​Quotes of the Day:

"For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support. "

– George Washington

"The old terms must be invented with new meaning and given new explanations. Liberty, equality, and fraternity are no longer what they were in the days of the late-lamented guillotine. This is what the politicians will not understand; and that is why I hate them. They want only their own special revolutions- external revolutions, political revolutions, etc. But that is only dabbling. What is really needed is a revolution of the human spirit."

– Henrik Ibsen

"Of our political revolution of '76, we all are justly proud. It has given us a degree of political freedom, far exceeding that of any other nation of the earth. In it the world has found a solution of the long mooted problem, as to the capability of man to govern himself. In it was the germ which has vegetated, and still is to grow and expand into the universal liberty of mankind."

– Abraham Lincoln

To my Asian Friends: Happy Lunar New Year

To my Korean Friends: 새해 복 많이 받으세요

To my American Friends: Happy Presidents' Day.

1. Cognitive Warfare Fails the Cognitive Test

2. Russia’s Wagner Group pivots to European sabotage, say western officials

3. Biodefense Blind Spot: Why Washington Confuses Pandemics with Bioweapons

4. The Sound of Munich: Autonomy, Anxiety, and the Twilight of Transatlantic Order

5. Three American Speeches at Munich, and Plenty of Confusion

6. Opinion | Rubio’s Tough Love for Europe

7. U.S. Military Airlifts Mini Nuclear Reactor in First-Ever Flight

8. Canada to Prioritize Domestic Firms in Defense-Spending Plan Amid U.S. Tension

9. Exclusive: Pentagon threatens to cut off Anthropic in AI safeguards dispute

10. Anthropic Blasts Pentagon's Use of Its AI Tool in Venezuela Raid—May Void $200M Contract

11. Promoting Stability on the Path to Superintelligence

12. U.S. and Europe, No Longer Kindred Souls, Enter a Marriage of Convenience

13. A Wave of Unexplained Bot Traffic Is Sweeping the Web

14. China’s military reveals future air warfare plans

15. How China Fights Against a U.S. Army Brigade Combat Team

16. Driving PME Transformation for the Total Force: CGSS’s Modernization of the ADL Common Core

17. Beyond Swarming: Documenting Harassment, Assault, and ICAD by Chinese Maritime Militia

18. The Seven Sons of China are Stealing our Stuff

1. Cognitive Warfare Fails the Cognitive Test

​Summary:

Matt Armstrong argues that “cognitive warfare” is branding, not a new phenomenon. He says the concept replays Cold War era political warfare and public diplomacy under a fresh label, then pretends the label is the problem. He critiques Frank Hoffman’s defense of the term as incomplete and overly military in audience and framing, which risks building a new Maginot Line that adversaries route around with cheaper, deniable political action. Armstrong stresses that “the message is the munition” is not novel, and that focusing on “the mind” as the target confuses means with political ends.

Comment: This is an important critique and a necessary contribution to the discourse on cognitive warfare and narrative intelligence. He actually supports the language in the 2026 NDAA that requires the Pentagon to define cognitive warfare and narrative intelligence. Below is the specific language in the 2026 NDAA. One of the reasons I like cognitive warfare is because cognitive warfare and narrative intelligence are the foundation of political warfare in the modern era but that political warfare has huge antibodies in the US.

I think the criticism of putting this in the military realm illustrates that we have no national level interagency capability. We have no other agency with the tools and capabilities to address this. The fact is congress is directing action and that is a positive step forward. I think Matt's criticism and wise counsel are very valuable and should inform the strategists and policy makers who are tasked to develop the concept and respond to congressional demands. My only fear is that those same people will read this and use it as an excuse to stiff arm Congress in the same way the Pentagon did with countering unconventional warfare in the 2016 NDAA. Imagine if we had taken Congress seriously in 2016. Where could we be now?

In defense of Matt, his essay was written before the 2026 NDAA was passed. But I have no doubt he would be making the same argument. 

2016 NDAA Language:

 SEC. 1097. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE STRATEGY FOR COUNTERING UNCONVENTIONAL WARFARE.

(a) Strategy Required.—The Secretary of Defense shall, in consultation with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the heads of other appropriate departments and agencies of the United States Government, develop a strategy for the Department of Defense to counter unconventional warfare threats posed by adversarial state and non-state actors.

https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/house-bill/1735/text#toc-H57D78DE2C41D4347BF5202B774B80E94   

2026 NDAA Language: 

 https://www.congress.gov/committee-report/119th-congress/senate-report/39/1

See p. 200: 

"Narrative intelligence and cognitive warfare”

  The committee recognizes that the rapidly evolving global 

security landscape and the increasing sophistication of 

information-centric threats pose significant strategic 

challenges, particularly as peer and near-peer competitors 

increasingly prioritize efforts and investments in this domain 

of warfare. The committee notes that the People's Republic of 

China, for example, is actively engaged in developing what it 

terms ``informatized warfare'' and ``intelligentized warfare,'' 

with a strong emphasis on cognitive domain operations, 

involving the integration of information warfare across 

military and civilian sectors and viewing information as a 

critical domain for achieving strategic advantage in great 

power competition. The committee believes there is an urgent 

need for a coherent understanding of and investment in 

cognitive warfare to address these challenges.

  The committee notes that despite multiple congressional 

actions, there remain ambiguities and challenges in core 

definitions relating to information warfare, with frequent 

conflation of terms such as information warfare, information 

operations, cyberwarfare, cognitive warfare, and influence 

operations. The committee believes this definitional ambiguity 

contributes to a lack of strategic clarity.

  Therefore, the committee directs the Secretary of Defense 

to provide a report on cognitive warfare and narrative 

intelligence to the Committees on Armed Services of the Senate 

and the House of Representatives, not later than March 31, 

2026. In this report, the Secretary of Defense shall define 

cognitive warfare as it relates to the Department of Defense 

and assess how this definition aligns with or relates to 

existing doctrinal elements, including information warfare, 

psychological operations, and military information support 

operations. Additionally, the committee directs the report to 

include an assessment of which Department of Defense 

organizations contribute to and have functional responsibility 

for cognitive warfare efforts. Finally, the report must include 

an examination of the relative value of narrative intelligence, 

defined as intelligence of the story or narrative an adversary 

is attempting to build, to cognitive warfare and related 

disciplines. The committee expects this evaluation to consider 

how narrative intelligence can enhance military operations, 

including information operations and irregular warfare."

Cognitive Warfare Fails the Cognitive Test

by Matt Armstrong

|

02.16.2026 at 06:00am

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2026/02/16/cognitive-warfare-fails/

This article is a re-publish of a critique of Frank Hoffman’s Assessing “Cognitive Warfare” article that ran on Small Wars Journal on November 11, 2025.

The critique ran on Matt Armstrong’s substack, Arming for the War We’re In on November 17, 2025.

Introduction

Contemporary security discourse is frequently captured by a false narrative on new forms of warfare. The recent emergence of the term “cognitive warfare” is a symptom of this misconception, suggesting a novel evolution in warfare that does not exist. This form of non-military aggression was not unknown to us; on the contrary, at the onset of the Cold War, the United States profoundly understood the critical importance of public opinion to national security, both domestically and within nations abroad. American leadership recognized that the Soviet Union, and later China, waged political warfare that specifically targeted these populations to undermine the United States without firing a shot.

However, despite this early recognition, American strategic thought succumbed to a “Maginot mentality”—a term Henry Kissinger used in 1955 to describe a rigid belief in a strategy that precluded the consideration of alternatives. As Kissinger argued, this mentality fostered an “all-or-nothing” military policy that relied heavily on the threat of general war, leaving the United States paralyzed in the face of “gray area” aggressions that fell short of total conflict. This strategic paralysis was not limited to nuclear deterrence; it extended to conventional military operations as well. Political and economic barriers rightly limited the United States’ ability to deploy troops abroad, but the real failure lay in failing to recognize that the threats in these areas were political rather than military.

Because the United States forgot the utility of the other tools in its national security toolbox, instruments like foreign aid and information were relegated to lesser importance than military force, neglected, and misapplied. This was not just a policy problem; it was an educational one: national security studies also relegated the central nature of political warfare to the margins, inculcating generations of national security professionals to eye “unrestricted warfare,” “information warfare,” and now “cognitive warfare” as novelties—novelties that remain fundamentally unaddressed and ignored. The emergence of “cognitive warfare” today is merely a fresh attempt to paint a new coat on an old problem, rebranding the very vulnerability we chose to ignore.

Political Warfare and Clausewitz’s Admixture

A fundamental issue with the current discourse is that “cognitive warfare” lacks a coherent definition and, more importantly, shows no evolution in its definition. This stagnation reflects the “flailing” nature of the attempt to legitimize the term. Frank Hoffman, serving as a discussant of the concept, noted that in cognitive warfare, “the message is the munition.” He offered a starting definition of “Cognitive War” as “the application of targeted and tailored messages and nonviolent methods… to gain a positional advantage in the cognitive domain or gain desired political, military, and informational outcomes.”

This definition reveals the fundamental defect of the term. By emphasizing “targeted and tailored messages,” it places information at the center of the concept, giving only the barest nod to the broader spectrum of “nonviolent methods” that actually constitute political struggle. Furthermore, the inclusion of the word “or”—“to gain positional advantage in the cognitive domain or gain desired outcomes”—is significant and telling. It suggests a bifurcation where one could conceivably seek a cognitive advantage for its own sake, divorced from a political purpose. In reality, why would one want an advantage in what people perceive other than for a specific political purpose? This “or” betrays a confusion in the concept itself, implying that influence can be an end rather than a means.

The murkiness of “cognitive warfare” stands in opposition to the strategic clarity of political warfare, which is deeply rooted in Clausewitzian theory. Hoffman rightly identified Clausewitz’s relevance, even as he acknowledged that observers “encultured with violent visions” may find non-kinetic conflict difficult to grasp. This difficulty, however, is a product of our own “Maginot mentality,” not Clausewitz’s writing. His theories are not only compatible with political warfare; they are foundational to it. While many readers remain bedeviled by the application of Clausewitz beyond the battlefield, General Walter Bedell Smith, as the US Ambassador to the Soviet Union, noted that our rivals suffered no such confusion: “The communists have read Clausewitz and believe that war is merely politics transferred to another sphere.”

George Kennan well understood this reality. In his 1948 memo, “The inauguration of organized political warfare,” he wrote:

Political warfare is the logical application of Clausewitz’s doctrine in time of peace. In [the] broadest definition, political warfare is the employment of all the means at a nation’s command, short of war, to achieve its national objectives. Such operations are both overt and covert. They range from such overt actions as political alliances, economic measures (as [the Marshall Plan]), and “white” propaganda to such covert operations as clandestine support of “friendly” foreign elements, “black” psychological warfare and even encouragement of underground resistance in hostile states…

Kennan likely relied on the 1943 translation of On War by O.J. Matthijs Jolles. Jolles’s translation states that war is a continuation of political intercourse “with an admixture of other means.”

We know, of course, that war is only caused through the political intercourse of governments and nations; but in general, it is supposed that such intercourse is broken off by war, and that a totally different state of things ensues, subject to no laws but its own. We maintain, on the contrary, that war is nothing but a continuation of political intercourse with an admixture of other means. We say “with an admixture of other means,” in order thereby to maintain at the same time that this political intercourse does not cease through the war itself, is not changed into something quite different, but that, in its essence, it continues to exist, whatever may be the means which it uses, and that the main lines along which the events of the war proceed and to which they are bound are only the general features of policy which run on all through the war until peace takes place.

This differs from the modern Howard-Paret translation of “with the addition of other means.” The complexity is well defined by Jolles’s concept of “admixture,” which suggests a fusion of elements in which ingredients are inextricably blended rather than remaining autonomous parts. This distinction is profound. “Addition” implies a layer of violence placed on top of politics, like icing on a cake. “Admixture” implies a blending in which the political intercourse does not cease but continues, modified by the introduction of new ingredients.

Political warfare is simply the prosecution of this intercourse using an admixture of non-kinetic means. It is not a new form of war; it is the constant state of “war in peacetime” described by Robert Strausz-Hupé and Stefan Possony in 1954. Political warfare remained an admixture of methods rather than just the addition of new tools, but it became clearer in what it was and what it was not. They described this dynamic—and defined political warfare—as follows (italics are theirs):

Wars are fought to impose one’s political will on a foreign state. But military techniques are not the only ones to achieve this objective. Propaganda and political warfare can be defined as a continuation of war with the admixture of nonmilitary means of pressure. The purpose of this pressure is to make war unnecessary; or to create the most favorable conditions for the implementation of one’s own policies and military plans should war become inevitable.

Political warfare, briefly, is a systemic activity, mostly of a secret nature, to influence and direct the policies of other nations. The ultimate objective of political warfare would be reached if the government of nation A would make not only its own decisions but also the decisions for nation B and do so without resorting to coercion by force of military occupation.

In 1956, Representative Francis Walter, chair of the House Un-American Activities Committee, released a report titled Communist Conspiracy, which argued that Lenin viewed war as “simply politics in which the saber has been exchanged for the pen,” and that “the will of the enemy is the principal objective of war.” The central principle that Kennan derived from Clausewitz—that “war is not only a political act but the ultimate instrument of politics”—is found in Lenin’s 1915 “Notebook on Clausewitz.”

James Burnham, in his 1961 article “Sticks, Stones, & Atoms,” built on years of discussion to describe political warfare as follows:

True political warfare, as understood and practiced by our enemy, is not mere rivalry or competition or conflict of some vague kind. Political warfare is a form of war. It is strategic in nature. Its objective, like that of every other form of war, is to impose one’s own will on the opponent, to destroy the opponent’s will to resist. In simplest terms, it aims to conquer the opponent.

Burnham emphasized that whether the objective may be “grandiose—conquest of a nation, disintegration of an empire; or the minor takeover of a trade union, scaring a parliament into defeating a bill… the objective is always power.”

For what it is worth, to address some institutional resistance to “warfare”—namely the State Department’s—Murray Dyer, in his 1959 book The Weapon on the Wall, suggested the term “political communication” to focus on the “role of the instrument” and to circumvent institutional objections to “warfare.”

William Kintner and Joseph Kornfeder praised Dyer’s efforts in their 1962 book, The New Frontier of War: Political Warfare, Present and Future, but they argued that “communication” disconnected methods from intent, thereby hampering understanding of the actions’ nature and urgency. They would likely make a similar argument against “cognitive warfare.” They updated the definition of political warfare to describe “a form of conflict between states in which a protagonist nation tries to impose its will on opponents without directly using armed force.”

According to Kintner and Kornfeder, political warfare “combines the operations of diplomacy and propaganda, frequently backed by the threat of military force.” It aims to weaken or destroy the enemy through “diplomatic proposals, economic sorties, propaganda and misinformation, provocation, intimidation, sabotage, terrorism, and by driving a wedge between the main enemy and his allies.”

For the sake of the discussion, my definition of political warfare is the use of power with hostile intent against another, employed through discreet, subversive, or overt means short of open combat, operating across political, societal, economic, or psychological spheres to achieve political objectives.

Reinforcing the Maginot Mentality

Perhaps the most telling evidence that proponents of “cognitive warfare” have failed to grasp the nature of the threat is the pervasive militarization of the discussion. Hoffman’s survey, which included organizations like NATO’s Allied Command Transformation, centers almost exclusively on military means and tools. The conversation focuses on how to empower the military to respond to adversarial cognitive warfare, often invoking special operations personnel or revising “Information Operations” doctrine.

Hoffman noted that in cognitive warfare, “the target is the mind.” While this sounds profound, it is a dangerous oversimplification that Chinese strategists would likely dispute. To the adversary, the mind is not the target; the mind is merely a means to an end. The true target is the removal of resistance and the attainment of political objectives. By claiming the “mind” is the target, we misdirect defenders and aspiring strategists to focus on the psychological “flanks” while ignoring the political “front.” This reinforces the very “Maginot mentality” that created our vulnerability. We attempt to force a political problem into a military box, assuming that if we just shift the organizational chart or centralize authority under a military command, we can “win” the so-called “cognitive war.”

When military actors like NATO ACT or U.S. defense analysts lead the charge on “cognitive warfare,” they are essentially attempting to extend the “Maginot Line” into the mind, rather than recognizing that the adversary is maneuvering around it entirely. It ignores the reality that the most effective tools for this struggle—political warfare, economic influence, and even cultural engagement—are inherently non-military. By delegating—whether implicitly or explicitly—the “cognitive” fight to the military, the United States continues to absolve its political leadership of the responsibility to engage in the grey areas, ensuring that we remain prepared for the war we want to fight while losing the war that is actually being waged.

Defining A New Maginot Line

If we adhere to the proposed definitions of “cognitive warfare,” we impose improper and illogical limits on the nature of the threat, creating a new variety of Maginot defense. The definition of “cognitive warfare” as focusing on “messages and nonviolent methods” creates an artificial boundary that excludes the broader spectrum of power encompassed by “political warfare.” Political warfare, as defined by Kennan to Burnham (and me), utilizes “all the means at a nation’s command,” including economic measures, alliances, and covert support, to “impose one’s own will.” By narrowing the scope to the “cognitive domain,” we risk focusing intently on the “munition” (the message) while missing the larger strategic maneuver.

Furthermore, limiting this discussion to military actors and military audiences renders the response inherently and exclusively reactive. As Chinese and Russian doctrine illustrates, “cognitive warfare” is designed to be used before kinetic activities to undermine the adversary’s will and prevent them from taking effective military action. It is an end run around our Maginot Line. By the time the military is engaged or authorized to act against “cognitive warfare,” the adversary has already achieved a measure of victory by penetrating the decision-making loop and shaping the environment. The military is a reactive instrument in this domain; relying on it to lead the defense ensures we are always steps behind.

Finally, if “cognitive warfare” is primarily a tool of the military, one must ask: how is this different than “psychological warfare”? Hoffman argues that he prefers “cognitive” because “psychological warfare is a broad field,” whereas cognition “narrows the subject to key features.” This is a distinction without a difference, or worse, a distinction that reduces strategy to tactics. Is the difference merely that “psychological warfare” (or PSYOP/MISO, plus the related Civil Affairs and Foreign Area Officers) is viewed as a tactical act (or tools), whereas “cognitive warfare” is perceived as not merely tactical in audience or time? If so, this rebranding does nothing to solve the underlying problem: that we have failed to integrate these non-kinetic tools into a national strategy, leaving them to languish as tactical military support functions rather than central instruments of statecraft.

Conclusion

The debate over “cognitive warfare” serves as a stark illustration of a strategic and intellectual regression. By attempting to brand the “battle for the mind” as a novel concept, we reveal the depth of our own “Maginot mentality”—a mindset that has so narrowed our definition of war that we no longer recognize its political foundations. “Cognitive warfare” fails the cognitive test because it is a redundancy; it is “political warfare” stripped of its full operational spectrum—reducing a multi-domain struggle to a mere psychological operation.

We do not need new terminology to describe the adversary’s operations; we need to recover the understanding that war is an “admixture” of means. This was a reality understood not only by Clausewitz and Kennan but also by Lenin, who integrated these concepts into a revolutionary doctrine that viewed peace and war as a continuous spectrum of struggle. Our adversaries today have long realized the same, utilizing “cognitive” means to disintegrate our will to fight without crossing our kinetic red lines. The adversary has not discovered a new form of warfare; they have simply continued to wage the political warfare we abandoned. As Senator Thomas Dodd warned in 1961, “So long as we remain amateurs in the critical field of political warfare, the billions of dollars we annually spend on defense and foreign aid will provide us with a diminishing measure of protection.” Until we look back to the tools, institutions, and definitions we discarded, we will continue to be outmaneuvered in the “grey areas,” grasping at new labels while losing the old war.

Tags: Cognitive Warfare, CogWar, influence operations, information warfare, Psychological Operations, strategic communication

About The Author

• 
  
• Matt Armstrong
• Matt Armstrong is a Ph.D. candidate at King’s College London specializing in the history of U.S. responses to Russian political warfare. A former Governor of the Broadcasting Board of Governors (2013–2017) and Executive Director of the U.S. Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy, he has spent twenty years at the intersection of public diplomacy, strategic communication, and political warfare policy with the executive branch and Congress. He has testified frequently before Congress and worked closely with legislative staff to launch a House caucus on strategic communication and to create and pass the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act. He has served as an adjunct or guest lecturer at institutions including the USC Annenberg Center, King’s College London, the Joint Special Operations University, the National Intelligence University, the Royal Danish Defense College, and the NATO School. In 2016, he was inducted into the Psychological Operations Regiment as an Honorary Member. In 2022, he was sanctioned by the Russian Federation.

2. Russia’s Wagner Group pivots to European sabotage, say western officials

​Summary:

Western intelligence officials say recruiters and propagandists tied to Russia’s Wagner Group now serve as a conduit for Kremlin-organised sabotage in Europe. After Wagner’s status became uncertain following the June 2023 rebellion and the death of Yevgeny Prigozhin, Wagner-linked recruiters allegedly shifted to hiring economically vulnerable Europeans as “disposable” agents for violence on Nato soil. Officials say the GRU and FSB seek cut-outs for deniability, while proxy recruitment has expanded after EU expulsions depleted Russian covert assets. Targets include arson against politicians’ cars and warehouses storing Ukraine aid, plus posing as Nazi propagandists. Many plots have been thwarted.

