Quotes of the Day:

“It’s a universal law – intolerance is the first sign of an inadequate education. An ill-educated person behaves with arrogant impatience, where truly profound education breeds humility.”

– Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

"The cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy!" 

– Henry Louis Mencken

"Why is propaganda so much more successful when it stirs up hatred than when it tries to stir up friendly feeling?"

– Bertrand Russell

1.  Strategy?? by Kevin Benson

2. The 2025 National Security Strategy and the 2026 National Defense Strategy Through the Eyes of a Special Forces Soldier

3. In an Age of Superpowers, Geography Is Still Destiny by Hal Brands

4. Special Operations News – Feb 2, 2026

5. Opinion | The Nuclear Threat After Tehran Falls

6. A Cocaine Boom Ruptured the U.S.-Colombia Alliance. Can It Be Repaired?

7. Exclusive | Classified Whistleblower Complaint About Tulsi Gabbard Stalls Within Her Agency

8. Naval Leaders Need to Think Fast, Slow, and Augmented

9. ‘We’ve Fought Side by Side’: Danish Veterans March Against Trump’s Comments

10. Pentagon names 6 appointees to lead the CTO’s top technology efforts

11. Russian Influence and the Russian Orthodox Church: A Connection to Think About

12. Move Fast, but Obey the Rules: China’s Vision for Dominating A.I.

13. Taiwan’s omission from Trump’s new defence strategy raises alarm in Taipei

14. Taiwan-US ‘firepower’ center to hone asymmetric warfare tactics

15. DOD ordered to study mental health impacts among military drone pilots

16. Xi the Destroyer: The Latest Military Purge Signals China’s Leader Is Entering a New Era

1. Strategy?? by Kevin Benson

Excerpts:

From a close reading of only open-source documents; newspapers, media reports, etc., I do not see how these disparate, albeit quite successful, tactical actions translate to a coherent campaign plan in support of a strategy. Clearly there is work to be done by the Joint Staff and U.S. Southern Command, at the least. They must answer hard questions; how long does the nation keep a carrier strike group in the Caribbean? How do we end Operation Southern Spear? Producing exciting video clips of successful strikes on alleged drug boats is not enough.

This broad-brush attempt to answering these strategic questions combined with how the government is explaining this strategy and the progress of its implementation to the American people and the world at large, should, I offer, reinforce the need for a coherent strategy that is continuously assessed at the national level. We must have more than a series of discrete, albeit successful, tactical operations. Bearing the answers to these questions in mind, the National Security Council must link tactical actions to the realization of our policy objectives through the practice of strategy. As Clausewitz wrote, “The maximum use of force is in no way incompatible with the simultaneous use of the intellect”.

Strategy??

by Kevin Benson

|

02.02.2026 at 06:00am

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2026/02/02/strategy/

President Donald Trump, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and CIA Director John Ratcliffe monitoring Operation Absolute Resolve from President Trump's residence at Mar-a-Lago.

Tactics without strategy is noise before defeat. At present, the American people are observing allegedly successful tactics in the monitoring and destruction of alleged drug running boats in the Caribbean and Pacific. The Navy, Marines, and Coast Guard are intercepting oil tankers of the so-called Russian “Shadow Fleet” while conducting a selective blockade of Venezuela. We also witnessed a remarkably successful operation to track and capture Nicolas Maduro. We are unsure if the purpose of these operations – discrete strikes against fleeting target – is the protection of the American people from the scourge of illegal narcotics or, as others opine, the removal of Maduro from the regime in Venezuela and access to Venezuelan oil. There are a series of questions we should be asking our government leaders, our military leaders, and our diplomats as we consider this situation. The answers to these questions will serve as a starting point for the continuous analysis that must accompany the execution of such operations. We all know the truth of the adage: no plan can look with certainty beyond initial contact with the enemy main body.

We must figure out; what is the problem we are (or this plan is) trying to solve? We must determine if it is the correct problem. We must determine that if we do this, what are we choosing not to do?

This is not simply a semantic argument. War and the use of force is and remains an extension of policy through other means. Policy must inform strategy and strategy must be the basis of the campaign plans and planning that guides the execution of tactical actions. All this effort must relate to the realization of U.S. policy objectives. If we disparage this process as “old think” and unrelated to modern problems, we yet again risk wasting tactical success gained by our force’s skill at arms, a core flaw of the U.S. war in Afghanistan, for example. We must define and constantly refine the linkage of tactical success to the purpose of our actions.

We must figure out; what is the problem we are (or this plan is) trying to solve? We must determine if it is the correct problem. We must determine that if we do this, what are we choosing not to do? We must consider the outcomes of success, to wit, if we succeed, what will we look like, what will our adversaries (or allies) look like, and what will the operating environment look like? Let us consider the problem.

The administration’s public statements directly relate to the interruption of the flow of illegal narcotics and migrants coming into the country. On December 18, 2025, the Washington Post reported that White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller’s larger goal for expanded U.S. military operations is reducing the flow of drugs and migrants into the United States. Miller believed that attacking drug cartels would diminish their power, thereby stabilizing Latin American countries and reducing the number of people risking the trek to the United States. The administration speaks of Mexican drug cartels as well cartels sponsored by the Venezuelan government. On November 29, 2025, the President posted on Truth Social:

The President signed an executive order on December 15, 2025 declaring fentanyl to be a weapon of mass destruction. On or about October 2, 2025, he notified Congress via a confidential memo that the United States is in a “non-international armed conflict” with drug cartels designated as terrorist organizations. He also stated that air and ground operations aimed at narcotics sites inside Venezuela will happen “soon.” The President also declared that, as of December 16, 2025, there is a “total and complete blockade of all sanctioned oil tankers” in and out of Venezuela. The President also demanded the return of oil that he claimed belonged to America. The problems the administration is apparently trying to “solve” are primarily undermining and replacing the Maduro regime in Venezuela in order to control Venezuelan oil reserves as well as interrupting the flow of narcotics into our country. This leads to consideration of the second question, is this the correct problem?

A complete strategy that protects the American people from the scourge of narcotics and makes the population healthy again should include a series of directed and funded programs designed to reduce the demand for narcotics.

The President states that his primary task is the security of the nation, its people, and its borders. He and his spokespeople assert that every boat – allegedly laden with narcotics – sunk saves 25,000 American lives. So, is just focusing on the supply side of the protection-of-the-people issue the correct problem? If the primary task is the protection of the people – especially as the administration also wants to make America healthy again, the stated portion of the problem – the administration should reconsider its focus on stopping the flow of narcotics. A complete strategy that protects the American people from the scourge of narcotics and makes the population healthy again should include a series of directed and funded programs designed to reduce the demand for narcotics. Therefore, a complete national strategy will require coordination of the Defense, Homeland Security, State, and Health and Human Services Departments, at a minimum. Given the inter-departmental nature of the challenge, executing this strategy will require oversight by the National Security Council. A complete governmental effort brings us to consider the question: if we develop, execute, and refine such a strategy, what are we, the government, choosing not to do?

What Aren’t We Doing?

Unless there are other activities going on in the Health and Human Services Department, it seems that what the administration is not choosing to do is address the demand for narcotics in the U.S. In accordance with the new National Security Strategy, the administration is choosing to focus on the western hemisphere. It also appears that the administration is choosing to not develop measures of effectiveness and performance in order to assess how well its strategy of interdiction is working. The administration is choosing to not inform the legislative branch of government about what the executive branch is doing in the name of the people. The administration is relying solely on presidential authority. Given this, what do we expect the outcome of successful execution of this strategy to look like?

Outcomes and Expectations

The first assumption on what success would look like would be a demonstrable reduction in the amount of illegal narcotics coming into the United States. By inference, there is an expectation of weakened drug cartels in the western hemisphere. From reading open source media, there is an expectation that the removal of Maduro and the further weakening of the Maduro regime in Venezuela will strengthen the U.S. and stabilize the Caribbean region. The interruption of Venezuelan support for the Communist regime in Cuba might lead to a further weakening of the regime’s hold on Cuba as well. The ultimate vision of success, expressed in the 2025 National Security Strategy, is a stronger position for the United States in the entirety of the western hemisphere.

The Trump administration and Secretary of State Rubio have long viewed the Maduro government not only as a leftist, authoritarian regime but also as the key element in a broad network of leftist governments in South and Central America. These governments undermine U.S. influence in the western hemisphere and assist the entry of Russian and Chinese soft power. The anticipated stronger position of the U.S. will contribute to global stability, a return of great power spheres of influence, and sustained trade.

Given the expectation of a stronger U.S. position in the western hemisphere – and potentially a stronger position in the world – then the expectation for our adversaries is a weaker position vis-a-vis the U.S., especially in the western hemisphere. The demonstration of decisive U.S. military power and the exercise of statecraft and economic power will complicate any adversary’s risk calculus. The National Security Strategy (which is really a policy statement) suggests a range of U.S. interests around the world. Given the assumption that U.S. operations in Venezuela are successful – given the strategy’s definition of “success” – such operations would lead to allies and adversaries recognizing that the U.S. will act in defense of its interests. Thus, all actors in the world will respect U.S. power and see it is in their best interest to support global stability through trade and open relationships between nations.

Thus, the expectation of this operating environment as a result of the successful conclusion of the U.S. campaign vis-a-vis Venezuela is the greater western hemisphere becoming a stable operating environment for all nations. There will be a return to the broad understanding that stronger powers will act in their interests, recognizing where these interests come into potential conflict with U.S. interests. This will lead to more diplomacy and deal-making. In short, a stable world where major powers recognize each other’s interests and consider, in some manner, the interests of other nations insofar as these interests coincide with their own.

This is the expectation implied in the National Security Strategy. Expectations require a strategy in order to become facts. The administration claims that this operation has legally been a war and – sometimes at odds – a counter-terrorist action, ultimately understood to be state-sponsored terrorism. This understanding lends itself to “phase IV” operations as well as transitions, branches, and sequels.

Final Thoughts

We must have more than a series of discrete, albeit successful, tactical operations.

From a close reading of only open-source documents; newspapers, media reports, etc., I do not see how these disparate, albeit quite successful, tactical actions translate to a coherent campaign plan in support of a strategy. Clearly there is work to be done by the Joint Staff and U.S. Southern Command, at the least. They must answer hard questions; how long does the nation keep a carrier strike group in the Caribbean? How do we end Operation Southern Spear? Producing exciting video clips of successful strikes on alleged drug boats is not enough.

This broad-brush attempt to answering these strategic questions combined with how the government is explaining this strategy and the progress of its implementation to the American people and the world at large, should, I offer, reinforce the need for a coherent strategy that is continuously assessed at the national level. We must have more than a series of discrete, albeit successful, tactical operations. Bearing the answers to these questions in mind, the National Security Council must link tactical actions to the realization of our policy objectives through the practice of strategy. As Clausewitz wrote, “The maximum use of force is in no way incompatible with the simultaneous use of the intellect”.

Tags: National Defense Strategy, National Security Council, National Security Strategy, Operation Absolute Resolve, strategy, tactics, Trump Administration, Western Hemisphere

About The Author

• 
  
• Kevin Benson
• Kevin Benson retired from the US Army after 30 years of service. He commanded Soldiers from the company to battalion level. He was the Assistant Chief of Staff, C5, of the Combined Forces Land Component Command/Third Army at the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom. His final position in the Army was Director, School of Advanced Military Studies.

2. The 2025 National Security Strategy and the 2026 National Defense Strategy Through the Eyes of a Special Forces Soldier

The 2025 National Security Strategy and the 2026 National Defense Strategy Through the Eyes of a Special Forces Soldier

by David Maxwell

|

02.02.2026 at 06:00am

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2026/02/02/special-forces-strategy/

Special Forces operators in team rooms around the world are talking about the new NSS and NDS. They are trying to judge what it means for their regions. They are trying to see what it means for their teams and the missions they will be told to execute. I miss those arguments. I miss the map on the table, the coffee gone cold, and the hard questions that follow.

I view the strategies through the two SOF trinities: the missions – irregular warfare, unconventional warfare, and support to political warfare and the comparative advantages of SOF – influence, governance, and support to indigenous forces and populations. They do not use any of these words. Yet these concepts support the strategies.

I read strategy the way I read a village after dark. I look for what is protected, what is ignored, and what is feared. The 2025 National Security Strategy tells me what the administration wants. The 2026 National Defense Strategy tells me what it thinks it must do first, and what it plans to do less of.

The NSS is blunt about the home front. It wants control of borders and immigration flows. It wants infrastructure that cannot be held at risk. It wants missile defense, including a “Golden Dome.” It frames “destructive propaganda and influence operations” and “cultural subversion” as threats alongside trafficking and predatory trade. It treats industrial power and energy as pillars of national strength, not side issues.

The NDS matches that posture and then narrows the aperture. Its first line of effort is homeland defense. It pairs that with a hard insistence on access to “key terrain” in the Western Hemisphere, naming the Panama Canal, the “Gulf of America,” and Greenland. Its second line of effort is deterring China in the Asia-Indo-Pacific “through strength, not confrontation.” Its third is burden sharing. The document says that as US forces focus on homeland defense and the Asia-Indo-Pacific, allies and partners elsewhere will take primary responsibility for their own defense and resilience, with critical but more limited support from American forces. It repeats that logic for Europe, the Middle East, and the Korean Peninsula, again using “primary responsibility” and “critical but limited support.”

