.

This column reflects the personal views of the author and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

10. China and US need new ways to engage in push for stable ties, Wang Yi says

Summary:

China’s foreign minister Wang Yi called for a “new paradigm” of engagement with the United States that stabilizes ties through “mutual respect,” peaceful coexistence, and reciprocity, while insisting Beijing will firmly defend its “core of core interests,” especially Taiwan. He said China would counter what it called “Taiwan independence” provocations and large US arms sales, remarks delivered as PLA live-fire drills around Taiwan continued. Wang also criticized Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi for comments linking a Taiwan contingency to Japan’s survival, warning Tokyo against challenging China’s sovereignty and the postwar order.

Comment: A step toward stable ties might call for halting the threats and coercion against Taiwan.

China and US need new ways to engage in push for stable ties, Wang Yi says

Speaking at a symposium in Beijing, the foreign minister also criticised remarks Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi made about Taiwan

Cao Jiaxuanin Beijing

Published: 6:07pm, 30 Dec 2025Updated: 7:36pm, 30 Dec 2025

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3338174/china-and-us-need-new-ways-engage-push-stable-cooperative-ties-wang-yi-says?module=perpetual_scroll_0&pgtype=article

Cao Jiaxuanin Beijing

Published: 6:07pm, 30 Dec 2025Updated: 7:36pm, 30 Dec 2025

China’s top diplomat Wang Yi on Tuesday called for a new paradigm for engagement with the United States, emphasising the need for stable, cooperative ties while firmly defending what he described as China’s core interests, particularly Taiwan.

During a speech in Beijing, the foreign minister also accused Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi of “openly challenging” Chinese territorial sovereignty after she suggested last month that a potential Taiwan conflict could threaten Japan’s survival.

Wang, who was speaking at the Symposium on the International Situation and China’s Foreign Relations, reiterated that Taiwan was an internal affair and the “core of core interests” for Beijing, framing reunification as a historical mission to safeguard national sovereignty and territorial integrity.

People’s Liberation Army holds second day of live-fire exercises around Taiwan

He said provocations by “Taiwan independence” forces and large-scale US arms sales would be firmly opposed and countered. His remarks coincided with the second day of large-scale People’s Liberation Army live-fire drills around Taiwan, code-named Justice Mission 2025.

Beijing views Taiwan as part of China to be reunited by force if necessary. Most countries, including the US, do not recognise it as an independent state, but Washington opposes any attempt to take the self-ruled island by force and is legally bound to provide arms to help it defend itself.

US President Donald Trump described the drills as routine, noting that such exercises had occurred “for 20-25 years”. He said he was not worried about the escalation and cited his personal rapport with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

In the speech, Wang reflected on the past year of US-China relations, saying that mutual respect, peaceful coexistence and win-win cooperation were essential for stability.

“When China and the US cooperate, both sides benefit; when they confront each other, both are harmed,” he said, urging both sides to address concerns on the basis of equality, respect and reciprocity.

The remarks come amid an uneasy trade truce agreed at a summit between Xi and Trump in Busan, South Korea, in October, which temporarily eased tensions over rare earth exports and trade disputes.

Developments this month – including Washington’s decision to sell around US$11 billion in weapons to Taiwan, reportedly the biggest deal of its kind to the island – have raised questions over the diplomatic road map ahead of high-level meetings set for April.

The tensions also worsened as Trump signed a sweeping defence bill, known as the National Defence Authorisation Act (NDAA), that would restrict US outbound investment in Chinese technology and curb federal contracts with Chinese biotechnology companies.

Washington had earlier added new models from China’s DJI firm and all other foreign-made drones to its blacklist.

On Japan, Wang accused Takaichi of failing to reflect on wartime history and said the current Japanese leadership was openly challenging China’s sovereignty, the World War II verdict and the post-war international order. He warned against a resurgence of militarism and urged efforts to safeguard “hard-earned peace and stability” in the region.

Beyond regional disputes, Wang outlined China’s broader diplomatic priorities to counter “protectionism and coercive trade practices globally”.

He pledged that Beijing would push for Brics countries – a grouping of mostly emerging economies – to gain more influence in a multipolar world.

China has long portrayed itself as a source of stability and certainty amid fast-changing geopolitics. It eyes greater support from the developing world and pushes for a greater voice for the Global South as it faces increasing isolation from the West.

“Modernisation does not equate to Westernisation. China and the countries of the Global South should support each other on the path to modernisation,” Wang said.

“China is closely monitoring the developments in the Latin American region and will steadfastly support them in safeguarding their own sovereignty and national dignity.”

China’s top diplomat Wang Yi lays out directions for country’s foreign policies

Meanwhile, China and Europe are recalibrating their relations as tensions over overcapacity, rare earths, supply chains and technology have further damaged a relationship that has suffered since the start of the Ukraine war in 2022.

He ramped up calls for Europe and China to seek common ground in their relationship while reserving differences to “open up new prospects” for bilateral relations, and become “genuine partners” in upholding multilateralism.

Wang pledged that Beijing would work with Moscow to bring international strategic stability, saying “the dawn of peace is visible on the horizon as the window has opened for negotiation to end the Ukraine war, but the road ahead remains challenging”.

“China is willing to continue playing a constructive role towards a comprehensive, lasting and binding peace agreement,” Wang said.

Cao Jiaxuan

Cao Jiaxuan joined the SCMP in 2025 and covers China’s diplomacy and foreign relations. She has an academic background in economics and international journalism and previously reported from Hong Kong on China's economic affairs.

11. Trump ‘not worried’ about Beijing’s military drills around Taiwan

Summary:

POTUS downplayed China’s “Justice Mission 2025” drills around Taiwan as routine activity seen for “20–25 years,” citing his personal rapport with Xi and saying he was not worried. The comments followed Beijing’s large-scale exercises, including live-fire activity around multiple approaches to Taiwan, framed by China as a warning against “Taiwan independence” and outside interference. The episode comes as the US approved a record $11.1 billion arms package for Taiwan and after smaller sales since an October Xi–Trump trade truce. Pentagon assessments still highlight 2027 as a key PLA planning horizon, while Taiwan launched rapid-response deployments amid major flight disruptions.

Comment: This would seem to confirm the description of the NSS as China is a strategic rival rather than an adversary. I think he is right to show no concern publically. But is the PLA activity really routine?

Trump ‘not worried’ about Beijing’s military drills around Taiwan

Trump dismisses ‘routine’ drills in Taiwan Strait even as US arms sales hit record high and Pentagon repeats 2027 timeline

Khushboo Razdanin Washington

Published: 7:28am, 30 Dec 2025

US President Donald Trump on Monday described Beijing’s large-scale military exercises around Taiwan as routine activities that have occurred “for 20-25 years”, expressing no concern over the escalation and instead citing his personal rapport with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

“I have a great relationship with President Xi, and he hasn’t told me anything about it,” Trump said in remarks to reporters during a press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.

When pressed on whether the manoeuvres were a sign of impending conflict, Trump doubled down.

“I certainly have seen it, but he hasn’t told me anything about it, and I don’t believe he’s going to be doing it,” he said.

“No, nothing worries me. They’ve been doing that for 20-25 years,” the President added when asked if the drills concerned him.

PLA kicks off military exercises around Taiwan

Just hours earlier, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) launched surprise drills code-named “Justice Mission 2025”, involving live-fire drills in waters and airspace in the Taiwan Strait and areas to the north, southwest, southeast and east of Taiwan’s main island.

Beijing described the drills as a “stern warning” to “Taiwan independence separatist forces” and “external interference”.

And while Trump brushed off the drills, his administration earlier this month announced a record $11.1 billion US arms package for Taiwan – the largest single sale in US history.

The pending package includes HIMARS rocket systems, self-propelled howitzers, anti-tank missiles and drones. Beijing condemned the sale as “flagrant interference in China’s internal affairs”.

Beijing sees Taiwan as part of China, to be reunited by force if necessary.

Most countries, including the US, do not recognise Taiwan as an independent state, but Washington has expressed its opposition to any attempt to take the self-governed island by force and says it’s committed to supplying it with weapons.

The latest deal marks the third such sale announcement since the October meeting between Xi and Trump in Busan, South Korea, that led to a trade truce between the two global powers.

In November, a US$330 million deal for aircraft spare and repair parts was also announced, followed by the sale of an advanced missile system worth US$699 million that has been battle tested in Ukraine.

Trump’s comments on Monday set a different tone from the Pentagon’s recent report to Congress. According to the document, released on December 23, Beijing now “expects to be able to fight and win a war on Taiwan by the end of 2027”, and has spent the last year refining “essential components” of an invasion, including blockades and strikes on US forces in the Pacific.

Since returning to the White House in January, Trump has focused on personal diplomacy with Xi, claiming that the Chinese leader assured him that Beijing would not invade Taiwan during his presidency, and even teasing a state visit to the mainland in 2026.

He has also repeatedly accused Taiwan, home to TSMC, the world’s largest advanced chipmaker, of “stealing” the American chip industry and threatened tariffs on the island’s exports.

Trump has insisted that Taiwan focus on self-defence, yet the delivery of US weapons remains plagued by delays. The backlog stood at US$21.54 billion as of November, with key systems not expected to arrive until 2027-2028 due to lingering pandemic-era supply chain fractures and labour shortages.