Comment: New Generation Warfare. Non-Linear Warfare. Unconventional Warfare with Russian characteristics. Wagner’s brand is damaged, but its human network still works, and the Kremlin is repurposing that network rather than rebuilding from scratch. Diplomatic expulsions appear to have forced Moscow toward cheaper proxies, and that trade buys volume while it costs skill and operational security. Telegram and social media are not just megaphones here, they are recruiting stations, and money is the hook for people who feel expendable.

If Russian services can recruit “disposable” Europeans at scale, what defensive model best disrupts recruitment before it becomes action: intelligence penetration, financial tracing, or online platform pressure?

Russia’s Wagner Group pivots to European sabotage, say western officials

Financial Times · Sam Jones

Recruiters involved with fighter group are said to be targeting agents for operations on Nato soil

Sam Jones in Berlin

Publishedyesterday

https://www.ft.com/content/dbd1d803-ab37-43f1-920f-fce74952313a

Recruiters and propagandists who previously worked for Russia’s Wagner Group have emerged as a main conduit for Kremlin-organised sabotage attacks in Europe, according to western intelligence officials.

The fighter group’s status has been uncertain since a failed rebellion against the top brass of the Russian army in June 2023 prompted a clampdown and the death of its founder, Yevgeny Prigozhin.

But Wagner recruiters who specialised in persuading young men from Russia’s hinterland to fight in Ukraine have been given a new task — recruiting economically vulnerable Europeans to carry out violence on Nato soil, the officials said.

Russia’s military intelligence agency (GRU) “is using the talent it has got available to it”, said one western intelligence official, referring to the Wagner network.

The GRU and Russia’s domestic intelligence agency (FSB) have both become highly active in seeking to recruit “disposable” agents in Europe to sow chaos.

In the past two years, the Kremlin has expanded a campaign of disruption and sabotage across Europe aimed at weakening the resolve of western powers in their support for Ukraine and sowing social unrest.

Faced with a much depleted deployment of covert agents in Europe following rounds of diplomatic expulsions by EU capitals, however, Moscow’s spy chiefs have increasingly turned to proxies to do their bidding.

For the GRU, the Wagner network has proved a particularly effective — if crude — tool to do so, senior European intelligence officials have told the FT.

Agents have been tasked by Wagner operatives with everything from arson attacks against politicians’ cars and warehouses containing aid for Ukraine to posing as Nazi propagandists.

Typically those recruited do so for money and are often marginalised individuals, sometimes lacking purpose or direction.

Wagner had a ready-built network of propagandists and recruiters who “speak their language”, said one European official.

Russia’s intelligence agencies typically seek to put at least two “cut-out” layers between themselves and agents they want to do their bidding, the official said. “They want some degree of deniability always . . . And Wagner and the individuals that were part of it . . . have a long and close relationship working for the GRU in this way.”

The FSB has meanwhile tended to turn to criminal and diaspora networks it has cultivated ties to in Russia’s near abroad, but these have been less effective in recruiting en masse, they added.

Wagner and its supporters already had a significant online output in social media channels aimed at Russians, which has been parlayed with relative ease into a more internationally focused effort.

Telegram channels used by the group in particular have been surprisingly slick and adept in how they have pitched themselves, a second European official said. “They know their audience,” they said.

Prigozhin was also responsible for running the St Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency — the most widely known Russian “troll farm” — which began targeting western audiences with disinformation well over a decade ago.

The Wagner network’s role in Russia’s sabotage campaign has been under scrutiny by European intelligence and security agencies from the beginning. Wagner-run social media accounts were responsible for recruiting a group of Britons in late 2023, for example.

Dylan Earl was recruited by Wagner through social media © Metropolitan Police/PA

Dylan Earl, a 21-year-old petty criminal, was recruited by Wagner through social media. In March 2024, having himself in turn recruited four more young men, Earl burnt down a warehouse in East London. He was convicted last year and sentenced to 23 years in prison.

“The hidden hand of the internet delivered results because anonymous recruiter proxies operating through internet chat rooms, usually on encrypted platforms, found within the United Kingdom young men who were prepared to undergo a form of radicalisation and betray their country for what seemed easy money,” said Justice Cheema-Grubb in her sentencing remarks.

In the wake of that attack, European agencies have slowly been assembling a picture of a much more extensive network of Wagner “disposables” across Europe.

In doing so, security authorities have at least one advantage: what Russia’s spy chiefs gain in scale and cost by using proxies such as Wagner to recruit amateur saboteurs, they lose in competence and secrecy. So far, more attacks have been thwarted than have succeeded.

Financial Times · Sam Jones

3. Biodefense Blind Spot: Why Washington Confuses Pandemics with Bioweapons

​Summary:

The article argues the next major biological threat may be designed on a laptop using commercially available AI, not just emerging from nature or accidents. It cites recent examples where AI systems helped design dangerous proteins, enabled novel genome and organism design, and improved planning for bioweapon production, while also showing that DNA synthesis screening can fail against AI-generated variants. The author contends U.S. biodefense still relies on an “all hazards” framework that conflates pandemics with deliberate attacks, creating fragmented governance across many agencies and misaligned investments. He calls for clearer separation of missions, stronger evaluation and screening, and better-funded standards and testing capacity.

Comment:  The U.S. model is built for yesterday’s biology, and AI is breaking the shared assumptions that made one system cover both pandemics and attacks. Fragmented authorities can look like coverage, but in crisis they can become delay, gaps, and blame shifting.

If the strategy treats pandemics and bioweapons as one problem, what specific capability is being underfunded, and who is accountable for that choice?

As an aside, I made this comment in 2020 during COVID:

“[W]e need to learn how to “fight through” this pandemic just as if it is a biological attack. Our adversaries are observing and analyzing our actions and assessing the potential efficacy of using biological weapons against us, especially in the “gray zone” of great power competition. If they assess this pandemic kicks our 4th point of contact they will be more likely to use bio weapons in the future.”

https://sites.duke.edu/lawfire/2020/04/27/eight-leadership-lessons-from-the-navy-carrier-captains-case/#:~:text=%E2%80%9C

Biodefense Blind Spot: Why Washington Confuses Pandemics with Bioweapons

By Junaid Nabi

February 10, 2026

https://warontherocks.com/2026/02/biodefense-blind-spot-why-washington-confuses-pandemics-with-bioweapons/

The next great biological threat may not begin in a wet market, a jungle, or a laboratory accident. It may begin on a laptop with a commercially available AI model.

In October 2025, AI researchers from Microsoft reported that generative AI tools could design dangerous proteins capable of evading biosecurity and, alarmingly, could slip past the screening systems used by DNA manufacturers.

In February 2025, researchers at Arc Institute released Evo 2, an AI model trained on 128,000 genomes that can design entirely new organisms. The model achieves 90 percent accuracy in predicting which genetic mutations cause disease. Within weeks of its predecessor’s release in 2024, users had circumvented biosecurity safeguards by adding back viral data that developers had deliberately excluded. The same month, Anthropic reported its Claude Opus 4 model could significantly enhance the ability of novices to plan bioweapon production, triggering the company’s highest security protocols for the first time. OpenAI’s o3 model, released in April 2025, can assist experts in effectively planning operations for reproducing a recognized biological threat.

These are not speculative futures. They are the current capabilities of commercially available systems. Yet, American biodefense strategy remains organized around a unified “all hazards” biodefense strategy — one that treats natural and intentional biological threats as related challenges, served by common capabilities. This made strategic sense when pathogen threats, natural or weaponized, followed similar evolutionary constraints. AI-synthetic biology convergence breaks this logic.

Adversaries can now computationally design threats that specifically evade surveillance systems optimized for natural pathogens, defeat stockpiled therapeutics, and exploit the dual-use assumptions that made this integrated biodefense efficient. The question is not whether integration was wrong — it was right for its threat environment. The question is whether that environment still exists.

Strategy Without Integration

Strategic coherence requires linking tactical actions to political objectives through an integrated theory of victory. Yet modern biodefense exhibits precisely what strategists warn against: fragmented institutions optimizing for narrow mandates without overarching purpose. An illustration of this fragmentation is the 2022 National Biodefense Strategy that lists five goals spanning pandemic preparedness, biological weapons defense, agricultural biosecurity, and laboratory safety, cascading across fifteen federal agencies with overlapping authorities. The Department of Health and Human Services leads pandemic response. The Defense Department handles bioweapon threats. The Agriculture Department protects crops and livestock. No single entity integrates these missions into a coherent strategy, distinguishing between threats requiring fundamentally different responses.

This matters because the analysis by Dr. Michelle Bentley of biological weapons being “taboo” — the visceral revulsion and norm constraints that have prevented state use of bioweapons despite possession — remains partially valid while simultaneously becoming outdated in critical ways. The core insight of the analysis holds: bioweapons inspire disgust, carry boomerang risks that deter rational actors, and remain constrained by the Biological Weapons Convention’s international norms. Even the Soviet Union’s massive Biopreparat program never deployed weapons operationally. More recently, COVID-19 also strengthened the taboo by demonstrating disease’s devastating societal impact.

Where the framework has become obsolete is in three specific domains transformed by AI-synthetic biology convergence since 2022. First, the knowledge threshold for bioweapon development has collapsed in ways that bypass state-level constraints the taboo regulates. Second, the barrier between computational design and physical synthesis has weakened as automation removes human judgment from the workflow. Third, the assumption that technical difficulty constrains proliferation no longer holds when AI tools embody decades of elite virological expertise accessible to non-state actors who reject taboo norms entirely.

The Capability Shift: What Has Changed

Between December 2024 and May 2025, multiple AI companies that build large language models crossed internal risk thresholds for biological threats. Anthropic’s testing found that Claude Opus 4 presented “significantly greater” performance than Google search, or previous models at advising novices on bioweapon production. The company’s chief scientist noted: “You could try to synthesize something like COVID or a more dangerous version of the flu — and basically, our modeling suggests that this might be possible.” Anthropic deployed its strictest safety protocols, acknowledging it “can’t rule out” the risk of “uplifting a novice terrorist, someone like Timothy McVeigh, to be able to make a weapon much more destructive than would otherwise be possible.”

In June 2025, OpenAI reported that upcoming models would reach “high” capability levels in biology, with its April 2025 o3 release already helping experts plan biological threats. A December 2024 study by SecureBio, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the Center for AI Safety found that o3 outperformed 94 percent of expert virologists on troubleshooting complex lab protocols. These are measured capabilities on concrete technical tasks, not projections.

However, critical limits remain. Current biological design tools cannot yet create pandemic-capable pathogens from scratch. A March 2025 National Academies report concluded that systems “still lack the requisite understanding of how complex biological systems interact” to design self-replicating pathogens de novo. Evo 2’s designed bacterial genome “was missing some critical elements and so would likely not function if synthesized,” according to Arc Institute researchers. The primary bottleneck is insufficient viral training data: Developers excluded eukaryotic viruses as a biosecurity measure, which ironically limits pathogen design capability.

Experts disagree sharply on timelines. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei predicted in 2023 that AI could offer step-by-step instructions for designing lethal pathogens within two to three years, a timeline the company reiterated in January 2025. An August 2024 study by Johns Hopkins and Stanford researchers argued that the key components needed to develop advanced biological models may already exist or will soon become available, emphasizing the need for immediate governance. The National Academies took a more conservative view in March 2025, suggesting current limitations preclude near-term pandemic pathogen design.

What is indisputable is that synthesis screening systems are failing against current AI capabilities. A recent Science study demonstrated that AI protein design tools can generate variants of known toxins that could bypass commercial screening software. Researchers created 76,000 blueprints for 72 harmful proteins, including ricin and botulinum toxin. Testing revealed that several software systems for detecting toxins, including those used by major nucleic acid suppliers, failed to reliably identify AI-reformulated variants, allowing up to 100 percent of certain protein variants to go undetected. While updated AI detection methods caught 97 percent of these variants, researchers cautioned that sequence-based biosecurity alone will not be sufficient, as future AI-assisted protein generation may produce entirely novel sequences.

This is not a hypothetical risk. It is the measured failure of existing defenses against currently available tools.

The Institutional Muddle

American biodefense policy systematically conflates two distinct challenges: preparing for naturally occurring pandemics and defending against deliberately engineered biological agents. This confusion appears in budget allocations, organizational mandates, and strategic doctrine.

The conflation starts at the conceptual level. For instance, the 2022 National Biodefense Strategy treats “biological threats — whether naturally occurring, accidental, or deliberate in origin” as a unified category requiring a coordinated response. The framework sets audacious targets, including developing vaccines within 100 days, deploying pathogen-specific tests within 30 days, and repurposing therapeutics within 90 days. These capabilities assume natural pathogen evolution, not adversaries using AI tools to design agents that specifically evade detection systems or defeat therapeutic interventions.

Also, integration of these concepts leads to misallocation. A biodefense model that combines these hazards, while logical for dual-use capabilities, fails against the AI-synthetic biology convergence at specific, measurable points. Take surveillance: the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s $500M+ pathogen genomic surveillance is optimized for detecting natural variants through clinical sampling. However, it cannot detect AI-designed sequences with no homology to known organisms. Similarly, pandemic-focused investments, such as hospital-based surveillance programs or an almost $10B expansion of the Strategic National Stockpile (stocking predictable broad-spectrum antivirals), crowd out funding for critical biodefense capabilities such as unusual equipment purchase tracking, synthesis-order monitoring, or forensic genomics for attribution. This integrated approach to biodefense prioritizes epidemiological investigation (contact tracing) but ignores supply-chain monitoring needed to catch deliberate attacks. This is not an overlap — it’s a systemic gap where pandemic priorities actively undermine necessary biodefense investment.

Consider three critical distinctions the current framework obscures:

Detection Architecture

Natural pandemics typically emerge from zoonotic spillover at predictable ecological interfaces. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s genomic surveillance network monitors clinical samples for variants of known pathogen families following natural evolutionary patterns. This system cannot detect AI-designed synthetic pathogens with genetic sequences bearing no homology to known organisms, specifically engineered to evade genomic surveillance. Detection would require fundamentally different sensor networks monitoring DNA synthesis orders, laboratory equipment sales, and research publication patterns — capabilities that fall outside the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s pandemic surveillance mandate and receive virtually no federal investment.

Medical Countermeasures

Pandemic response emphasizes rapid vaccine platforms, therapeutic manufacturing scale-up, and broad-spectrum antiviral stockpiles. Operation Warp Speed invested $18 billion to expedite COVID-19 vaccine production, while the Strategic National Stockpile holds medical equipment and pharmaceuticals for outbreak response. This strategy assumes that adversaries have not tailored viral proteins to evade existing vaccines or engineered resistance to therapeutics. The 2023 Department of Health and Human Services Screening Framework recognizes that advancements in biotechnology could enable the creation of novel pathogenic proteins but offers no specific measures to address this threat, instead encouraging synthesis providers to establish their own best practices.

Attribution and Deterrence

Natural pandemics require no attribution. Response focuses on public health measures, not adversary intentions. Deliberately released biological weapons demand attribution to enable proportional response and deterrence. Yet, the 2022 National Biodefense Strategy contains no discussion of attribution capabilities, despite acknowledging state bioweapons programs in Russia, North Korea, China, and Iran.

This institutional confusion produces three concrete policy failures:

Wrong Investments

Fiscal year 2024 allocated approximately $20 billion for pandemic preparedness across Health and Human Services, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Institutes of Health, focused on vaccine platforms, clinical trial infrastructure, and disease surveillance. By contrast, the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Center for AI Standards and Innovation, which is the primary federal entity evaluating frontier AI models for biological risks, faces a proposed 35 percent budget cut in fiscal year 2026. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Public Health Emergency Preparedness received $735 million, less than 3 percent of pandemic preparedness spending. This allocation makes sense if biological threats are primarily natural pandemics. It makes no sense if the real danger lies in adversaries using AI tools to engineer pathogens that pandemic response systems cannot handle.

Missed Opportunities

No federal program systematically evaluates biological design tools for dual-use risks before public release. The Trump administration’s July 2025 AI Action Plan directs the National Institute of Standards and Technology to evaluate frontier AI models for emerging high-impact biological capabilities (also called Biological Development Technologies) but provides no funding, no testing protocols, and no enforcement mechanism. Arc Institute released Evo 2 as open source without any requirement for pre-deployment government review, despite the model’s ability to design novel genomes. Google DeepMind similarly released AlphaFold 3 with voluntary biosecurity consultations but no regulatory oversight. The default is unregulated proliferation of increasingly powerful biodesign tools, while pandemic-focused agencies lack mandate, or expertise, to intervene.

Dangerous Blind Spots

DNA synthesis screening — the most important choke point for preventing bioweapon production — remains voluntary, fragmented, and inadequate. The 2023 Department of Health and Human Services Screening Framework encourages synthesis providers to screen orders against the 63-agent select agents list, but imposes no legal obligation. Only recipients of federal research funding must use screened providers, leaving commercial customers free to shop internationally. No mechanism exists to share data on suspicious orders across companies. The International Gene Synthesis Consortium, representing 80 percent of global capacity, operates through voluntary information sharing with no verification, or enforcement. This is not a system designed to stop adversaries from acquiring AI-designed bioweapons. It is a patchwork inherited from pandemic biosafety protocols, inadequate by design for the emerging threat environment.

What Must Change

Addressing AI-synthetic biology convergence while distinguishing it from pandemic preparedness requires institutional reforms, not incremental budget adjustments.

Four policy actions should begin immediately:

First, consolidate fragmented biodefense by reforming existing entities. Although the Department of Homeland Security already operates the National Biosurveillance Integration Center and Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction Office, both lack authority and capacity for AI-synthetic biology threats. The National Biosurveillance Integration Center’s statute (6 USC §195b) focuses on early warning for “biological events of national concern” with no authority for pre-deployment technology assessment. The Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction Office emphasizes operational response, not computational genomics expertise. Given the current administration’s focus on reform, AI-biosecurity mission can be split between two existing entities with complementary strengths. One, authorize the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to lead pre-deployment evaluation of biological design tools above computational thresholds, leveraging existing AI expertise. Next, give the Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction Office authority for mandatory synthesis screening enforcement, building on its operational mission. Two, fund through consolidation: the Government Accountability Office repeatedly identifies biodefense as fragmented across fifteen agencies. This is national security consolidation during an efficiency-focused administration, not regulatory expansion.

Second, the president should issue an executive order establishing an AI-enabled DNA synthesis screening infrastructure that incentivizes industry adoption. The order should direct the National Institute of Standards and Technology to develop a federal screening application programming interface (a software platform) that synthesis providers query for real-time risk assessments using AI-powered functional detection, not just sequence matching. There are powerful adoption incentives for this policy: federal procurement requirements for certified providers, liability protection from biosecurity lawsuits, expedited FDA review, and public certification. Providers declining participation must disclose this to customers and report high-risk orders to the Department of Homeland Security, creating market pressure. This leverages existing executive authorities — procurement rules, liability frameworks, and regulatory review — to achieve industry-wide adoption within 12 to 18 months. This is industrial policy building security infrastructure that enables AI-driven biological innovation while demonstrating responsible leadership — a competitive advantage over China’s less regulated approach.

Third, require pre-deployment security evaluation of biological design tools above specified computational thresholds. Any AI model trained on biological data that requires a massive amount of computing power — more than the power used for systems like Evo 2 and AlphaFold 3 — should undergo evaluation by the Center for AI Standards and Innovation before public release. Evaluation would assess: (1) the capability to design novel pathogens, (2) ease of circumventing built-in safeguards, and (3) the potential for misuse by actors with limited technical expertise. The evaluation would not block release, but require developers to implement specified safeguards (training data exclusions, query filtering, usage logging), and report attempted misuse. This protocol would mirror the E.U. AI Act’s approach to high-risk systems, adapted for biological threats. Academic researchers releasing nonprofit models could receive federally funded evaluation support to avoid penalizing open science.

Fourth, fund the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the Center for AI Standards and Innovation at levels proportionate to the threat scale. Proposed budget cuts to the National Institute of Standards and Technology contradict the administration’s biosecurity priorities articulated in the July 2025 AI Action Plan. Congress should heed recommendations from experts, like the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, which advocates for at least $8-$10 million in annual funding for the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s AI safety branches (such as CAISI). This funding is vital for AI-biosecurity initiatives such as developing standardized benchmarks, conducting red-teaming exercises on bioweapon pathways, and enhancing international coordination through the AI Safety Institute network. These tasks should not be left to AI companies’ internal safety teams, which are under commercial pressure to release products quickly.

The Window Is Closing

The convergence of AI and synthetic biology presents an immediate threat, with commercial AI systems capable of expert-level bioweapon development and evading DNA screening. However, American biodefense strategy conflates this deliberate biological threat with natural pandemic preparedness, creating dangerous blind spots and prioritizing the wrong investments.