So, I start with the first question. If the United States does less forward by default, what must it do more of to keep outcomes favorable. And what must Special Forces be ready to do that others cannot.

This is where a Special Forces soldier sees the shape of the fight. The strategies talk about borders, industry, missile defense, and alliances. They also talk about propaganda and influence operations, and they demand that partners carry more weight. Those are not problems you solve with platforms alone. Those are contests of will, legitimacy, cohesion, and local capacity. That is the human domain. That is where the two SOF trinities live.

The Mission Trinity Hidden in Plain Sight

Irregular warfare is present because the NSS treats influence operations and cultural subversion as threats to national security. When a state treats propaganda as strategic attack, the response cannot be only rebuttal, and it cannot slide into censorship as a substitute for strategy. It must be competitive influence that is persistent, credible, and local. That is irregular warfare logic, even when the document never says the term.

Unconventional warfare is implied by burden sharing. The NDS says partners must take primary responsibility, with the United States providing limited support. If that is true in peacetime posture, it becomes more true in crisis, when distance and prioritization constrain what the United States can surge. In competition and conflict below the threshold of war, the decisive force will often be indigenous because they have to be. The strategic question is whether we are building the kind of indigenous capacity that survives shock, or the kind that only looks good in exercises.

The strategies’ focus on burden sharing also evokes the foundational Special Forces operational concept in unconventional warfare Colonel Mark Boyatt coined in 1994: working “through, with, and by” friends, partners, and allies. Without stating it explicitly the strategies call for this on a grand scale.

Support to political warfare sits under both documents because both are about order. Borders, industrial base, energy, alliances, and influence are political foundations. Political warfare is the contest to shape decisions without open war. Our adversaries understand that. Do we. If we do, do we organize for it, fund it, and lead it, or do we improvise each time and call it innovation.

The Comparative Advantage Trinity That The Strategies Depend On

• Influence. If propaganda and influence operations are strategic threats, then influence is strategic defense. Influence is not talking louder. It is being trusted. Special Forces build trust through presence, competence, and shared risk. That work is slow. It is also the only work that holds when the crisis comes and the internet goes dark.
• Governance. The NSS emphasis on resilience, infrastructure, and control implies a governance problem at home and abroad. You cannot missile defend your way out of institutional weakness. You cannot buy unity. Special Forces do not run ministries, but we understand power networks and local legitimacy. We can help partners harden their institutions against coercion and subversion, which is what “cultural subversion” is designed to fracture.
• Support to indigenous forces and populations. The NDS burden sharing line is central. Primary responsibility will sit with allies and partners. That means the United States needs forces built to enable others at scale, not just strike for effect. This is the old Special Forces truth. The best way to expand reach is not to clone ourselves. It is to help others defend their own homes with competence and confidence.

Now the hard counterargument. Some will say this is too indirect, too slow, too political. They will argue that the age demands missiles, ships, cyber, and industrial mobilization. The strategies elevate missile defense and the defense industrial base, and they should. But the deeper question remains. What happens when the enemy chooses terrain where missiles are marginal and legitimacy is decisive.

POTUS can set priorities. Strategies can declare lines of effort. Competitors still exploit seams. They pressure allies. They poison trust. They fracture societies. They use fear, money, and narrative. If we accept the NDS premise that US support will be “critical but limited,” then we must accept the next premise too. The deciding fight will often be fought by partners, among their own people, under political pressure. Are we preparing them for that fight, or are we preparing them only to receive us.

So, I end where a Special Forces operator should end. With questions.

If propaganda and cultural subversion are strategic threats, do we treat influence as a core military competency or as an afterthought. If allies must take primary responsibility, are we investing in their will and cohesion, or only in their inventories. If the homeland is first, are we building forward networks that prevent crises, or are we accepting a future of late reactions and high costs.

Strategy is choice. The 2025 NSS and 2026 NDS choose the homeland, choose industry, choose missile defense, choose China deterrence in the Asia-Indo-Pacific, and choose burden sharing. The SOF trinities are not decoration for those choices. They are the human machinery that can help make those choices real.

Tags: Army SOF, Human Domain, irregular warfare, IW, National Defense Strategy, National Security Strategy, SOF, Unconventional Warfare, UW

About The Author

• 
  
• David Maxwell
• David Maxwell is a retired U.S. Army Special Forces Colonel who has spent more than 30 years in the Asia Pacific region (primarily Korea, Japan, and the Philippines) as a practitioner, specializing in Northeast Asian Security Affairs and irregular, unconventional, and political warfare. He is the Vice President of the Center for Asia Pacific Strategy. He commanded the Joint Special Operations Task Force Philippines during the war on terrorism and is the former J5 and Chief of Staff of the Special Operations Command Korea, and G3 of the US Army Special Operations Command. Following retirement, he was the Associate Director of the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University. He is a member of the board of directors of the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea and the OSS Society, on the board of advisers of Spirit of America, and is a contributing editor to Small Wars Journal.

3. In an Age of Superpowers, Geography Is Still Destiny by Hal Brands

Summary:

Hal Brands argues the post–Cold War era has ended and a new age of rivalry, economic warfare, and dangerous technology is here. He says geography remains the most enduring foundation of international politics even as innovation changes how distance and terrain matter. Strategic geography helps explain conflict patterns, wartime success, and why places like Ukraine and Taiwan become flashpoints. Ukraine’s terrain and position make it a recurring hinge in Eurasian contests; Taiwan’s location in the First Island Chain makes it central to China’s maritime ambitions. Brands contends Russia and China show geographically rooted expansionist patterns, while US geography enables both global leadership and perennial retrenchment temptations.

Comment: Reading is fundamental. Math counts. And Geography is forever. 

If geography still sets the “deeper rhythms” of conflict, what specific choices should the US make to keep Taiwan functioning as a barrier in the First Island Chain rather than a springboard for Chinese power into the open Pacific? I think Bridge Colby believes he has the answer to this. 

If Ukraine is a “strategic hinge” that repeatedly draws great-power contest, what does a durable Western strategy look like when the map suggests Ukraine will remain a flashpoint for years? What is the acceptable durable political arrangement that will sustain, protect, and advance US and alliance interests? 

If America’s geography both empowers alliance leadership and tempts retrenchment because the homeland can “do okay” behind oceans, how should US strategists decide when distant commitments are vital versus optional in a more anarchic world? How do we address this "paradox" of geography - leadership because of protection versus the temptation of retrenchment? Fundamentally do the American people want the US to exert global leadership? Is American global leadership good for the American people?

In an Age of Superpowers, Geography Is Still Destiny

Bloomberg · Hal Brands ·

February 1, 2026 at 8:00 AM EST

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/features/2026-02-01/superpowers-america-china-and-russia-can-t-change-geography?sref=hhjZtX76

By Hal Brands

Hal Brands is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist and the Henry Kissinger Distinguished Professor at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies.

The world is a battleground again. The post–Cold War moment of great-power peace and borderless globalization has ended. Fracture, rivalry and disorder are defining themes of our age.

In recent years, ghastly wars have upended crucial regions. Freedom of the seas and the sanctity of borders are under assault. Aggressive autocracies are challenging the US and its democratic allies. America’s commitment to leading a prosperous, stable international system is itself in doubt.

Meanwhile, economic warfare intensifies, as tariffs, sanctions and other trade controls proliferate. Technological breakthroughs, from artificial intelligence to synthetic biology, promise revolutionary progress — and threaten terrible new forms of destruction.

The decades ahead will feature ugly, grinding cold wars — or perhaps even devastating, great-power hot wars. Transiting this volatile, uncertain era will require reacquainting ourselves with the strategic logic of geography, that most enduring, unforgiving force in world affairs.

That may seem like a retrograde way of thinking. We continually hear that technology has obliterated distance — that instantaneous global communications and hypersonic missiles have broken the shackles of time and space. It’s true that innovation perpetually shifts the meaning of terrain and location. But geography still sets the deeper rhythms of our world.

The physical features of the earth profoundly shape the behavior of leaders and societies. They define the strategic landscape on which competition, conflict and cooperation occur. Geography isn’t quite destiny, but it is the most elemental foundation of international relations. Rediscovering a geographical mindset will be vital to comprehending — let alone mastering — the era of remorseless struggle that is underway.

Armies Can’t Move a Mountain

The term “geography” probably takes you back to the dry, fact-laden subject you studied in middle school. But strategic geography, or geopolitics, is something different. It’s a rigorous intellectual discipline that traces the relationship between the physical environment and the quest for global power. It finds, in our natural surroundings, a key to explaining the rise and fall of nations and the clash between rival states.

Thinking geographically means seeing the strategic landscape in ways that unlock the long arc of history, that illuminate ingrained patterns of interaction, and that perhaps even reveal sources of advantage in struggles with deadly foes.

This discipline begins with things humans cannot change. “Ministers come and ministers go, even dictators die,” the Dutch-American scholar Nicholas Spykman wrote in 1938. “But mountain ranges stand unperturbed.”

A man, several plans, a canal.Source: Fox Photos/Hulton Archive via Getty Images

Still, a geopolitical mindset isn’t static, because innovation shifts geography’s strategic meaning: The transcontinental railroad and the Panama Canal transformed America’s position by uniting a vast continent and giving it greater access to the wider world.

The geographical mind wrestles with how the enduring relates to the dynamic, how strategic choice and physical circumstance interact. And it addresses some of the most significant questions about our world.

‘Look at Your Map’

Geography helps explain, for instance, why some countries are mired in poverty and repression while others soar toward wealth and freedom. It reveals why a small, otherwise obscure nation like Belgium — which commanded the best amphibious invasion route from Europe to Britain — was a strategic tinderbox in 1914. Or why a modest island off the coast of Asia, Taiwan, is the world’s most perilous place today.

Geography shows why a politically fractured, fiercely competitive Europe generated centuries of unmatched imperial dynamism and centuries of devastating warfare — until a non-European state, the US, smothered the continent’s rivalries with American power. Geographical knowledge can even make the difference between success and failure in a major war.

In his defining work, On War, Carl von Clausewitz devoted dozens of pages to the problems of marching armies through mountains, rivers, hills and swamps. The Habsburg Empire treated its most accurate maps as military secrets of the highest order. And in an age of global warfare during the early 20th century, American presidents grasped the power of the geographical mind.

“Look at your map,” Franklin Roosevelt said in a fireside chat less than three months after Pearl Harbor, as he described to Americans a war touching “every continent, every island, every sea, every air lane in the world.” He then explained how geographical imperatives shaped global strategy — how a mighty but distant US could win only by keeping far-flung Eurasian allies fighting, by securing transoceanic lines of communication, by transporting men and machines to battlefields “at distances which extend all the way around the globe.”

D-Day was a victory over Germany and geography, 1944.Source: MPI via Getty Images

More recently, however, Americans have been losing touch with geography. In academia, geography has been dying for decades — only one Ivy League school even has a distinct department anymore. During the Cold War, long-range missiles compressed transoceanic distances and warning times. Post–Cold War globalization then made travel and communication easier — and made geography seem passé.

Except it wasn’t. After 9/11, US troops discovered that Afghanistan’s rugged terrain and remote location made it brutally difficult in which to fight, even for a hyperpower. Sometimes modern technology makes geography more relevant: Chinese planners hope to crush the US in the next great-power war by using precision-guided missiles to destroy American bases in the Western Pacific and force the Pentagon to fight from thousands of miles away.

Even globalization itself was molded by geography: Trade, finance and production clustered in three great regional hubs — in Europe, East Asia and North America — because proximity to suppliers and customers still matters quite a bit.

Today, a geographical sensibility is becoming more important as threats multiply and the price of strategic ignorance rises. Geography helps us comprehend some of the fiercest clashes of our era — and get inside the heads of towering leaders, from Russian leader Vladimir Putin to US President Donald Trump.

Ukraine’s Priceless Terrain

Consider Ukraine’s tragic stardom in the greatest geopolitical drama (so far) of our century. Russia’s all-out invasion in 2022 shocked the democratic world. It put Ukraine on the front lines of a global struggle, President Joe Biden declared, “between democracy and autocracy, between liberty and repression, between a rules-based order and one governed by brute force.”

Yet marauding armies are an old problem for Ukraine — which has been at the core of every great-power contest for generations, because it occupies such valuable and vulnerable terrain.

Ukraine possesses some of the world’s best agricultural land. It has a long shoreline on the Black Sea, which links Russia to the Mediterranean and the maritime commons. Its very name, which translates as “borderland,” reflects its position between four tumultuous regions: Central Europe, the Balkans, the Caucasus and the Middle East.

Most fundamentally, Ukraine is the strategic hinge of a supercontinent: It lies along the flat, inviting pathway between the space and resource riches of the Eurasian Heartland to the east and the economically dynamic European rimland on the west.

During World War I, Imperial Germany schemed to seize Ukraine as part of an empire stretching from the English Channel to the Caucasus. A generation later, some of World War II’s fiercest battles were fought there, as the grandiose visions of two murderous rulers, Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler, met head-on.

White Russians trapped at the Black Sea, 1919.Source: Hulton Archive via Getty Images

During the Cold War, Ukraine linked the Soviet Union to its Eastern European empire. When Ukraine dashed for independence in 1991, it helped bring the Soviet state crashing down. Now, Putin aims to rebuild a Russian imperium, and squeeze an endangered Europe, by demolishing a free Ukraine. If the map is any guide, that country will remain a flashpoint for years to come.