In Taiwan, the Ministry of National Defence condemned PLA manoeuvres as provocative and announced the deployment of forces for rapid response. Over 850 flights were disrupted, affecting more than 100,000 passengers.

Khushboo Razdan

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

12. Why Singapore is the only Southeast Asian country in Pax Silica, the U.S.’s new AI 'inner circle'

Summary:

Singapore is the only Southeast Asian signatory to Pax Silica because Washington sees it as a “trusted node” for AI-era supply chains, with strong governance, regulatory credibility, capital markets, logistics, and high-end connectivity and data-center infrastructure. Singapore also has deep semiconductor roots and a material share of global chip production, and it has invested heavily in AI workforce development and cloud capacity. For Singapore, membership provides a seat in US-led discussions on sensitive joint ventures and supply resilience, plus earlier access to leading AI technologies. Other ASEAN states are building capacity, but infrastructure and talent constraints make them likelier “outer ring” candidates for later expansion.

Why Singapore is the only Southeast Asian country in Pax Silica, the U.S.’s new AI 'inner circle' | Fortune

Fortune · Angelica Ang

Yet despite deepening trade relations between the U.S. and ASEAN nations like Thailand, Malaysia and Vietnam, Singapore remains the agreement’s only Southeast Asian signatory. That decision comes even as ASEAN nations like Malaysia are investing in their own AI industries, like semiconductors and data centers.

Singapore is “precisely the kind of ‘trusted node’ the U.S. is seeking to anchor AI-era supply chains,” says Ruben Durante, a professor of economics and Provost’s Chair at the National University of Singapore (NUS). Singapore “offers strong governance, regulatory credibility, capital markets, logistics, and advanced data center and connectivity infrastructure.”

The country has a long history with chips. U.S.-based National Semiconductor set up a plant there in 1968, followed by the government’s creation of Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing in 1987. Singapore now accounts for around 10% of all chip production.

More recently, Singapore has strived to become an “AI nation,” investing in skilling programs to train its workforce and encouraging local AI development. The country has also attracted billions of dollars’ worth in cloud computing and data centers, including from Big Tech companies like Amazon and Google.

While the U.S. is trying to shore up its AI supply chain, Singapore might also benefit from being part of Pax Silica, Atreyi Kankanhalli, a computing professor from NUS, suggests. Being part of Pax Silica gives the country—which has less land area than New York City—a seat at the table when the U.S. discusses joint ventures in chip production and logistics. It also gives the resource-poor city-state a safety net to ward off future supply shocks, while enabling access to the latest AI technologies.

Both the U.S. and China are trying to leverage their dominance in particular industries against each other.

Washington has blocked the sale of advanced processors, key to training and running AI models, to China since 2022. Beijing, in turn, has slapped export controls on rare earth minerals, a crucial component used for semiconductors and magnets in the AI supply chain. (China has a stranglehold on rare earths, supplying 90% of the world’s processed rare earths and rare earth magnets.)

“The AI race is often framed as a battle over data or models, but the real constraints are increasingly physical—chips, energy and supply chains,” says Simon Chesterman, a law professor from NUS and the senior director of AI governance at research institute AI Singapore.

In addition to Singapore, the U.S. included several close allies in the Pax Silica agreement: Japan, South Korea, Australia, the U.K. and Israel.

Japan and South Korea were chosen as they anchor advanced semiconductor manufacturing, says Durante of NUS. Additionally, Australia is central for critical minerals, the U.K. contributes standards-setting and intelligence alignment, and Israel brings high-end AI and defense-related innovation.

Experts think that the U.S.’s inner circle on AI will soon expand. Durante, from NUS, argues that a small founding group will facilitate early coordination on sensitive issues. Several non-signatories, like the Netherlands and the United Arab Emirates, were involved in initial discussions of the Pax Silica, which Durante sees as an “outer ring” of contributors, even if they’re not yet fully aligned with the U.S.

“Expansion will depend on whether Pax Silica develops concrete mechanisms, such as financing, standards, or procurement coordination,” he says, adding that countries which combine industrial relevance with willingness to align on economic-security priorities are the most likely candidates for addition.

While other Southeast Asia countries could eventually become important nodes in the AI supply chain, they still face constraints like a lack of infrastructure and dispersed talent, explains Anant Shivraj, a managing director and partner at Boston Consulting Group (BCG).

Yet this could soon change, as Vietnam and Malaysia strive to become key hubs in the region, particularly in semiconductors and data centers.

“Pax Silica’s first wave is more focused on countries that can anchor long-term control, governance, and security across the AI stack,” says Shivraj. “Many countries play essential roles, and even if they are not part of the inner circle yet, that circle may well expand.”

Fortune · Angelica Ang

13. A Country and a World Out of Balance

Summary:

Richard Haass argues the United States and the international system became dangerously unbalanced in 2025. At home, he describes an unconstrained assertion of executive primacy under POTUS, enabled by a weak congressional check and a deferential Supreme Court, alongside shocks that included a prolonged shutdown, rising debt, tariffs, immigration crackdowns, politicization of institutions, and cuts to science and foreign assistance. Abroad, he says Washington pivoted to a Western Hemisphere centered agenda and commercial priorities, distancing Europe and the Asia-Indo-Pacific while tilting policy in ways that benefited Russia and China. He frames 2026, including court rulings and the midterms, as the test of whether equilibrium can be restored.

A Country and a World Out of Balance

Dec 29, 2025

Richard Haass

US President Donald Trump's second administration has stood out for its unconstrained assertion of executive primacy and a foreign policy that has shifted geopolitical power in favor of Russia and China. Will American democracy right itself in 2026, the year it turns 250?

https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/us-and-a-world-out-of-balance-by-richard-haass-2025-12?utm

NEW YORK – Writing about 2025 from an American perspective is both easy and difficult. It is easy because there is so much to choose from. And it is difficult for the same reason.

On the domestic front, even a short list would include: the longest-ever government shutdown; the national debt surpassing $38 trillion; persistent inflation, along with increased joblessness and inequality amid accelerating, AI-fueled economic growth; growing political violence; efforts to seal the southern border to illegal immigration coupled with mass deportations; the deployment of national guard troops to Los Angeles and several other American cities; attacks on universities and on programs meant to promote diversity; the imposition of massive import tariffs; reductions in public-sector employment, including the US Agency for International Development; and considerable defunding of scientific research.

Foreign-policy developments were no less momentous. The United States joined Israel in launching armed attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities, setting its weapons program back years. A US diplomatic push did not achieve peace in Gaza, but it did bring about the release of the Israeli hostages and thousands of Palestinian prisoners, and an uneasy, incomplete ceasefire. Another diplomatic push to end the war between Russia and Ukraine has also failed so far to deliver peace but has succeeded in aligning the US with Russia and further distancing it from Europe.

Closer to home, a large US military presence was assembled off Venezuela and more than 20 boats allegedly carrying drugs were attacked, and oil exports partly blockaded, to pressure the government there to cede power. The sovereignty of Canada, Greenland, Panama, and Colombia was threatened by President Donald Trump at one time or another. The US withdrew from the World Health Organization and from global efforts to combat climate change. At the same time, it promoted fossil-fuel production and cut spending on wind and solar power. Efforts designed to promote democracy and human rights in other countries were largely terminated.

The consequence? Significant power imbalances emerged both at home and abroad in 2025.

At home, the first year of the second Trump presidency stood out for its excessive assertion of executive primacy. Trump signed hundreds of executive orders and thousands of pardons, fired public officials meant to exercise independent judgment, pressured others to bend to his will, and pursued legal retribution against perceived political enemies. The sudden bulldozing of the East Wing of the White House to make way for a large ballroom, and the abrupt renaming of the Kennedy Center, were emblematic of Trump’s rejection of decorum along with due process and oversight.

HOLIDAY SALE: Save $25 on a Digital Plus subscription

Our annual flagship magazine, PS Quarterly: The Year Ahead 2026, is here! To get your print copy, and unlock digital access to all its content, subscribe to PS Digital Plus now.

Subscribe Now

What stood out just as much as Trump’s assertion of power was congressional Republicans’ unwillingness to provide a check on the president, and the deference shown to him by the Supreme Court. Not since Franklin Delano Roosevelt has any president accumulated such a degree of control, but unlike FDR, who could point to the Great Depression and World War II as justifications for his actions, Trump inherited no emergency. He simply did things – and others acquiesced.

Trump’s unconstrained presidency is at odds with the American political tradition. Central to American government and democracy is the notion of checks and balances – that the three branches of the federal government are meant to govern jointly and ensure that no single branch dominates. This has failed utterly: Trump acts, and few react.

Abroad, Trump gave unprecedented focus to the Western Hemisphere – best understood as an extension of homeland security, a domain where concerns over drugs, immigration, and commerce intersect – and on promoting commercial interests everywhere. This strategy meant distancing the US from allies and friends in Europe and Asia and cozying up to Russia and China. As a result, the balance of power shifted in favor of countries that, until recently, had been seen as actual or potential adversaries.

Looking ahead, how the Supreme Court rules on Trump’s assertion of emergency powers to justify his prolific use of tariffs, his signature economic policy, will prove informative. Equally revealing will be whether congressional Republicans demonstrate increasing willingness to distance themselves from Trump, which could happen if they believed he was becoming a political liability.