The proposed reforms face political obstacles in a deregulation-focused administration, but they consolidate fragmented efforts rather than expand government. Fifteen agencies with overlapping biodefense authorities create redundancy, not strength. The voluntary synthesis screening framework aligns with deregulatory philosophy but demonstrably fails — the October 2025 Science study proves that systems miss AI-generated threats. Mandatory screening applies narrowly to synthesis providers and frontier AI developers, not biotech research broadly. This transcends regulatory philosophy: whether voluntary or mandatory matters less than whether it works. Even deregulation-focused administrations fund defense priorities when adversaries threaten national security. AI-augmented bioweapons demand that recognition. The time to act is not after the next penetration test exposes our vulnerabilities. The test is happening now, and the current defenses are failing.

Junaid Nabi, M.D., MPH, is a physician-scientist advancing digital health strategy, healthcare reform, and national security. His latest research exposed critical cybersecurity vulnerabilities in AI-enabled remote monitoring systems. He serves as a senior fellow at the Aspen Institute and a Millennium fellow at the Atlantic Council. 

**Please note, as a matter of house style, War on the Rocks will not use a different name for the U.S. Department of Defense until and unless the name is changed by statute by the U.S. Congress.

4. The Sound of Munich: Autonomy, Anxiety, and the Twilight of Transatlantic Order

​Summary:

At the Munich Security Conference, officials described a visible crisis in transatlantic relations and a broader sense that the post 1945 “world order” is ending. European leaders called for greater strategic autonomy and less dependence on the United States, yet many also voiced fear of U.S. abandonment and sought to repair trust. Secretary of State Marco Rubio struck a warmer tone, stressing shared history and commitment, while other U.S. officials reiterated defense and nuclear deterrence assurances, even as they signaled Washington may act alone. Delegates expect a riskier world and are buying costly “insurance,” including talk of an independent European nuclear deterrent.

Comment: Europe wants leverage, not divorce, and it is trying to become stronger without triggering U.S. withdrawal. Our tone can soften, but our terms can still harden, and Europeans are learning to read the gap. As faith in order fades, states will hedge more, spend more, and accept new risks that come with “insurance.”

If Europe seeks autonomy while fearing abandonment, what concrete burden shifts ("burden owning") can strengthen deterrence without splitting alliance command and political cohesion?

If Washington signals it may negotiate directly with Russia and act alone, how should European capitals protect their interests while preserving NATO unity and credibility?

If European nuclear options move from taboo to debate, what governance, command, and escalation controls prevent deterrence from becoming instability?

The Sound of Munich: Autonomy, Anxiety, and the Twilight of Transatlantic Order

warontherocks.com  · February 16, 2026

Richard Fontaine

February 16, 2026

https://warontherocks.com/2026/02/the-sound-of-munich-autonomy-anxiety-and-the-twilight-of-transatlantic-order/

Munich was warmer than Washington this weekend, both in weather and in sentiment. Neither development was widely forecast. The sense of crisis in transatlantic relations was plain, especially on the European side, and the world descended on the Bayerischer Hof hotel to sort it all out. At the Munich Security Conference there was beer to drink, brats to eat, statements to make, and bilateral meetings to hold. February’s foreign policy freneticism kicked off in earnest.

And frenetic it was. Bilateral meetings were set at 25 minutes apiece and the most hyperactive delegates kept them shorter than that. Heads of state and foreign ministers mingled while the rest of us were jostled by their security details. One Middle Eastern official suggested a walking meeting. He and I weaved through delegations, passed the smoking section under a light rain, trudged up and down a metal staircase, and finally parted at the elevator. It was actually rather productive.

Officials from both sides of the Atlantic arrived in force. The German chancellor spoke, as did French President Emmanuel Macron, Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, and many more. Secretary of State Marco Rubio came to Munich, as did U.N. Ambassador Mike Waltz, Undersecretary of Defense Elbridge Colby, and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin. A bipartisan Congressional delegation attended, and other nations were well-represented: Venezuela’s Maria Corina Machado, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, and others.

That wasn’t all. A raft of possible U.S. presidential candidates summoned their inner Otto von Bismarcks, and for a moment it seemed like New Hampshire already. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez came, as did California governor Gavin Newsom, Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, former commerce secretary Gina Raimondo, and former Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin. No one offered to eat a fried pretzel at the Bavarian state fair, but we’re still three years away from election day. Oval Office ambitions spring eternal.

I’ve now participated in Munich for more than 20 years: a record that betrays advancing age, fondness for pretzels, and a tolerance of secondhand smoke. The zeitgeist is always different, and always illuminates the state of our world. This time, four themes struck me most.

BECOME A MEMBER

Lord, Make me Independent, but Not Yet

Early in the proceedings, former Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland summed up the sentiment of many there. The era of capitulation, she said, is over. No more appeasing Donald Trump, hoping that a combination of flexibility and flattery would dull the American president’s rough edges. Some European officials concurred. A year of appeasement, they said, had yielded only tariffs, threats against Greenland, and negotiations over Ukraine that leave allies out. The president belittled their contributions to the war in Afghanistan, established a new Board of Peace to end-run the United Nations, and mocked them at Davos. Nein more.

The alternative, they said, was to generate leverage, stand your ground, and increase their strategic autonomy. Derisk ties with the United States, just as Europeans have started to do with China and should have done with Russia. Europeans have seen the dangers of overdependence on America — for defense, technology, market access, investment, and weapons sales. The answer to Europe’s situation was greater self-reliance. Time to break free.

The Bayerischer Hof at moments sounded like a latter-day Independence Hall. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said that the United Kingdom should reduce its dependencies on U.S. military capabilities. “As Europe,” he said, “we must stand on our own two feet.” Austria’s foreign minister said that “Europe has to become more independent and assume more responsibility.” The French foreign minister pledged, “We will deliver a strong and independent Europe,” and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said, “Europe must become more independent – there is no other choice.” In all this, finally there was something on which Europeans and the Trump administration could agree.

Except not so fast. St. Augustine was no European, but his Confessions showed that the task of conversion is difficult and riddled with inner contradictions. The same European leaders who pledged greater independence from the United States fretted openly about abandonment by Washington. German chancellor Friedrich Merz offered to “repair and rewrite transatlantic trust.” “We cannot,” he said, “guarantee our security by ourselves.” Starmer clarified his intent: “I’m talking about a vision of European security and greater European autonomy that does not herald U.S. withdrawal.” At least some European leaders seek more independence from the United States, but to avoid America becoming too independent of them.

World Order Died Today. Or Maybe Yesterday; I Can’t be Sure.

If officials on both sides of the Atlantic agree that Europe should become more self-reliant, they also concur on the state of international order. It is, many observed, dead. Departing for Munich, Rubio said that “the old world is gone, frankly.” Merz said that the post-World War II world order, “as imperfect as it was at its best times, no longer exists.” Von der Leyen referred to the “rapidly changing world order,” and delegates from the Middle East and Asia observed similarly. While it was never entirely clear what precisely each speaker meant by the notion of “world order,” nearly all were convinced that whatever it was, it is no more.

Many also said that the order undermined their countries. American officials complained that the U.S. unfairly bore the lion’s share of the burden in upholding world order. Free trade led to deindustrialization, globalization to dangerous dependencies, multilateral institutions to paralysis, and alliances to freeriding. Chinese observers, for their part, see international order as unjustly Western-dominated, with rules and institutions that do not accord Beijing and others their rightful status and standing. Indian foreign minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar pointed out that his country has been free of alliances and a central role in many prevailing institutions all along — self-reliance for India is nothing new. In this requiem for a rules-based international order, Europeans regret its alleged demise the most.

Rubio to the Rescue!

Just as Europeans were lamenting the Trump administration’s recent turns and pledging to reduce their U.S. dependence, the secretary of state took the stage. After Vice President J.D. Vance’s barn-burning denunciation of Europe one year ago, the audience braced itself for more. This time around, however, Rubio brought honey instead of vinegar.

The United States and Europe, he said, “belong together.” America will “always be a child of Europe” and a country where Italian explorers, Spanish horses, French fur traders, British rock music, and German beer came together to help build a new nation. Their very destinies are intertwined and, as a result, Americans seek “not to separate but to revitalize an old friendship.” Trump’s criticism of Europeans refusing to fight in Afghanistan? The allies, Rubio said, “bled and died side by side on battlefields from Kapyong to Kandahar.” That “civilizational erasure” the National Security Strategy talked about? The forces pushing it “menace both America and Europe alike.” America is charting a new path, Rubio said, and “we want to do it together with you, our cherished allies and our oldest friends.” The audience rose to its feet in applause.

Other administration officials piled on: The United States is “absolutely” committed to Europe’s defense, Waltz said. Colby said that “the U.S. extended nuclear deterrent continues to apply here and to our allies. That is clear.” Ambassador to NATO Matthew Whitaker insisted, “The Americans are not leaving.” And Sen. Thom Tillis told the audience, “We’re not in a civil war with our partners and allies in Europe.”

After the initially warm reception to Rubio’s remarks, Europeans seemed split. Some welcomed the change in tone, hoping it augured a new and more sober era in transatlantic diplomacy. Others warned their continental brethren not to be so naïve. The substance of the administration’s approach remains the same, they observed, even if the rhetoric is friendlier. After all, the secretary of state expressed a desire to work with Europe, but added that “we are prepared, if necessary, to do this alone.” The administration wants a changed Europe.

Here, There Be Dragons

Delegates in Munich generally concurred that a new, more uncertain and more dangerous world lies ahead. The post-1945 world order might be ending, but the war in Ukraine is not. Nor are trade wars, economic coercion, great power competition, U.N. paralysis, the possibility of new attacks on Iran, technology disputes, and much else. The near-universal response is to beef up national insurance plans.

Geopolitical insurance policies ­­­­­­­— higher defense budgets, multiple relationships with differently aligned powers, diversified trade partners and sources of investment, small coalitions to manage issues and crises, reduced risk in weapons suppliers, and more ­­­­­­­— are newly attractive and very pricey. The attempts to buy down risk in some areas may generate it in others. But the trend is clear already.

Sweden, Norway, Germany, and the Netherlands, for example, have held talks about an independent European nuclear deterrent, possibly built on France’s force de frappe. “Nuclear deterrence can give us new opportunities,” Latvia’s Prime Minister Evika Siliņa said in Munich. “Why not?” Speculation abounds that Macron may extend the French umbrella to other European countries in a speech he has planned for March. And nuclear deterrence is just one dimension of the full-coverage insurance plans countries increasingly seek.

Order On, Dear Friends

The conference began with Europeans claiming an unprecedented crisis in transatlantic relations. After Greenland, questions about Article Five, tariffs and all the rest, the trust, they said, is gone. The allies have never faced such a profound sense of division.

There indeed is much trust eroded across the Atlantic, but the allies have seen major crises before and endured despite them. Suez, France’s withdrawal from NATO’s integrated military command, the Vietnam War, the deployment of Pershing II missiles to Europe, and the invasion of Iraq: All those episodes generated genuine crisis. Observers say that this time is different. But many said that before, too. Things that are rotten tend to collapse under pressure. Things that have value tend to endure. The transatlantic security, economic, and political partnership has value, and it will endure.

At the same time, the allies would be mistaken for confusing a change in tone for one in philosophy. The secretary of state’s speech gave a generally warm and welcoming address, amplified by other senior officials. The Trump administration is proposing deeper friendship with Europe, but on new and different terms. Washington wants an end to mass migration, to reduce its financial burdens and increase its barriers to trade, to negotiate directly with Russia without Europe, to preserve a form of Western civilization that emphasizes Christian traditions, and to employ its power unconstrained by outdated norms and institutions and instead in accordance with the judgment of the president. It’s not clear that Europe wants any of those things.

The upshot is that major cleavages will endure between the United States and Europe. But the transatlantic partnership will remain as well, weakened and less predictable. And it will all take place against a backdrop of global uncertainty, with international behavior less constrained today than in decades. The United States should seek a Europe that is more capable, to be sure. But U.S. leadership and a degree of European dependence has, for all its downsides, kept the peace for 80 years. We might well miss it if it’s gone.

A year is a long time in today’s geopolitics. Next February, Munich will come around again. The issues will be difficult. Relationships strained. The future unclear. But there will be beer, schnitzel, and conversation. At least we can hold on to that.

BECOME A MEMBER

Richard Fontaine is the chief executive officer of the Center for a New American Security.

Image: U.S. Department of State via Wikimedia Commons

warontherocks.com ·  · February 16, 2026

5. Three American Speeches at Munich, and Plenty of Confusion

​Summary:

European leaders at Munich heard three different U.S. messages about the alliance in a year and left uncertain what commitment remains. Vice President J.D. Vance last year condemned European democracy and argued immigration and limits on far right parties threaten Europe more than Russia. Secretary of State Marco Rubio offered a softer appeal to shared history and a warning of “civilizational erasure” tied to border control, drawing applause but raising concern that he framed security around white Christian heritage and then visited Slovakia and Hungary. Bridge Colby urged an alliance grounded in shared interests, not values, and stressed collective defense and the U.S. nuclear guarantee.

Comment: "Shared interests, not values?" SECSTATE's warmth may calm the room, yet his civilizational frame can split Europe at home and weaken its global posture. Bridge’s "interests first "pitch lands because it is easily understandable, and because it implies clearer terms for burden and risk. 

But as an American it pains me to hear leaders forgo our values. My entire military career has rested on a values foundation: the protection of and respect for sovereignty and the universal human right of determination of government as exemplified in our Declaration of Independence and Constitution. The right of self determination of government and the protection of sovereignty manifest in the two foundational Special Forces missions of unconventional warfare and foreign internal defense. Bridge Colby pulls the rug out from under these.

Three American Speeches at Munich, and Plenty of Confusion

NY Times · David E. Sanger · February 15, 2026

By Steven Erlanger and David E. Sanger

Steven Erlanger and David E. Sanger write about American and European diplomacy and security. They reported from the Munich Security Conference.

Feb. 15, 2026

As the U.S. message veered from shared heritage and values to shared interests and back again, Europeans wondered what kind of alliance they were left with.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/15/world/europe/three-american-speeches-at-munich-and-plenty-of-confusion.html

Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday in Budapest, Hungary, where he traveled after addressing the Munich Security Conference. Credit...Pool photo by Alex Brandon

In the space of just a year, European leaders have heard three descriptions of how the Trump administration is reimagining the American relationship with its allies. Each strikes a bit of a different tone, but all are intended to push them into a new era in which Washington’s commitment to defend them faces new limits.

One was delivered by Vice President JD Vance last year, a blistering condemnation of European-style democracy, arguing that waves of immigrants and Europe’s restrictions on its own far-right parties pose a greater threat to the continent than Russia’s aggression.

The second was a far easier-to-swallow version of a similar message from Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Saturday. He described a hazy and sometimes idealized cultural history shared by Europe and the United States and argued that each faced “civilizational erasure” unless it figured out a way to control its borders.

Then, at the same conference, the most senior defense official to attend, Elbridge Colby, the under secretary of defense for policy, offered a classic American national-security message about shared interests, not values, recommending that both sides focus on “nuts and bolts kind of stuff.”

If the Europeans emerged a bit confused, it’s understandable.

Mr. Vance and Mr. Rubio could well end up as rivals for the presidential nomination in 2028 — or as running mates. So how they described America’s role and purpose with its allies was intended as much for audiences at home. They know each phrase will be weighed by MAGA supporters who are suspicious of the degree to which the Trump administration has intervened around the world, whether in Venezuela or Iran, Syria or Greenland.

But their immediate audiences were NATO allies. While the Europeans have committed to spending far more on their defenses between now and 2035, they also know that should the breach with the United States widen, they would need to replicate America’s vast powers and reach — a project that would cost them far more, and could take 10 to 20 years.

Mr. Vance’s speech last year was met by a stunned silence, even gasps. Mr. Rubio’s softer version on Saturday morning drew a standing applause by those in the hall of the Bayerischer Hof hotel, a stately remnant of the old Europe that Mr. Rubio seemed to be idealizing. His words were deemed reassuring by the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen.

The chairman of the security conference, Wolfgang Ischinger, noted that while Mr. Vance talked about NATO as “them,” Mr. Rubio referred to the alliance as “we.” Still, he said that Mr. Rubio’s speech was a “starkly American view of the world.”

Mark Rutte, NATO’s secretary general, last February in Munich with Vice President JD Vance, whose speech then shocked and provoked European leaders. Credit...Leah Millis/Reuters

For many European officials and analysts, the reaction quickly turned cautious. Mr. Rubio’s case for the alliance barely touched on the threats from Russia and other adversaries, and was far more of a defense of the white Christian heritage that he said connects Europe and the United States.

While Mr. Rubio did not mention the far-right parties that Mr. Vance praised, he seemed to give voice to the argument that the purpose of national security strategy was to protect “one civilization: Western civilization.”

Sign up for the Race/Related Newsletter Join a deep and provocative exploration of race, identity and society with New York Times journalists.

“We are bound to one another by the deepest bonds that nations could share,” he said, “forged by centuries of shared history, Christian faith, culture, heritage, language, ancestry and the sacrifices our forefathers made together for the common civilization to which we have fallen heir.”

He argued that the Trump administration has “no interest in being polite and orderly caretakers of the West’s managed decline,” adding, “We do not seek to separate, but to revitalize an old friendship and renew the greatest civilization in human history.”

And it was noticed by everyone that Mr. Rubio chose to travel from Munich to Slovakia and Hungary, countries run by populist far-right parties that are skeptical of the European Union and that have moved closer to Russia, especially on the war in Ukraine.

Luuk van Middelaar, a Dutch historian and former E.U. official, called the Rubio speech “well-crafted, and therefore all the more dangerous for the Europeans, offering a new pact on the basis of a shared civilization, but omitting the Vance part of a year ago, which comes with U.S. alignment with MAGA allies in Europe.”

So in a sense, he argued, “the Europeans are walking into a trap.” Mr. Rubio “tried to embrace us in a shared story of history and peoples, kin and religion, while leaving out an awful lot of nonwhite Europeans — and Americans, too.”

Mr. Rubio with Prime Minister Robert Fico of Slovakia in Bratislava, the capital, on Sunday.Credit...Pool photo by Alex Brandon

A senior European official described Mr. Rubio’s argument as a poison pill. His case for defending “Western civilization,” he said, was offered as a bargain for America’s defensive umbrella, with its implicit suggestion that the United States and its Western allies were fighting to preserve a whiter, more Christian Europe. It would make it far harder, he argued, for European leaders to interact with the rest of the world, let alone with their own non-Christian citizens.

While some Europeans understand that Mr. Vance and Mr. Rubio are speaking to two audiences — one in Europe, one in the United States — Mr. Colby is not a politician. He is a conservative defense scholar who finds himself cast in the role of explaining a Trump national security strategy that is shifting each week.

He spoke of “common sense and flexible realism,” dismissing talk of shared values as “hosannas or shibboleths.” From “our part of the political spectrum, I’m not sure that’s true,” he said.

Instead, “let’s ground our partnership on something more enduring and durable and kind of real, like shared interests,” Mr. Colby said. “The values are obviously there, and the history is there,” he said. But “you can’t base an alliance on sentiment alone,” and “maybe there are differences of values.”

That message went over far better with Europeans, like Chancellor Friedrich Merz of Germany, who in his opening remarks to the conference said pointedly, “The culture wars of the MAGA movement are not ours.”

Mr. Colby’s view of a relationship of shared interests is far closer to where the Europeans want to be, with his open commitment to collective defense and the American nuclear guarantee.

Mr. Colby insisted that over time Europe would have to defend itself in any conventional war, noting that America’s presence at the core of NATO is integral to ensure that conventional conflict does not escalate to a nuclear one.

A member of a Ukrainian artillery unit in the eastern Donbas region in December. Russia’s war in Ukraine directly challenges European security.Credit...Tyler Hicks/The New York Times

After all was said, Europe was left wondering which America it is allying with, said Ivan Krastev, a Bulgarian political scientist who is a fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences, a research institution in Vienna.

“Sometimes we say we can do without the Americans, and then sometimes we’re relieved that America seems to be back,” he said.

Europeans who see in Mr. Rubio a return to the kind of American ally they have known since the end of World War II “are fooling themselves,” he said.

“And you could say Europeans want to be fooled, since they are dependent on the U.S. even more today than in 1989,” the year that the Berlin Wall was breached, given Russia’s four-year war in Ukraine, which directly challenges European security.

Europeans are less worried about the pressure to spend more on the military as the United States turns to China, Mr. Krastev said.

“What Europeans are most worried about is that this administration became highly ideological,” he said. “What is new is the readiness of the U.S. to enter European domestic politics. And what’s interesting is not what Rubio said here but where he goes from here” — to Slovakia and Hungary.

Steven Erlanger is the chief diplomatic correspondent in Europe and is based in Berlin. He has reported from over 120 countries, including Thailand, France, Israel, Germany and the former Soviet Union.

David E. Sanger covers the Trump administration and a range of national security issues. He has been a Times journalist for more than four decades and has written four books on foreign policy and national security challenges.

NY Times · David E. Sanger · February 15, 2026

6. Opinion | Rubio’s Tough Love for Europe

​Summary:

This WSJ editorial says the Trump administration has shaken Europe, sometimes pushing higher defense spending but also causing anxiety. It argues Secretary of State Marco Rubio delivered a more conciliatory Munich speech framed as “tough love,” criticizing Europe’s policies on mass migration, defense, climate, and energy while grounding the case in shared Western civilization and intertwined destiny. Rubio called for a renewed alliance that defends people and interests, preserves freedom of action, and is not constrained by multilateral institutions such as the United Nations, which the editorial says has failed to stop recent conflicts. The editorial praises Rubio’s “conservative internationalism,” but warns Ukraine is the key test and fears a bad peace.