Or think about Taiwan, the democratic outpost where World War III might start. Many Americans think Taiwan matters because of microchips. But really, the island is geographically fated to be the focus of strife.

Taiwan is the heart of the First Island Chain, which runs up and down the East Asian littoral, from Indonesia to Japan. It marks the confluence of the two great marginal seas — and conflict-zones — of the Western Pacific: the South China Sea and the East China Sea.

As long as Taiwan remains free and democratic, it forms a double barrier to Chinese ambitions — bottling up Beijing’s power west of the island chain and breaking the unity of China’s seaboard from north to south. If Taiwan is taken by the mainland, it blasts a hole in this containment cordon and becomes Beijing’s springboard to the open Pacific and beyond.

Russia Is an Invasion Route

It’s tempting to see contemporary international politics as a clash, or collusion, of personalities — Putin in Russia, Xi Jinping in China, Trump in the US. But present-day policies are molded by older templates: Geography creates patterns that even the world’s strongest leaders can’t easily escape.

Putin may be this era’s quintessential rogue, but he travels well-worn paths. For centuries, Russia’s size has given it a sense of greatness, a strategic reach across Eurasia, and deep reserves of stamina and strength. But its northern location, far from warm waters that conveyed commerce, literacy and liberalism, predisposed it to slow development and tyranny. Its open terrain made it an invasion route for ravagers from Europe and Asia alike.

The result, transcending regimes and ideologies, is a polity that amasses strength at the center to rule a vulnerable, distant periphery — and a strategic culture, wrote the US diplomat George Kennan, “in which conceptions of offense and defense are inextricably confused.”

Under autocrats from Ivan the Terrible to Stalin and now Putin, a fearful, fearsome giant has sought security through violent expansion that makes it the scourge of neighboring states.

Russia carves up Poland, 1773.Source: Hulton Archive via Getty Images

Putin’s grotesque onslaught against Ukraine echoes Stalin’s forced starvation there in the 1930s. His serial wars and interventions over the last quarter-century — in Chechnya, Georgia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and elsewhere — are part of a venerable tradition that seeks physical and ideological security through space.

Those who agonize over how the West supposedly failed or embittered Russia after the Cold War are missing this larger pattern. Putin isn’t the first Russian ruler who can only see nearby states as buffers, vassals or enemies. He won’t be the last.

China’s Map to Dominance

Xi also styles himself as a transformative leader, and his push for glory also follows channels made by geography. China’s strategic geography is amphibious: The country boasts the resources and depth of its huge Eurasian hinterland, as well as the oceanic reach its Pacific frontage provides.

This is a double-edged endowment. When China is weak and divided, it is typically assailed by richer, more technologically advanced enemies from the sea while its land borders are menaced by nomads, restive minorities and rival states. But when China is strong and unified, it becomes the most dangerous sort of country — one that can plausibly seek dominance in two domains.

China weak and strong, 1950.Source: Hulton Archive via Getty Images

That’s the frame for Xi’s strategic gambits. The massive naval buildup, the maritime coercion of neighbors, and the construction of a blue-water fleet that will one day patrol the Indian Ocean and other far-flung seas, can all be seen as efforts to reclaim the oceanic grandeur the Ming Dynasty grabbed six centuries ago. Xi’s Belt and Road Initiative simultaneously aims at achieving continental hegemony by integrating Eurasia under China’s economic, technological and political sway.

If Beijing succeeds, it will have overwhelming influence on the largest landmass and the greatest oceans — the sort of hybrid hegemony that would surely end the American Century and usher in a Sino-centric world. That’s why Xi’s agenda also brings the threat of encompassing, multidirectional hostility, from continental neighbors such as Vietnam, maritime rivals like Japan and the Philippines, and the reigning superpower across the Pacific.

That’s also why it’s such madness for the US to be engaged in a protracted, petty feud with India — a country whose Indian Ocean coastline and Himalayan frontier make it a barrier to Chinese power on land and sea.

Xi is the current champion of Chinese greatness. But his strategic drive, and the resulting dangers, are hardly new: They flow from stubborn realities of space and place.

America Could Pull Back

The same goes even for that most idiosyncratic leader: Trump. Geography is the fundamental source of the unrivaled power that has long allowed the US to anchor the international system. It’s also the root of the undying strategic ambivalence the president manifests.

Only a country as blessed as America could have made the world Trump inherited. It took a peerlessly prosperous, resource-stocked continental empire of the sort the US assembled in the 19th century to create an international system in its image. It took a bicoastal superpower, interposed between the European and East Asian rimlands, to underwrite alliances that fostered unprecedented stability on both edges of the Eurasian landmass.

When the US was young and weak, broad oceans shielded it from foreign enemies. Once it grew mature and strong, they served as conveyor belts for its influence. Since 1945, moreover, distance from the Old World has accentuated US strength there. A far-away, democratic America mostly hasn’t threatened the survival of European and Asian countries, which has made it an attractive ally against more existential dangers nearby.

America’s Atlantic wall, 1902.Source: Hulton Archive via Getty Images

Yet geography also creates vexing dilemmas. The US alliance system requires America to run very high risks over very distant places, like West Berlin in the Cold War or the Baltic states today. More fundamentally, America’s unique blend of power and position create an enduring temptation to pull back from the globe.

After all, US retrenchment might be a disaster for Taiwan or Estonia. But a continental behemoth, with a huge internal market and vast, watery buffers would probably do okay — better than any other country, at least — in this less-structured, more anarchic world.

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Trump may seem like a radical break with the post-1945 legacy of American global engagement. There isn’t much recent precedent for a president threatening the sovereignty of North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies. But when he points out that the US has oceans separating it from the trouble spots, when he insists that European defense should be the business of the Europeans, when he argues that the US must focus on safeguarding the homeland and the hemisphere, or when he plays around with ideas — like annexing Greenland — that could rupture US alliances, he’s tapping into an older, more unilateral tradition.

That tradition dates back generations, even centuries, because it flows from an undeniable physical condition: The same geography that allowed Washington to build the modern world gives it the option of going its own way.

Cartography Becomes Strategy

Geography isn’t all-determining: It narrows, but never eliminates, the scope for choice. China’s geography may allow it to expand in two domains, but choice will ultimately determine whether Xi or his successors try to take Taiwan by force. Yet the geographical mind is a potent aid to strategy, something no effective leader can do without.

Thinking geographically helps us know ourselves and our enemies, by highlighting the physical realities that condition a society’s habits and fears. It gives depth to decision-making, by revealing the tectonic forces against which the current crisis or conflict unfolds.

The geographical mind knows the space for strategic choice, because it sees the tangible barriers that constrain and direct us. It seeks insight about a murky future by probing the recurring patterns of the past.

Trump’s world view, 2025.Photographer: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

For the US to prosper in this daunting era, it will need to make geography its ally — by exploiting the natural tendencies of resistance that Russia and China inspire in frightened countries around them, and by devising ways of war that make the watery expanses of the Western Pacific a death-trap for invasion fleets. America will need the realism to understand that expansionist impulses are geographically ingrained in Russian and Chinese behavior and may persist even after Xi and Putin depart. All this, in turn, requires treating cartography as a good metaphor for strategy itself.

Strategy involves traveling from one’s origin to one’s destination, across a global landscape replete with lethal obstacles. Even — especially — when the world seems too complex and volatile, mapping the pressures and opportunities geography creates is a good way to start.

Brands is also a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, the author of The Eurasian Century: Hot Wars, Cold Wars, and the Making of the Modern World, and a senior adviser to Macro Advisory Partners.

Bloomberg · Hal Brands ·

4. Special Operations News – Feb 2, 2026

Comment: The usual comprehensive weekly rundown of all things related to SOF.

Special Operations News – Feb 2, 2026

February 2, 2026 SOF News Update 0

https://sof.news/update/20260202/

Curated news, analysis, and commentary about special operations, national security, and conflicts around the world.

Photo / Image: Members of the U.S. Special Operations Mountain Warfare Training Center (SOMWTC) and Danish Special Operation Forces (DANSOF) trek up the mountains of Mestersvig, Greenland, March 6, 2024. The SOMWTC and DANSOF exchanged Arctic best practices during Arctic Edge 24 (AE24). AE24 provided Special Operations Command North and U.S. Special Operations Forces the opportunity to integrate with SOF from Norway, Denmark, and the United Kingdom as well as interagency and total force partners to enhance integrated deterrence, layered defense, and resilience across the Arctic. (U.S. Army photo by Spc. Andrew Estrada)

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SOF News

SOF and “Administrative Terrain”. Erika Lafrennie explains how special operations forces are the connective tissue between the convergence across domains and convergence across systems of governance. She argues that “administrative terrain” is a legitimate domain of military competition where SOF has an important role. “The Terrain Before the Terrain: Why Special Operations Forces Must Master Administrative Battlespace”, Small Wars Journal, January 27, 2026.

Parachute Tree Landings and the U.S. Army. Established recovery procedures for parachute jumpers in the trees are not optimized. Improved processes could lessen the financial burden and lessen injuries for personnel. An NCO at USAJKFSWCS has some recommendations. “Parachute and Jumper Recovery”, Special Warfare Journal, January 30, 2026.

NATO SOF Command and McRaven. Former USSOCOM commander Willim H. McRaven writes on the value that allied special operations forces brought to the fight in Afghanistan and Iraq. “Never Fight Alone”, The Atlantic, January 27, 2026.

Hong Kong’s SDU. A unit of the Hong Kong Police Force (HKPF) is tasked with tackling the most dangerous threats facing the special administrative region. Founded in 1974, it trained alongside the British SAS, SBS, German GSG9, and US Navy SEALs. “The Special Duties Unit (SDU): The Flying Tigers of Hong Kong”, by Milo R., Grey Dyanmics, January 31, 2026.

SOF History

SAS Legends. The United Kingdom’s Special Air Service (SAS) is the British government’s elite counterterrorism unit. It specializes in rescuing hostages, covert reconnaissance, and many other special operations missions. This article provides some background on five famous members of the SAS. “5 of the most legendary soldiers of the United Kingdom’s Special Air Service”, We are the Mighty, January 27, 2026.

Beginning the night of February 6, 1968, and concluding on February 7, 1968, the Lang Vei Special Forces camp close to the Laotian border came under attack and was captured by North Vietnamese Army forces.

https://arsof-history.org/articles/19_aug_lang_vei_page_1.html

On February 2, 2023, the 193rd Special Operations Wing received its first MC-130J Commando II. This signaled the wing’s transition to a new aircraft and a new mission.

https://sof.news/afsoc/193rd-sow-mc-130j/

National Security and Commentary

1st SFAB now ASCG-S. The 1st Security Force Assistance Brigade has transitioned to the Army Security Cooperation Group – South. The 1st SFAB was activated in 2017 to provide advisors for Afghan security forces. After the Afghanistan tour, the 1st SFAB was regionally aligned to the Southern Command area of operations. The ASCG-S falls under the newly-established United States Western Hemisphere Command (USAWHC). Read more in “Army Security Cooperation Group – South: First of its kind stands up in Georgia”, Army.mil, January 27, 2026.

“Scramble for the Arctic”. Sergio Miller puts the strategic value of Greenland in perspective – reports of Russian and Chinese warships are exaggerated and Russian military capabilities in the Arctic are overstated. “Exaggeration and Ignorance: The Scramble for the Arctic”, Small Wars Journal, January 29, 2026.

ICE Tools of the Trade. A recent article details the technological tools that the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is using in its current campaign of apprehending illegal immigrants across the country. Those in the SOF community will recognize that some of these tools have been in play for a couple of decades in the SOF CT / COIN world. “The powerful tools in ICE’s arsenal to track suspects – and protesters”, The Washington Post, January 2026. (subscription)

Intel, IO, Cyber, AI, IW

The New Propaganda Battlefield. There has been a broader transformation in the mechanics of influence operations. The core of persuasion now seems to be centered on emotions rather than ideology or doctrine. This is illustrated in studies done about TikTok that show emotional conditioning is a part of early-stage influence. Read more in “TikTok, Algorithmic Emotion, and the New Propaganda Battlefield” by Michael Morgan, War on the Rocks, January 27, 2026.

The Navy and IW. Two Naval intelligence officers provide an essay on the U.S. Navy’s Information Warfare (IW) capabilities. For the purposes of this article IW is the collective of intelligence, cryptology, cyber, space, and other disciplines. They argue that the “most data-centric part of the Navy, the Information Warfare Community” is poorly postured to effectively adapt to the modern maritime battlespace. After outlining the problems they provide some recommendations. “Leading the Digital Fight: How the Navy’s IW Community Must Innovate to Win”, Center for International Maritime Security, January 29, 2026.

Air Force and AI. The Air Force is using advanced war gaming powered by artificial intelligence (AI) that brings an AI cloud-based system, called WarMatrix, into its war-gaming capability. “Air Force Leveraging AI for Advanced Wargaming”, National Defense Magazine, January 28, 2026.

Cyber Ops and Maduro Capture. A non-kinetic effects cell took part in the operation to apprehend Venezuelan President Maduro during Operation Absolute Resolve in January 2026. The cell targeted radar, internet, and the Caracas power grid – causing a temporary blackout. “US military used new ‘non-kinetic’ cell to guide cyber ops during Maduro capture”, Defense One, January 28, 2026. Read another article on the same topic – “Cyber isn’t the whole story in Venezuela – but it’s a key takeaway”, The Strategist, Australian Strategic Policy Institute, January29, 2026.