Even more important will be the November 2026 midterm elections. History suggests that given Trump’s low approval rating, the party out of power – the Democrats in this case – will pick up seats, gaining control of at least the House of Representatives. With that would come the ability not just to frustrate legislation sought by the White House but to investigate the administration. Trump is eager to avoid that outcome. The question is not simply whether Democrats will prevail in a free and fair election but whether the elections will be free and fair – an unexpected test of American democracy just months after it turns 250.

Overseas, Trump’s emphasis on the Western Hemisphere and on ousting Nicolás Maduro’s regime in Venezuela means less attention will be devoted to Europe and Asia, and fewer assets devoted to balancing Russia and China. This outcome will be even more pronounced if Trump doubles down on the use of military force against Venezuela to achieve his aims.

This, of course, raises the question of what the US is prepared to do vis-à-vis Russia and China. There is no sign the Trump administration will provide Ukraine with the military, economic, and diplomatic support it needs to convince Russian President Vladimir Putin that time is not on his side and that more war will not yield more results. But that is precisely what maintaining a balance of power and deterring further Russian aggression in Europe requires.

Similarly, there are doubts about Trump’s willingness to stand by America’s friends and allies in the Asia-Pacific, in particular Taiwan. His planned trip to China in the spring of 2026 could show whether his desire to reduce America’s trade imbalance takes precedence over maintaining the balance of power in a region critical to the world’s future.

Systems out of balance tend to evolve either in the direction of further imbalance or toward a new or restored equilibrium. What Trump is willing and able to do will go a long way toward determining this evolution – and with it, the history of this era. As such, 2026 promises to be a pivotal year for the US and the world.

Richard Haass

Writing for PS since 2000

190 Commentaries

Richard Haass, President Emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, senior counselor at Centerview Partners, and Distinguished University Scholar at New York University, previously served as Director of Policy Planning for the US State Department (2001-03), and was President George W. Bush's special envoy to Northern Ireland and Coordinator for the Future of Afghanistan. He is the author of The Bill of Obligations: The Ten Habits of Good Citizens (Penguin Press, 2023) and the weekly Substack newsletter Home & Away.

14. The Houthi Model – Non-State Actors and Multi-Drone Capabilities

Summary:

Cole Black argues the Houthis illustrate a repeatable “model” in which a non-state actor, enabled by state sponsorship, fields sophisticated multi-drone capabilities that serve both operational and political objectives. He traces how Iran-backed Houthi drones and swarm-style attacks have enabled strikes on regional targets and disruption of Red Sea shipping, exploiting cost asymmetry and the complexity of detecting and defeating drones in volume. The key insight is the fusion of military effects with state-building propaganda: the Houthis showcase drones in parades, media, and messaging to portray themselves as a legitimate sovereign authority rather than an insurgent group. Black concludes similar groups will copy this blend of advanced drone tech, logistics, and legitimacy narratives, increasing future multi-drone threats.

Excerpt:

Conclusion

Dozens of states have adopted drone systems into their militaries during the 21st century, from democratic nations to autocratic leaders, from full-fledged regional conflicts in Europe to piracy in the Red Sea. With modern warfighting mired in proxy conflict and gray-zone operations, it is not surprising that regimes like Iran have provided non-state groups with financial and material support to acquire similar weapons systems. Arming the Houthis enables Tehran to strengthen its regional influence, build prestige around its military technology, and undermine its rivals. The future threat of multi-done terrorism by non-state actors is made salient by increasingly sophisticated Houthi multi-drone attacks. The Houthis hold drones on a rhetorical pedestal, wielding multi-drone attacks as a tool to build their own regional legitimacy. Groups that adopt advanced drone technologies into their military capabilities and political rhetoric to portray themselves as legitimate governments are following the “Houthi Model”; this threat will likely intensify with the emerging use of multi-drone systems in modern warfighting.

The Houthi Model – Non-State Actors and Multi-Drone Capabilities

by Cole Black

12.30.2025 at 06:00am

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/12/30/the-houthi-model-non-state-actors-and-multi-drone-capabilities/

Houthi drones displayed during an official military parade in Sanaa, September 2023 (Mohammed Huwais/AFP).

Abstract: Terrorist use of drones has expanded significantly in the 21st century as a result of the widespread proliferation of drone technology. Yemen’s Houthi movement – a non-state group conducting drone strikes with unique frequency in the last decade – uses technologically sophisticated and logistically complex multi-drone attacks as a central piece of their military and propaganda strategies. Examining the practical and symbolic dimensions of the Houthis’ drone air force provides greater insight into the trajectory of future multi-drone attacks as well as their role in Houthi efforts to portray themselves as Yemen’s legitimate government. Groups that integrate advanced drone technologies (especially from state-sponsors) into their military capabilities and state-building rhetoric are following the “Houthi Model.”

Introduction

Since the outbreak of war in Gaza, regional conflict in Yemen has escalated into an international crisis. In November of 2023, the Iran-backed Houthi movement began targeting merchant and naval vessels transiting major trade routes in the Red Sea to apply economic pressure against Israel and its allies’ actions in the Gaza Strip. By exerting control over global supply chains reliant on the shipping chokepoint of the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait and the Gulf of Aden, the Houthis hope to elevate their regional importance and reinforce their sovereignty. A cornerstone of the Houthi strategy is their “uncrewed aerial vehicle air force,” an arsenal of technologically sophisticated drones imported directly from Iran or assembled from a combination of foreign and domestically manufactured components. Drone strikes – especially the advanced type utilizing multiple drones simultaneously – support the Houthis’ narrative of fighting for independence and national sovereignty against an oppressive coalition of external powers. Branding themselves as technologically sophisticated freedom fighters of the true Yemeni state rejects outside designations (and redesignations) of the Houthis as a terrorist or insurgent group. Drone attacks are central to both the military and propaganda strategy of the Houthis; examining the dimensions of their drone operations, both practical and symbolic, in the context of the “Houthi Model” of state-building, gives greater clarity to the trajectory of multi-drone terrorism in the future for similar groups.

Background

Terrorist use of drones has expanded significantly in the 21st century in large part due to greater availability of the technology; groups like ISIS, Hamas, and other non-state militias have exploited the ubiquity of drones, adapting cheap civilian drone systems to conduct surveillance or carry improvised explosives. State-supported groups began operating drones en masse in the last decade, conducting simultaneous multi-drone attacks requiring greater technological sophistication and logistical capability. Studies identify several appeals that multi-drone terrorism might have for non-state groups: its potential to facilitate mass casualty attacks, reduce risk to human assets, avoid countermeasures, and increase group publicity. These motivations push lesser states, non-state actors, and knowledgeable individuals to adopt emerging drone technologies. Yemen’s Houthis have a distinct ideological motivation behind their extensive use of drones: a desire to portray themselves as a modern, technologically advanced state rather than a conventional terrorist organization. The Houthis are unique among non-state groups in their en masse use of drone strikes since 2015.

The Houthis contest the philosophical idea of the modern death of the state, suggesting that non-state groups continue to aspire towards achieving international recognition as independent government authorities.

The Houthi movement, or Ansar Allah, has been in conflict with the internationally recognized Yemeni government for nearly two decades. The Houthis seized control of Yemen’s capital in 2015, expelling the government of President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi. Since then, the Houthis have exerted control over the north-west of Yemen, reshaping prior institutions with their extremist sectarian Zaydi Shiite ideology. Statehood in the postcolonial Middle East is notoriously complicated. It is especially difficult to ascribe western theories of state formation to Yemen, a region that rejected Eurocentric models of governance even before its civil war and ongoing insurgency. Historian Charles Tilly’s famous maxim “war made states and states made war” is both proven and disproven by Houthi governance and hybrid Yemeni sovereignty.

The Houthis contest the philosophical idea of the modern death of the state, suggesting that non-state groups continue to aspire towards achieving international recognition as independent government authorities. Houthis have conducted increasingly sophisticated drone attacks in Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, most significantly two multi-drone strikes in 2019, first on Saudi oil tankers and later on Aramco’s Shaybah oil field with ten drones in a swarm-like attack. These attacks stand out for their large scale and relative sophistication: non-state groups traditionally lack the funding, armament, or technological capability to conduct drone attacks with multiple drones at once. The Houthis, however, are outfitted with advanced fixed-wing drones able to carry larger ordinances and attack in synchronized groups. These military drone operations fit into traditionally the most difficult aspect of sovereignty for non-state actors to achieve and sustain: significant impact on the foreign policy of established “superpower” nations.

The Houthi Model

Strategic strikes using a modern arsenal of drone platforms requires foreign policy engagement whereas the traditional violence of terrorism might prohibit negotiation: back-channel attempts to coordinate a ceasefire between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis have failed multiple times and diplomats from the United Nations and Oman have occasionally met with Houthi and Saudi leaders to mediate negotiations towards peace. Yahya Sarea, spokesperson for the Houthi Armed Forces, and other Houthi military leaders describe targeting an American destroyer in the Red Sea using several drones. In response, the United States took military and diplomatic action to facilitate humanitarian aid to Yemen and Gaza and defend maritime trade. According to the Department of War, the US military has spent upwards of $1 billion dollars in efforts to protect vessels in the Red Sea; the “Shahed” model drones used by the Houthis cost about $35,000 per drone. One report describes the Houthis’ siege as the biggest disruption to international trade since the COVID-19 pandemic, reducing shipments through the Red Sea by 70 percent. While the United States employs the “stick”, China uses the “carrot” by offering weapons manufacturing equipment and shell-company funding in exchange for the safe passage of Chinese-flagged vessels.