Comment: SECSTATE’s rhetoric is meant to steady allies while still forcing policy change, and the pressure is the point, not the side effect. If multilateral institutions are “beyond control,” what replaces them in crisis: coalitions, bilateral deals, or raw power, and who sets the rules?

Opinion | Rubio’s Tough Love for Europe

WSJ · Rubio’s Tough Love for Europe

His message is better than Vance’s, but then there’s Ukraine.

By The Editorial Board

Follow

Feb. 15, 2026 2:59 pm ET

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/rubios-tough-love-for-europe-e2e2b3ad

Secretary of Sate Marco Rubio speaks in Munich. Panama Pictures/Action Press/ZUMA Press

The Trump Administration has rattled America’s friends in Europe, sometimes for the better (defense spending) but often for the worse (Greenland). Secretary of State Marco Rubio offered a more conciliatory message in a speech this weekend, but the underlying theme remains one of very tough love for the Continent.

Mr. Rubio at the Munich Security Conference recalled the Cold War when much of the world “lived behind an Iron Curtain and the rest looked like it would soon follow.” The West was thought to be in “terminal decline” but “our predecessors recognized that decline was a choice, and it was a choice they refused to make.”

America and Europe are now at another inflection point. Mr. Rubio offered the Administration’s by now familiar critique about Europe’s policy mistakes on mass migration, defense, climate and energy.

But he rooted that criticism in the shared history and values of Western civilization. “We are connected spiritually and we are connected culturally,” he said. “We believe that Europe must survive, because the two great wars of the last century serve for us as history’s constant reminder that ultimately, our destiny is and will always be intertwined with yours.”

Mr. Rubio outlined a renewed trans-Atlantic alliance “ready to defend our people, to safeguard our interests, and to preserve the freedom of action that allows us to shape our own destiny—not one that exists to operate a global welfare state and atone for the purported sins of past generations.”

He also made a crucial point that the alliance shouldn’t be constrained by multilateral institutions “beyond its control.” He mentioned the United Nations in particular for its failure to stop any recent conflict of note. The Administration’s liberal internationalist critics, at home and in Europe, too often mistake this critique for U.S. unilateralism when it is practical realism.

Mr. Rubio’s speech won praise in Munich and from nearly every corner of President Trump’s domestic coalition. It is amusing to watch some on the right suggest Mr. Rubio is inventing some new foreign policy cocktail, as if the world began yesterday.

Mr. Rubio is drawing directly from Ronald Reagan’s playbook of “conservative internationalism”—unapologetic about U.S. leadership and the superiority of freedom; anchored by threats to the American people and their interests; wary that diplomacy and commerce by themselves can resolve the world’s differences.

This worldview still represents the best formula for dealing with the accumulating threats to the U.S., namely an axis among China, Russia, North Korea and Iran. Mr. Trump wants America to be the big player in every region, but his greatest failure as President is that he won’t, or can’t, articulate his larger principles.

Vice President JD Vance made motions to a shared culture with Europe in his speech at the same security conference last year. But Mr. Vance all but told Europe it was free to plan its own funeral and gave oxygen to Europe’s right-wing fringes that are sympathetic to Moscow. Mr. Rubio is also offering a far better vision than Canada’s Mark Carney, the hero of Davos, whose idea for replacing U.S. leadership with a coalition of the world’s “middle powers” is delusional and cynical domestic politics.

The big caveat to Mr. Rubio’s message is Ukraine, which like it or not is the current front line of Western civilization. On that score it wasn’t reassuring that after Munich Mr. Rubio headed to Hungary and Slovakia, Russia’s two best friends in Europe.

The U.S. continues to behave like a mediator of the Ukraine-Russia war, rather than taking the side of the West. Mr. Rubio’s good words about shared values won’t mean much if a rotten “peace” is imposed on Ukraine.

Journal Editorial Report: The week's best and worst from Kim Strassel, Bill McGurn, Allysia Finley and Dan Henninger. Photo: Stefano Costantino/SOPA Images/ZUMA Press/Jim West/Zuma Press/U.S. FDA via AP

Copyright ©2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

The Editorial Board speaks for free markets and free people, the principles, if you will, marked in the watershed year of 1776 by Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence and Adam Smith's “Wealth of Nations.” So over the past century and into the next, the Journal stands for free trade and sound money; against confiscatory taxation and the ukases of kings and other collectivists; and for individual autonomy against dictators, bullies and even the tempers of momentary majorities.

WSJ · Rubio’s Tough Love for Europe

7. U.S. Military Airlifts Mini Nuclear Reactor in First-Ever Flight

​Summary:

The U.S. military conducted its first airlift of a miniature nuclear reactor, moving components of Valar Atomics’ unfueled Ward 250 from March Air Reserve Base, California, to Hill Air Force Base, Utah, on three C 17s. The flight, funded by Valar Atomics, included Pentagon and Energy Department officials, reporters, and industry representatives traveling alongside a plexiglass-encased reactor module. The effort aligns with POTUS’s push to expand nuclear power, with a goal of getting at least three advanced reactors “critical” on U.S. soil by July 4. Supporters cite safe, cheap, deployable power and fewer fuel vulnerabilities; critics warn fast-tracked, untested private designs may raise safety risks. The Ward 250 will be tested near Hill AFB, starting at 250 kW and aiming for 5 MW, using TRISO fuel and helium coolant.

Comment: We need advanced nuclear capabilities like this. If deployable nuclear power becomes a warfighting enabler, what doctrine and command authority govern when and where it is used and protected? How does this concept change logistics, basing, and resilience for forces operating in the Asia-Indo-Pacific (assuming we will employ this capability to support our overseas operations)?

U.S. Military Airlifts Mini Nuclear Reactor in First-Ever Flight

WSJ

Reactor’s journey from California to Utah is part of the Trump administration’s push for more nuclear power

By Lara Seligman

Follow

Feb. 15, 2026 7:22 pm ET

Feb. 15, 2026 7:22 pm ET

Undersecretary of Defense for acquisition and sustainment Michael Duffey at March Air Reserve Base, Calif. DVIDS

HILL AIR FORCE BASE, Utah—The U.S. military airlifted a miniature nuclear reactor for the first time, part of President Trump’s push to deploy nuclear power across the United States.

Three C-17 transport planes flew components of the Valar Atomics Ward 250 unfueled nuclear reactor from March Air Reserve Base, Calif., to Hill Air Force Base, Utah, on Sunday. Valar Atomics officials handed out black caps emblazoned with the words “Make Nuclear Great Again.” Pentagon and Energy Department officials, reporters and industry representatives sat alongside the reactor module, encased in plexiglass, during the hourlong flight.

Proponents of the technology say the new systems can deliver megawatts of power safely and cheaply, eliminating fuel supply vulnerabilities and providing reliable, scalable energy to remote locations. But some critics say the Trump administration’s fast tracking of the untested reactor designs, built by private companies, could pose safety issues.

Trump has pledged to get at least three advanced nuclear reactors “critical”—running all of its nuclear systems—on U.S. soil by July 4.

“Energy is not just an economic issue, although it is that, it is a national security issue as well,” said Utah Gov. Spencer Cox. “America cannot project freedom if we lack reliable deployable power at home and in the field.”

The flight on Sunday “gets us closer to deploying nuclear power when and where it is most needed to give our nation’s war fighters the tools to win,” said Michael Duffey, the undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment.

Valar Atomics, which funded the flight, will test the Ward 250 at a facility near Hill Air Force Base, according to CEO Isaiah Taylor. Testing will begin at 250 kilowatts, and the system is ultimately capable of 5 megawatts, which is enough to power 5,000 homes.

The reactor uses TRISO fuel, uranium kernels in ceramic layers, rather than uranium. It also uses helium coolant, instead of water.

Copyright ©2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

Lara Seligman is a national security reporter for The Wall Street Journal in Washington, where she covers the White House and the Pentagon. She previously spent four years at Politico as a defense reporter.

Lara's reporting on the military and the defense industry has taken her around the world, with time spent covering geopolitics in real time in Africa, Asia and the Middle East.

Lara previously covered the Pentagon and national security for Foreign Policy. She also has written for publications including the Washington Post and Defense News.

WSJ

8. Canada to Prioritize Domestic Firms in Defense-Spending Plan Amid U.S. Tension

​Summary:

Canada plans to unveil a new defense industrial strategy that prioritizes domestic firms as Ottawa ramps defense spending toward 5% of economic output, the Nato threshold described in the article. Prime Minister Mark Carney’s blueprint aims to reduce reliance on U.S. suppliers amid trade and geopolitical tensions with POTUS, while building closer defense industrial ties with Europe, the U.K., and the Asia-Indo-Pacific. Ottawa previously pledged over C$80 billion in upgrades and now estimates total military related spending could reach about C$500 billion by 2035. The strategy projects 125,000 jobs, C$5.1 billion more annual revenue for small and mid sized firms, and a 50% rise in military exports. Contracts favor Canadian firms first, then trusted ally partnerships with shared technology and IP, and foreign buys only with conditions for Canadian sovereignty. Carney ordered a review of Canada’s planned purchase of 88 F 35s as Saab promotes Gripen alternatives.

Comment: Are we cutting off our nose to spite our face by destroying our alliance with Canada?

Canada to Prioritize Domestic Firms in Defense-Spending Plan Amid U.S. Tension

WSJ

The government’s strategy would lead to the creation of 125,000 jobs and a 50% increase in the country’s military exports

By Paul Vieira

Follow

Feb. 15, 2026 9:38 pm ET

https://www.wsj.com/world/americas/canada-to-prioritize-domestic-firms-in-defense-spending-plan-amid-u-s-tension-7d38b562

The Canadian government plans a formal reveal of a new defense-industrial strategy on Tuesday. carlos osorio/Reuters

OTTAWA—Canada is seeking to create 125,000 jobs and increase corporate revenue by billions annually by ensuring domestic firms receive priority from a sizable increase in defense spending.

A new defense-industrial strategy from Prime Minister Mark Carney lays out a blueprint on how Ottawa intends to spend the tens of billions allotted to ensure Canada’s defense spending accelerates to reach 5% of economic output, or the threshold agreed to by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Furthermore, the strategy focuses on reducing its reliance on U.S. suppliers, amid increased trade and geopolitical tensions with the Trump administration, with an eye toward closer defense ties with Europe, the U.K. and the Indo-Pacific.

“Canada has a long history of working closely with the United States and looks forward to a continued strong Canada-U.S. defense relationship,” the strategy said. “To ensure greater resiliency in uncertain times, Canada is also undertaking efforts to diversify and build new defense-industrial relationships.”

The Canadian government plans a formal reveal on Tuesday. The made-in-Canada defense strategy was scheduled to be published last week, and journalists were sent a copy under embargo. The announcement was delayed as the Prime Minister, Mark Carney, focused on the fallout from a shooting in northern British Columbia that left at least nine people dead.

The Financial Times published a story on Sunday outlining the defense strategy’s contents. Other media outlets followed with their own accounts.

In the government’s annual budget plan last year, Ottawa pledged to spend over 80 billion Canadian dollars, equivalent to about US$59 billion, on a cash basis to upgrade the Canadian military. Officials now estimate that total spending related to the military—from procurement to investments in defense-related infrastructure—will total about C$500 billion by 2035.

The Carney government is looking to capitalize on that new spending to create new jobs, as the country’s manufacturing sector struggles under the weight of hefty tariffs imposed by the Trump administration on goods like steel, aluminum, motor vehicles and forest products.

Overall, Canada said the strategy would lead to the creation of 125,000 jobs, an increase in annual revenue among the country’s small- and medium-sized firms of C$5.1 billion, and a 50% increase in the country’s military exports.

Canada’s strategy intends to award defense contracts to domestic firms. In the event that is not possible, it will pursue partnerships with multinational firms from trusted allies. “Partnerships will be defined by joint work, joint building, and the sharing of key technologies and intellectual property in a manner that reinforces our alliances and underpins Canadian sovereignty,” the government said.

When it isn’t feasible to produce domestically or partner with an ally, Canada said it would purchase new military equipment from abroad – although with conditions related to further investments in Canada’s industrial base and guarantees that Canada maintains “sovereign control” over the assets.

Prior to Carney coming to power, Canada had agreed to purchase 88 F-35 fighter jets from U.S.-based Lockheed Martin to help augment its aging fleet of aircraft. However, Carney ordered a review of that purchase, and Sweden’s Saab has made an aggressive push for Canada to buy some of the company’s Gripen jets.

Carney’s policy priority is to reorient the Canadian economy to rely less on the U.S., which has implemented a protectionist trade policy. About 20% of Canada’s gross domestic product is tied to two-way trade with the U.S.

Copyright ©2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

Paul Vieira covers Canada for The Wall Street Journal and is based in Ottawa. He writes about what’s transpiring in the U.S.’s northern neighbor with an eye toward the broader global context. Besides following Canadian politics in the capital, he focuses on economic and social policy, U.S.-Canada relations and the country’s eccentricities.

Paul joined the Journal in 2011, after stints over a 15-year period at Toronto’s Globe and Mail and National Post newspapers. He is a graduate of Western University in London, Ontario, and earned his journalism degree at Metropolitan Toronto University, formerly known as Ryerson.

WSJ

9. Exclusive: Pentagon threatens to cut off Anthropic in AI safeguards dispute

​Summary:

Axios reports the Pentagon may cut ties with Anthropic because the company will not accept a contract standard allowing military use of its models for “all lawful purposes,” including sensitive work in weapons development, intelligence collection, and battlefield operations. Anthropic says two uses must remain off limits: mass surveillance of Americans and fully autonomous weaponry. A senior administration official argues these categories have gray areas and that case by case negotiation is unworkable, especially if Claude blocks applications unexpectedly. Tensions rose after a Venezuela operation to capture Nicolás Maduro via a Palantir partnership; the official claims Anthropic probed whether Claude was used, while Anthropic denies it. Anthropic’s Pentagon contract is valued up to $200 million.

Comment: A case of "you can't fire me, I quit first?" (note sarcasm)

If “all lawful purposes” becomes the rule, who defines “lawful” and who audits compliance when models move into classified use?

Exclusive: Pentagon threatens to cut off Anthropic in AI safeguards dispute

Axios · Dave Lawler, Maria Curi · February 15, 2026

https://www.axios.com/2026/02/15/claude-pentagon-anthropic-contract-maduro

The Pentagon is considering severing its relationship with Anthropic over the AI firm's insistence on maintaining some limitations on how the military uses its models, a senior administration official told Axios.

Why it matters: The Pentagon is pushing four leading AI labs to let the military use their tools for "all lawful purposes," even in the most sensitive areas of weapons development, intelligence collection, and battlefield operations. Anthropic has not agreed to those terms, and the Pentagon is getting fed up after months of difficult negotiations.

• Anthropic insists that two areas remain off limits: the mass surveillance of Americans and fully autonomous weaponry.

The big picture: The senior administration official argued there is considerable gray area around what would and wouldn't fall into those categories, and that it's unworkable for the Pentagon to have to negotiate individual use-cases with Anthropic — or have Claude unexpectedly block certain applications.

• "Everything's on the table," including dialing back the partnership with Anthropic or severing it entirely, the official said. "But there'll have to be an orderly replacement [for] them, if we think that's the right answer."
• An Anthropic spokesperson said the company remained "committed to using frontier AI in support of U.S. national security."

Zoom in: The tensions came to a head recently over the military's use of Claude in the operation to capture Venezuela's Nicolás Maduro, through Anthropic's partnership with AI software firm Palantir.

• According to the senior official, an executive at Anthropic reached out to an executive at Palantir to ask whether Claude had been used in the raid.
• "It was raised in such a way to imply that they might disapprove of their software being used, because obviously there was kinetic fire during that raid, people were shot," the official said.

The other side: The Anthropic spokesperson flatly denied that, saying the company had not "not discussed the use of Claude for specific operations with the Department of War. We have also not discussed this with any industry partners outside of routine discussions on strictly technical matters."

• "Claude is used for a wide variety of intelligence-related use cases across the government, including the DoW, in line with our Usage Policy."
• "Anthropic's conversations with the DoW to date have focused on a specific set of Usage Policy questions — namely, our hard limits around fully autonomous weapons and mass domestic surveillance — none of which relate to current operations," the spokesperson said.

Friction point: Beyond the Maduro incident, the official described a broader culture clash with what the person claimed was the most "ideological" of the AI labs when it came to the potential dangers of the technology.

• But the official conceded that it would be difficult for the military to quickly replace Claude, because "the other model companies are just behind" when it comes to specialized government applications.

Breaking it down: Anthropic signed a contract valued up to $200 million with the Pentagon last summer. Claude was also the first model the Pentagon brought into its classified networks.

• OpenAI's ChatGPT, Google's Gemini and xAI's Grok are all used in unclassified settings, and all three have agreed to lift the guardrails that apply to ordinary users for their work with the Pentagon.
• The Pentagon is negotiating with them about moving into the classified space, and is insisting on the "all lawful purposes" standard for both classified and unclassified uses.
• The official claimed one of the three has agreed to those terms, and the other two were showing more flexibility than Anthropic.

The intrigue: In addition to CEO Dario Amodei's well-documented concerns about AI-gone-wrong, Anthropic also has to navigate internal disquiet among its engineers about working with the Pentagon, according to a source familiar with that dynamic.

The bottom line: The Anthropic spokesperson said the company was still committed to the national security space.

• "That's why we were the first frontier AI company to put our models on classified networks and the first to provide customized models for national security customers."

Axios · Dave Lawler,Maria Curi · February 15, 2026

10. Anthropic Blasts Pentagon's Use of Its AI Tool in Venezuela Raid—May Void $200M Contract

​Summary:

Inc. reports that Anthropic says the Pentagon’s use of Claude in the operation to capture Nicolás Maduro has intensified tensions with CEO Dario Amodei, who opposes AI use in lethal operations and domestic surveillance. The dispute could void Anthropic’s $200 million Defense Department contract signed last summer. Anthropic says any use of Claude must comply with its Usage Policies. SECDEF/WAR Hegseth rejects AI firms dictating military use and said the Pentagon will not employ models that “won’t allow you to fight wars.” The piece says Claude was used in classified operations and deployed in Venezuela through Anthropic’s partnership with Palantir.

Comment: I think the SECDEF/WAR is right here.

Anthropic Blasts Pentagon's Use of Its AI Tool in Venezuela Raid—May Void $200M Contract

Inc. · Kevin Haynes · February 15, 2026

CEO Dario Amodei says Defense Department violated contract by deploying its AI technology to kidnap Venezuela President Maduro

BY KEVIN HAYNES, NEWS WRITER

Feb 15, 2026

https://www.inc.com/kevin-haynes/anthropic-blasts-pentagons-use-of-its-ai-tool-in-venezuela-raid-may-void-200m-contract/91303320?utm

The revelation that Anthropic’s artificial intelligence tool Claude played a key role in the U.S. military’s recent capture of former Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has ratcheted up tensions between the Pentagon and Anthropic CEO Dario Amoedi, an ardent foe of using AI in lethal operations and domestic surveillance.

At stake is Anthropic’s $200 million contract with the Defense Department, which is now reportedly considering voiding the deal signed last summer. Both parties have already drawn clear lines in the sand.

“Any use of Claude—whether in the private sector or across government—is required to comply with our Usage Policies, which govern how Claude can be deployed,” an Anthropic spokesman told The Wall Street Journal.

But Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth bristled at the prospect of AI companies dictating how their products can and can’t be used by the military. Speaking at an event promoting the Pentagon’s new pact with Elon Musk’s xAI last month, Hegseth said the agency will no longer employ AI models, “that won’t allow you to fight wars.”

Featured Video

An Inc.com Featured Presentation

Anthropic was the first AI model developer to be used in classified operations by the Defense Department. Claude was deployed in Venezuela through the manufacturer’s partnership with Palantir Technologies, a data company whose tools are used by the Pentagon and federal law enforcement.

Amodei has repeatedly expressed concerns about AI’s potential power as a tool of war and called for tighter limits and guardrails on their deployment as weapons. Scanning documents, generating reports and guiding autonomous drones is fine, he says. Dropping bombs on Venezuela is not.

“We need to draw a hard line against AI abuses within democracies,” Amodei said in a recent essay titled “The Adolescence of Technology.” “There need to be limits on what we allow our governments to do with AI, so that they don’t seize power or repress their own people. The formulation I have come up with is that we should use AI for national defense in all ways except those which would make us more like our autocratic adversaries.”

The final deadline to apply for the 2026 Inc. Best Workplaces awards is Friday, February 20, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply here.