Cognitive Warfare. Colonel John Wilcox, a U.S. Army Civil Affairs officer, writes about how current targeting logic fails in a fast-moving information ecosystem. “Cognitive Warfare Without a Map”, Small Wars Journal, January 28, 2026.

Ukraine Conflict

Peace Talk Success Unlikely. Control over small Ukrainian towns and villages are a key focus of Putin in the long war in Ukraine. Negotiations over the Ukraine-Russia War involve a number of talking points including sanctions, oil movements, NATO, troop limits, and more. Most westerners believe that territory is a bargaining chip. However, Andrey Pertsev, argues that holding and gaining more ‘terrain’ is what is most important to Putin. “Ukrainian Villages Are a Bigger Prize for Putin Than a Deal with Trump”, Carnegie Politika, January 26, 2026.

A War of Attrition. Russia is attempting to wear down Ukraine through piecemeal destruction of its military. This is a battle of high casualties, massive expenditures of equipment, and very little movement along the front lines. Many observers believe that Russia has the advantage as it has a much larger pool of soldiers that can be mobilized. However, Russia has suffered nearly 1.2 million battlefield casualties. In 2025, it had roughly 35,000 killed, wounded, or mission on average each month. Estimates of Soviet Union losses in Afghanistan over a ten-year period are about 14,000 killed. Read a detailed analysis of the situation in “Russia’s Grinding War in Ukraine”, by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), January 27, 2026.

• References:
• Interactive Map. Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine by the Institute for the Study of War and Critical Threats. On storymaps.arcgis.com See also https://www.national-security.info/ukraine/maps.html

And Around the World

NATO and SFA. The second edition of NATO’s AJP 3-16, Allied Joint Doctrine for Security Force Assistance, reflects its efforts to adapt Security Force Assistance (SFA) to the new strategic environment. The lessons learned from the counterinsurgency advisory missions in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Africa – as well as the security situation in eastern Europe – is incorporated into the updated document. Vibeke Gootzen provides a detailed analysis of the revised AJP 3-16 in “NATO’s Latest Doctrine on Security Force Assistance: What’s New?”, Irregular Warfare Initiative, January 20, 2026.

Greenland Update. Two new Danish defense initiatives were announced. The Arctic Basic Training program in Kangerlussuaq will be increased from 30 to 50 students. The program started 2024 with 22 participants and was expanded to 30 in 2025. The Danish military is looking at expanding its aerial surveillance capabilities with a contract to lease aircraft from Air Greenland. An interesting article that argues Alaska is more strategically placed than Greenland and U.S. Arctic security efforts will provide better security via Alaska. “Greenland isn’t the answer to U.S. Arctic security. This place is.”, The Washington Post, January 28, 2026. (subscription)

Guerrilla Warfare in Myanmar. Patrick Goldman provides an excellent essay on guerrilla warfare, Che Guevara and Mao, and how their writings apply to the current conflict in Myanmar. “Guevara in Myanmar: The Enduring Logic of Guerrilla Warfare”, Small Wars Journal, January 27, 2026.

Taiwan Resistance and Foreign Fighters. Lumpy Lumbaca provides us a scenario of Taiwan recruiting foreign fighters to join the fight against a future invasion and occupation of Taiwan. (SOF News) Interesting reading! “The Role of Foreign Fighters in a Taiwan Resistance Scenario”, Irregular Warfare Initiative, January 29, 2026.

Afghans in the U.S. The tragic shooting of a young soldier from the West Virginia Army National Guard in Washington, D.C. by a Afghan in November 2025 has put collective suspicion on Afghans living in America. The killer was a former member of the CIA’s NDS zero units and was brought to the U.S. as a parolee after the August 2021 fall of the Afghan government, the Kabul non-combatant evacuation operation, and subsequent takeover of the Taliban. In the weeks that followed the November 2025 shooting the federal government announced several immigration and security-related steps that hindered or stopped immigration processing, relocation, and vetting of Afghans who were in the Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) pipeline or who had already been relocated to the U.S. by the Department of State. Omid Kamal provides an Afghan’s perspective on the current situation in “The Costs of Collective Suspicion: Afghans in America in the Aftermath of a Killing”, War on the Rocks, January 27, 2026.

SIGAR Goes Away. The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) ends its run as a long-term impartial observer and recorder of the Afghan War as of January 31, 2026. Its quarterly reports often contradicted the rosy proclamations of DoD, DoS, and ISAF four-star generals. The SIGAR quarterly reports and special reports to Congress were one of the most reliable sources of information about the Afghanistan War.

CT Policy Against ISIS at Stake. The walking away from the Syrian Democratic Front (SDF) in northeast Syria will have a big impact on the U.S. policy and strategic in confronting the Islamic State. The one-year-old Syrian government is in a campaign to take the country’s northeast from the Kurdish-led militia that helped the U.S. significantly degrade the Islamic State. Read more in “Syria’s Campaign Against Kurds Scrambles Trump’s Counterterror Policy”, The Wall Street Journal, January 28, 2026.

Insurgency in Mozambique. Brandon Schingh writes on the rise of the Islamic State in Mozambique (SOF News, March 2023) amidst a deteriorating socio-economic situation. The insurgency for many years was found mostly in the north of Mozambique (NSI map), along with other factors, are stretching the fragile governmental structures and has limited humanitarian response mechanisms. Various regional and western nations have attempted to provide assistance in military equipment and advisors. This includes the United States – providing Special Forces teams for Mozambique advisory missions. (SOF News, March 2021) Aid from western nations has been ineffective and not enough. China may step into the vacuum to offer assistance – and at the same time tap into the immense natural resources that Mozambique offers. Read more in “A War Without Headlines: Mozambique’s Insurgency and the Global Security Blind Spot”, Small Wars Journal, January 26, 2026.

Russians In Mali. The Wagner Group has left Mali, to be replaced by the Africa Corps. However, the tactics of violence by the Russians is still the same. “In Mali, Mercenaries Have New Name, Same Tactics”, Eurasia Review, January 24, 2026.

Books, Podcasts, Videos, and Movies

Book – The Winter Warriors. Author Oliver Norek is interviewed about his latest novel that takes place during the 1939 Russo-Finnish War. The main character is a Finnish sniper called ‘The White Death’ by the Russians. Read a transcript of the interview in Lethal Minds Journal, January 27, 2026.

Sentinel. The February 2026 issue is now posted online. An update on America’s “Forgotten Warriors” – the Montagnards in Vietnam, a story of secret ops in El Salvador during the 1980s, book review of “Textbook Special Ops: the Son Tay Raid”, and video about Colonel Mataxis – a career combat soldier.

https://www.specialforces78.com/chapter-78-newsletter-for-february-2026/

Report – The War in Sudan. Nikkie Lyubarsky and Gabriella Tejeda write about the role of external actors and the prospects of conflict resolution in Sudan. The Soufan Center, January 2026, PDF, 23 pages.

https://thesoufancenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/TSC-IssueBrief-The-War-in-Sudan.pdf

Video – Embedded with 20th Special Forces Group in Eastern Europe. A video about an SF ODA training with counterparts in Latvia. Posted by Mighty Finland on YouTube, August 2025, 38 minutes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Axqfu8WSr0

Video – What Do Night Stalkers Do? Take an inside look into the world of the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment. Posted by The U.S. Army, YouTube, January 9, 2026, 4 minutes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqBTnoKhDzw

Video – How CIA Black Ops Actually Work. John Kiriakou, a former CIA officer specializing in counterterrorism, discusses black ops. Topics include recruiting and training agents, missions, raids, interrogations, and more. John was chief of CIA CT ops in Pakistan in 2002. He later became a whistle-blower on the CIA’s “enhanced interrogation” program and spent a couple of years in prison. Business Insider, January 22, 2026, YouTube, 58 minutes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pcfwx50zl40

Podcast – Special Operations Aviation (Night Stalkers) with Kyle Hogan. A former Deputy Commander of the 160th SOAR, Hogan discusses the Maduro raid, special operations, the future of Army Aviation, and the oil industry. Extremely informative! WarVector, January 30, 2026, 40 minutes. https://www.warvector.com/p/episode-189special-operations-aviation

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SOF News provides news, analysis, commentary, and information about special operations forces (SOF) from around the world.

5. Opinion | The Nuclear Threat After Tehran Falls

Summary:

David Albright and Andrea Stricker warn that if POTUS triggers major strikes or regime collapse in Tehran, Iran’s highly enriched uranium, reactors, and radioactive sources could become unsecured. They argue “loose” nuclear and radiological assets could be seized by militias or nonstate actors, sold on black markets, or cause accidents and releases. They highlight urgent targets: the Bushehr power reactor and spent-fuel pools, a Tehran research reactor, and Iran’s stockpile of nearly 1,000 pounds of 60% enriched uranium, likely in tunnel complexes or damaged sites at Esfahan, Natanz, and Fordow. They urge contingency planning and rapid-response teams.

Comment: If regime instability is the trigger, do US and European planners have a credible, rapidly executable plan to secure Iran’s most sensitive nuclear sites before militias, criminals, or accidents turn them into a regional catastrophe? 

Would Israel intervene? 

A rehearsal for north Korea?

Opinion | The Nuclear Threat After Tehran Falls

WSJ · The Nuclear Threat After Tehran Falls

In the event of regime change, the world should be ready to secure Iran’s uranium and reactors.

By

David Albright

and

Andrea Stricker

Feb. 1, 2026 1:22 pm ET

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/the-nuclear-threat-after-tehran-falls-7d66aa47

Damage at the Isfahan nuclear technology center after U.S. airstrikes, in Isfahan, Iran, June 22, 2025. handout/epa-efe/shutterstock/Shutterstock

President Trump is reportedly weighing military strikes or other forceful measures in response to Tehran’s deadly crackdown on protesters, and on Thursday he wrote on Truth Social that “a massive Armada is heading to Iran.” Should Mr. Trump opt to destabilize—or help topple—Iran’s repressive regime, the country’s stockpiles of highly enriched uranium and operating nuclear reactors could become dangerously unsecured.

These “loose” assets risk falling into the hands of rogue actors, militias or nonstate groups. They also pose severe hazards to people in the region through accidental release or abandonment. The international community, led by the U.S. and Europe, with Russian and Chinese buy-in, must develop contingency plans to prevent this.

Robust rapid-response operations are vital to securing the most sensitive sites—such as the operational Bushehr nuclear power plant several hundreds miles south of Tehran, a research reactor in the heart of Tehran and hundreds of pounds of highly enriched uranium and tons of low-enriched uranium at nuclear sites bombed during the June 2025 war with Israel and the U.S.

Many of Tehran’s nuclear assets are entombed inside bombed facilities or at less-affected sites. The most threatening stockpile is almost 1,000 pounds of uranium enriched to 60%, which without further enrichment could be used to make a crude nuclear weapon. This stock is likely located in tunnel complexes at Esfahan or within the damaged enrichment sites at Natanz and Fordow. Gaining access to such materials could be difficult, but determined actors may try, especially given their high value on the black market and to terrorists and states interested in proliferation.

Another concern is the large, operating Bushehr nuclear power reactor and the spent fuel pools adjacent to it. Both contain vast inventories of radiological materials, such as cesium-137, which could be dispersed during an accident over vast areas, exposing tens of thousands of people, including in nearby Gulf states, to potentially life-threatening radiation.

Iran also possesses highly radioactive sources for legitimate medical, industrial and agricultural purposes at the Tehran Nuclear Research Center, the Karaj Nuclear Research Center for Medicine and Agriculture, hospitals, and other Atomic Energy Organization of Iran sites. These dangerous sources pose more localized risks but can be deadly if used in a “dirty bomb.”

Risks to nuclear and radioactive materials during state collapse aren’t new, and effective prevention depends on proactive planning.

Disaster following the collapse of the Soviet Union was averted largely by quick actions of the U.S. government, working in cooperation with former Soviet states. They enacted the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, allocating hundreds of millions of dollars to assist primarily Russia, but also Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan in securing, consolidating and safeguarding nuclear warheads and fissile materials, upgrading physical security at storage sites, and redirecting weapons scientists to peaceful work to prevent proliferation of sensitive know-how.

On the other hand, failing to prepare can have dangerous consequences, as evidenced by security failures in Iraq after the 2003 U.S. invasion. The Tuwaitha nuclear complex was left unsecured for days after Iraqi forces abandoned it, leading to widespread looting by local civilians. Some highly radioactive sources also went missing temporarily.

Looters stole and emptied barrels containing natural uranium (yellowcake), scattering some material on-site and nearby. Luckily, the looters wanted the barrels rather than the uranium. But villagers who repurposed the empty barrels for storing water or food or washing clothes reported rashes, vomiting and other symptoms. U.S. forces and international inspectors eventually secured the site and, over subsequent years, recovered or removed most stockpiles, but the incident highlighted early security lapses.

Another unanticipated threat in Iraq that could have had deadly consequences involved gas centrifuge technology used to make weapons-grade uranium. The former head of the Iraqi gas centrifuge program had hidden key assets from Iraq’s pre-1991 gas centrifuge program and was looking to trade them for safe passage out of Iraq. Fortunately, he contacted one of us (Mr. Albright), who facilitated a trade with the Central Intelligence Agency for his residency in the U.S. Other buyers likely would have lined up if his effort to reach the U.S. had failed.