A Houthi drone as observed by a French destroyer in the Red Sea shortly before interception

Houthi leaders claim to have designed and manufactured their drone air force internally despite the fact that their drone platforms – such as the Qasef-I – are nearly identical in design and construction to Iranian drones like the Ababil-II, often sharing serial numbers identical to those produced in Iran. The state-sponsored drone armament of Ansar Allah and their ability to produce “hybrid” drones from imported and domestic parts typifies the vanguard threat of multi-drone attacks by non-state actors. However, Iranian backing alone does not distinguish the Houthis’ use of drones from other non-state groups. Iran has a history of providing technology to terrorist networks as part of its proxy conflicts across the Middle East. Hezbollah has been using Iranian-provided drones against Israel since the early 2000s. Iran gave drones to the Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba militia in Iraq and Hamas in Gaza. The Houthis are unique in that they use drones as both a strategic military capability and a propaganda tool to build credibility.

The Houthis have set military drone operations at the center of their propaganda strategy. During a 2022 military parade, Houthi military vehicles displaying their drone air force on truck beds passed by formations of uniformed soldiers. In videos circulated by Houthi social media accounts, Sarea delivers a press conference applauding the alleged success of eight years of drone operations before the video cuts to a computer-generated drone image that rotates alongside attack statistics. Sarea’s X/Twitter account had over 500,000 followers before being banned last year and his English-language account had posted hundreds of tweets mentioning drones and reporting attacks conducted by the Houthi drone air force. Houthi followers regularly share similar propaganda videos and messages crowded with drone content on Twitter or Telegram groups. The Almasirah Media Network – Yemen’s Houthi-run propaganda channel – consistently reports on the Houthi’s possession and use of drones. Selectively citing Western military reporting, the Almasirah Network broadcasts that the Houthi drone strategy has “challenged traditional, high-cost defense systems and highlighted the effectiveness of relatively inexpensive asymmetric warfare technologies.” They are indeed correct that sophisticated multi-drone drone threats from non-state actors like the Houthis have influenced operational calculus for Western powers in the Red Sea: US Central Command recently announced Task Force Scorpion Strike, the US military’s first squadron of low cost, one-way-attack drones based in the Middle East, a pivot to the very technology threatening US forces in the region.

Conclusion

Dozens of states have adopted drone systems into their militaries during the 21st century, from democratic nations to autocratic leaders, from full-fledged regional conflicts in Europe to piracy in the Red Sea. With modern warfighting mired in proxy conflict and gray-zone operations, it is not surprising that regimes like Iran have provided non-state groups with financial and material support to acquire similar weapons systems. Arming the Houthis enables Tehran to strengthen its regional influence, build prestige around its military technology, and undermine its rivals. The future threat of multi-done terrorism by non-state actors is made salient by increasingly sophisticated Houthi multi-drone attacks. The Houthis hold drones on a rhetorical pedestal, wielding multi-drone attacks as a tool to build their own regional legitimacy. Groups that adopt advanced drone technologies into their military capabilities and political rhetoric to portray themselves as legitimate governments are following the “Houthi Model”; this threat will likely intensify with the emerging use of multi-drone systems in modern warfighting.

Check out all the great things Small Wars Journal has to offer.

Tags: drones, Houthi, non-state actors, Red Sea

About The Author

Cole Black
Cole Black grew up in San Diego, CA, and recently graduated Yale University with a degree in History, focusing on War and Society.

15. From Khorramshahr to Hezbollah: How Iran Learned to Win by Not Winning

Summary:

Frzand Sherko argues Iran’s core strategic lesson came after retaking Khorramshahr in 1982, when Tehran chose endurance over decisive victory and redefined success as regime survival, legitimacy, and time. He traces how the Iran–Iraq War forged IRGC learning, shifting from costly mass assaults toward force preservation and the externalization of risk through proxies. Ideology, he argues, functions as an operational asset that converts pain into proof of righteousness and blunts cost-based deterrence. Hezbollah becomes the template: avoid decisive engagements, survive, and claim narrative victory, as in 2006. Sherko says Iran replicates this “win by not winning” approach across Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and the Red Sea, producing managed instability that exhausts adversaries.

From Khorramshahr to Hezbollah: How Iran Learned to Win by Not Winning

by Frzand Sherko

12.30.2025 at 06:00am

Introduction: Redefining Victory

When Iranian forces retook Khorramshahr in May 1982, the Iran–Iraq War could have ended. Iraq signaled readiness for a ceasefire, Iran had reversed the invasion, and the strategic balance no longer justified escalation. Yet, Tehran chose to continue the war for six more years. This decision was not simply ideological stubbornness; it marked a decisive shift in how the Islamic Republic defined victory itself.

Survival, endurance, and ideological consolidation became substitutes for decisive military success. That redefinition of victory, born during the Iran–Iraq War, remains central to Iran’s strategic behavior today. From Hezbollah in Lebanon to Iranian-aligned militias in Iraq and Yemen, Tehran’s approach reflects a doctrine shaped not by triumph but by attrition, adaptation, and learning how to endure without winning outright.

Khorramshahr as a Strategic Turning Point

The early phase of the war exposed Iran’s vulnerability. The post-revolutionary purges of the regular army, the execution or dismissal of senior officers, and the rapid formation of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) left Tehran ill-prepared for conventional conflict. Iraq’s initial advances were facilitated by Iranian disarray rather than Iraqi operational brilliance, as documented in multiple historical and policy assessments of the war.

Iran’s survival, however, became the war’s most consequential outcome. After Khorramshahr, Iranian leaders internalized a critical lesson: The regime could absorb extraordinary punishment so long as it mobilized society ideologically and framed endurance as moral victory. Territory became secondary to legitimacy; time became more valuable than maneuver.

This logic inverted conventional deterrence thinking. Losses no longer signaled failure; they became proof of righteousness and resistance.

IRGC Institutional Learning and Adaptation

The IRGC emerged from the war as an institution forged through improvisation rather than doctrine. Early reliance on human-wave assaults and mass casualties reflected material weakness, not strategic sophistication. Over time, however, the Guards learned to preserve manpower while maintaining pressure.

This transition, from expendable mass mobilization to force preservation, laid the groundwork for Iran’s modern proxy doctrine. Rather than confronting adversaries directly, Tehran learned to externalize risk, fight through intermediaries, and stretch conflicts across time and geography. The evolution of the IRGC into a transnational force with expeditionary capabilities has been well documented.

By the late stages of the war, Iran’s leadership was less focused on battlefield victory than on regime survival, internal consolidation, and the projection of influence beyond Iran’s borders.

Ideology as an Operational Asset

Ideology functioned as a military technology during the war. Iranian leaders framed combat as sacred defense, martyrdom as transcendence, and suffering as legitimacy. This narrative discipline allowed Tehran to compensate for material inferiority and suppress internal dissent under wartime conditions.

Crucially, ideology redefined defeat. Casualties did not undermine resolve; they reinforced it. Endurance itself became victory. This worldview continues to shape Iran’s strategic culture, frustrating Western deterrence models premised on rational cost-benefit calculations. Iran often interprets pressure campaigns as confirmation of its resistance narrative rather than incentives for restraint.

Hezbollah: The Model Outcome

Hezbollah represents the most refined application of Iran’s post-war learning. Unlike Iran in the 1980s, Hezbollah does not seek to defeat Israel militarily. It avoids decisive engagements, preserves its forces, and measures success by survival, deterrence, and narrative dominance.

The 2006 Lebanon War is instructive. Hezbollah did not achieve battlefield victory, but it survived. That survival was framed as success, strengthening Hezbollah politically and embedding it further into Lebanon’s security architecture. From Tehran’s perspective, this outcome validated a strategy of limited escalation and endurance.

Replication Across Multiple Theaters

Iran has replicated this model across the region. In Iraq, militias absorb pressure that Tehran avoids directly. In Syria, Iranian forces and proxies sustain conflict without seeking a decisive resolution. In Yemen, the Houthis impose strategic costs disproportionate to their capabilities. In the Red Sea, limited disruption creates global economic effects without triggering full-scale retaliation.

Across these theaters, Iran avoids “winning” wars because decisive victory would require responsibility, escalation control, and political compromise. Instead, Tehran seeks permanence: managed instability that exhausts adversaries over time. This approach aligns with assessments by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency and other policy institutions emphasizing Iran’s preference for indirect confrontation and strategic patience.

Implications for the United States and Its Allies

Western deterrence efforts frequently misfire against Iran because they assume shared definitions of success. Tehran does not seek decisive outcomes; it seeks survival, legitimacy, and time. Escalation designed to impose costs often reinforces Iran’s self-image as a besieged but righteous power.

Any effective strategy toward Iran must account for the regime’s formative experience during the Iran–Iraq War. The Islamic Republic emerged battered but intact and concluded that endurance itself confers legitimacy. Pressure alone, absent political strategy, risks reproducing the same cycle: escalation, endurance, and strategic stalemate.

Conclusion: Institutionalized Memory

The Iran–Iraq War was not merely a historical tragedy; it was the crucible in which Iran’s modern strategic doctrine was formed. From Khorramshahr to Hezbollah, Tehran learned how to survive without winning, how to fight without deciding, and how to endure without conceding.