Inc. · Kevin Haynes · February 15, 2026

11. Promoting Stability on the Path to Superintelligence

​Summary:

Mike Mazarr (my old thesis advisor at National and later my faculty mentor) argues the race toward AI superintelligence could create strategic instability if the United States or China fears the other is near a decisive breakthrough. He reviews “mutual assured AI malfunction” (MAIM), which couples nonproliferation, competitiveness, and deterrence through preventive sabotage of rival AI projects. He finds MAIM not credible, hard to calibrate, and dangerously hair trigger because intelligence is uncertain and thresholds are ambiguous. He proposes an alternative built on mutual restraint and reassurance, improved intelligence and awareness of AI progress and misuse, continued investment to avoid falling behind, and broad societal resilience. He calls this “Resilient Equilibrium.”

Comment: Fascinating discussion and many points I had not considered. This requires a lot of reflection and analysis. MAIM may talk like deterrence, but it reads like a standing invitation to misperception and escalation. If superintelligence arrives in jagged steps across domains, then the safest strategy is to absorb shocks, not to threaten first strikes. The decisive contest may be less about beating China to a finish line and more about preventing discrete AI-enabled harms from compounding into crisis.

Promoting Stability on the Path to Superintelligence

Mutual restraint and resilience could be an alternative to threats of preventative war.

This essay is part of a project from the RAND Center for the Geopolitics of AGI that considers threats to stability in the race toward AGI. In this essay, expert Michael Mazarr proposes an approach that relies on mutual restraint, assurance, and resilience. We welcome your feedback.

by Michael Mazarr

https://geopoliticsagi.substack.com/p/promoting-stability-on-the-path-to?utm

Feb 12, 2026

Photo by Wirestock/Getty Images

As the world confronts the prospect of AI superintelligence—highly advanced AI capable of performing thousands of functions as well as or in some cases dramatically better than humans—the question of strategic stability during the transition period is becoming a real concern. If either the United States or China thinks that the other is on the verge of AI superintelligence, it may fear being subjugated in economic, technological, and military terms, or that superintelligence once unleashed will pose myriad threats to humanity. Great powers facing such threats have sometimes lashed out in preventive wars.

The obvious risk in such a power-rearranging transition is that the race to superintelligence could prompt instability and conflict. Probably the most widely-discussed diagnosis of and prescription for this challenge is the concept of “mutual assured AI malfunction,” or MAIM, proposed in the 2025 report Superintelligence Strategy by Dan Hendrycks, Eric Schmidt, and Alexander Wang. (Hendrycks and Adam Khoja later added a response to critics.) They argue that superintelligence could pose multiple dangers. “In the hands of state actors,” they argue, “it can lead to disruptive military capabilities and transform economic competition. At the same time, terrorists may exploit its dual-use nature to orchestrate attacks once within the exclusive domain of great powers. It could also slip free of human oversight.” As superintelligence looms on the horizon, great power relationships could become more volatile.

MAIM is compelling and sparked a necessary debate. But I’d like to propose an alternative to a world in which great powers threaten to attack each other to enforce controls on AI. My approach is grounded in a very different assessment of the dangers involved in the path to superintelligence. Rather than threats of preventive war, it relies on mutual restraint, assurance, and resilience.

The Difficulties with MAIM

To deal with the dangers of the superintelligence transition, Schmidt, Hendrycks and Wang offer a strategy with three components: Nonproliferation (preventing uncontrolled spread of AI capabilities such as advanced chips), competitiveness (ensuring that others don’t get to superintelligence first), and deterrence through the concept of MAIM. They term their overall approach the “Multipolar Strategy” because it embodies all three of these mutually supportive elements. But the linchpin of their approach, the core mechanism to avoid most risk, is MAIM.

With this strategy, they’re trying to control a complex and distinct set of risks. One is that “In the hands of state actors, it can lead to disruptive military capabilities and transform economic competition,” such as the creation of “superweapons” that could “enable military dominance.” A country “with sole possession of superintelligence,” they argue, “might be as overwhelming as the Conquistadors were to the Aztecs.” Such capabilities have the potential to destabilize balance of power, though the analysis doesn’t explain precisely how that would play out (except to claim that AI capabilities are, as a rule, dangerously offense-dominant).

A second risk is malign uses by non-state actors. Here they focus specifically on AI “as an amplifier of terrorist capabilities,” including bioterrorism and AI-empowered cyberattacks. The third risk is “losing control over the AI system itself”—classic loss of control or misalignment dangers of highly powerful AI that escapes human guardrails. They suggest MAIM as a way of controlling AI development and thus mitigating all three dangers.

MAIM reflects a sort of hyperactive Mutually Assured Destruction involving the relentless danger of preemptive action. They describe it this way:

If a rival state races toward a strategic monopoly, states will not sit by quietly. If the rival state loses control, survival is threatened; alternatively, if the rival state retains control and the AI is powerful, survival is threatened. A rival with a vastly more powerful AI would amount to a severe national security emergency, so superpowers will not accept a large disadvantage in AI capabilities. Rather than wait for a rival to weaponize a superintelligence against them, states will act to disable threatening AI projects.

Under the concept of MAIM, “any state’s aggressive bid for unilateral AI dominance is met with preventive sabotage by its rivals.” States could try to kneecap an opponent’s AI progress in various ways, “ranging from covert operations that degrade training runs to physical damage that disables AI infrastructure.” The result, they argue, would be “a dynamic similar to nuclear Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD), in which no power dares attempt an outright grab for strategic monopoly, as any such effort would invite a debilitating response.”

This is a useful and thought-provoking idea, and it has sparked critical dialogue on the issue of stability on the road to superintelligence. But in an earlier essay, two RAND colleagues and I pointed out several major shortcomings. The basic threat involved in MAIM just isn’t credible: Neither country has an ability short of the use of nuclear weapons to hit hundreds of AI-related targets in the other’s homeland. Then, too, it’s hard to imagine that intelligence on the other side’s AI progress would be reliable enough to justify starting wars, in part because there’s no obvious threshold at which to launch an attack.

The threat of such attacks likely won’t deter AI progress, especially because any side which can race to superintelligence before it gets hit will be able to prevent the other side from launching a preemptive attack, basically creating a veto power on the other’s MAIM strategy. Worst of all, the doctrine would be profoundly destabilizing, locking in a mutual threat to start a war over ambiguous conditions. As we argued in our response, because “it will be so difficult to know when the critical moment of danger has arrived in a rival’s development of advanced AI, a MAIM-like balance could be highly unstable. … Each side would be scrutinizing the others’ AI development with an intensity verging on paranoia, and the potential for misperception would become very great. … The result could be a hair-trigger balance of AI terror.”

The Risks We’re Trying to Control

Yet the strategic risks and uncertainties on the path to superintelligence could be very real, and so we need some form of strategy to deal with them. An alternative can be grounded in a less binary conception of those risks from that proposed in the MAIM concept, which sees dangers of instability from fears of a sudden, rapidly destabilizing transition to superintelligence. If instead we assume that the transition is not a singular event but many accumulating steps, that it will be drawn out rather than a single event or threshold, and that it will be jagged rather than uniform in the power it conveys, we can envision a very different strategy for dealing with it.

My proposal makes a key distinction: between rapidly emerging, binary risks and gradually accumulating ones. Contrary to some arguments about strategic stability, I’d argue that the dangers of superweapons that effectively disarm other nations are not so great. MAIM envisions a “grab for strategic monopoly,” a sort of potent leap for superintelligence on a massive scale. But superintelligence will emerge from a thousand incremental steps rather than a few massive and easily recognizable ones, probably over a longer time frame than some advocates have suggested. In its focus on a sudden, rapid transition, MAIM is describing a world that’s not likely to exist. If superintelligence ends up being a gradually emergent phenomenon rather than a stark threshold, no single moment will offer a potential to impose absolute hegemony.

Nor will superintelligence arrive in all domains at the same time. It is more likely to emerge very unevenly, across different sectors of the economy and social domains. Neither side will confront a comprehensive advance that gives the other an absolute advantage. Some areas, like biology, broader scientific discovery and strategic decision making, are too causally complex, interactive, and stochastic to allow linear effects from hugely intelligent AI. Even in domains where it can offer real gains, many advantages conveyed by advanced AI will probably take years to work themselves into tangible advantage—for example through scientific discoveries that need to be validated or manufactured goods that need to be produced. The stability risks of the path to superintelligence will be eased by the gradualism of its emergence.

Finally, there’s growing evidence that the road to superintelligence is likely to be increasingly diverse rather than monolithic. New approaches to model training beyond transformer-based LLMs are likely to be needed to get to true superintelligence. Compute power will come as much from complex architectures of linked semiconductors, ecosystems of computing power, as from the power of the chips themselves. A more heterogenous pathway to superintelligence will make a jagged, uneven emergence of capabilities even more likely.

Of course, in any strategic balance, perceptions will be at least as important as reality. If one or both sides believe that advantages will arrive quickly and be more binary than I have argued, they might be tempted to act in destabilizing ways, trying to undermine the other’s emerging AI ecosystem as MAIM would predict.

So far, despite the breakneck pace of AI investment in both the United States and China, neither side seems to be thinking this way. U.S. officials and AI leaders assume they are ahead and can remain there. Most reports on Chinese official perceptions agree that for now, Chinese experts do not perceive an approaching moment of profound strategic disadvantage and view the competition as a more gradual affair and one in which application and diffusion are as important as outright model capability and open source models, while less powerful, have important long-term advantages in capturing global AI network power.

This could all change if a single, profound threshold emerged on the road to superintelligence, something that forced one or both sides to confront the possibility of strategic defeat. But the objective reality of a jagged, gradual, diverse frontier of superintelligence is likely to be apparent enough to leaders on all sides of the race that it will calm the temptation to take violent action—especially because MAIM-like attacks are so impractical and profoundly risky.

Even on a gradual path, however, we are likely to begin seeing—possibly within the next several months—the first of a long chain of AI-empowered threat moments, actions that highlight the growing dangers of advanced AI. Some of these will be hostile use of AI by dangerous individuals or groups: Inventing a lethal pathogen and trying to manufacture it; using AI-magnified cyber capabilities to attack critical infrastructure; manipulating chatbots to threaten vulnerable populations. Others could be loss of control events in which AI models spontaneously cause harm in various ways. Some versions of either of these categories of threat could be profoundly dangerous—far more than mere nuisances, threats that pose serious risk to the American homeland. (In fact, some see the recent events surrounding the AI collaboration realm Moltbook as a harbinger of serious risks to come.)

It could well be, then, that the real danger as the path to superintelligence becomes clearer is not a sudden, comprehensive power shift that feeds the risk of preemptive strikes, but an accumulating set of serious but discrete perils generated by increasingly powerful AI. Few of the intentional malign uses of AI might originate from other great powers; none of them would create the possibility of a comprehensive strategic hegemony by any one country.

Elements of a Strategy to Deal with the Transition

That analysis suggests that a strategy for dealing with the transition to superintelligence can be less about avoiding Conquistador moments or mitigating temptations for preventive war and more about building resistance against gradually emergent and uneven threats—threats that do endanger America’s and China’s security, but not in ways that can be remedied with mutual AI decapitation strikes. A standoff characterized by brinksmanship, intimidation and enforced limits is less appropriate to this challenge than resilience, reassurance, and staying even in AI progress.

At this point I’m not trying to offer a comprehensive strategy to deal with the risks of the superintelligence transition. A wide range of work is underway at RAND and in other places looking at this issue. My goal here is to contribute to that thinking by offering one tentative idea for an alternative strategy and defining its constituent parts. A transitional risk mitigation strategy could be based on four elements:

1. Restraint and reassurance. In a mirror image of the MAIM idea, the United States and China could make formal commitments not to preempt the other’s AI progress. The United States could enshrine this as a formal doctrine and offer transparency and public assurances about its posture. Such promises alone would hardly sweep away all concerns, partly because there is too little trust between the United States and China to make promises strong enough to solve the problem on their own. But they would create a baseline set of pledges on which to build further confidence building measures. This step could include coordination on specific risks both would fear, such as terrorist use of AI to generate biological weapons. It could also involve demonstrated restraint in the use of new AI-fueled capabilities to avoid the impression that the United States will employ them to subjugate others.
2. Intelligence and awareness. A second component of the strategy would seek to guarantee maximum possible knowledge of AI programs and progress in China and beyond. It would also build a basis of reporting and sensing to identify potential loss of control and misuse risks, be able to attribute attacks and understand which elements of the jagged frontier of superintelligence are moving more quickly. As AI capabilities advance, intelligence on their movement and risks associated with them will become more important than reporting on potential adversary militaries.
3. Continued investment in AI development and application to avoid falling decisively behind. As much as progress even at the threshold of superintelligence is likely to remain gradual, the United States has to ensure that it does not surrender a significant lead to other AI actors. That seems highly unlikely given current and prospective AI research and development but ensuring the outcome must remain a U.S. priority. It can help the United States avoid the kinds of fears that would prompt desperate actions to protect its security. This component of the strategy is not only about AI model capabilities but also broader investments in the societal requirements for success in the AI era.
4. Broad-based societal resilience against AI-generated risk. Finally and most importantly, as MAIM is the fulcrum of the Schmidt, Hendrycks and Wang strategy, resilience is the centerpiece of this one. Part of the resilience agenda could be focused on ensuring that no one can launch a preemptive strike against the U.S. AI ecosystem. Steps to achieve this can include hiding, concealing and dispersing elements of an AI architecture; providing active defense against virtual or physical attack; hardening targets; and increasing redundancy and resilience. More broadly, the United States could pursue a general society-wide program of resilience in many forms to guard against the risks posed by superintelligence: Critical infrastructure protection, a radically higher degree of cybersecurity, societal and population training, disaster recovery capabilities, preparations for operating in degraded modes, and a broad-based approach to AI alignment and control.

Part of the goal with such resilience is to create an analogue to the true source of Cold War-era nuclear peace: Guaranteed retaliation. MAIM inverts the true logic of Cold War MAD. That strategic reality was based on the inability of either side to launch a first strike, not the institutionalization of such strikes. The “mutual destruction” element came from the fact that both sides maintained a secure second strike, not a constant threat of preemption. To be sure, both sides sought to escape this reality to some degree, toying with first strike-capable nuclear systems and warfighting doctrines. But senior political leaders always recognized the futility of large-scale nuclear strikes. The goal is to preserve an ability to retaliate across a wide range of tools so that the attacker could not envision getting away with a superintelligence-spurred attack.

This strategy addresses the risk of perception-driven instability and fears of sudden power shifts but does so in different ways than MAIM. It uses commitments for restraint, broader assurances and confidence building measures, and strengthened intelligence and awareness to reduce the perceived danger of preventive war, and investments in AI equivalence and resilience to increase mutual confidence that each side would not be vulnerable to a sudden, superintelligence-driven effort to impose hegemony. Even if moments do arise that feel more like a brink than a gradual path, the strategy has shock absorbers to avoid instability.

We could call the resulting strategy Resilient Equilibrium (or as a shorthand, R-EQ). I asked ChatGPT for a summary of its basic elements. This approach, it noted, rests on the judgment that transitional risks don’t emerge so much from a mutual temptation to destroy the other’s AI ecosystem but from a more gradually accumulating series of discrete dangers. Given this,

Strategies centered on brinkmanship, enforced limits, or threats of disruption risk amplifying those dangers by encouraging secrecy, arms racing, and crisis instability. By contrast, Resilient Equilibrium seeks to dampen escalation pressures by combining restraint and reassurance with superior intelligence and sustained investment in AI research and application sufficient to avoid decisive technological disadvantage. Its central premise is that confidence—confidence in awareness, in relative technological position, and in societal robustness—reduces the incentives for preventive war more effectively than coercion. Rather than attempting to freeze progress or deter through mutual vulnerability, Resilient Equilibrium prioritizes resilience: hardening critical systems, dispersing and defending AI infrastructure, and preparing society to operate through disruption. Stability in a superintelligence transition, under this approach, is achieved not by threatening catastrophe, but by making catastrophe strategically unnecessary.

Nicely said. That sort of a strategy—ensuring world-class AI capabilities and awareness of others’ progress while promoting restraint and reassurance alongside a comprehensive new effort at national resilience—is the way to deal with the risks of the transition to superintelligence. It’s appropriate to the nature of the threat and a lot more feasible, and less provocative, than MAIM. Broadly speaking, it’s the direction we should head as we begin to contemplate those final years and months on the road to extremely powerful AI.

12. U.S. and Europe, No Longer Kindred Souls, Enter a Marriage of Convenience

​Summary:

European officials at Munich described the transatlantic relationship as a loveless “marriage of convenience,” saying trust has eroded even after Secretary of State Marco Rubio delivered a warmer speech and won a standing ovation. They argue shared values matter less now than hard security interests. Pentagon policy chief Elbridge Colby urged grounding the alliance in pragmatic “nuts and bolts” cooperation, while reaffirming U.S. extended nuclear deterrence and pressing Europe to carry the main conventional defense burden. Tension centers on Russia and Ukraine: Europeans see Russia as the paramount threat, while POTUS downplays that danger and pressures Ukraine toward a settlement Europeans fear will reward aggression. The earlier Greenland crisis is cited as papered over, not solved.

Comment: If Europe accepts “interests first,” what is the minimum U.S. commitment that keeps deterrence credible while Europe builds conventional capacity?

U.S. and Europe, No Longer Kindred Souls, Enter a Marriage of Convenience

WSJ

Secretary of State Marco Rubio offered a warmer tone at this year’s Munich Security Conference, but European officials say the trans-Atlantic fissure remains

By Yaroslav Trofimov

Follow

Feb. 15, 2026 2:46 pm ET

https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/u-s-and-europe-no-longer-kindred-souls-enter-a-marriage-of-convenience-d76008d6

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke Saturday at the security summit in Munich. Liesa Johannssen/Reuters

MUNICH—Ask a European official who attended this weekend’s Munich Security Conference about the state of the trans-Atlantic relationship, and you’re likely to hear metaphors about dealing with a troubled, possibly abusive, spouse.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio delivered a less pugnacious message when compared with last year’s Munich conference. Back then, Vice President JD Vance launched a blistering attack on the governments of Europe’s largest nations and embraced their far-right political opponents.

Rubio, by contrast, got a standing ovation after highlighting the importance of trans-Atlantic ties and common history and culture. Yet, though the Europeans and the Trump administration are on speaking terms once again, there are few illusions.

The deep fissure caused by last month’s crisis over Greenland has been papered over, but not fixed. What used to be an alliance of kindred souls is viewed by both sides today as a marriage of convenience, loveless and lacking basic trust.

“Now there is a new equation that you don’t really know who is your friend and who is your ally,” Kaja Kallas, the European Commission’s head of foreign and security policy, said in an interview in Munich.

Kaja Kallas spoke Saturday in Munich. Ronald Wittek/EPA/Shutterstock

Ministers, lawmakers and military leaders who packed Munich’s Bayerische Hof hotel over the weekend acknowledge that the common values that once bound Washington to its European allies aren’t so common anymore. The focus of conversations has now shifted onto the bond that remains: hard security interests that are less susceptible to ideological rifts.

Elbridge Colby, the Pentagon’s undersecretary for policy, told the attendees in Munich that he isn’t sure that the onetime “hosannas and shibboleths” about shared values between Europe and the U.S. are true, at least when it comes to his part of the political spectrum.

Yet, he added, “the deduction is not being ‘hey let’s pull out,’ but rather let’s ground our partnership in something more enduring and durable and real, like shared interests…We have a shared interest in a Europe that can defend NATO territory, and so I would recommend focusing on pragmatic nuts and bolts kind of stuff.”

Highlighting the positive, many European officials noted that, ahead of Munich, Colby reaffirmed at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization ministerial meeting in Brussels the enduring American extended nuclear deterrence in Europe—even as he insisted that European forces will be primarily responsible for the continent’s conventional defense. Colby also praised the strides that Germany and several other European allies have made in expanding their military capabilities over the past year.

Elbridge Colby in Brussels on Thursday. Geert Vanden Wijngaert/AP

“It was important after the discussions we had over the last couple of weeks to reaffirm that, on a fundamental level, we are allies, we are friends, we share the same history, our connections go deep in every direction, and it is acknowledged and appreciated that many countries in Europe are stepping up,” Netherlands Defense Minister Ruben Brekelmans said in an interview.

With Washington’s focus on shared interests, the big question, of course, is the degree to which America’s security interests actually overlap with those of Europe today.

Seen from European capitals, the paramount security challenge is presented by Russia’s war to subjugate Ukraine and Moscow’s possible designs on the Baltic states and other parts of the European Union. President Trump, by contrast, has repeatedly spoken of Russia as a source of great business opportunities and a possible hedge against China, with senior aides like Steve Witkoff denying any Russian threat to countries outside Ukraine.

Former Swedish foreign minister Tobias Billström said he found such attitudes disturbing. “The U.S. has some permanent interests, and we have to take that into account. But the U.S. has to accept that Russia is a European problem,” he said. “What has worried me over the years, since the new administration came into place, is this constant downplay of Russia as a threat.”

The word “Russia” wasn’t even mentioned in Rubio’s Munich speech, which warned instead about the perils of mass migration, unfettered trade and the “climate cult.” While Rubio said that the fate of Europe will never be irrelevant to America’s, he added that “we are prepared, if necessary, to do this alone.” Many European officials took these words as a warning that Washington’s commitment to European security was conditional on aligning with the Trump administration’s ideology.