South Africa’s nuclear dismantlement during its transition from apartheid to democracy in the early 1990s offers a positive counterexample. The apartheid government under President F.W. de Klerk dismantled its nuclear weapons and associated facilities in an orderly process—before acceding to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Afterward, under International Atomic Energy Agency monitoring, Pretoria destroyed a stash of parts, documents and equipment stored at former nuclear-weapons sites.

The Soviet example demonstrates the need for efforts to secure Iran’s loose nuclear assets. The Iraq example underscores the need for rapid military contingencies, including the deployment of specialized teams to secure Iranian sites quickly. The South Africa case shows the value of engaging cooperative authorities to support dismantlement and international verification.

While regime collapse in Tehran isn’t inevitable and the situation remains fluid, America and its allies must prevent Iran’s nuclear legacy from becoming the world’s next proliferation nightmare.

Mr. Albright is president and founder of the Institute for Science and International Security. Ms. Stricker is deputy director of the Nonproliferation Program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

Journal Editorial Report: Paul Gigot interviews Gen. Jack Keane. Photo: Fabrice Coffrini/AFP/Getty Images/Ali Khaligh/ZUMA Press

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

Appeared in the February 2, 2026, print edition as 'The Nuclear Threat After Tehran Falls'.

WSJ · The Nuclear Threat After Tehran Falls

6. A Cocaine Boom Ruptured the U.S.-Colombia Alliance. Can It Be Repaired?

Summary:

The article describes a sharp rupture in the US-Colombia alliance driven by a historic surge in cocaine production. Colombia now produces nearly nine times more cocaine than in 2012, fueled by a 445 percent rise in coca cultivation and major gains in productivity. Drug militias have doubled in size since 2022, while record seizures reflect record supply rather than effective control. POTUS has sanctioned President Gustavo Petro, threatened aid cuts, and questioned Bogotá’s commitment, despite Colombian claims of intensified enforcement. Analysts argue policy reversals, cease-fires, and the end of aerial fumigation enabled armed groups to expand and entrench.

Comment: If record seizures merely mirror record production, can a US-Colombia strategy built on interdiction and political reset succeed without confronting the structural drivers that allowed coca, militias, and territorial control to rebound so dramatically? An age old question here: Do we target to cure the disease or only manage the symptoms? Of course the real question is can we cure the disease? Especially if we allow the market to exist.

A Cocaine Boom Ruptured the U.S.-Colombia Alliance. Can It Be Repaired?

WSJ

Colombia’s president is visiting the White House to make the case the drug trade is under control, despite record production levels

By Juan Forero

Follow

Feb. 2, 2026 5:30 am ET

https://www.wsj.com/world/americas/a-cocaine-boom-ruptured-the-u-s-colombia-alliance-can-it-be-repaired-8cf4e76e

Colombian workers in a field of coca plants in Cauca province. Carlos Villalon for WSJ

BOGOTÁ, Colombia—Once the most reliable U.S. ally in Latin America, this country is now racing to mend ties with Washington after its leader fell out with President Trump. Its biggest challenge is controlling a record surge in cocaine production.

Colombian President Gustavo Petro is heading to Washington for a White House meeting Tuesday with Trump at a time when his country is producing almost nine times as much cocaine as in 2012. Heavily armed narcotics-trafficking militias have doubled in size since 2022. So much cocaine is reaching American shores that the U.S. has threatened to cut off foreign aid and sanctioned Petro for not doing enough to stop it.

Ahead of Petro’s meeting with Trump, Gen. Pedro Sánchez, the Colombian defense minister, visited Washington with a message that the country is cracking down.

The security services here say they are destroying a cocaine-production lab every 40 minutes. They seized almost 2 million pounds of cocaine last year, a record. And, they say, they have pinched supply so much that cocaine prices are rising.

“It’s reached its peak,” Sánchez said by phone, taking a break from talking to U.S. officials in Washington last month. “The rate of growth has declined.”

James Story, a former U.S. diplomat who led antinarcotics efforts in Colombia from 2010 to 2013, said Colombia has indeed interdicted a lot of cocaine, but the reason isn’t very impressive.

“You have record seizures of cocaine, sure, because you have record production of cocaine,” said Story, a former ambassador to Venezuela. “They’re producing a ton of cocaine.”

The fate of U.S.-Colombia ties might come down to the chemistry between Trump and Petro, a leftist former guerrilla who is openly hostile to capitalism, close to Cuba’s Communist government and frequently critical of the U.S., including its signature antidrug campaign of airstrikes on speedboats ferrying drugs from South America.

Trump has called Petro “a low-rated and very unpopular leader, with a fresh mouth toward America.” Last fall, the U.S. canceled Petro’s visa and froze any assets he may hold in the U.S., accusing him of allowing drug cartels to flourish. The U.S. hasn’t provided evidence to justify placing him on the Office of Foreign Assets Control list, typically reserved for major traffickers.

Trump even suggested that Colombia could be next the day after U.S. commandos extracted Venezuelan autocrat Nicolás Maduro from Caracas, Venezuela.

But Trump invited Petro to the White House after a 40-minute conversation on Jan. 7. Trump said he came away open to hearing Petro’s side in person. Petro, 65 years old, said he told Trump that political figures from Colombia’s “extreme right” had spread false rumors to undermine his leftist rule.

The hope for Petro is that he can reset relations that had been close since the 1980s. Successive Colombian governments received about $14 billion in U.S. aid to fight cocaine trafficking and insurgencies in close coordination with Washington—a partnership unmatched in the region.

Gustavo Petro gives a speech about his phone call with President Trump, surrounded by his cabinet members. Oscar B. Castillo for WSJ

The coming meeting between the two leaders is a “huge step in the right direction,” said Daniel García-Peña, Colombia’s ambassador to Washington. But he added: “That doesn’t mean the differences are going to be resolved.”

One problem might be that Petro denies that cocaine trafficking is flowing north from Colombia like never before. He told a huge crowd of supporters gathered on Bogotá’s central square recently that such assertions were a “bag of lies.”

“They tell this story to Trump,” the president said in his speech. “There’s no evidence at all.”

Evidence from Colombia’s countryside—including United Nations monitoring of drug crops, military data and interviews in coca-growing regions—shows otherwise.

Figures collected last year by the U.N. show Colombia was covered with 647,000 acres of the leaf essential to making cocaine—445% more than in 2012, when the U.S. and Colombia had dramatically reduced the size of the coca crop and cocaine production after a dozen years of spraying chemicals from crop dusters. The amount of cocaine that can be produced reaches 3,300 tons, nearly nine times as much as the U.N. drug researchers reported was produced in 2012.

Since Petro took office in 2022, drug militias, each fielding thousands of heavily armed fighters, have doubled in size to more than 25,000 members. The National Liberation Army, or ELN, counts 6,700 members, hundreds of them in Venezuela. The Gulf Clan, which the U.S. recently designated a foreign-terrorist organization, has about 9,000 members. And other groups made of renegade guerrillas who rejected a 2016 peace accord have 9,200 members.

In his mountainous home in southwest Cauca province, Uverney Ijaji, 42, who helps lead a cooperative of farmers, says coca remains central to the local economy and to the gangs that have grown strong trafficking it.

Bags of coca paste, which is used to make cocaine. Carlos Villalon for WSJ

“The armed groups have taken territory, and so people from one place can’t cross over to where the other group is,” he said, calling government assertions that it had gained back some ground “a lie.” He added, “The farmers around here find themselves caught in the crossfire.”

This isn’t Colombia as it was a quarter-century ago, when the U.S. embarked on a bipartisan, multibillion-dollar program to curb cocaine production and contain Marxist guerrillas who some policymakers in Washington believed could seize power.

By the early 2010s, the industrial-sized fields of coca in Colombia’s remote far south had been decimated. Nationally, the coca crop had been reduced by 70%. And the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC—once Latin America’s largest and most powerful guerrilla group—had abandoned its goal of taking power and instead entered peace talks.

“It was an incredible drop,” said Story, the former diplomat who once led antidrug efforts. “There was a point in time where we no longer had any coca to spray in southern Colombia.”

The reversal since then—which experts trace to a 2015 court ban on aerial fumigation—is visible across remote regions, particularly those close to the borders of Venezuela and Ecuador where groups compete for control of booming drug routes.

Hugo Gomez, who oversees a program by the American group Mercy Corps to help coca producers switch to legal crops, said farmers in the Catatumbo region next to Venezuela breed heartier crops that result in more harvests. They also now cram 36,000 coca bushes per hectare, as opposed to 12,000 in the past.

The increased productivity means more cocaine available to traffic to the U.S. and the world’s expanding markets, from Australia to Eastern Europe.

“It’s not only an increase but in the density of plants, the number,” driving the growth in cocaine, Gomez said. “That means technological advances that are making coca fields more productive are leading to an increase in cocaine.”

Unilateral cease-fires called by the government to spur armed groups into peace talks have eased battlefield pressure, military analysts said, allowing militia commanders to recruit more fighters and use drug profits to upgrade their arsenals.

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In Catatumbo, that has led 100,000 people to flee their homes in the past year as the groups battled over drug routes. And Jose Abril, a farmer who has grown coca but fled amid the violence, said the state failed to make the sustained investments to persuade farmers to switch crops.

“At this moment, Catatumbo is in a war without hope that there’s going to be any change,” he said. “As long as the ELN is there with other groups, they’re going to fight it out. It’s impossible there’ll be an end to it, impossible that there’ll be an end to the coca.”

Write to Juan Forero at juan.forero@wsj.com

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7. Exclusive | Classified Whistleblower Complaint About Tulsi Gabbard Stalls Within Her Agency

Summary:

A US intelligence official filed a whistleblower complaint last May alleging wrongdoing by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. The complaint is so highly classified that even the whistleblower’s lawyer says he cannot view it, and officials warn disclosure could cause “grave damage to national security.” Months of dispute center on how to transmit it to Congress, with the lawyer accusing Gabbard of stonewalling and her office calling the complaint baseless and politically motivated. The inspector general’s office says some allegations against Gabbard were deemed not credible, while others involving another federal agency could not be assessed. Congress has not received the complaint after eight months.

Comment: When a complaint is deemed too sensitive to share broadly, what is the ethical balance between protecting sources and methods and honoring Congress’s oversight duty so accountability does not become optional? Does that only leave us with the Fourth Estate to do its job of bringing transparency to issues that are covered up so that the people can hold the government accountable?

Like "the bomber will always get through" such controversial information will always end up being exposed.

Exclusive | Classified Whistleblower Complaint About Tulsi Gabbard Stalls Within Her Agency

WSJ

Congress hasn’t seen the complaint, which was filed eight months ago with the U.S. intelligence community’s watchdog office

By Dustin Volz

Follow and C. Ryan Barber

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Feb. 2, 2026 5:00 am ET

https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/classified-whistleblower-complaint-about-tulsi-gabbard-stalls-within-her-agency-027f5331?mod=hp_lead_pos5

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. Alex Wong/Getty Images

WASHINGTON—A U.S. intelligence official has alleged wrongdoing by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard in a whistleblower complaint that is so highly classified it has sparked months of wrangling over how to share it with Congress, according to U.S. officials and others familiar with the matter.

The filing of the complaint has prompted a continuing, behind-the-scenes struggle about how to assess and handle it, with the whistleblower’s lawyer accusing Gabbard of stonewalling the complaint. Gabbard’s office rejects that characterization, contending it is navigating a unique set of circumstances and working to resolve the issue.

A cloak-and-dagger mystery reminiscent of a John le Carré novel is swirling around the complaint, which is said to be locked in a safe. Disclosure of its contents could cause “grave damage to national security,” one official said. It also implicates another federal agency beyond Gabbard’s, and raises potential claims of executive privilege that may involve the White House, officials said.

The complaint was filed last May with the intelligence community’s inspector general, according to a November letter that the whistleblower’s lawyer addressed to Gabbard. The letter, which was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, accused Gabbard’s office of hindering the dissemination of the complaint to lawmakers by failing to provide necessary security guidance on how to do so.

In a statement, a spokeswoman for Gabbard’s office confirmed that the complaint concerned Gabbard but dismissed it as “baseless and politically motivated.”

The whistleblower’s lawyer, Andrew Bakaj, and Gabbard’s office also disagreed on whether the inspector general had made any determinations about the credibility of the complaint. A representative for the inspector general said the office had determined specific allegations against Gabbard weren’t credible, while it couldn’t reach a determination on others. Bakaj said he was never informed that any determinations were reached.

Tulsi Gabbard was among several Trump administration security officials who testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee last year about worldwide threats. kevin lamarque/Reuters

Gabbard has been an enigmatic figure in the Trump administration, sidelined from major national-security matters and tasked with investigating the results of the 2020 election that President Trump lost.

The November letter from Bakaj was shared with the House and Senate intelligence panels, making them aware of the complaint’s filing for the first time. Months later, lawmakers still haven’t received the complaint itself. Some Democratic staffers on the intelligence committees have tried to learn more about the complaint in recent weeks, with little success, congressional aides said.