Iran’s behavior today reflects continuity, not improvisation. Until policymakers recognize that Tehran measures success through survival rather than victory, its strategic logic will remain misunderstood, and its endurance underestimated.

Tags: asymmetric warfare, Hezbollah, Iran, irregular warfare, Khorramshahr, Middle East security, proxy warfare, resistance, strategy

About The Author

Frzand Sherko
Frzand Sherko is a strategic scholar and political analyst specializing in Iranian strategy, proxy warfare, and security dynamics in the Middle East. He is a doctoral candidate in Statecraft and National Security at the Institute of World Politics in Washington, D.C.

16. The Cyber Wars That Weren’t

Summary:

Derek Ray argues recent major wars produced “cyber wars that weren’t”: despite heavy warnings, offensive cyber operations in Russia–Ukraine, Israel–Hamas, and Israel–Iran delivered little meaningful battlefield effect. He contrasts timing choices, noting Russia’s pre-invasion cyber activity signaled intent, while Hamas and Israel appeared to delay cyber to protect operational security. Cyberspace still went global as hacktivists and criminals joined in, yet outcomes stayed largely tactical and disruptive rather than decisive, with missiles, drones, and ground operations driving results. Ray highlights limited escalation and sparse public attribution, implying low costs for opportunistic cyber during conflicts. He concludes cyber is better viewed as sabotage supporting operations, not a door-kicker.

Excerpts:

In an increasingly digital world, it makes sense that warfare also goes digital. The Russia-Ukraine, Israel-Hamas, and Israel-Iran conflicts both provided glimpses into what the future convergence of physical and digital warfare may look like. Growing digital connectiveness equates to more potential cyber targets and a growing tech savvy populace equates to more potential digital combatants. As such, cyberattacks are likely to remain an element of warfare, whether employed by civilian hacktivists or state-level actors.

In terms of overall international security, it is a good thing that cyberattacks did not spur escalation in either conflict. For practitioners of both offensive cyber and cybersecurity, this lack of escalation also means cyberspace remains a domain of action where a wide range of actors will continue to attack one another in support of their respective cause. Understanding the use of cyberattacks in both the Russia-Ukraine, Israel-Hamas, and Israel-Iran conflicts and applying lessons learned from these conflicts should enable future combatants to more effectively leverage the cyber domain during times of conflict.

The Cyber Wars That Weren’t

irregularwarfare.org · Derek Ray · December 30, 2025

https://irregularwarfare.org/articles/the-cyber-wars-that-werent/

At the onset of the Israel-Iran conflict, news websites warned the public of the possible collateral damage the Israel-Iran fight could generate in cyberspace. The ominous warnings about the hacktivists flocking to both sides of the conflict were remarkably similar to those issued at the onset during the beginning of the Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Hamas conflicts. Yet, despite the participants of these conflicts standing as some of the most cyber-capable states in the world, activities in cyberspace failed to translate into a meaningful battlefield effect, drawing into question the military utility of offensive cyber operations. This article analyzes the use of offensive cyber operations across the Russia-Ukraine, Israel-Hamas, and Israel-Iran conflicts and outlines lessons learned for how offensive cyber operations can factor into future conflicts.

Jumping the Gun? Timing Cyber & Kinetic Attacks

The onset of hostilities in all three conflicts included a flurry of cyber activity seemingly in tandem with attacks in the physical domain. Yet, there are meaningful differences regarding the nuanced timing of these cyberattacks that are indicative of two distinctly different offensive cyber strategies.

In the Russia-Ukraine conflict, Russia’s perpetual harassment of Ukraine in the virtual domain intensified with a wave of significant cyberattacks targeting Ukraine a full month prior to Russia’s kinetic attacks. This was followed by a second wave of significant cyberattacks in the 24 hours immediately preceding Russia’s multi-axis invasion of Ukraine.

In contrast, the months and days preceding Hamas’s attack on Israel were as unremarkable in cyberspace as they were the physical domain. Then, on October 7, 2023, Hamas launched its first cyber salvos twelve minutes after Hamas initiated its highly coordinated, multi-axis surprise attack against Israel. Lastly, on June 13, 2025, Israel launched its own surprise airstrikes against Iran while appearing to wait nearly a week to launch any major cyberattack against Iran.

Russia’s use of cyberattacks preceding a ground invasion in Ukraine bear similarities to Russia’s use of offensive cyber prior to its invasion of Georgia in 2008, yet Russia’s belligerent cyber against Ukraine provided early evidence and warning of the pending invasion. In contrast, the lack of preceding cyberattacks against Israel in the run-up to Hamas’s October 7th attacks likely reflect a prioritization of operational security which almost certainly made the attack in the physical domain more effective. Prioritizing operational security for kinetic attacks in the physical domain and delaying attacks in cyberspace appeared to be Israel’s preferred strategy as well.

Global Virtual Participation in Physically Regional Conflicts

In the physical domain, the Russia-Ukraine, Israel-Hamas, and Israel-Iran conflicts are best categorized as regional conflicts fought by singular actors on each side. In the cyber domain, however, all three conflicts are global. In each of these instances, a variety of “hacktivist” groups and cybercriminals quickly entered the fray, with different groups fighting on either side of each conflict.

For the Russia-Ukraine conflict, Ukraine both encouraged and embraced wide-ranging hacktivist support while Russia quietly received at least some level of non-government hacktivist support augmenting its own cyber-capable intelligence services and military units. Yet for both the Israel-Hamas conflict and Israel-Iran conflict, the greater preponderance of hacktivist groups attacked Israel regardless of Israel’s status as the victim of the Israel-Hamas conflict and aggressor in its conflict with Iran.

All Bark and No Bite?

Although the Russia-Ukraine conflict is ongoing, available evidence suggests that cyberattacks have had only a limited impact in all three of the conflicts. Rather, the impact of cyber appears to be negligible and overshadowed by events occurring in the physical domain.

At the onset of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, analysts and pundits feared Russian cyberattacks would take down Ukraine’s critical infrastructure and the Ukrainian people’s ability to rally behind its government and military. While Ukraine’s electric grid, water supply, and other critical infrastructure elements indeed fell under Russia’s crosshairs, glide bombs, unmanned aerial vehicles, and ballistic missiles proved to be the preferred weaponry or at least more effective than cyberattacks.

Similarly, initial accounts that hackers breached Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system prompted fear Hamas’s missiles would freely rain across Israel. In actuality, Israeli missile defense appeared to remain largely capable of defending against rocket attacks while physical hostage taking, not rocket launches, loom as the Hamas’s most effective tactic employed against Israel thus far.

For the Israel-Iran conflict, a pro-Israeli group claimed credit for an attack against an Iranian bank and cryptocurrency exchange. Additionally, it was probably a cyberattack that was responsible for Iranian state TV broadcasting anti-regime messages but none of these actions appear to have meaningfully impacted the conflict.

In all three cases, the fear of what cyberattacks might do outpaced what cyberattacks accomplished in these conflicts. Although the timing of cyberattacks at the onset of hostilities in these conflicts indicates that Russia, Hamas, and Israel factored offensive cyber operations into their planning, both state-sponsored actors and hacktivist groups have yet to translate such activity into more than tactical disruption. Cyberattacks in all three conflicts appear to have failed to result in any meaningful impact on the overall state of these conflicts.

Lessons for Future Conflict

For advanced offensive cyber powers like the United States and United Kingdom, these conflicts offer great insight into the potential role of cyberattacks in future conflicts. At the core are policy issues, military strategy considerations, and operational planning lessons worth understanding.

From a policy standpoint, the most significant revelation is that cyberattacks have not sparked any escalation in either conflict. This is significant given the inherent concern regarding escalation for any conflict involving nuclear powers. While there certainly have been issues and events in the physical domain, such as attacks on the Kerch bridge, or airstrikes in Lebanon, which resulted in at least short-term escalation in both the Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Hamas conflicts, neither Russia nor Ukraine appear phased by the ongoing spate of cyberattacks. Meanwhile both Israel-Hamas and Israel-Iran have largely abandoned cyberattacks and appear unconcerned with the ongoing low-level hacktivist cyberattacks launched on their behalf.

Perhaps linked with the lack of escalation in cyber, is the lack of attribution by cyberattack victims. While many hacktivist groups quickly claimed responsibility for their attacks, the victims of cyberattacks remained quiet during both conflicts. Although it’s more difficult to identify the perpetrators of a cyberattack than an attack in the physical domain, it is well within the capabilities of Ukraine, Russia, Israel, and Iran to do so if they wanted to.

The policy implication here is that the lack of public attribution, let alone reprisal or escalation, means both state-sponsored actors and hacktivist groups can wage cyberattacks with little fear of recourse. Given what transpired thus far in each studied conflict, one should expect states with offensive cyber programs could become opportunistic in conducting cyberattacks during conflict regardless if they are a direct participant or a third-party partner. Cyberattacks may even be the ideal tool for third-party interventionist states to impose costs and weaken adversaries otherwise distracted by higher priority hostilities in the physical domain.

From a military strategy standpoint, the value of cyberattacks in support of military operations remains uncertain. History will show Russia fumbled its invasion of Ukraine in multiple ways. In the cyber domain, Russia’s actions may have actually been counterproductive. Not only did Russian cyberattacks fail to intimidate Ukraine’s population or set conditions for a quick government capitulation, Russia’s cyberattacks against Ukraine served as an indication of the impending invasion and bolstered the West’s public characterization of Russia as an undeterred aggressor. Hamas employed a different cyber strategy, which ensured actions in the cyber domain did not undermine operations in the physical domain, but were nonetheless insignificant in terms of the overall conflict.