“Rubio’s speech was JD without a beard,” said Jeff Rathke, president of the American-German Institute in Washington. “It’s a change of tonality without a change of policy.” One European official described Rubio’s Munich address as “a slap, but while wearing a silk glove.”

“The worst lesson we could draw from this weekend is to say that ‘I can cling to some love words that I heard in part of his speech’ and push the snooze button,” said France’s minister of European affairs, Benjamin Haddad. Instead of fretting about Trump, he added, the Europeans must be stoic and “focus on what we can control: focus on rearmament, on the support for Ukraine and the threat that Russia poses to all our democracies, focus on competitiveness.”

Benjamin Haddad. Omar Havana/AP

Trump’s pressure on Ukraine to accept a peace deal on Russia’s terms and surrender unconquered territory in the Donetsk region, something that most European governments oppose because they view such an outcome as emboldening future Russian aggression, has been a source of trans-Atlantic tension for months.

With Trump portraying Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as an obstacle to peace, the issue could trigger another crisis in trans-Atlantic relations in coming weeks, many European leaders fear.

The lesson learned by these European governments from the previous crisis, over Trump’s demand to annex Greenland, was that it pays to push back, hard. Several European nations last month sent troops to the island, which belongs to Denmark, and threatened to use their financial muscle to retaliate against the tariffs that Washington imposed in retribution. Facing this coordinated response, Trump ended up withdrawing his tariffs and ruled out using force in Greenland.

“I definitely see that with all the strongmen, they respect strength and nothing else. So you have to either be strong or project strength. This is very clear. And if we are united, we are actually strong,” said Kallas, the European Commission’s foreign affairs and security chief.

A former prime minister of Estonia, Kallas noted the inherent problem of separating values and interests. “Our values are also our interests,” she said. “The underlying values of democracy and human rights—these are also the fundamentals for prosperity.”

SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS

What do you think are the biggest challenges facing Europe as it becomes increasingly independent from the U.S.? Join the conversation below.

While Europe and the U.S. don’t always see eye to eye, she added, both are democracies in a world where human rights constantly come under fire.

Indeed, despite all the trans-Atlantic tension since Trump took office, much common ground remains, giving hope that the relationship could be mended one day.

“If the current American administration chooses to emphasize shared interests, this is okay. But we believe in our interactions with the Americans that there is more to that,” Germany’s state secretary of defense, Nils Schmid, said in an interview. “If you look at the American political spectrum in a broader sense, you will still find a lot of people who insist on shared values, and I think we should not give up on that.”

Watch: How Trump Wielded ‘America First’ to Bend the World Order

The president brushed aside the norms of international diplomacy when he targeted narcoterrorists, fought with European allies and bombed Iran. As part of our video series on Trump’s second term, The Wall Street Journal’s Alexander Ward sets out to learn whether this made America safer. Photo Illustration: Annie Zhao

Copyright ©2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

Yaroslav Trofimov is the chief foreign-affairs correspondent of The Wall Street Journal, covering major issues and developments around the world.

He won the National Press Club award for political analysis in 2024, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2023 for his coverage of the war in Ukraine and in 2022 for the coverage of the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, among other honors.

A native of Ukraine and a graduate of New York University, he joined the Journal in 1999 and previously served as Rome, Middle East and Singapore-based Asia correspondent, as bureau chief in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and as Dubai-based columnist writing on the greater Middle East.

He is the author of a historical novel, “No Country for Love,” and of three books of narrative nonfiction: “Faith at War,” “The Siege of Mecca” and “Our Enemies Will Vanish,” which was a finalist for the Orwell Prize.

WSJ

13. A Wave of Unexplained Bot Traffic Is Sweeping the Web

​Summary:

Websites from small publishers to U.S. government domains report large, consistent spikes of automated visits linked to IPs geolocated to Lanzhou, China, and routed through Singapore. One owner saw over half his annual traffic come from China and Singapore, with “visitors” spending 0 seconds and not interacting, indicating bots. Analytics.usa.gov data showed in the last 90 days 14.7% of visits to U.S. government sites came from Lanzhou and 6.6% from Singapore. Analysts say Lanzhou may be a geolocation artifact; traffic appears to traverse ASNs tied to Tencent and also Alibaba and Huawei. Motive is unclear, but many suspect large scale data harvesting for AI training. Bots disguise themselves as normal users, evade common blocking, raise bandwidth costs, and distort analytics and ad revenue.

Comment: This looks less like clumsy crawling and more like an organized attempt to blend in at scale, which suggests intent to collect data without easy attribution or blocking.

A Wave of Unexplained Bot Traffic Is Sweeping the Web

Wired · Zeyi Yang · February 12, 2026

From small publishers to US federal agencies, websites are reporting unusual spikes in automated traffic linked to IP addresses in Lanzhou, China.

https://www.wired.com/story/made-in-china-niche-websites-are-seeing-a-surge-of-mysterious-traffic-from-china/

For a brief moment in October, Alejandro Quintero thought he had made it big in China. The Bogotá-based data analyst owns and manages a website that publishes articles about paranormal activities, like ghosts and aliens. The content is written in “Spanglish,” he says, and was never intended for an Asian audience. But last fall, Quintero’s site suddenly began receiving a large volume of visits from China and Singapore. The amount of traffic coming from the two countries was so high and consistent that it now accounts for more than half of total visits to Quintero’s site over the past 12 months.

When he first noticed the traffic spike, Quintero thought he’d found an audience on the other side of the world. “I need to travel to China right now because I’m the bomb there,” Quintero says he recalls thinking. But as soon as he dug into the data, he knew something was wrong. Google Analytics, a common tool used by website owners to parse web traffic, shows that all the Chinese visitors are from one specific city: Lanzhou. They are unlikely to be real humans, because they stay on the page for an average of 0 seconds and don’t scroll or click. Quintero quickly realized his website was actually being bombarded by bots.

Quintero later found out from social media that he was far from the only website operator who started seeing a large influx of bots from China and Singapore beginning in September. A lifestyle magazine based in India, a blog about a small island off the coast of Canada, the owners of several personal portfolio websites, a weather forecast platform with over 15 million pages, ecommerce shops hosted by Shopify, and even domains run by the US government have all reported being hit by what appear to be the same bots. And they were easy to spot because the bots significantly skewed each website’s usual analytics patterns. In the last 90 days, 14.7 percent of visits to US government websites came from Lanzhou and 6.6 percent came from Singapore, making them the top two cities in the world supposedly hungry for information from the American government, according to Analytics.usa.gov.

While their IP addresses can be traced to China and Singapore, there’s little information about who's actually behind this massive amount of automated visits. Website owners who are being targeted have largely concluded that the bots don’t pose any immediate harm. Given that AI-related bot activity surged across the internet last year, many believe the traffic could be connected to companies harvesting web data for training models.

Where Is Lanzhou, Anyway?

When website owners saw the sudden uptick of visits from China, many of them started asking, where is Lanzhou? The second-tier city in China’s northwest is known for its heavy manufacturing industries and historical legacy as a Silk Road trading hub. But it’s neither a tech hub nor home to significant numbers of data centers. So why is so much traffic coming from the city?

Lanzhou might not be the actual source of the bots, says Gavin King, founder of Known Agents, which analyzes automated online traffic. King’s own company website has also been targeted by bots from China and Singapore. When he looked deeper into the specific details of the visits, the only thing he could say for certain was that all of the traffic was eventually being routed through Singapore. Google Analytics determined the visits originated from Lanzhou, but King says that could just be an educated guess instead of a precise location.

But the most concrete detail King found is that the traffic is being routed through servers belonging to several major Chinese cloud companies. King says the bot traffic his website received all came through the Autonomous System Number (ASN) 132203, a unique identifier in the internet’s routing system assigned to an internet service provider operated by the Chinese company Tencent. Andy, the manager of a large weather forecasting website group, says he detected bot traffic coming from ASNs associated with Tencent, Alibaba, and Huawei. (He asked only to use his first to protect his privacy.) All three companies are major cloud providers, and it’s unclear whether the bots are coming from in-house or clients using their servers.

Many people suspect that these bots are part of an AI company’s effort to collect training data from web pages. In 2025, AI bots accounted for a significant portion of overall web traffic, which crawl the internet for text and other information to feed to data-hungry large language models.

But there are some key differences between these Chinese bots and other AI bots. First, there’s simply way more of them. King says on his website that the traffic from China and Singapore accounts for 22 percent of overall traffic, while all other AI bots account for less than 10 percent combined.

Most leading AI companies clearly identify their bots to website operators, which also makes them easier to block. The frontier AI labs are “not as interested in evading” bot-blocking rules, says Brent Maynard, senior director of security technology and strategy at the internet infrastructure company Akamai. He says AI companies usually only start trying to disguise their bots after a website shuts the front door. This wave of Chinese bots, however, disguised themselves as normal human users from the start, and they have even bypassed common bot-blocking rules, several website owners told WIRED.

Beyond AI companies, there are other businesses incentivized to scrape the internet, including search crawlers and intelligence-gathering companies.

Rising Costs and Distorted Data

The good news, at least for now, is that the bots don't seem to have an explicitly malicious purpose. They haven’t been publicly connected to any cyberattack and don't seem to be scanning for vulnerabilities. But the lack of a clear motive also adds to the confusion.

Some website owners are worried that the bots are scanning copyrighted material without permission. Others say the surge has forced them to pay more for bandwidth, as bot traffic crowds out human users, or to invest in more sophisticated prevention tools. The visits also skew traffic analytics, distorting reports about who is actually visiting their sites.

But the biggest impacts are felt by people who earn revenue from attracting ad clicks on their websites. “This is destroying my AdSense strategies,” says Quintero, the paranormal blog owner, “because they are saying [your website is] only visited by bots, so your content is not something that is valuable to the viewer.” As a result, websites like his may be seen as less desirable to advertisers and penalized by Google.

Makeshift Solutions

Many people have complained about the China AI bot problem in online support channels over the past few months, or sent messages about it directly to their web-hosting providers. But so far, there are still few concrete answers.

Contacted by WIRED, WordPress acknowledged that it has seen reports in recent months that some of its sites are experiencing increased traffic from suspected AI bots or scrapers. “WordPress websites have always had a great structure that makes them easy to find and be indexed by search engines. Those same capabilities make them easily crawled [by] AI as well,” the company said in an unsigned email. Google, Cloudflare, and Squarespace did not respond to requests for comment.

Some website operators are now taking matters into their own hands. On social platforms like Reddit, victims of the bots have swapped makeshift strategies for identifying and blocking them. Over time, they learned that these bots often present themselves as using old versions of Windows operating systems and uncommon screen aspect ratios, characteristics that allow website operators to block them as a group. If the websites don’t care about traffic from China or Singapore at all, some also elect to prevent anyone with an IP address located in those countries from accessing their sites.

Andy, the weather website manager, says he ended up blocking four ASNs associated with Tencent, Alibaba, and Huawei. That was enough to reduce the number of bots significantly but not completely eliminate them, he says. The number of daily visits from the Chinese bots to his site have gone from 127,000 at their peak down to just above 2,000 the day he spoke to WIRED.

As autonomous AI tools proliferate across the internet, figuring out how to combat them will likely become a more common headache for website owners. “This is the cost of being on the internet to some degree,” says Akamai’s Maynard, “You're open, and you're in public view.”

This is an edition of Zeyi Yang and Made in China newsletter. Read previous newsletters here.

Wired · Zeyi Yang · February 12, 2026

14. China’s military reveals future air warfare plans

​Summary:

The article says an internal PLA report emphasizes future air warfare built around stealth, drones, and high technology weapons. The report, published in September in Liberation Army News and translated by the U.S. Air Force’s China Aerospace Studies Institute, argues that “intelligentized” aerial combat is inevitable. It describes system clusters led by uncrewed combat systems that operate as AI managed system of systems, with distributed operations, swarms, and crewed aircraft backed by drone formations for sensing and weapons support. It highlights stealth aircraft using long range stealth and hypersonic missiles for beyond visual range strikes. It also stresses “hard kills” and “soft kills” like deepfakes, algorithmic fog, and viruses to induce cognitive collapse.

Comment: The PLA is framing air war as a contest of decision and perception as much as platforms, and it aims to win by breaking the enemy’s system coherence.

China’s military reveals future air warfare plans

washingtontimes.com · Bill Gertz

By Bill Gertz - The Washington Times - Thursday, February 12, 2026

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2026/feb/12/chinas-military-reveals-future-air-warfare-plans/

An internal Chinese military report has revealed that the People’s Liberation Army is placing a heavy emphasis on waging advanced air war using stealth, drones and high-technology weapons.

The report, “How Will the Form of Air Warfare Change in the Future?” was published in September in the Liberation Army News, the mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Military Commission.

It was translated by the U.S. Air Force think tank China Aerospace Studies Institute, which described the report as having “the imprimatur of orthodoxy.”

The Chinese report was written by Chai Shan, a military author who has previously written about PLA air power control.

“The future form of air warfare is ultimately and inevitably intelligentized aerial combat,” the report stated.

It asserted that combat weapons and equipment will form system clusters leading with “intelligentized” uncrewed combat systems that use independent, self-adaptable, and self-coordinating system-of-systems operations under the control of artificial intelligence decision-making and management systems.

The report also said future air warfare for the PLA will evolve toward uncrewed weapons platforms, autonomous weapons platforms, distributed operations, and swarms, aerial combat will employ crewed aircraft backed by drone formations that will provide sensors and enhance manned warplane weapons.

China’s forces already are moving toward the goal of “distributed aerial combat with stealth, hypersonic [propulsion], and beyond-visual-range attacks as the primary means,” the report said.

Advertisement

Advertisement

“Stealth aircraft carrying long-range, air-launched stealth missiles and hypersonic missiles will become operational endpoints within an aerospace system-of-systems network, where they will disperse and deploy across a broad area, widely participating in each operational stage of reconnoiter, search, strike, and assess [akin to ’find, fix, finish, and assess’], and with the support of integrated aerospace sensing systems, they will execute long-range strikes against the enemy from outside visual range.”

Current development of the PLA new form of air warfare is “fast and ferocious,” the report said.

A key to air warfare will be the combining of both physical and information domains to produce a hybrid of conventional and cognitive power to attack enemies.

“Aerial combat actions with ’striking vital points’ firepower warfare and ’pretending to be foolish while smart’ information warfare as primary characteristics, as well as air warfare system of systems, by executing ‘hard kills’ against the enemy’s key smart weapons and equipment as well as ’soft kills’ by methods such as deep fakes, algorithmic fog, virus infections, etc., will make the enemy’s cognitive environment complex, ultimately causing the cognitive collapse and degradation of the enemy’s air warfare system of systems,” the report said.

It went on to assert that the PLA is developing these types of air warfare capabilities with hypersonic munitions, advanced battle management systems and other high technology that are “rapidly developing” along with new types of warfare, which the report described as “decision-centric warfare,” “mosaic warfare,” and “algorithmic warfare.”

Advertisement

Advertisement

“In the not-too-distant future, they could appear on the battlefield,” the report said.

• Bill Gertz can be reached at bgertz@washingtontimes.com.

Copyright © 2026 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.

washingtontimes.com · Bill Gertz

15. How China Fights Against a U.S. Army Brigade Combat Team

Summary:

In a U.S. China large scale combat operation, a U.S. Army brigade combat team would face a PLA Army heavy combined arms brigade that is aggressive and able to fight across domains. The PLA would task organize in layered, multidomain fashion to disrupt and paralyze the enemy’s operational system, backed by joint support including space, cyber, electronic warfare, ISR, and fires. If the PLA attacks, it phases operations to isolate the BCT, paralyze C2 and fires, and force culmination before committing main forces, using information dominance, massed effects, and brief violent kinetic and nonkinetic volleys. If the BCT attacks, it meets an elastic defense built to lure, attrit, ambush, and then counterstrike, using deception, denial, counterrecon, and counterattacks.

​Comment: Download the entire 20 page report here: https://g2webcontent.z2.web.core.usgovcloudapi.net/OEE/China Landing Zone/2026FEB04_T2COMG2_How_CHI_Fights_LSCO_Assessment1-1.1_digital 1.pdf

The fight is designed to be decided before close combat, by isolation and paralysis more than by ​direct ​f​orce on force.​ Reconnaissance is the engine of PLA fires, so counterrecon is not a phase, it is a constant ​r​equirement.​ Protection is being stretched beyond armor and shelters, because “fires” now include nontraditional effects that hit systems and cognition.

How China Fights Against a U.S. Army Brigade Combat Team

T2COM G-2

Distribution A: Approved for public releaseare on X

02/02/2026|China,G2

https://oe.t2com.army.mil/product/how-china-fights-against-a-u-s-army-brigade-combat-team/

In a potential large-scale combat operation (LSCO) between the United States and China, a U.S. Army brigade combat team (BCT) would face a People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Army heavy combined arms brigade (HCAB) that is determined, aggressive, and capable of fighting in all domains. The PLA would task-organize its forces using a layered, multidomain approach aimed at disrupting and paralyzing the adversary’s operational system. The HCAB would receive direct and indirect combat support from across the PLA joint force, including space; cyber; electronic warfare (EW); intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance; and fires.

A U.S. Army BCT defending against an attacking PLA Army HCAB would contend with a phased operation designed to isolate the BCT from the division, paralyze BCT command-and-control and fires systems, and ultimately cause the BCT to culminate before the HCAB commits its main forces. This would include shaping operations to gain information dominance through reconnaissance, fires, and EW, massed fires and effects supporting the HCAB’s main effort, and aggressive maneuver and the employment of brief, violent volleys of both kinetic and nonkinetic fires on the objective.

A U.S. Army BCT attacking a PLA Army HCAB would encounter an active, elastic, and deep system designed to lure, attrit, and ambush an attacking force before destroying it with a decisive counterstrike. This would include shaping operations focused on delaying, channeling, and attriting the BCT; spoiling attacks and counterreconnaissance; extensive use of denial and deception to disrupt and delay the BCT; and aggressive counterattacks to exploit opportunities or seal points of penetration.

Operating against an HCAB in LSCO would challenge the BCT’s intelligence, fires, and protection warfighting functions due to the PLA’s focus on gaining and maintaining information dominance, massed fires, and purpose-built, systems-focused combat effects. The HCAB’s reliance on reconnaissance as part of its information dominance campaign suggests the BCT may need to conduct continuous counterreconnaissance throughout all phases of operations. The HCAB’s massed fires, supported by robust reconnaissance efforts, would enable a focused and dedicated counterbattery effort. The PLA’s approach to systems warfare, manifested at the tactical level as the task organization of theater and group army assets to the HCAB, suggests that BCT protection systems will be challenged by nontraditional fires and effects. Finally, accurately emulating PLA combat equipment in training and at Combat Training Centers with opposing forces (OPFOR) may provide the BCT with more realistic training events and better prepare the BCT to gain and maintain the advantage during LSCO.

​16. Driving PME Transformation for the Total Force: CGSS’s Modernization of the ADL Common Core

​Summary:

CGSC has redesigned the Command and General Staff School Asynchronous Distance Learning Common Core to modernize PME for the Total Force. The program shrinks from 36 months to 12 months through a three phase, scaffolded structure: Foundations, Doctrine, and Execution. It shifts doctrine sensitive content out of Phase 1 to protect credit from doctrinal updates, adds cohort advisors and more faculty touchpoints, and replaces static instruction with multimodal learning tools. The redesign aligns with LSCO, MDO, and joint requirements, uses a Complexity Toolkit across phases, and partners with Arizona State University for a modern hosting platform. The goal is higher completion, faster MEL 4 throughput, and more ready division and corps staff officers.

Driving PME Transformation for the Total Force: CGSS’s Modernization of the ADL Common Core

by Thomas A. Crowson, by Brian Lust, by Cherry Lust, by Michael Mathews, by Jeffrey Kilgo, by Andrew Harvey, by John Schatzel, by James Wiggins

|

02.16.2026 at 06:00am

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2026/02/16/cgss-adl-common-core-modernization-total-force/

Abstract:

The U.S. Army Command and General Staff College has comprehensively redesigned its Asynchronous Distance Learning Common Core (ADL-CC) program, reducing course length from 36 to 12 months and introducing a scaffolded, multimodal curriculum aligned with modern warfighting requirements. This transformation accelerates the production of MEL 4 qualified officers, enhances operational relevance, and ensures greater accessibility for Active Duty, National Guard, and Army Reserve officers, thereby strengthening the Army’s cognitive edge for large scale and multidomain operations.

Introduction

For almost a century and a half, the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College (CGSC) has shaped the intellectual foundations of the Army’s warfighting excellence. As America’s School for War, the institution has repeatedly adapted to changes in the character of conflict, from the mechanization and mass mobilization of the 20th century to the complex, multidomain operational environment of today. As a pioneer in distance education for over 100 years, CGSC has continually evolved its methods to reach officers wherever they serve, ensuring access to high-quality professional military education regardless of location or component.

Today, under the Army’s mandate for continuous transformation and the reorganization of the Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) to Transformation and Training Command (T2Com), CGSC is undertaking one of the most significant reforms to professional military education (PME) in its modern history: a comprehensive redesign of the Command and General Staff School’s Asynchronous Distance Learning Common Core (ADL-CC) program. This reform is not merely a pedagogical update. It is a deliberate structural transformation designed to enable more officers to rapidly complete the common core curriculum, producing more Military Education Level 4 (MEL 4, the Army’s intermediate level education qualification) qualified officers with relevant warfighting skills aligned with large scale combat operations (LSCO) and multi domain operations (MDO).