The complaint is so highly classified that Bakaj said he hasn’t been able to view it himself. The Wall Street Journal couldn’t learn the substance of the allegations.

Representatives for the Senate and House intelligence committees declined to comment.

The lengthy delay on sending the complaint to Congress is without known precedent, according to watchdog experts and former intelligence officials. The inspector general is generally required to assess whether the complaint is credible within two weeks of receiving it, and share it with lawmakers within another week if it determines it is credible.

An employee alleging wrongdoing is allowed to share the complaint directly with congressional intelligence committees as long as the director of national intelligence provides instructions on how to securely transmit it. There is no requirement for a precise timeline on doing so, but typically that process occurs within a matter of weeks, the officials and experts said.

Gabbard answered written questions about the allegations from the inspector general’s office, a senior official at the spy agency said. That prompted the acting inspector general at the time, Tamara Johnson, to determine the allegations specifically about Gabbard weren’t credible, the official said. Johnson remains employed at the agency, which didn’t make her available for an interview.

The complaint includes a separate allegation about “an office within a different federal agency,” upon which the watchdog’s office wasn’t able to make a credibility determination, the representative for that office said. The Wall Street Journal couldn’t determine the identity of the other federal agency.

Gabbard provided her staff with required guidance to “support the eventual transmission of appropriate details to Congress,” the spokeswoman at Gabbard’s office said.

Bakaj, the whistleblower’s lawyer, previously advised a Central Intelligence Agency officer who in 2019 filed a complaint that sparked Trump’s first impeachment.

“From my experience, it is confounding for [Gabbard’s office] to take weeks—let alone eight months—to transmit a disclosure to Congress,” Bakaj, who is chief legal counsel at the nonprofit WhistleblowerAid.org, said in a statement.

Amid the limbo, the Gabbard complaint has been locked in a safe in the office, a person familiar with the matter said. Asked about the safe, the inspector-general representative said: “Some complaints involve exceptionally sensitive materials necessitating special handling and storage requirements. This case is one of them.”

Some of the material in the complaint is also “marked as ‘attorney-client privileged,’ ” and could be subject to “executive privilege,” which generally refers to the power of the president to withhold confidential information or private discussions from Congress or the judicial branch, the inspector general’s office said.

The inspector general received the complaint under a statute through which intelligence-community employees and contractors have filed around a dozen such “urgent concern” allegations each year in recent years, according to a review of semiannual reports.

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In a 2019 whistleblower complaint, a CIA officer alleged that Trump sought to use the powers of his office to push Ukraine to investigate Democratic rival Joe Biden. The Democratic-controlled House voted to impeach Trump over the issue, but the GOP-controlled Senate declined to convict him.

Days after Trump returned to the presidency in January 2025, he fired a raft of inspectors general across government, which Democrats said was an effort to “purge” his administration of independent watchdogs to conceal wrongdoing.

Last year Gabbard also fired the acting counsel in the intelligence community’s inspector general’s office, and appointed a senior adviser within the office who reported directly to Gabbard. Democrats said the moves violated the law.

In October, the Republican-controlled Senate confirmed a new intelligence-community inspector general, Christopher Fox, on a 51-47 vote. No Democrats voted for Fox, who served as an aide to Gabbard in her role as spy chief before taking the oversight job.

Write to Dustin Volz at dustin.volz@wsj.com and C. Ryan Barber at ryan.barber@wsj.com

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WSJ

8. Naval Leaders Need to Think Fast, Slow, and Augmented

Summary:

Frank Hoffman argues AI may restore US naval advantage only if paired with human judgment through intensive human-machine teaming, not by chasing exquisite platforms or full autonomy. Drawing on Kahneman, he contrasts fast, cue-based System 1 intuition with slower System 2 deliberation, then proposes “System 3” thinking: AI-augmented decision-making that accelerates pattern recognition and option generation while keeping strategic authority with commanders. He warns against automation bias, over-optimism, and “Silicon Syndrome,” urging flexible mission command and guardrails based on context and consequence. He sees agentic models offloading lower-order tasks, with PME and broad AI literacy as the key enablers.

Comment: More than just Naval leaders. We all do. AI does not reduce the importance of the human domain at which the very heart (or brain) is critical thinking and judgment. (and Clausewitz' coup d'oiel)

If AI can compress decision cycles while also amplifying bias, what concrete guardrails and feedback loops will keep leaders from mistaking machine speed for strategic clarity?

As agentic systems offload planning tasks, how should mission command evolve so commanders retain moral agency and creative judgment without reverting to paralyzing centralized control?

Again, this applies to more than Naval leaders. 

Naval Leaders Need to Think Fast, Slow, and Augmented

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Innovation for Sea Power Essay Contest—First Prize

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The conduct of war is complicated and requires judgments that should not be ceded to machines. Human-machine teaming is the future.

By Lieutenant Colonel Frank Hoffman, U.S. Marine Corps (Retired)

February 2026 Proceedings Vol. 152/2/1,476

https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2026/february/naval-leaders-need-think-fast-slow-and-augmented?utm

This is an age of potentially disruptive technologies. The emerging revolution centered around artificial intelligence (AI) could restore the U.S. competitive edge in naval warfighting. Yet victory will not be gained solely by investing in AI or another advanced technology. Success in future conflicts will not be driven by exquisite platforms or AI systems. Instead, victory will be the product of an effective nexus between human minds and machines.

Human-machine teaming is the future. While totally autonomous systems may be needed in some contexts, intensive and interactive human-machine teaming is more powerful—and more likely—as Russian chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov has argued.1 While chess programming models have long surpassed human capabilities, the conduct of war is significantly more complicated and requires judgments that should not be ceded to machines. The history of technology should shape a clear understanding that the higher realms of leadership in war, such as making strategy, are going to be subject to an “indelibly human element.”2 The goal should be to make sure the contributions humans make in war are as timely and creative as needed.

System 3 Thinking

Mastering the nexus of human-machine teaming requires an updated decision-making concept that draws on the ideas of the late Daniel Kahneman, the Nobel Prize winner in economics, from his bestselling book, Thinking, Fast and Slow.3 In the book, Kahneman presented two modes of decision-making, which he called System 1 and System 2 thinking.

Air Force Lieutenant General Jack Shanahan, the first director of the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, briefs the press on the adoption of ethical principles for artificial intelligence. Lieutenant General Shanahan has since written that advancements in generative AI will soon provide significant value in joint planning, including collaborative, course-of-action development and analysis. Department of Defense

System 1 thinking is rapid, instinctive, and often emotional. This part of the brain exploits mental shortcuts or heuristics to respond efficiently to the need for decision. Taken to an extreme, it leads to rash and rushed decisions that could be based more on bias than logic. Dr. Gary Klein is a leading scholar in psychology who developed a theory of naturalistic or recognitive decision-making that explains these quick judgments. The Marine Corps recognizes this theory in its approach to warfare.4

The intuition of System 1 decision-making is built from experience and the recognition of “cues.” Such cues allow the human mind to make a snap judgment that corresponds with a decision-maker’s experience. Developing intuition is based on three elements: 1) a regular environment, 2) adequate opportunity to practice (or operate), and 3) immediate and unequivocal feedback from the actions taken.5 Military careers are designed to provide the experience, and combat does offer clear feedback. Yet, the conduct of warfare is not a closed or steady environment, but one filled with friction and chaos. Kahneman was rightfully pessimistic about System 1 thinking for anything above tactical situations.

System 2 thinking is concentrated and deliberative problem solving, and it takes longer. System 2 thinking is applicable to higher-level strategy and campaign design—and it requires seasoned decision-makers and educated operators. But like System 1, it can be less than rational and affected by biases or personal blind spots.6 The military decision-planning process is designed to support such deliberative and rational decision-making and also to counter dysfunctional elements.

The System 3 concept proposed here extends Kahneman’s bicameral idea to the emergent age of AI—“Thinking, Fast, Slow, and Augmented.” This means augmented and enhanced by AI. This concept is based on a human-centric approach to using AI decision tools. The commander exploits what AI and generative tools can provide and then shapes his or her advice and courses of action to meet the commander’s guidance and intent. Human-machine teaming that blends and exploits the best of human and machine intelligence is already being tested in military settings.7 China’s military is also interested in related forms of “hybrid intelligence.”8

System 3 thinking exploits pattern recognition and data analytics at machine speed. However, AI should enhance a commander’s intuition, not displace it.9 Assistance should not lead to an abdication of agency or decision, and a collaborator should not become a crutch that obviates the necessity of human creative and novel thinking. Here AI supports the need for “fast” responses at machine speed to address compressed decision cycles and the character of modern hyperwar.10

System 3 thinking uses AI to promote deliberative thinking as well. In this concept, decision-making authority at the strategic or operational level is not delegated to AI, but AI is employed to augment the commander’s understanding of the situation and enhance creativity in devising potential solutions through prompts and queries and by having the ability to conduct pattern analysis and shape options for analysis and gaming.

AI is still fairly brittle, but large language models (LLMs) are making significant advances. Defense experts anticipate LLMs will assist commanders most in the observation and orientation tasks of the observe, orient, decide, act loop. In fact, as noted by the founding director of the Pentagon’s Joint AI Center, advancements in generative AI will soon provide significant value in joint planning. AI will expedite collaborative, real-time course-of-action development and analysis and offer recommendations.11 Such capabilities could improve and accelerate the development of strategic and operational orders and the assessment of their implementation. This suite of contributions enhances numerous aspects of command and control (C2).

The next step in the evolution of AI will be agentic models that can collect information, perform specific planning tasks, adapt to changes in context without human intervention, and automate a broader range of tasks. The result of this evolution will be models autonomously working together, recursively reflecting and iterating to create new ideas beyond the most educated human thinking. These collaborative models with extended memories, tied to applications and workflows, will result in autonomous AI agents: generative AI models that can consider, collaborate, and create content and options for human decision-making.12

Properly designed and validated agentic systems will assist commanders and staff in offloading lower-order tasks and functions so there is more time for critical thinking and collaboration. To promote System 3 thinking, models are needed that allow the commander and staff to dynamically prompt, interrogate, and edit their AI assistant’s output with two-way feedback. This will sharpen both intuition and deliberative reasoning power, improve creativity in planning, and afford more intensive collaboration among commanders.13

The critical part is the human decision. Commanders must be prepared to use the insights and options from the agentic models. While some practitioners are willing to accept a high degree of deference to machine solutions, senior civilian or military officials should not expect to delegate critical policy or strategic decisions to an algorithm.14 Certainly machine solutions are appropriate for some defense applications, such as cybersecurity or missile defense. However, senior commanders should want options and recommendations without ceding command to a black box that spits out a single unexplainable answer. Computational machines may do numerous wonderful things, but they will never think like humans or understand the context of real-world events.

Warfare presents the most perplexing and unique aspects of human affairs, putting a high premium on clear judgment. Given that combat situations are inherently complex and riddled with friction, operational decision-making skills must be sharpened rather than dulled with assistance from AI. Uniquely human traits such as cunning, creativity, morality, and empathy still count in war. To ensure political, ethical, and moral factors are incorporated, the human component in decision-making will remain invaluable.15

Some researchers suggest incorporating AI into C2 processes could lead to delays and confusion, rather than increasing the speed and decisiveness of military operations. But with projected advances, augmentation will likely assist commanders in separating signals from noise, accelerate support processes, and reduce complexity.16 However, friction will always be a factor in human conflict.

One source of friction is cognitive bias. Automation bias is a commonly recognized challenge with AI.17 Optimism is a form of bias that seems rife in the national security community, according to recent research.18 Kahneman writes of a “pervasive optimistic bias,” which “may well be the most significant of the cognitive biases.”19 This can be overcome with training, and LLMs can reinforce that by providing probabilistic estimates to dampen biases.

Mission Command

Mission command in the Navy, which can be traced at least as far back as Vice Admiral William S. Sims more than a century ago, is more relevant than ever. While AI-supported decision-making strengthens mission command tenets, commanders may need to adjust the level of delegation in mission command based on the operational context. U.S. Naval Institute Photo Archive

Mission command has a long history in the Navy, going back at least as far as Vice Admiral William S. Sims, and is more relevant than ever.20 AI-supported decision-making strengthens the tenets of mission command but also suggests evolution. Several military researchers contend commanders need to adjust the level of delegation in mission command based on the commander’s assessment of the operational context.21 A context of high complexity and low experience (and trust) of junior subordinates might justify more oversight and tighter control. Extending the concept of mission command to AI and agents requires similar flexibility in command. In some cases, “end-to-end” processes including limited forms of judgment should be permitted, and in others, stronger guardrails are needed to ensure greater human oversight and control in highly complex or ambiguous contexts.

To benefit from this style of decision-making, the naval services would have to restructure decision processes to provide the right degree of human judgment and authority depending on the potential consequences of outcomes. Table 1 outlines such a framework to visualize the adaptation in decision-making that AI and agentic systems can enable eventually.22 The shaded cells represent areas in which human inputs and decisions are needed. The other cells suggest tasks that might be offloaded to agents, freeing time and mental bandwidth for leaders to deal with higher-priority and more-complex tasks that require nuance and human perception. The integration of hardware, software, and human factors is the future of optimal decision-making.

The collaboration between commanders and warfare specialists and their agentic models also will have to be conditions-based and flexible. As in traditional mission command, trust between humans and agentic models, built up over time, will be critical.