From an operational planning perspective, cyberattacks wilk not “knock down the door” in advance of kinetic attacks and are not suited to providing the decisive blow in a conflict. Cyberattacks are most usefully viewed akin to sabotage operations, in that both can be conducted behind enemy lines to support the overall war effort but not in a manner that will necessarily generate headlines or be immediately understood by the general public. Much like sabotage operations, ensuring the maximum impact of cyberattacks depends on intentional targeting efforts to understand when and where to best exploit an adversary’s critical vulnerabilities.

Another operational planning consideration is that the large number of moderately capable hacktivists joining conflicts should dissuade state-level actors from pursing easily accessible or vulnerable targets of opportunity an effort to “do something” right away. Pursuing such low-hanging fruit becomes problematic since hacktivist groups typically employ a similar strategy of striking easily accessible targets of opportunity first. The low barrier to entry in the cyber domain means multiple state-sponsored and hacktivist groups may inadvertently and unknowingly work the same target. When this happens and the one group launches a cyberattack against the target, it will typically render everyone else’s work moot and efforts wasted. To avoid this situation, cyber-capable states are best assuming hacktivist groups will seize easily accessible targets and focus on the strategic value of possible cyber-target over ease of access.

Conclusion

In an increasingly digital world, it makes sense that warfare also goes digital. The Russia-Ukraine, Israel-Hamas, and Israel-Iran conflicts both provided glimpses into what the future convergence of physical and digital warfare may look like. Growing digital connectiveness equates to more potential cyber targets and a growing tech savvy populace equates to more potential digital combatants. As such, cyberattacks are likely to remain an element of warfare, whether employed by civilian hacktivists or state-level actors.

In terms of overall international security, it is a good thing that cyberattacks did not spur escalation in either conflict. For practitioners of both offensive cyber and cybersecurity, this lack of escalation also means cyberspace remains a domain of action where a wide range of actors will continue to attack one another in support of their respective cause. Understanding the use of cyberattacks in both the Russia-Ukraine, Israel-Hamas, and Israel-Iran conflicts and applying lessons learned from these conflicts should enable future combatants to more effectively leverage the cyber domain during times of conflict.

About the Author: Lt Col Derek Ray is an active-duty officer currently assigned to the Joint Staff. He served as a Cyber Mission Force Team Lead and Offensive Cyber Operations Planner under 16th Air Force. He holds a PhD in Foreign Affairs and is a graduate of the Air Force Chief of Staff’s Strategic PhD Program.

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

Main Image: Generated by DALL-E, OpenAI (December 2025).

If you value reading the Irregular Warfare Initiative, please consider supporting our work. And for the best gear, check out the IWI store for mugs, coasters, apparel, and other items.

17. From Restraint to Readiness? Germany Considers Conscription

Summary:

Germany is edging from postwar restraint toward readiness under Chancellor Friedrich Merz. Parliament approved a law requiring all 18 year old men to register and undergo screening, creating a selective service system that can become conscription if volunteers fall short. The move follows new defense financing, a National Security Council, and vows to build Europe’s strongest conventional force, yet recruitment and readiness lag after decades of underinvestment. Public willingness to fight remains limited, and legal and logistical hurdles persist. The article argues Zeitenwende is gradual, and allies should measure expectations by deliverables and timelines while Germany’s industry scales up fastest.

Comment: Is there any greater commitment to defense than conscription?

From Restraint to Readiness? Germany Considers Conscription

warontherocks.com · December 30, 2025

Michael F. Harsch

December 30, 2025

https://warontherocks.com/2025/12/from-restraint-to-readiness-germany-considers-conscription/

On Dec. 5, 2025, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz reached a significant milestone in his bid to build “Europe’s strongest conventional army”: Germany’s parliament passed a controversial bill requiring all German men to register for potential military service, which could become the first step toward reinstating a draft if volunteer numbers fall short. The breakthrough followed weeks of tense negotiations within Merz’s governing coalition, during which leading members accused one another of “torpedoing” the plan. In the end, Merz held his coalition together, and the law was approved by a margin of 323 to 272.

The hard-won vote contrasted sharply with the momentum Merz enjoyed just three months earlier. In August, he convened his full cabinet at the defense ministry — the first such meeting in nearly 20 years. Standing beside U.S. Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe, Merz signaled that Germany was ready to take on a more active leadership role in European security. The cabinet approved a draft of the military service bill and created a new National Security Council, building on a recent constitutional amendment that enabled major defense investments. For a moment, Merz seemed poised to deliver on the Zeitenwende, the epochal “turning point” declared after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

The fight over reviving conscription has been a reality check. Public willingness to defend Germany in wartime is increasing, but remains comparatively low, and questions persist about whether the Bundeswehr can meet the government’s ambitions after decades of underinvestment. Yet the government’s progress on service reform suggests that political will for change is stronger than in the past and that incremental steps can still add up to meaningful reform.

Merz’s challenge reflects the forces that have shaped German security policy since 1945. Rising threats and allied expectations have pushed Germany toward a more active defense posture, even as a deeply rooted culture of restraint continues to shape public attitudes. These complex and sometimes contradictory dynamics explain why the Zeitenwende has advanced haltingly, with progress often followed by setbacks.

The United States and Germany’s European allies should calibrate their expectations accordingly. The Zeitenwende is a gradual transformation, not a sudden pivot. For Merz, the real test lies not in passing a military service law or meeting a spending target, but in reshaping Germany’s strategic culture — the enduring patterns of thought that guide how countries conceive of and use force. One should not expect such a transformation to occur overnight, but time will inevitably be of the essence if Germany wants to avoid being sidelined by a rapidly shifting geopolitical environment. If successful, Germany may complete its long journey from a country that associates power with guilt to one that understands power as responsibility.

BECOME A MEMBER

Germany’s Postwar Paradox

Emerging from the ashes of World War II, West Germany faced a delicate balancing act. As the Soviet Union loomed as a threat, its leaders came under growing pressure to rebuild a military capable of deterring a potential Soviet invasion of Western Europe. At the same time, they had to reassure their neighbors that the country would not once again endanger peace in Europe.

As NATO’s first secretary general, Lord Hastings Lionel Ismay, famously put it, the alliance’s original purpose was to “keep the Soviet Union out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.” West Germany’s accession to NATO and the creation of the Bundeswehr in 1955 embodied this compromise: The country would rearm, but only under allied supervision. It would not develop its own nuclear weapons, but would host U.S. nuclear weapons as part of NATO’s nuclear-sharing arrangements.

German leaders’ caution toward military power stemmed not only from allied constraints but also from the postwar reckoning with Nazi crimes. Over time, this evolved into what became known as a culture of restraint (Kultur der Zurückhaltung): a national identity rooted in repentance and the belief that self-limitation — especially in the use of military force — was essential. As scholars such as Colin Gray, Elizabeth Kier, and John Duffield have argued, strategic culture reflects a nation’s historically conditioned ways of thinking about security and the using force.

For Germany, this meant that restraint became an enduring mindset shaping how both elites and the public understood the country’s role in the world. Yet political elites also increasingly invoked it as a convenient rationale — allowing successive governments to reject allied demands, defer costly military investments, and manage coalition politics, even as Berlin remained at the center of European economic integration. Germany’s strategic culture is thus something that is certainly historically rooted, but that has also on occasion been invoked by leaders who found restraint politically useful.

During the Cold War, the result was a stable yet uneasy equilibrium. West Germany built one of NATO’s most capable armies, with over 500,000 active troops at its peak, and devoted between 2.5 and 3 percent of GDP to defense through the 1980s, according to World Bank data. Yet it did not deploy forces abroad. Military power was tolerated as a necessity, not embraced as a tool of statecraft — a tension that would continue to define German security policy long after the Berlin Wall fell.

From “Civilian Power” to Complacency

The end of the Cold War removed the external pressures that had long balanced Germany’s culture of military restraint. With the Soviet threat gone and NATO obligations receding, Germany’s defense spending fell to about 1.3 percent of GDP by 2001 and remained near that level until 2022. This became known as the Friedensdividende, the peace dividend of the post-Cold War order.

Germany settled into the role of a “civilian power,” seeking to project influence through trade, diplomacy, and multilateral cooperation rather than military force. It deployed troops to the Balkans in the 1990s and to Afghanistan after 2001, but framed these missions as humanitarian or alliance obligations — extensions of, rather than departures from, its civilian identity.

This self-image also defined the era of Chancellor Angela Merkel in 2005–2021. She pursued a strategy of engagement aimed at moderating Russia and China through economic interdependence — an approach that has faced growing criticism since her departure for prioritizing short-term commercial interests over long-term security concerns. In 2011, her government suspended conscription after a reform commission concluded that “with the disappearance of an immediate, massive military threat,” it could no longer be justified. Germany became heavily reliant on cheap Russian gas, assuming that, despite Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, large-scale war in Europe had become unthinkable.

Scholz’s Zeitenwende

That illusion was shattered by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Within days, Chancellor Olaf Scholz declared the Zeitenwende and pledged to make Germany once again a capable ally within NATO. His government launched a 100 billion euro (approximately $110 billion at the time) special fund to modernize the Bundeswehr and committed Germany to meeting NATO’s spending targets.