Asynchronous Distance Learning (ADL) is the Army’s primary mechanism for delivering Intermediate Level Education to officers who do not attend resident courses due to operational requirements, geographic dispersion, or component specific constraints. In a globally distributed Army with persistent operational demands, ADL is essential—it ensures the Army can develop adaptive, strategically minded leaders wherever they serve. The redesigned ADL-CC program represents a decisive step forward: an agile, relevant, and warfighting-focused learning model that reflects how the Army will fight and win in the decades ahead.

The Imperative for Change

This transformation is not merely administrative. It is strategic. The Army’s transformation effort demands a PME system capable of producing leaders who can integrate warfighting functions at echelon, understand operational art, and make decisions in contested multi domain environments. PME cannot lag behind operational modernization; it must drive it.

The ADL-CC redesign directly supports this mandate by:

1. Increasing readiness for Joint All Domain Operations (JADO) and continuum competition by accelerating MEL 4 production through a focused curriculum, enhanced delivery, and increased faculty interaction, and
2. Preparing officers for the cognitive demands of Large Scale Combat Operations (LSCO) and Multi Domain Operations (MDO), regardless of component, assignment, or operational tempo.

Like all PME institutions, CGSC must function within the strategic realities of Army readiness: limited resources, high operational tempo, and the constant need to balance force readiness with leader development. PME must adapt to evolving threats, comply with policy mandates, and support talent management, all while ensuring the Army remains prepared for the demands of modern warfare.

Prolonged Completion Times Limited Readiness

The legacy 36-month ADL-CC model promised flexibility but delivered delay. Without structured milestones or regular faculty engagement, officers across all components struggled to maintain momentum amid competing demands—operational tempo, deployments, civilian careers, and family obligations.

The result was predictable. Students remained inactive for months, then rushed to complete assessments in the final weeks. Many never finished at all. Completion rates declined as the timeline stretched, creating a systemic bottleneck that reduced MEL 4 throughput precisely when the Army needed to expand its leadership bench.

Officers awaited qualifications. Developmental assignments went unfilled. Units operated without fully qualified staff officers. What began as a flexibility feature had become a readiness constraint.

Inefficient Policies Constrained Availability and Wasted Resources

Flexible enrollment policies compounded the timeline problem by allowing uncommitted students to occupy limited seats. The data was stark: 10% of enrolled students never started, 18% withdrew after the first course block, and many re-enrolled repeatedly without completing. Each abandoned seat meant a motivated officer waiting months for an opening; a revolving door that consumed resources without producing qualified leaders.

The curriculum structure amplified the problem. Frequent doctrinal updates, necessary to maintain relevance, forced students to restart entirely when content changed. The course lacked a scaffolded design where lessons build cumulatively on previous learning. Instead, concepts felt disconnected, preventing students from leveraging earlier mastery to tackle later complexity. This violated fundamental adult learning principles and made an already lengthy course feel even more overwhelming.

National Guard and Reserve officers bore the heaviest burden. Citizen-Soldiers couldn’t afford to wait indefinitely for enrollment, invest months in coursework, then restart due to doctrinal changes. Career timelines stalled. Promotion opportunities passed. The Total Force deserved better.

Army Regulation 350-1 Raised the Stakes

The 2025 update to AR 350-1, Army Training and Leader Development, established a new requirement. Officers now have five years from attaining promotable status to complete ILE. Under the 36 month ADL-CC model, many officers were simply running out of time. PME delays became promotion delays, assignment delays, and readiness delays. The conclusion was unavoidable: the legacy ADL-CC model no longer met the Army’s needs. The solution was a complete redesign of the structure and delivery.

What Changed? The 12 Month, Three Phase ADL-CC

CGSS’s redesigned ADL-CC (Figure 1) represents a comprehensive modern redesign aligned with Army Learning Concept 2030–2040, the Army’s transformation initiative, and the Community of Inquiry (CoI) model commonly used in civilian education instructional design. It introduces a 12 month, three phase scaffolded program delivered through multimodal learning, supported by embedded human mentorship, and engineered to be relevant to LSCO, MDO, and Joint Operations. The redesigned structure replaces the unfocused, multiyear progression with a precise, disciplined, and outcome driven sequence:

Figure 1: CGSS ADL-CC Three Phase Structure. Source: CGSC Department of Distance Education

Phase 1: Foundations (4 months)

Phase 1 (Foundations of the Profession, Leadership, and Military History) now serves as a permanent anchor. Because doctrine rapidly evolves, all doctrine dependent instruction was moved out of Phase 1 to ensure students never lose credit due to doctrinal updates, while still allowing time to complete the course. This phase introduces the Complexity Toolkit and establishes grounding in communication, critical thinking, professional identity, the human dimension of leadership, and the historical context of operations. Lessons are sequenced intentionally so that communication skills, problem framing, and systems thinking are introduced early and become the intellectual scaffolding for later doctrine and planning work.

Figure 2: The Complexity Toolkit. Source: Author produced. Note, intended as a callout.

Phase 2: Doctrine (4 months)

Phase 2 consists of three blocks of instruction: Strategic Context, Joint Warfighting, and Force Management. These subjects are reinforced by multidomain perspectives and the Complexity Toolkit. This phase builds directly on Phase 1 by introducing the doctrinal foundations of how the Army operates, integrates with the Joint Force, and generates the capabilities required for multidomain outcomes. Lessons follow a structured progression. Students analyze the strategic environment, then apply joint doctrine, then understand how the Army builds and fields formations to execute those concepts. This logical scaffolding reinforces cumulative learning and mirrors how commanders and staffs think through problems in the real world.

Phase 3: Execution (4 months)

Students will then complete a capstone phase that emphasizes Army doctrine, joint planning, and sustainment, culminating in the application of operational art in LSCO environments. Phase 3 requires students to synthesize everything learned in Phases 1 and 2. Planning, decision making, sustainment integration, and operational art are applied to complex LSCO/MDO scenarios. Sustainment emphasizes how logistics enables execution at echelon and ensures endurance, reach, and freedom of action.

This structure reduces the legacy course length by as much as two years while preserving all CGSS Learning Objectives and Outcomes. It reduces instructional hours by 30%, eliminates redundancy, and shifts learning from seat time to outcome driven mastery aligned with division, corps, and Joint Task Force (JTF) level operations. The result: officers can complete PME efficiently and purposefully, but without sacrificing rigor.

Making it Work

The modernization of the ADL-CC is more than a content overhaul—it is a comprehensive effort to create a PME experience that truly works for today’s Army officers. Recognizing the unique challenges faced by adult learners balancing operational, professional, and personal responsibilities, the program is designed to improve accessibility, flexibility, and relevance at every step.

Student Focused:

At the heart of this modernization is a commitment to a positive student experience. The redesigned ADL-CC program delivers targeted support and innovative learning tools to ensure every officer can succeed, regardless of their schedule or location. Key features include:

• Cohort Advisors and Active Support. Every student is assigned a cohort advisor who provides mentorship, structured support, and ready advice. Advisors coordinate with a dedicated Help Desk to intervene early when students have challenges, addressing the historically high attrition seen in the first phase.
• Synchronous Touchpoints in an Asynchronous Environment. Study halls, office hours, and targeted instructional sessions give students structured opportunities for interaction while preserving the flexibility of asynchronous coursework. National Guard, Army Reserve, and deployed students gain access to faculty support without requiring fixed attendance.
• Multimodal Learning for Modern Warfighters. The redesigned course replaces static computer based instruction with a contemporary suite of instructional tools that allow students to pick what they need to learn, including:
• Professionally produced videos from Army University Press Films to provide a deeper understanding of the subjects.
• Video based, instructor produced lesson overviews and whiteboard sessions to focus the students on learning objectives.
• 10–15 minute course specific audio podcasts focused on helping students understand and provide context of the lesson.
• Short podcasts and recorded microlessons to clarify the most complex ideas and concepts.
• Narrated slide presentations
• Transcripts, templates, examples, and study guides
• Links to other supporting media

This ecosystem supports all learning preferences and schedules, improves understanding, and reduces the time burden on working officers.

A Warfighter Curriculum Anchored in LSCO, MDO, and Complexity

The redesigned ADL-CC is not merely shorter; it is more operationally relevant. This fast paced and agile curriculum is characterized by:

• Division and Corps Operations at the Center. The new curriculum directly prepares officers for division and corps staff assignments, the heart of LSCO and MDO. Core learning emphasizes integrating warfighting functions, decision making in Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous (VUCA) operational environments, and applying operational art across domains.
• The Complexity Toolkit. Integrated across all phases, the Complexity Toolkit (Figure 2) develops the cognitive capabilities essential for algorithmic, data-rich, and cyber-influenced battlefields, mirroring the resident CGSS instruction.
• Agility and Doctrinal Currency. The modular, multi modal design enables rapid updates that keep pace with doctrinal changes, emerging force structure, and lessons learned from multidomain experimentation.

A New Hosting Platform

A central component of the ADL-CC modernization effort is CGSS’s new partnership with Arizona State University (ASU) to host, enhance, and expand multimodal content delivery. ASU brings world class instructional design and a modern digital learning platform, allowing CGSS to enhance student centric delivery across all phases. This collaboration enables CGSC to harness the same advanced educational tools used by top tier civilian institutions while retaining complete control over military content and doctrinal rigor. It ensures the ADL-CC program remains flexible, resilient, scalable, and future ready.

The Result: A More Ready and Capable Officer Corps

The ADL-CC redesign is expected to deliver immediate and measurable benefits:

• Higher Completion Rates. The 12 month structure, combined with scaffolding, multimodal delivery, and embedded support, is projected to increase completion across all components significantly.
• Improved Throughput and Readiness. The Army can produce more MEL 4 qualified officers each year, reducing PME bottlenecks and expanding the pool of officers ready for developmental assignments.
• Operationally Relevant Skills on Arrival. Graduates will arrive at division and corps staffs capable of contributing immediately to planning, integration, and decision making in LSCO/MDO environments.
• Accessibility and Equity Across Components. The modernized model ensures that Active Duty, National Guard, and Army Reserve Soldiers can complete PME faster, with less career disruption, resulting in:
• Improved Readiness and Talent Management. Faster PME completion means more officers available for key developmental positions and assignments requiring MEL 4 qualification.
• Operationally Relevant Leaders on Arrival. Graduates possess the data literacy, systems thinking, and decision making skills necessary for division and corps operations in LSCO/MDO environments.
• Greater Accessibility. Modernized delivery ensures that Active Duty, National Guard, and Army Reserve officers with diverse schedules and operational demands can succeed without sacrificing rigor.

Unified Modernization for the Army’s Cognitive Edge

For over a century, the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College (CGSC) has pioneered distance education, ensuring that Army leaders across the globe receive high quality professional military education. Today, the comprehensive redesign of the ADL-CC program builds on this legacy, aligning with the larger modernization of CGSC under Army University and T2Com.

As CGSC modernizes resident programs with AI integration, collaborative digital platforms, and data-driven instruction, the ADL-CC redesign ensures distance learners receive the same warfighter-focused, technologically integrated PME experience. This unified approach to modernization—across resident and distance modalities—ensures every officer, regardless of component or location, develops the cognitive capabilities required for multidomain operations.

The redesigned ADL-CC represents more than curriculum reform; it is a strategic investment in the Army’s cognitive advantage. By enabling officers to complete MEL-4 education efficiently while maintaining operational relevance and doctrinal currency, CGSC ensures the Army can generate the adaptive, strategically minded leaders essential for success in large-scale combat operations.

In an era defined by velocity, complexity, and multidomain competition, the Army’s advantage will increasingly depend on cognitive overmatch. The modernized ADL-CC ensures CGSC continues its historic mission: preparing leaders to think critically, act decisively, and integrate warfighting functions in the most demanding operational environments—wherever they serve.

Tags: Army PME transformation, CGSC, Command and General Staff College, Command and General Staff School, GCSS, Transformation

About The Authors

• 
  
• Thomas A. Crowson
• Thomas A. Crowson, Ed.D. is a retired Army Colonel and Assistant Professor in the Department of Distance Education, U.S. Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. He currently serves as a Team Leader and Lead Curriculum Integrator for the Asynchronous Distance Learning program. He received his Doctorate in Educational Leadership from University of Saint Mary and has published several articles on military culture and interoperability.
• View all posts
• 
  
• Brian Lust
• Lieutenant Colonel Brian I. Lust is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Distance Education, U.S. Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. He currently serves as the lead instructor and subject matter expert for the Sustainment and Force Management blocks for the Asynchronous Distance Learning program.
• View all posts
• 
  
• Cherry Lust
• Lieutenant Colonel Cherry M. Lust is an instructor in the Department of Distance Education, U.S. Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. She currently serves as the lead instructor for History in the Asynchronous Distance Learning program.
• View all posts
• 
  
• Michael Mathews
• Michael L. Mathews is retired Army Colonel and Assistant Professor in the Department of Distance Education, U.S. Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. He currently serves as the Operational Art and Joint Planning block of instruction subject matter expert and lesson integrator for the Asynchronous program. He holds Master’s Degrees in both Strategic Studies (Air War College) and Education (Drury University).
• View all posts
• 
  
• Jeffrey Kilgo
• Jeffrey W. Kilgo is a retired Army Lieutenant Colonel and Assistant Professor in the Department of Distance Education, U.S. Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. He currently serves as a Team Leader and focal point for Joint and Army Doctrine for the Asynchronous Distance Learning program. He has over 17 years of Adult Education experience at the Command and General Staff College resident and distance learning directorates and the National Intelligence University in Washington, DC.
• View all posts
• 
  
• Andrew Harvey
• Dr. Andrew S. Harvey is an assistant professor in the Department of Distance Education, Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. He holds a PhD in political science from the University of Kansas. He is a retired Army officer who served in various positions as an armor officer and foreign area officer including during Operation Iraqi Freedom.
• View all posts
• 
  
• John Schatzel
• John A. Schatzel is a retired Army Lieutenant Colonel and Assistant Professor in the Department of Distance Education, U.S. Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. He has been affiliated with the College for twenty-five years as an instructor of both resident and non-resident courses and as an advisor to an Army Reserve battalion within the Total Army School System (TASS). He currently serves as lead instructor of the Unified Action (joint capabilities) course for the Asynchronous Distance Learning program.
• View all posts
• 
  
• James Wiggins
• James T. Wiggins is a retired Army Lieutenant Colonel and Assistant Professor in the Department of Distance Education, U.S. Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. He currently serves as the  Developing Organizations and Leaders Lead Lesson Integrator for the Asynchronous Distance Learning program. He received his Master of Science in Administration from Central Michigan University.

​17. Beyond Swarming: Documenting Harassment, Assault, and ICAD by Chinese Maritime Militia

​Summary:

Potter documents China’s People’s Armed Forces Maritime Militia as a central gray zone tool in the South China Sea, used to press territorial claims while preserving deniability. The article records 270 open source incidents from 2012 to 2025 involving harassment, assault, or ICAD, often targeting regional fisherfolk and vessels. It argues the militia operates in coordination with the Chinese Coast Guard and nests within PLA and state mobilization structures, with training, funding, equipment, and missions linked to provincial and central authorities. The data suggests persistent, structured coercion, seasonal clustering around fishing bans, and increased reporting under transparency focused Philippine policy.

Beyond Swarming: Documenting Harassment, Assault, and ICAD by Chinese Maritime Militia

by Joseph Potter

|

02.16.2026 at 06:00am

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2026/02/16/beyond-swarming/

PAFMM vessels during a swarming "operation" in the South China Sea.

Abstract: This article documents the escalating use of the People’s Armed Forces Maritime Militia (PAFMM) by China to assert territorial claims in the South China Sea through “gray zone” tactics, recording 270 specific incidents of harassment and assault since 2012. By analyzing the militia’s strategic coordination with the Chinese Coast Guard and its impact on regional sovereignty, the research seeks to strip away the shroud of deniability and provide quantifiable evidence of state-backed maritime coercion.

Waving axes and boarding Filipino vessels, blue hulled fishing ships cutting dangerously close to coast guard ships, subsea cables getting cut to Taiwan, and sailors attacked in the night: we see these stories regularly in our news feeds and sound bites condemning them in defense podcasts. Videos of the destruction and chaos they sow serve as reminders of the ledge the United States (U.S.) is on in the South China Sea (SCS). The Chinese maritime militia (also known as the People’s Armed Forces Maritime Militia  or PAFMM) are more than an internet video or news story. To thousands of Filipino, Vietnamese, Malaysian, Indonesian, and Bruneian fishermen, the Chinese maritime militia is a very real threat to their livelihood, property, and lives. They are an almost daily reminder of China’s growing presence in the region. While some stories might make it to the news, there has been no concerted effort to document open source reports of Chinese maritime militia violence against their neighbors in the South China Sea until 2025. Over the last thirteen years, there have been 270 documented maritime incidents of Chinese militia vessels harassing, assaulting, or using ICAD – illegal, coercive, aggressive, and deceptive behavior against states in the SCS. China and its Maritime Militia leverage uncertainty and gray zone aggression to assert themselves in the region, achieve their geopolitical aims of increased regional influence, and secure access to the vast economic and material wealth in the SCS. China accomplishes these objective by using both conventional and gray zone tactics to achieve strategic success while minimizing risk and maintaining deniability, all with little resistance. This article and other research seeks to address this lack of resistance by shedding light on militia activity, providing quantifiable evidence of aggression, and showing militia ties with the Chinese Coast Guard.

The South China Sea

At approximately 3.5 million square-kilometers, the South China Sea is rich in resources, containing 10% of the region’s aquatic food supply, 190 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, 17 billion barrels of proven and probable oil reserves, valuable minerals, and a critical trade route through which roughly 50% of global commerce passes. To China, the SCS is vital to its import-dependent economy, export-driven growth, and regional/global ambition of national rejuvenation. The contest for these resources and this region covers multiple aspects of national power: economic coercion, military operations, and international diplomacy at the United Nations.

Despite the value of the SCS, conflict is extremely risky. Full-scale war in the SCS would result in disrupted food supplies, economic downturn, and regional instability. These risks are not in the best interest of any state actor, but the potential gains certainly are. To access the mineral, energy, and substantial natural wealth while avoiding conflict, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has resorted to employing gray zone tactics through irregular forces and maritime militias. Gray zone operations exist in a “no-man’s-land between peace and war,” executed deliberately with specific goals in mind but “without the overt use of military force”. Gray zone methods allow the actor to maintain deniability and forces adversaries to confront difficult choices: how to respond, whether to shift force posture, and how to allocate scarce resources against irregular forces. The PRC uses gray zone tactics and irregular forces to achieve its political objectives in a way that avoids confrontation with the United States while still eroding its credibility. China uses “salami slicing” tactics to seize islands, atolls, reefs and attempts to unilaterally impose its nine-dash line across SCS in a “War without Gun Smoke”. For China, the best tool for providing coercive force below the threshold of war is their People’s Armed Forces Maritime Militia.

The Maritime Militia

For war the militias prepare to conduct supporting tactical tasks to disrupt the tempo of operations, time tables or actions of adversaries, delay their arrival or even redirect targets to more disadvantageous sea space. In peace-time operations they are seen alongside fishery enforcement vessels and Chinese Coast Guard ships conducting territorial policing, surveillance, rescue, and sovereignty enforcement.

Officially labeled the People’s Armed Forces Maritime Militia (PAFMM) by the Congressional Research Service, this force constitutes an emerging threat to America, its allies and its interests in the region. For decades, Chinese militia in the SCS operate in plain sight alongside thousands of commercial fishing, exploration, and policing agencies. Evolving out of the collectivization of fishing communities under Mao Zedong and early coastal defense policy, the maritime militia plays a supporting role to China’s conventional forces. Like other state militias, they can operate both alongside state security and independent of direct state oversight. They are often seen operating on the peripheries of conventional units in preparation for war but also in support of peace. For war the militias prepare to conduct supporting tactical tasks to disrupt the tempo of operations, time tables or actions of adversaries, delay their arrival or even redirect targets to more disadvantageous sea space. In peace-time operations they are seen alongside fishery enforcement vessels and Chinese Coast Guard ships conducting territorial policing, surveillance, rescue, and sovereignty enforcement.

China defines the PAFMM as “an armed mass organization composed of civilians retaining their regular jobs,” therefore classified as both a component of China’s armed forces and an “auxiliary and reserve force” of the Peoples Liberation Army. These vessels operate under the direction of PRC civil and military leaders, not as lone actors. While ostensibly operating as fishing vessels, these units are recruited and equipped by provincial governments based on requirements provided by Provincial Military Districts and the policy of the Central Military Commission’s National Defense Mobilization Department. This resourcing and support creates a direct link between the maritime militias and the central government/military; all financing, manning, training, equipment, and missions are nested within the broader structure of the PLA. This allows the militia to augment the Chinese military by acting as a force multiplier, enabling the PLA to assert greater control over “maritime territory” while maintaining deniability and mitigating any negative ramifications. By leveraging gray zone warfare, the PRC can achieve its military aims of greater control and posture in the SCS, political aim of keeping competition below kinetic or conventional conflict, and economic aim of increasing access to the abundant natural resources.