Implications

As noted by soldier/scholar and retired Australian Army Major General Mick Ryan, successful combat leaders must acquire more than basic literacy in a range of disruptive technologies, including AI. They must become knowledgeable in the employment of these technologies, maximize their utility, and recognize their limits.23 The goal is to be able to outthink adversaries, which requires adapting organizations and decision processes at every level.

Alfred Thayer Mahan cannot be put in a box or a macro-model to solve all operational challenges.24 But a lot of adversary doctrine, system capabilities, and operational context can be put into a decision-support system that a smart operator can exploit to make better decisions in a timely manner. Authority and responsibility for key decisions cannot be completely delegated to an AI agent, but the intellectual and cognitive capacity of commanders and young leaders can be enhanced with narrow AI tools. System 3 thinking will ensure commanders benefit from the best combination of machine intelligence and human intuition and cognition.

These tools are coming, and officers need to know how to exploit them and understand AI’s promise and shortfalls—what AI can deliver in terms of cuing their intuition and enhancing decisions. It also is critical to train officers to understand shortfalls such as automation bias and avoid the Silicon Syndrome that occurs when thought processes are “captured” by AI-enabled systems.25 Commanders must retain and enhance their critical thinking skills and cognitive autonomy. Tomorrow’s naval warriors must master their decision-support assets and not be in thrall to them.26

The key to implementing System 3 thinking is professional military education (PME). “If military organizations are to successfully adapt to this new era,” Ryan concludes, “they must maximize their human potential to gain an intellectual edge. To sustain and build this edge, leaders will need to rethink professional military education systems and learn how to best combine human and artificial intelligence.”27 Senior U.S. PME schools are already tasked to enhance the AI literacy of future leaders and foster AI in their curricula.28 However, focusing just at the senior level is insufficient, and AI literacy should be encouraged in most educational programs.

Future success in naval warfare will require creativity and superior critical thinking skills, along with judgment that can only come from the human side of the human-machine dyad. AI support should be a tool for commanders but only in augmenting their decision inputs.

Thinking faster and sharper creates a competitive edge in naval warfare. Whether standing watch on the bridge, sitting in a combat information center, or tucked inside the cockpit of a fighter aircraft, naval leaders will interact with decision-support systems and AI aides to make critical judgments. To do so they must master the nexus of human cognition and their machines.

Mastering System 3 thinking is the means to that end. Commanders must be able to effectively command and make critical judgments, fast, slow, and algorithmically augmented.

1. Garry Kasparov, Deep Thinking: Where Machine Intelligence Ends and Human Creativity Begins (New York: Public Affairs, 2017), 239.

2. Kenneth Payne, I, Warbot: The Dawn of Artificially Intelligent Conflict (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021), 174.

3. Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow (New York: Macmillan, 2011).

4. Gary Klein, Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998); and Daniel Kahneman and Gary Klein, “Conditions for Intuitive Expertise, a Failure to Disagree,” American Psychologist (September 2009): 515–29.

5. Kahneman, Thinking Fast and Slow, 416.

6. Kahneman, 19–30.

7. William J. Barry and Blair Wilcox, “Neocentaur: A Model for Cognitive Evolutions across the Levels of War,” Modern War Institute, 9 May 2025.

8. Elsa Kania, “Minds at War: China’s Pursuit of Military Advantage through Cognitive Science and Biotechnology,” PRISM 8, no. 3 (January 2020): 84.

9. ADM Scott H. Swift, USN (Ret.), and Antonio P. Siordia, “Mission Command and Speed of Decision,” in CAPTs Sam J. Tangredi and George Galdorisi, USN (Ret.), AI at War: How Big Data, Artificial Intelligence, and Machine Learning Are Changing Naval Warfare (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2021), 147.

10. Gen John R. Allen, USMC (Ret.), and Amir Husain, “On Hyperwar,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings 143, no. 7 (July 2017).

11. LtGen John Shanahan, USAF (Ret.), “Reimagining Military C2 in the Age of AI,” Special Competitive Studies Project, 2024. On the employment of agents in military planning, see Richard Farnell and Kira Coffey, “AI’s New Frontier in War Planning: How AI Agents Can Revolutionize Military Decision-Making,” Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, 11 October 2024.

12. Benjamin Jensen, Dan Tadross, and Matthew Strohmeyer, “Agentic Warfare Is Here: Will America Be the First Mover?” War on the Rocks, 23 April 2025.

13. For a positive assessment that reflects advances to date, see Amanda Collazzo, “Warfare at the Speed of Thought: Balancing AI and Critical Thinking for the Military Leaders of Tomorrow,” Modern Warfare Institute, 21 February 2025.

14. See Keith Dear, “Artificial Intelligence and Decision-Making,” RUSI Journal 164, no. 5–6 (2019): 18–25. Dear argues that AI will soon outperform humans and force humans to take themselves “out of the loop” for decision-making in several domains.

15. On the increased value of human inputs and judgment, see Avi Goldfarb and Jon Lindsay, “Prediction and Judgement: Why Artificial Intelligence Increases the Importance of Humans in War,” International Security 46, no. 3 (Winter 2021/2022): 7–50; and David Maxwell, “Agentic Warfare, Yes—But the Future of War Will Always Be Human,” National Security Journal, 21 July 2025.

16. LCDR Anthony Becker, USN, “What Threatens Human Control of Military AI,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings 151, no. 6 (June 2025): 60–65.

17. Lauren Kahn, Emelia S. Probasco, and Ronnie Kinoshita, “AI Safety and Automation Bias,” Center for Security and Emerging Technology, November 2024.

18. Jeffrey Friedman, “The World Is More Uncertain Than You Think,” Texas National Security Review 8, no. 4 (Fall 2025).

19. Kahneman, Thinking Fast and Slow, 255–65.

20. See Benjamin F. Armstrong, ed., 21st Century Sims: Innovation, Education, and Leadership for the Modern Era (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2020), 46–74; and LtCol Frank Hoffman and Col Pat Garrett, USMC (Ret.), “Beyond Mission Command: Collaborative Leadership,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings 151, no. 4 (April 2025).

21. Andrew Hill and Heath Niemi, “The Trouble with Mission Command: Flexible Command and the Future of Command and Control,” Joint Force Quarterly 86 (3rd Quarter 2017): 94–100.

22. Adapted from Federico Berruti, Lari Hämäläinen, Oana Cheta, Venky Anant, and Damian Lewandowski, “When Can AI Make Good Decisions?” McKinsey & Co., 4 June 2025.

23. MAJGEN Mick Ryan, Australian Army (Ret.), “The Intellectual Edge: A Competitive Advantage for Future War and Strategic Competition,” Joint Force Quarterly 96 (1st Quarter 2020): 9.

24. On prior efforts to explore the application of AI, see Adam Aycock and William Glenney IV, “Trying to Put Mahan in a Box,” in Tangredi and Galdorisi, AI at War.

25. Jean Hollands, The Silicon Syndrome: How to Survive a High-Tech Relationship (New York: Bantam, 1985).

26. For a pessimistic (and now outdated) view of the reasoning potential of AI, see Cameron Hunter and Bleddyn E. Bowen, “We’ll Never Have a Model of an AI Major-General: Artificial Intelligence, Command Decisions, and Kitsch Visions of War,” Journal of Strategic Studies 47, no. 1 (2024): 116–46.

27. Mick Ryan, “Intellectual Preparation for Future War: How Artificial Intelligence Will Change Professional Military Education,” War on the Rocks, 3 July 2018.

28. Donald J. Trump, Winning the Race: America’s AI Plan (Washington, DC: The White House, July 2025), 12.

Lieutenant Colonel Frank Hoffman, U.S. Marine Corps (Retired)

Lieutenant Colonel Hoffman served for 46 years in the Defense Department as a Marine Corps officer and civil servant. He is a frequent contributor to Proceedings and in 2021 authored the Naval Institute Press book Mars Adapting, a study of military wartime adaptation.

usni.org

9. ‘We’ve Fought Side by Side’: Danish Veterans March Against Trump’s Comments

Summary:

Danish veterans who fought alongside U.S. troops in Afghanistan and Iraq marched through Copenhagen in subzero weather to protest POTUS remarks that belittled NATO allies’ wartime contributions. They stressed they blame no American soldiers, but said the comments cut deeply after years of shared sacrifice. The march also reflected broader Danish and Greenlandic anger over POTUS threats to take over Greenland, which Danish leaders call a red line and many Greenland residents oppose. Veterans ended at the U.S. Embassy, held silence for the fallen, laid a wreath citing Article 5, and replaced small Danish flags that had been removed and later restored.

Comment: A rhetorical question here perhaps: When allied soldiers feel publicly dishonored while sovereignty is questioned, what practical steps can Washington take to rebuild trust before political resentment hardens into strategic distance? How does this affect US military personnel who work "with, through, and by" allied partners?

‘We’ve Fought Side by Side’: Danish Veterans March Against Trump’s Comments

NY Times · Lynsey Chutel · January 31, 2026

In the latest anti-American gathering in Denmark, veterans who went to war alongside U.S. troops took to the streets of Copenhagen.

By Maya Tekeli and Lynsey Chutel

Maya Tekeli reported from Copenhagen.

Jan. 31, 2026

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/31/world/europe/denmark-military-march-us-troops.html

Danish military veterans and their families marching in Copenhagen on Saturday in protest of recent comments by President Trump.Credit...Emil Helms/Ritzau Scanpix Foto, via Associated Press

A Danish soldier who fought alongside American troops in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq marched in subzero temperatures through the streets of Copenhagen on Saturday, driven by outrage against President Trump.

The soldier, Lance Cpl. Soren Teigen, was at the front of a group of veterans who had been bused in from all corners of Denmark for the latest demonstration of anti-American anger, after Mr. Trump’s recent comments belittling the support that NATO allies had given the United States in recent wars.

“I don’t blame American soldiers in any way — we’ve fought side by side, and we still do,” Lance Corporal Teigen said. “But when the president says something like this, of course it hurts.”

The march in Denmark comes at a time when the U.S. relationship with Europe is sinking to a new low, fueled by Mr. Trump’s threats to take over Greenland. For months, Denmark’s leaders have resisted the takeover bid, while residents of Denmark and Greenland have staged protests against Mr. Trump.

Even though Mr. Trump recently declared that he would not seize Greenland by force, he has continued to berate Denmark and his European allies. Last week, Danes were incensed when he claimed that NATO troops who had fought alongside the United States in Afghanistan “stayed a little back, little off the front lines.” Denmark, a NATO ally, lost more soldiers per capita in the conflict than any other nation.

“I think the man is seriously out of his mind,” René Wendt, a retired warrant officer from Denmark who served in Afghanistan in 2012, said of Mr. Trump. “Anyone with even a basic understanding of military service knows exactly what the Danes have contributed in Afghanistan and elsewhere.”

Danish veterans on Saturday outside the U.S. Embassy in Copenhagen, where they laid a wreath.

In the past weeks, European leaders have held frantic meetings to strategize how to reduce their dependence on the Trump administration. For Denmark in particular, the threat is existential. Greenland has been an important part of the Danish kingdom for three centuries, and Denmark has rallied European nations to push back against Mr. Trump’s threats.

Polls show that the majority of Greenland’s 57,000 inhabitants oppose living under American control. And the idea of joining a deeply divided nation whose domestic chaos has been on full display in the streets of Minneapolis holds little appeal.

For Danes on the mainland, Mr. Trump has not only violated their sovereignty but has also trampled on a decades-old relationship forged on the battlefield. Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen of Denmark publicly expressed her uncertainty this week about how much longer the United States would remain a trusted ally.

“I’m not responsible for what will happen in the U.S.,” she told reporters during a visit to Berlin. “I hope that they will stay in our alliance, but I don’t know what will happen.”

Ms. Frederiksen, who has remained resolute that seizing Greenland is a “red line,” echoed a sadness that some Danish veterans described about the fallout.

“I’m trans-Atlantic in my heart,” she said, “so I feel a bit sad about how things are developing.”

The veterans who marched in Copenhagen, the Danish capital, on Saturday expressed shock at how the leader of the country they had fought beside now denigrated them.

“The U.S. has always been a big brother, the one we expected would show up if something happened,” said Michael Jensen, who completed two tours in Iraq. “I’ve lost colleagues. And we’ve lost Americans, too.”

Danish soldiers fought fierce battles in Afghanistan’s southern Helmand Province and lost 43 people in the conflict. When the United States invaded Iraq, Danish troops followed. When Danish soldiers died in battle, American troops traveled from afar to attend their funerals, some veterans said.

Onlookers cheered on Saturday as the Danish military veterans and their families marched. They began at a centuries-old military citadel, a site long associated with the remembrance of Denmark’s armed forces, and walked to the U.S. Embassy. There, they stood in stoic silence, remembering the fallen.

The veterans and their families marched from a centuries-old military citadel to the U.S. Embassy in Copenhagen on Saturday.Credit...Emil Nicolai Helms/Ritzau Scanpix Denmark, via Reuters

They laid a wreath at the embassy’s entrance, with a ribbon inscribed with the message “In eternal respect for those who fought when the United States activated Article 5.” It was a reference to the core provision in NATO’s founding treaty that requires the alliance to step in when one member is attacked, as NATO did during America’s wars.