Scholz’s approach marked a clear break from the era of engagement to one of deterrence and de-risking — efforts to secure and diversify supply chains, making Germany less vulnerable to the risk of other countries “weaponizing” its dependence on energy and export markets. He rapidly reduced Germany’s dependence on Russian gas and oversaw the adoption of the country’s first National Security Strategy and China Strategy in summer 2023. Both documents emphasized the need to protect Germany from coercion by authoritarian powers while preserving cooperation where possible.

The defense budget reached two percent of GDP in 2024 for the first time in over three decades, and Germany became the second largest military donor to Ukraine after the United States. While Russia’s invasion led to a reassessment of security perceptions, the culture of restraint proved resilient within both Scholz’s own party and German society. The tempo of reform slowed, recruitment stalled, and readiness goals slipped. Scholz had initiated change, but sustaining political and societal support proved difficult, and his coalition collapsed in late 2024.

Merz: New Ambitions, Old Obstacles

When Merz took office in May 2025, Germany was in mid-transformation. The Bundeswehr remained only partially operational even as Berlin faced strong U.S. pressure to increase defense spending and alarm over an emboldened Russia. Merz vowed to restore readiness and build Europe’s strongest conventional force.

Before assuming power, Merz narrowly secured a parliamentary majority to suspend the constitutional “debt brake,” exempting defense spending above 1 percent of GDP and creating a 500 billion euro ($585 billion) defense and infrastructure fund. Together, these measures are expected to mobilize one trillion euro in military and industrial investment over the next decade. He also pledged to meet NATO’s new 5 percent of GDP benchmark by 2035: 3.5 percent for military capabilities and 1.5 percent for infrastructure, industry, and resilience.

Expanding the armed forces, as well as improving their combat readiness, has proved far more difficult. Persistent shortages in critical capabilities, especially air defense and digital communications, continue to constrain overall readiness. The Bundeswehr currently fields just over 180,000 active personnel. Meeting NATO’s new requirements would mean approximately 260,000 active troops and 200,000 reservists by 2035 — a combined force of 460,000. Yet Berlin has authorized an increase of only 1,750 active soldiers for 2026, a pace that would push NATO’s targets decades into the future.

The new bill seeks to close this gap through a selective service framework: All 18-year-old men will complete a questionnaire and medical screening to assess willingness and suitability for service, while women may volunteer. The registration process will begin on Jan. 1, 2026 for men born in 2008 or later. The law also establishes better pay and benefits for volunteers, and incentives for extended service. Although initially focused on voluntary enlistment, the law leaves open the option of reintroducing mandatory service if volunteer numbers fall short. Whether the voluntary scheme can generate sufficient numbers remains deeply contested.

Beyond various legal and logistical hurdles lies a deeper cultural one. Although a majority of Germans acknowledge the threat posed by Russia, their willingness to take up arms remains limited. In a recent poll, only 16 percent said they would “definitely” fight to defend the country, and 22 percent said they “probably” would, a total of 38 percent. A large survey by the Bundeswehr Centre of Military History and Social Sciences paints a similar overall picture, though with important nuances: Among Germans aged 16 to 49, 54 percent of men and 21 percent of women — again, an average of about 38 percent — said they would be willing to take up arms in the event of an attack, with lower levels of willingness among young men. The military service reform has triggered student protests, and successfully reintroducing conscription will require persuading the generation most directly affected by it.

Despite unprecedented financial commitments, Germany’s ability to field the forces envisioned for the 2030s remains uncertain. A reluctant public is not the only brake on reform. Resistance also originates within political elites and the defense bureaucracy, which, when under pressure, sometimes find it convenient to cast society as the obstacle — an interpretation that deflects attention from institutions slow to modernize. Meanwhile, the biggest progress may be coming from the private sector. Rheinmetall, for example, has ramped up munitions production at record speed. Other firms are rapidly scaling missile and radar production, while high-valued AI defense startups have emerged — evidence that industrial capacity can surge even when cultural change lags behind.

The Way Ahead

Across eight decades, external constraints and internal restraint have defined German foreign policy. During the Cold War, the Soviet threat and NATO demands were tempered by a reluctance to use military power. After 1990, as the sense of threat receded, restraint became orthodoxy. Since Russia’s assault on Ukraine in 2022, external pressure has pushed Germany toward greater assertiveness, even as its strategic culture continues to shape the pace and character of change. The Zeitenwende therefore resembles evolution more than revolution.

The conscription debate illustrates this dynamic: a government under mounting pressure to assume a larger security role, yet still constrained by a strategic culture that sees military force as a risk to stability rather than a means of preserving it. To navigate this tension, the government should explain more clearly to the public how military capabilities contribute to European security and why younger generations have a stake in national defense. The draft debate reflects a broader pattern of political shifts once thought unimaginable, and even incremental reforms could meaningfully alter Germany’s role in Europe’s security architecture.

Yet gradualism carries risks. Germany’s defense transformation is unfolding in a strategic environment no longer centered on Berlin, and its measured pace offers limited reassurance to NATO’s eastern flank, which assesses readiness in months rather than decades. As Germany debates reform, Poland and other eastern allies are emerging as Europe’s new center of gravity. Germany thus has a narrow window to close its capability gaps if it hopes to remain a central pillar of European security and reduce its reliance on the United States.

For the United States, the key question is not whether Germany is changing but what it can deliver — and when. The recent suggestion by U.S. Ambassador to NATO Matt Whitaker that Germany might one day assume the Supreme Allied Commander Europe position — a post held by an American since Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1950 — underscores how significantly expectations are shifting.

Washington should continue encouraging Berlin to assume greater responsibility while remaining cautious about expectations of rapid force expansion and clear-eyed about the possibility that a more capable Germany may act more independently. Germany’s most consequential near-term contribution will likely come from its defense-industrial base, whose growth is outpacing the evolution of its strategic culture. Deepening U.S.-German cooperation on defense industrial issues — illustrated by the 2025 collaborations on drones, maritime and air defense systems — will be essential to sustaining momentum. Whether Germany can complete its journey from restraint to readiness before the strategic clock runs out remains the defining question of its transformation.

BECOME A MEMBER

Michael F. Harsch, Ph.D., is an associate professor at the National Defense University’s Eisenhower School, specializing in international security. He holds a doctorate in political science from the Free University of Berlin and has been a visiting scholar at Harvard and Stanford University.

Image: Michele Wiencek via DVIDS

warontherocks.com · December 30, 2025

18. If U.S.-China AI Rivalry Were Football, the Score Would Be 24-18

Summary:

Stu Woo frames the U.S.-China AI race as a halftime score: U.S. 24, China 18. The U.S. lead rests on chips and the broader supply chain that produces them, plus an edge in top ranked chatbots. China is portrayed as having momentum through fast improving models and aggressive publication, despite weaker hardware. The pivotal “risky trade” is the administration allowing Nvidia to sell the H200, an older but still powerful chip, to China. Critics call it gifting capability, while supporters argue it keeps China on a U.S. centered ecosystem and buys time for the next leap. Woo' core point is leverage is shifting, not settled.

If U.S.-China AI Rivalry Were Football, the Score Would Be 24-18

WSJ

If the U.S.-China artificial-intelligence rivalry were a football game, America would be leading at halftime—but it just made a risky trade.

By Stu Woo

and Ming Li

Dec. 29, 2025 12:00 pm ET

https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/the-ai-scorecard-how-the-u-s-built-a-leadand-could-lose-it-to-china-7939603a

President Trump said this month that he would allow Nvidia NVDA -1.21%decrease; red down pointing triangle to sell an older but still powerful chip to China, easing restrictions that had kept top American technology away from Beijing.

Politicians from both parties said Trump handed a rival a star player. Supporters called it a strategic long-term play.

But what is the score right now and how does this shift the momentum?

To be clear, this isn’t a game. There’s no fourth-quarter clock, and both sides can claim victory. The stakes are economic and military supremacy, not a trophy. But to demystify the conflict, we asked experts to translate the AI contest into touchdowns and field goals.

The consensus at halftime: U.S.A. 24, China 18.

Our experts disagreed on how close the game is. “Chip War” author Chris Miller called it a comfortable 24-12 lead, saying only U.S. companies are turning AI into money.

Others saw a nail-biter. Deepika Giri, head of AI research at IDC in Singapore, scored it 21-19. America dominates chips, she said, but China is surging with chatbots.

The experts weighed everything from power grids to software to arrive at their scores. Below, we focus on two key factors: chips and chatbots.

Entering the second half, the U.S. holds the lead. But the underdog has the momentum—and after Trump’s trade, a new quarterback.

Chips: the quarterbacks

To understand Trump’s bet on chip exports, consider the 1993 San Francisco 49ers.

The team had the game’s best quarterback, Steve Young, and the legend Young replaced, Joe Montana. Figuring Montana wasn’t worth much on the bench, the 49ers traded him to the Kansas City Chiefs for a draft pick who could complement Young.

The aging veteran in this case is Nvidia’s H200 chip, which Trump recently cleared for export. Released in mid-2024, it is a generation behind the company’s leading-edge Blackwell chip.

A report by one of our experts, Saif Khan of the Institute for Progress think tank, found the H200 to be 16% more cost efficient and 32% more powerful than the best model from Huawei, China’s chip champion.