Individual PAFMM unit composition, proficiency, and characteristics are highly dependent on their provincial district and military district. Militias operating in the SCS are based primarily across ten ports in Guangdong and Hainan. Because of the differentiation in mission sets, resourcing, and training, the PAFMM fleet can be broken into two categories: normal fishing vessels with PLAN support, and purpose-built militia vessels. To further enhance their effectiveness, the PRC professionalizes these units by providing funds from national defense budgets for training and equipment. This military training increases effectiveness in sea-borne operations such as border patrol, surveillance and reconnaissance, maritime transportation, and search and rescue. PRC-provided equipment ranges from satellite communication terminals and shortwave radios to nonlethal weapons such as water cannons and modified ship hulls designed for ramming other vessels. With 304 confirmed vessels and potentially thousands more in support, the U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence updated its Identification Guide to include a variety of PAFMM vessels, highlighting the conventional importance of these militia vessels.

Once activated, these irregular forces fall under the authority of the local People’s Armed Forces Departments (PAFD), China Coast Guard (CCG), PLAN, or another maritime-related government entity. Activations occur in response to natural disasters, search and rescue, coastal patrolling, or defense of sovereign claims. The mobilized PAFMM becomes a force multiplier for the PRC and PLA in “military operations other than war (MOOTW)”, using “military-civil general-purpose equipment” to assist conventional forces. These MOOTW actions mirror gray zone operations. Examples of known and well-documented operations include the harassment of the USNS Impeccable, the standoff at Scarborough Shoals in 2012, and the swarming by 135 Chinese Maritime Militia (CMM) vessels of Julian Felipe Reef in 2023.

While there exists a broad array of well-researched and documented analysis of the PAFMM, no comprehensive recording of militia activity exists. The Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative (AMTI) provides incredible work documenting the presence of vessels, but not their specific activities. The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) captures Coast Guard activity, which sometimes includes militia vessels but has not focused effort on militia activities. This project captures instances of confrontation between suspected Chinese maritime militia vessels and other parties – defined as any actor not affiliated with the PRC – to fill this research gap. Confrontation is defined as any occurrence of the following: (1) harassment – stalking, conducting hazardous navigation operations, interception, blocking passage, loitering in passageways, short duration (less than 24 hours) swarming to deny legal operation, unlawful detention; (2) assault (simple or aggravated) – ramming, emplacement of obstacles with the intent to damage property, damage to property, use of nonlethal weapons (lasers, water cannons, acoustic weapons); (3) ICAD – rafting, military operations (reconnaissance, disruption, deception), or other CMM activities that fall below the threshold of harassment but within the context of gray zone operations. As part of a larger research project on PAFMM activity, the data below show the employment of web scraping technology and manual searches to collect and analyze incidents involving CMM from targeted websites, filtering results by specific keywords, geographic location, timeframe, and incident criteria to build a structured database. The results of this effort highlight the prolific use of the militia in China’s pursuit of national rejuvenation and greater regional power.

Militia Activity

This research shows that militias conduct swarming alongside kinetic and disruptive behavior, returning to the guise of innocent fishing vessels once they achieve their objectives.

To advance its political objectives in the South China Sea, the People’s Republic of China employs a broad, multi‑pronged strategy that leverages diplomatic pressure alongside paramilitary and military instruments of power. A central component of this approach over the past twelve years has been the Chinese maritime militia, which has played a important though largely hidden role in reinforcing Beijing’s sovereignty claims, projecting influence, and sustaining an almost continuous Chinese presence across this heavily contested region. Table 1 documents this activity, capturing 270 open‑source reports of harassment, assault, or interference with civilian access to disputed areas (ICAD) targeting Filipino and Vietnamese fisherfolk between January 1, 2012, and December 31, 2025. On average, this equates to roughly a 5% likelihood of a militia‑related incident occurring on any given day over the last thirteen years. Figure 2 further illustrates the breadth of militia operations across the South China Sea, showing their extensive targeting patterns not only against Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Taiwan, and the Philippines but also against U.S. forces and key American allies, including Australia, India, and Japan.

Further analysis reveals that 48% of incidents occurred during joint militia and Chinese Coast Guard operations, indicating a high degree of coordination between these forces, strengthening the claims that the PAFMM serves as an extension of the PRC in the region. 34% percent of all recorded incidents took place between May and July, aligning with the PRC-imposed fishing ban in the SCS. This seasonal trend suggests that militia activity may strategically heightened during specific periods, potentially to enforce maritime claims under the guise of resource protection. These findings provide deeper insight into the structured and strategic nature of Chinese maritime militia operations, reinforcing the role of state-backed coercion in regional maritime disputes.

Table 1 and Figure 2 only represent cases of harassment, assault, ICAD and do not show swarming activity or the prolific use of militia. Given the gray zone context, this count is likely incomplete due to deception, underreporting, and the remote nature of many incidents. This research shows that militias conduct swarming alongside kinetic and disruptive behavior, returning to the guise of innocent fishing vessels once they achieve their objectives. The most telling example is at Second Thomas Shoal, where the infamous BRP Sierra Madre lies. Here, the tension between the Philippines and China is at its most severe. As shown in AMTI’s 2023 militia tracking, we see a continuous militia presence at Second Thomas Shoal with up to twenty-one vessels present at times. Coinciding with this activity, thirteen incidents of harassment and two incidents of assault occurred in 2023, one of which caused “bodily injury, [and] damaged Philippine vessels” according to the U.S. Ambassador. Over the entire period analyzed, Second Thomas Shoal accounted for 29 reported incidents. Although this appears substantial, it is comparatively lower than Scarborough Shoal (43 incidents), the Paracel Islands (33), and Vietnam’s Exclusive Economic Zone (32)

Taken together, these incidents illustrate the militia’s diverse and escalating tactics as well as the broader trends that influence militia use.

While collecting incidents of militia use, this project identified several trends affecting both the occurrence and reporting of these incidents. First, an analysis of the collected data reveals a correlation between incidents and key events in the region. A notable example is the 42 incidents recorded in 2014 that correspond to a confrontation between Vietnam and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) over oil rights and the operation of the Haiyang Shiyou 981 oil rig. During this nearly three-month confrontation (from May 2 to July 15, 2014), approximately 190 vessels from both China and Vietnam engaged in near daily reciprocal gray-zone actions until the Chinese vessels departed the area in mid-July. The next two key events concern political administration and contrasting incident reporting in Manila. Rodrigo Duterte, President of the Philippines (2012-2022) adopted a conciliatory approach toward China, while Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. (2022-Present) adopted an aggressive policy of transparency against the PRC and aligned with the United States. These contrasting policies explain the decrease in reporting during Duterte’s administration and the significant increase in transparency and reported incidents under Marcos.

Reported incidents range in their intensity and ramifications. Some eighty-one cases in our analysis involved some form of assault, such as a June 2019 incident where a Chinese vessel collided with and sunk a Vietnamese fishing boat leaving 22 sailors adrift at sea. This is an extreme case and most often assault results in lesser property damage, such as the case of Chinese militia vessels repeatedly ramming a Vietnamese fishing vessel in May 2013 or the sideswiping of a Filipino patrol boat in 2024. 106 incidents involved some form of harassment such as dangerous maneuvers or blocking access. On the lowest end of the gray zone spectrum are the 82 occurrences of ICAD, however these events are difficult to capture and it is often challenging to conceptualize their linkage to militia activity. However, the colocation of two militia vessels observing Balikatan 2024, or the surrounding of a Filipino vessel by CMM vessels during a resupply mission are two examples of suspicious and deceptive use of militia vessels. Taken together, these incidents illustrate the militia’s diverse and escalating tactics as well as the broader trends that influence militia use.

Conclusion

This research project sheds light on the complex dynamics of maritime militias in the South China Sea and how the People’s Republic of China uses them to expand its maritime claims, control territory, and ultimately increase its regional power. Left unchecked, irregular forces operating in the gray zone undermine global stability, regional economies, and can inadvertently escalate to war. Over the last thirteen years, 270 incidents of harassment, assault, and ICAD reveal a persistent pattern of coercive behavior and highlight the structured and strategic nature of militia operations. The PAFMM operates as an extension of state power, utilizing gray-zone tactics to advance territorial claims while maintaining deniability. It is essential to confront malign actors who employ gray zone tactics to reduce their effectiveness and expose their methods. By challenging these operations, we limit the ability of irregular forces to act in obscurity. The greatest strength of this project is raising awareness about the use of militias and encouraging regional actors to act. It serves as a call to confront these threats as they emerge, ensuring they cannot operate unchecked. Denial or misinformation does not degrade its value because its ultimate goal is awareness: taking maritime militias out of the shroud of gray zone operations and into public discourse.

Tags: Chines Maritime Militia, civil military fusion, Grey Zone Operations, military operations other than war (mootw), PAFMM, South China Sea

About The Author

• 
  
• Joseph Potter
• Captain Joseph Potter is an Instructor and Course Director within the Defense and Strategic Studies (DSS) Department at the United States Military Academy. He is a 2015 graduate of the University of California, Santa Barbara and holds a Master of Science degree in Geological Engineering from Missouri University of Science and Technology and a Master of Science degree in Political Science from Utah State University. CPT Potter has previously served as an Infantry Officer in the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault), the 75th Ranger Regiment (Fort Benning, GA), and the 2nd Infantry Division (Joint Base Lewis–McChord, WA). He has deployed in support of NATO missions in Germany and Romania, as well as combat operations in Afghanistan as part of Operation Freedom Sentinel. CPT Potter's research interests include irregular forces, maritime security, Indo-Pacific relations, security cooperation, information warfare, and Russian strategy. He and his wife, Sarah, are a dual military couple and have one son, Clayton.

18. The Seven Sons of China are Stealing our Stuff

​Summary:

The post argues U.S. universities and research institutions are training large numbers of PRC nationals in high-end STEM fields, which the author frames as a national security loss in a zero-sum competition for limited graduate slots and federally funded research positions. It cites congressional and think tank characterizations of China’s “Seven Sons” defense universities and SASTIND-linked schools as feeders for PLA and defense industry work. It then lists examples of PRC-educated researchers holding U.S. postdoctoral roles in nuclear engineering, materials, polymers, and AI security at federally funded labs and universities, warning this enables technology transfer and expands PRC-aligned networks inside U.S. research.

The Seven Sons of China are Stealing our Stuff

...and the academic establishment is fine with it...

CDR Salamander

Feb 16, 2026

https://cdrsalamander.substack.com/p/the-seven-sons-of-china-are-stealing?utm

Those who follow me on X know that every couple of months I remind everyone that we are gleefully training those whose life’s work is to defeat this nation.

If you have been to a major top-shelf university or research institution’s graduation ceremony in the last two decades, one thing that dramatically stands out is how many People’s Republic of China (PRC) nationals are receiving not just undergraduate degrees, but master’s degrees and PhDs in the most highly skilled STEM fields from biostatistics to quantum physics. From aerospace engineering to industrial design—PRC nationals are overrepresented to an outlandish degree.

Don’t forget, these are the places basic research starts, where the future technology is developed. This is also a zero-sum game with a finite number of positions. For each PRC national who is getting a PhD in a STEM field, that is one American who is not. They either don’t go, or have to find a lower-tier university to go to.

It isn’t just private institutions. At one of my daughters’ graduation ceremonies at a major land-grant university, the university was proud of the fact that they had more international students than out-of-state students.

Think about that. Let it soak in.

In some STEM fields, 4 out of 5 or more are non-American.

I’m not interested in excuses. The future will be won or lost by those who master emerging technology…or the methods to defend against them.

I also don’t want to hear the, “…but they pay full price…” If that is your argument, then we already know what you and your institution are, we are just haggling over the price.

I know that administrative bloat won’t pay for itself, but I don’t care. Return to 1996 levels and train Americans. Public or private institutions, they all receive government funds. There is leverage.

Enough of my commentary. Our friend Jerry Dunleavy has one of the most important articles related to our future national security that I’ve read so far this year.

Yes, national security.

This is not so much an education story or an economic argument. No, especially in STEM fields, this is about national security—ours and our allies’.

The House Select Committee on the CCP said last year that the “Seven Sons” are “a group of elite Chinese universities known for their deep ties to the PLA and central role in military research and development.”

The House committee assessed that these seven academies are “China’s leading defense-focused universities, whose primary mission is to advance defense research and development and drive state-directed military-civil fusion efforts” and that “most maintain partnerships with state-owned defense conglomerates and operate as training grounds for future military leaders, engineers, and technicians working on weapons systems and defense programs.”

The committee warned that the Seven Sons “play a central role in developing advanced military technologies, including hypersonic weapons, unmanned systems, cyber warfare tools, and aerospace engineering, often in direct coordination with the PLA and its affiliates” and that “graduates from these institutions frequently enter roles within China’s military, intelligence, or state-owned defense enterprises.”

Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology wrote in 2020 that “the Seven Sons of National Defense are important feeders for China’s military and defense industry.” The center said the Seven Sons “contribute the lion’s share of new hires at Chinese defense state-owned enterprises” and “produce nearly three quarters of the elite university graduates hired by China’s largest defense companies.”

The Hoover Institution in 2020 argued that the Seven Sons “act as fronts for and extensions of the People’s Liberation Army and the Ministry of State Security” and “directly support military-civil fusion; the PLA; and the defense research and industrial base, weapons programs, and myriad other entities that are part of the PRC’s military, public security, and surveillance apparatus.”

The RAND Corporation also warned in 2023 that the “Seven Sons universities contain researchers likely to be tied to China’s military-civil fusion strategy.”

SASTIND grads also make their way to America

The House CCP Committee referred to SASTIND as a “Chinese defense agency” linked to the PLA. The committee’s report from last year said that SASTIND “co-administers 58 Chinese universities — out of more than 3,000 Chinese universities — engaged in military-civil fusion research.”

Let’s look at this parade of horrors.

Dr. Ziang Yu poses an immediate threat to U.S. security. Dr. Yu’s attendance at one of China’s leading defense universities only raises further concerns.”

Yu’s LinkedIn page and Google Scholar page say that he is a postdoctoral associate with the University of Wisconsin’s department of nuclear engineering and engineering physics.

The Chinese scientist’s LinkedIn profile also says he received an undergraduate degree at Northwestern Polytechnical University. It has been dubbed one of the CCP’s “Seven Sons of National Defense.”

Yes, nuclear engineering and engineering physics. Somewhere, there is an American who applied for that slot and was denied.

They are not coming to the U.S. for Gender Studies PhDs.

The university has long been on U.S. government blacklists, including being blacklisted by the Pentagon. The Defense Department has the Chinese school on its list of “foreign institutions engaging in problematic activity” and says this list “is an important continuing effort in highlighting and countering mechanisms of unwanted technology transfer to foreign countries of concern.”

The Commerce Department in 2021 described the school as “a Chinese military university that is heavily involved in military research and works closely with the People’s Liberation Army on the advancement of its military capabilities.”

The House Select Committee on the CCP described the school as “a core Chinese military university” last year. The House committee said that the school “was created by the merging of several engineering universities and institutions — including the Air Force Engineering Department of the PLA Military Engineering Institute.” The committee said the university “hosts 13 major defense laboratories and 44 designated defense research areas.”

How many Americans are studying such things at PRC universities? We both know the answer.

Yu’s school profile says he is a postdoc research associate at the Microstructure Materials Modeling group at Wisconsin, which is also called “Professor Yongfeng Zhang’s Research Group.” Dr. Yongfeng Zhang of the University of Wisconsin himself received two degrees from the University of Science and Technology of China, according to his online biography.

The Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security added that particular Chinese university to a blacklist “for acquiring and attempting to acquire U.S.-origin items in support of advancing China’s quantum technology capabilities, which has serious ramifications for U.S. national security given the military applications of quantum technologies” and said it was “involved in advancing China’s nuclear program development.”

Zhang was previously a senior member of the U.S. government’s Center for Thermal Energy Transport under Irradiation, and was also a staff scientist in the Fuel Modeling and Simulation Department at Idaho National Lab. Zhang did not respond to a request for comment.

The Wisconsin lab, led by Zhang and counting Yu as a member, receives funding from the Energy Department’s Nuclear Energy University Program, the Idaho National Laboratory, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Yu’s co-author for a 2025 research paper received support from the Idaho National Lab.

This is no isolated incident. It gets worse.

The AAF report assessed that “Zongliang Xie is conducting research in fields that have potential military applications. He is doing so at Lawrence National Laboratory, a lab with a substantial amount of federal funding. The Chinese University, which Xie attended, is a high-risk institution due to its ties with the CCP military’s adjacent research.”

Xie’s LinkedIn page lists him as a postdoctoral researcher at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, and his Google Scholar page lists him there too. Xie is part of the Molecular Foundry at the lab, and he says that “I’m working on AI-driven polymer design and nanocomposite fabrication techs.” Xie’s LinkedIn profile also says he received a PhD and undergraduate degree from Xi’an Jiaotong University.

The Pentagon has the Chinese school on its list of “foreign institutions engaging in problematic activity,” and the House Select Committee on the CCP assessed in 2025 that Xi’an Jiaotong is administered by SASTIND.

No one is hiding anything here.

Oh, everyone is aware of the PRC’s 2017 National Intelligence Law and the 2015 National Security Law, yes? If not, read up on it here and continue.

“Jinghan Gao’s research on high-temperature-resistant materials and related work in energy-efficient storage and semiconductor technologies represent serious dual-use risk technology and national security concerns.”

Gao’s LinkedIn page and her University of Florida profile say she received her PhD and her undergraduate degree at Xi’an Jiaotong University.

Gao’s LinkedIn says she was a postdoctoral associate at the University of Florida until last year, but that she is now a postdoc fellow at the University of Michigan. Her Google Scholar profile lists her at Michigan, and the electrical and computer engineering department at Michigan lists her as a research fellow. “Jinghan Gao was a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Florida in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering,” a spokesperson for the University of Florida told Just the News. “She left UF in 2025 in good standing.” The spokesperson did not answer specific questions related to any concerns the U.S. university may have had about Gao’s attendance at a Chinese military-linked school. The University of Michigan did not respond to a request for comment.

Gao is still listed as a post-doctoral research associate at the Interdisciplinary Microsystems Group at the University of Florida, where she is listed as a member of Professor Roozbeh Tabrizian’s Research Group.

The “sponsors” for the microsystems group include the National Energy Technology Laboratory, NIH, NASA, Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the National Science Foundation, and DARPA.

Let me repeat this again: there is an American citizen—someone who has loyalty to our nation—who did not get these fellowships that you paid for, but instead is being used to grow the intellectual capital of our nation’s #1 competitor on the world stage.

It keeps going.

Xiaoyi Chen … “an expert in AI machine learning, who comes to the U.S. from PLA-tied universities, and whose mentor (Wang) at Indiana University was raided by the FBI.”

Chen’s GitHub page states that “I’m currently a Postdoctoral Researcher at Indiana University Bloomington, under the supervision of Prof. XiaoFeng Wang and Prof. Haixu Tang. Before joining Indiana University, I completed my Ph.D. in Computer Software and Theory from Peking University.”

The House Select Committee on the CCP assessed in 2025 that Peking University is administered by SASTIND. ASPI says that Peking University “is assessed as high risk for its high number of defence laboratories and defence research areas, strong relationship with the defence industry, supervision by SASTIND, secret-level security clearance, and links to China’s nuclear weapons program.” The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission in 2022 also said the Chinese military’s air force “established the ‘Dual-Enrollment Program’ with” Peking University.

…

Chen, for her part, lists her research areas as “Backdoor Attacks and Defenses” and “AI Web Security.” Indiana University has previously highlighted Chen’s AI research work under Wang’s guidance. Chen also previously conducted web application firewall research funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China.

There are so many PRC nationals that they now have their own self-supporting networks inside our lifelines

We are letting this happen in the open.

“Bao Xianyang, at Harvard, who is working on Department of War-funded polymers research that could enhance the PLA’s capabilities in a broad variety of military materiel, from vehicles to protective equipment to weapons.”

Bao’s LinkedIn says he studied at the South China University of Technology. The House Select Committee on the CCP assessed in 2025 that the school is administered by SASTIND. The China Aerospace Studies Institute said the South China University of Technology is a “PLA and defense-aligned” college.

Bao has a profile at Michigan State which says that he is a postdoctoral research associate at the Extreme Soft Materials Laboratory, which aims at developing next-generation technologies” including “physics-empowered tactile robots.” The profile for Bao at Michigan State says that “he aims to develop tough and sustainable soft materials for engineering and biomedical applications.”

Jerry’s article has an incredibly large amount of additional information. Give it a full read.

Reading it is just an emotional nightmare. We don’t have to do this. This is a choice. No one is forcing this on us.

But we are allowing it to happen.

Board of Regents/Trustees/Visitors. Chancellors. Governors. Senators. Representatives. Presidents.

All share this national disgrace.

Who will take action?

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

https://apstrategy.org/

Executive Director, Korea Regional Review

https://www.upi.com/Korea-Regional-Review/

Editor-at-large, Small Wars Journal

https://smallwarsjournal.com/

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com