The gap is probably wider, his group said, because Huawei’s chips are glitchy and scarce, owing to manufacturing bottlenecks.

Meanwhile, the U.S. has the supply chain to crank out superior chips. Khan’s team estimates that next year, the U.S. can produce semiconductors with the aggregate power of 6.9 million top-end Blackwells—more than 40 times China’s capacity.

But allow H200 sales to China, and the U.S. computing-power lead shrinks to less than sevenfold, it said.

National-security hawks warn that an aging Montana is still better than any quarterback China has produced.

Nvidia executives view the field differently. A spokesman for the company, which backed the H200 sales approval, said American customers will continue to receive far more computing and AI capabilities than anyone else.

Company leaders fear that blocking sales forces China to build around Huawei, creating a parallel AI ecosystem the U.S. can’t control. Better to keep China using Nvidia, they reason, so that if a Chinese startup such as DeepSeek makes a breakthrough, it relies on tech that U.S. companies can easily replicate.

They also consider the H200 near-obsolete, packing by some metrics just a quarter of the Blackwell’s power. Why not sell it to fuel the next seismic leap?

As for the 49ers, the gamble worked. Montana had two decent seasons in Kansas City. Young won a Super Bowl.

Chatbots: the receivers

If chips are the quarterbacks, chatbots are the receivers who turn a well-crafted spiral into a touchdown catch.

Chatbots are already doing real work, and both countries’ ambitions go further. U.S. developers say the ultimate goal is artificial general intelligence, systems that may eventually outfox humans by thinking independently. The more top-tier chatbots a country has, the better its odds of getting there first.

The LMArena leaderboard, a global ranking of chatbots, suggests America is running up the score. At one point this month, variants from just four U.S. companies—Google, xAI, Anthropic and OpenAI—swept the top 20 spots.

But the rest of the top 30 is crowded with Chinese heavyweights, including Alibaba, Baidu and rookie sensation DeepSeek.

SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS

Who do you think is winning the AI race, the U.S. or China? Join the conversation below.

DeepSeek triggered a $1 trillion market selloff earlier this year by building a world-class chatbot on second-rate Nvidia chips. It was like a receiver snagging a wobbly pass from a backup quarterback, breaking three tackles and sprinting 80 yards for a touchdown.

While U.S. labs are secretive, Chinese companies publish their research to prove they can compete despite inferior hardware, said Barrett Woodside, an AI entrepreneur in San Francisco who previously worked at Nvidia.

“The question is, when the Chinese companies get more hardware and better hardware, do they sprint away from the U.S.?” he said.

In other words, Chinese receivers have been training harder to compensate for a weaker quarterback. What could they achieve with 37-year-old Joe Montana?

Write to Stu Woo at Stu.Woo@wsj.com and Ming Li at ming.li@wsj.com

WSJ

19. The 2025 Festivus Report from SEN Rand Paul is now available

Comment: Download at this link: https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/FESTIVUS-2025-FINAL.pdf

Page one is pasted below.

All my pet projects seem to be protected from Festivus.

More seriously I afraid of the debt numbers. What can we do? I have not read a single serious solution. One faction says end wars, bring all troops home AND cut defense spending. Another faction says eliminate entitlement programs.

What is the solution? (Mint about 38 trillion dollar coins and pay off the debt with that?)

The 2025 Festivus Report from SEN Rand Paul is now available

https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/FESTIVUS-2025-FINAL.pdf

The Festivus Report 2025

Happy Festivus! How is 2025 already nearly over? What a year it’s been. So much has happened since last year’s Festivus Report: Katy Perry went to space, we all found out nothing beats a Jet2 Holiday, the Wicked press tour flooded our feeds, the Pope is now American, and SNL turned 50 years old. And of course, because highlighting waste is a year-round endeavor, my Committee continued conducting effective oversight over USAID’s reckless spending and even held a hearing on it.1

Last Festivus, we clamored over the national debt reaching over an astronomical $36 trillion. Shockingly, in one short year, the career politicians and bureaucrats in Washington have managed to reach nearly $40 trillion in debt, without so much as a second thought. When asked who’s to blame for our crushing level of debt, the answer is “Everyone.” This year, Congress voted to raise the debt ceiling by $5 trillion, the most we ever have.

Congress keeps shoveling money toward pet projects and special interests while hardworking Americans pay the price through inflation and crushing interest rates – even after President Trump took action to end most foreign aid programs.

From a $20 billion bailout for Argentina to continued funding for global health programs through waivers, Washington found new ways to keep the cash flowing. And with every new handout, the mountain of debt grows even higher.

For the first time in 50 years, President Trump deployed a pocket rescission, cancelling $5 billion in foreign aid and international organization funding. While it’s a good start, it’s just a drop in the bucket. The Congressional Budget Office predicts we will add an average of $23.9 trillion in debt annually for the next decade. The U.S. government will add over $6.53 billion of debt every single day for the next ten years. We borrow over $272 million every hour, we borrow $4.54 million every minute, and we borrow over $75,000 every second.

This year, I’m spotlighting a jaw-dropping amount of government waste — the kind that makes you wonder if anyone in Washington has ever heard the word “priorities.” A grand total of $1,639,135,969,608, which includes $1.22 trillion in interest payments on the debt.

We discovered cash going toward experiments teaching ferrets to binge drink alcohol and dosing dogs with cocaine (again). Then there were taxpayer dollars spent on safe spaces at a private university. It wouldn’t be a Festivus Waste celebration without mentioning the $2.1 million spent for researchers to collect saliva samples and survey partiers at EDM clubs and festivals in New York City about their drug use. White Coat Waste helped us uncover hundreds of millions of your hard-earned tax dollars funding labs, gain-of-function research, and brutal experiments on dogs, monkeys, and rats. That includes over $13.8 million on beagle experiments, $14,643,280 to make monkeys play a “Price Is Right”-inspired video game, and so much more.

No matter how much taxpayer money Washington burns through, politicians can’t help but demand more. Fiscal responsibility may not be the most crowded road, but it’s one I’ve walked year after year — and this holiday season will be no different. So, before we get to the Feats of Strength, it’s time for my Airing of (Spending) Grievances.

I’ve got plenty of bones to pick with reckless federal spending, and now you’re going to hear every one of them.

Happy Festivus!

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

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

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

Access NSS HERE

Company Name | Website

China’s Push to Master the Arctic Opens an Alarming Shortcut to U.S.

‘Basically warships’

Partners of convenience

Opinion | Did Ukraine Target Putin’s Residence?

Kyiv denies an attack, but Moscow is already using it as an excuse against peace talks.

Chinese Military Drills Send ‘Stern Warning’ After U.S. Arms Sales to Taiwan

Beijing directs message at foreign forces with exercises around island

Advice for advisers - 14 lessons for making government work

Opinion: Ukraine’s Victory Is the Answer to a Better Future for the World

‘Putin Told Me’ – Trump’s Trust Test as Russia Revives Familiar Playbook

Betrayal – built into Russia’s DNA

A moral choice

America Needs Economic Warriors

A New Era of Statecraft Demands a New Kind of Strategist

Navin Girishankar

HOW TO BUILD A PIPELINE

OWN WORST ENEMY

UNCLE SAM NEEDS YOU

Russia’s Descent Into Tyranny

How Four Years of War Have Remade Society

Nina Khrushcheva

DUAL REALITY

A HALF WAR

GRAY AREAS

THE MAKING OF A DICTATORSHIP

TIGHTENING THE SCREWS

The National Security Strategy Paper on China

The Quantum Era Crept Up While You Were Watching AI

Takeaways by Bloomberg AI

Hide

China and US need new ways to engage in push for stable ties, Wang Yi says

Speaking at a symposium in Beijing, the foreign minister also criticised remarks Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi made about Taiwan

Cao Jiaxuanin Beijing

Published: 6:07pm, 30 Dec 2025Updated: 7:36pm, 30 Dec 2025

Trump ‘not worried’ about Beijing’s military drills around Taiwan

Trump dismisses ‘routine’ drills in Taiwan Strait even as US arms sales hit record high and Pentagon repeats 2027 timeline

Why Singapore is the only Southeast Asian country in Pax Silica, the U.S.’s new AI 'inner circle' | Fortune

A Country and a World Out of Balance

HOLIDAY SALE: Save $25 on a Digital Plus subscription

Richard Haass

Conclusion

​​The Houthi Model – Non-State Actors and Multi-Drone Capabilities

Introduction

Background

The Houthi Model

Conclusion

About The Author

From Khorramshahr to Hezbollah: How Iran Learned to Win by Not Winning

Introduction: Redefining Victory

Khorramshahr as a Strategic Turning Point

IRGC Institutional Learning and Adaptation

Ideology as an Operational Asset

Hezbollah: The Model Outcome

Replication Across Multiple Theaters

Implications for the United States and Its Allies

Conclusion: Institutionalized Memory

About The Author

The Cyber Wars That Weren’t

Jumping the Gun? Timing Cyber & Kinetic Attacks

Global Virtual Participation in Physically Regional Conflicts

All Bark and No Bite?

Lessons for Future Conflict

Conclusion

From Restraint to Readiness? Germany Considers Conscription

If U.S.-China AI Rivalry Were Football, the Score Would Be 24-18

Chips: the quarterbacks

Chatbots: the receivers

The Houthi Model – Non-State Actors and Multi-Drone Capabilities