The march on Saturday came after thousands of people braved freezing temperatures in coordinated anti-American protests. In Nuuk, Greenland’s capital, demonstrators waved Greenlandic flags and shouted, “Yankee, go home” and “Greenland is already great.” Many Danes and Greenlanders have also begun wearing red baseball caps with the slogan “Make America Go Away.”

This week, when staff at the American Embassy in Copenhagen removed miniature Danish flags from flower beds outside the building, Danish veterans were outraged. The embassy said there had been “no ill will behind the removal of the flags” and restored them.

On Saturday, the veterans placed more flags in the flower beds around the building, then the leaders of the march recited the name of each Danish soldier who had died in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Jeffrey Gettleman contributed reporting.

Lynsey Chutel is a Times reporter based in London who covers breaking news in Africa, the Middle East and Europe.

A version of this article appears in print on Feb. 1, 2026, Section A, Page 10 of the New York edition with the headline: Danish Veterans Protest Trump’s Stance on NATO

NY Times · Lynsey Chutel · January 31, 2026

10. Pentagon names 6 appointees to lead the CTO’s top technology efforts

Summary:

The Pentagon announced six “accountable senior officials” to lead newly restructured critical technology areas and run “tangible” technology sprints meant to deliver capabilities rapidly and at scale. The CTO and Under Secretary for Research and Engineering, Emil Michael, cut the prior list of 14 CTAs to six renamed priorities: applied artificial intelligence, biomanufacturing, contested logistics technologies, quantum and battlefield information dominance, scaled directed energy, and scaled hypersonics. Appointees are Cameron Stanley (AAI), Dr. Gary Vora (BIO), Dr. Robert Mantz (LOG), Dr. Kevin Rudd (Q-BID), Dr. Christopher Vergien (SCADE), and Dr. James Weber (SHY), all with prior DOD or military experience. No detailed sprint plan has been released.

Pentagon names 6 appointees to lead the CTO’s top technology efforts

defensescoop.com · Brandi Vincent

Here’s a first look at the new cadre tapped to accelerate projects across the DOD’s Critical Technology Areas.

By

Brandi Vincent

January 30, 2026https://defensescoop.com/2026/01/30/dod-cto-critical-technology-areas-emil-michael-cta-appointees/

The six senior officials appointed by Pentagon leadership to oversee the recently-restructured “critical technology areas” and accelerate the military’s adoption of each of those top-priority capabilities, were officially announced Thursday evening via social media.

Posts on Instagram and X from official accounts for the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering and Chief Technology Officer spotlighted brief bios for each of those “accountable senior officials” who will lead the Defense Department’s new CTAs.

“The six CTAs are department-wide imperatives designed to maintain American military dominance — and now, each one will have accountable leaders leading the tangible ‘sprints’ under each CTA. Each sprint will be designed to deliver advanced capabilities to our warfighters rapidly and at scale,” the posts stated.

For years the Pentagon has grappled with long-standing challenges that have stymied the military’s pursuits to integrate emerging technologies across the back office and in operational settings.

The DOD’s list of critical technology areas has included the most pressing challenges and capabilities needed for modern warfare since it was conceptualized. In November, Pentagon CTO and Undersecretary for R&E Emil Michael revealed his plan to trim the department’s list of 14 CTAs established during the Biden administration down to six, with renamed categories.

The focus areas in the updated catalog include: applied artificial intelligence; biomanufacturing; contested logistics technologies; quantum and battlefield information dominance; scaled directed energy; and scaled hypersonics.

At the time of the reset, Michael suggested that his team’s overarching aim was to prioritize and focus investments in select technologies “that will deliver the greatest impact, the fastest results and the most decisive advantage on the battlefield.”

Each of the six officials who were tapped to lead the new CTAs have prior experience in DOD or the military.

According to the social media posts and their online bios, the six appointees are:

• Applied Artificial Intelligence (AAI) — Cameron Stanley, a former national security transformation lead for AWS and chief of the DOD Algorithmic Warfare Cross Functional Team (previously known as Project Maven), who was also recently hired as the department’s Chief Digital and AI Officer.
• Biomanufacturing (BIO) — Dr. Gary Vora, the Navy’s former principal scientist for biotechnology, who also initiated and led the Naval Research Lab’s basic research efforts in the microbiological sciences.
• Contested Logistics Technologies (LOG) — Dr. Robert Mantz, who has more than four decades of federal service, including senior roles at the Army Research Office and DARPA.
• Quantum and Battlefield Information Dominance (Q-BID) — Dr. Kevin Rudd, a specialist in electronic warfare, radar, RF systems and advanced sensing, who previously served at DARPA and the Office of Naval Research.
• Scaled Directed Energy (SCADE) — Dr. Christopher Vergien, an expert in DE and national defense technology, who previously served at the Air Force Office of Scientific Research and the Defense Threat Reduction Agency.
• Scaled Hypersonics (SHY) — Dr. James Weber, an engineer with more than 30 years of experience in the research and development of hypersonic systems, including at the Air Force Research Lab.

The Pentagon has not yet released a detailed plan for the CTA’s forthcoming “tangible” technology sprints.

Written by Brandi Vincent

Brandi Vincent is a Senior Reporter at DefenseScoop, where she reports on disruptive technologies and associated policies impacting Pentagon and military personnel. Prior to joining SNG, she produced a documentary and worked as a journalist at Nextgov, Snapchat and NBC Network. Brandi grew up in Louisiana and received a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Maryland. She was named Best New Journalist at the 2024 Defence Media Awards.

defensescoop.com · Brandi Vincent

11. Russian Influence and the Russian Orthodox Church: A Connection to Think About

Summary:

Karolina Beshenich argues the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) has long been tied to the Russian state and can function as a channel of influence that aligns individual purpose with state goals. She traces a “Third Rome” tradition, state control of church structures, and Russian exceptionalism that casts Moscow’s actions as divinely sanctioned. She contends this frames the Ukraine war as civilizational, not merely territorial, with Patriarch Kirill portraying Russia as moral and Ukraine as Western depravity, while dissenting clergy faced penalties. She notes Ukrainians shifting Christmas to December 25 as identity distancing. She recommends countering Russian reach by limiting influence through public education, content, verification channels, and military awareness training.

Russian Influence and the Russian Orthodox Church: A Connection to Think About

by Karolina Beshenich

|

02.02.2026 at 06:00am

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2026/02/02/russian-influence/

Andrew Shiva, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

“O God, God of our salvation, look with mercy upon your humble servants, hear us and have mercy on us: for behold, those who desire to fight have gathered against Holy Rus’, seeking to divide and destroy its unified people.”               

Introduction

Since the reforms of Peter the Great, the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) has been tangibly connected to the Russian government. Accordingly, its historical and spiritual influence on Ukrainian Orthodox and Russian Orthodox believers, in general as members of the Orthodox Church family, cannot be discounted. In light of the continuation of Russian aggression in Ukraine, it is important to consider the teleological dimension of Russian beliefs in its actions within the operational environment. This suggests the war is more than territorial; its roots go deeper than surface-level rhetoric and politics, and its sociopolitical implications should be interpreted with something more than a map and demographic chart. The ideological war between Moscow and Kyiv has created a conflict of its own – one that is civilizational but is at risk of its meaning falling between the cracks, as it is being fought without guns and rockets. Russian influence wields considerable power in modern times. It holds the ability to affect believers and non-believers alike and inspire sympathy towards Russia in the hearts of outside people. The Russian Orthodox Church, more than just being a religious organization, may be viewed as extending the Russian government’s goals to the individual and transforming their personal telos to that of the State’s. In the struggle for power with the West, this may be a cause for concern, as Russian influence has the potential to brush against Western inhabitants and reorient their support to the East and its mission.

Historical Background

The current war being fought in Ukraine is between the Eastern and Western civilizations. However, it is key to note that it connotes more than just geographic distinctions, especially considering modern conflicts often occur according to historic fault lines. The modern divide between the East and West may be traced back to the 16th-century Orthodox monk Filofei, who sent then-Tsar Vasiliy III a letter stating the empires of Orthodox Christianity had conglomerated into one entity – the Russian Empire. This Empire was destined for greatness because the First and Second Romes (Rome and Constantinople) had fallen. The Third Rome, that of Moscow, “…alone would continue.” Filofei wrote, “Russia, what country can compare with thee in magnitude?… A population of sixty million people… Who can compare with us? Whom will we not force into submission? Is not the political fate of the world in our hands whenever we want to decide it one way or the other?” Russia, by virtue of its sheer size and divinely appointed destiny, will force all others to submit to its rule and thus create peace.

Russian Exceptionalism

The ROC’s geopolitical influence in the post-Soviet space is inherently connected to Russia’s exceptionalism, which automatically places Moscow’s political actions on God’s “side”. This is especially true considering it is the final authority in terms of religious sanctions. Looking back in time, in 1589, the Metropolitan of Moscow was elevated to a Patriarchate, thereby removing the need for it to report to the ecclesial authority of the Constantinople Patriarchate. The sacred idea of Moscow was later eliminated under the reforms of Peter the Great in 1712, when Peter moved the capital of Russia to Saint Petersburg, away from the holy city of Moscow. The political power of Moscow, however, was not diminished. With the elimination of the Patriarchate and the institution of the Holy Synod (a state-operated and approved substitute for the ROC that normalized state intervention in Church affairs), the Church became subservient to the State. With this diminishing, the tsar became the manifestation of God’s voice on earth, and the Church became a state body. Russia as the Third Rome evolved into an idea beyond the religious sphere, embodying Russia’s destiny. It will stand as “…the ‘last country’ of world history, the rulers of which would bear a lofty moral responsibility for the destinies of all humankind and who ought not to place their hope in the transient riches, power, and glory of ‘this age,’ but solely in God.” Any actions needed to achieve that goal are allowed, and ostensibly, other Slavic nations are destined to fall under Russia’s power to fulfill this ambition. The Russian government has become the vehicle for achieving the success of the mission. This was seen when Russia made Kyiv part of the ROC in 1685. This act imbued Moscow with power and authority, which could even be applied to the historic cradle of Slavdom. In contemporary times, the “Russia as the Third Rome” concept supports many of Russia’s goals, both strategic and foreign policy. From a religious perspective, how can one argue with the country destined to bring mankind back to God? From a political perspective, how is it possible to reason with a country that believes its destiny is to dominate part of the world?

A Teleological Change

In pre-Soviet times, the Russian man was Orthodox automatically because he was born Russian. During the Russian Revolution, “Orthodox” as an identificatory label was no longer applied to the person. Communism, as a way of life, a belief system, and a state of existence, became the substitute for personal identification. Thus, the very criteria by which Russian society and the individual defined themselves were changed. Russian society was wholly transformed as the Soviet system replaced orthodoxy and the most basic teleological understandings of life; believers became comrades, the Church hierarchy was substituted by the Party leaders, and Communist ideology replaced theology. The “opiate of the masses” was utterly extracted by the Party, which replaced Christianity’s eternal salvation with “revolution”. Even the Orthodox calendar, with its religious feast days, was exchanged for the Party’s “year”, featuring annual holidays for the Soviet citizen to observe. As the Russian Orthodox Church’s societal role was altered by the Soviet Union, the destiny of the Russian person evolved from that of individual “salvation” to the collective achievement of worldwide revolution by the Soviet people. The individual was made part of a group and their good was now effectively what was good for the group.

Patriarch Kirill and Why He Matters

Patriarch Kirill is the head of the modern ROC; included within his spiritual authority are the Orthodox peoples of Russia and Belarus, who together represent the largest group of Eastern Orthodox Christians in the world. Whereas the Church had been stifled under Communism, President Putin has allowed it the oxygen needed to breathe, restore itself, and grow. While the Church’s head, Patriarch Kirill, is not President Putin’s personal chaplain, it is critical to keep in mind the alleged KGB ties that may exist in their working relationship. While living in Switzerland in the 1970s, Kirill worked for the Soviet intelligence. Putin would later join the KGB in 1975, so the possibility of their paths crossing is not remote. Considering Kirill’s support for the Ukraine conflict, the ordinary Russian citizen is constantly reminded of the ROC’s subsequent support for the conflict. The Patriarchate has portrayed the conflict as essentially a clash of civilizations, wherein Ukraine represents Western depravity, and Russia represents Eastern morality. According to this rhetoric, Ukraine must be subjugated to prevent the further moral decline of the Orthodox peoples and their societies. Thus, the conflict is not merely political, but also a matter of religion, identity, and values. Essentially, it is a fight between good and evil.

From the information presented, some conclusions may be drawn. Patriarch Kirill is the faith leader for millions of people. His support of Putin demonstrates a solidarity between the ROC and Putin’s actions. This support underpins the appearance of divine legitimization. Consequently, it further emphasizes Russia’s divine destiny to lead the Christian peoples as the Third Rome. This position is key in light of the divisive March 1, 2022 letter from 300 ROC clergy, who opposed the conflict in Ukraine and called for an end to military action in the country. These individuals were not supporters of the approved, mainstream line. Society is not at peace with the conflict. Rather, sections of it are against the conflict, and so parts of society stand against the Church. In the view of the ROC, this stance ultimately places these parts against God. After the priests’ letter, ROC priests were made to say the prayer in quotations, found at the beginning of this article:

“O God, God of our salvation, look with mercy upon your humble servants, hear us and have mercy on us: for behold, those who desire to fight have gathered against Holy Rus’, seeking to divide and destroy its unified people.”

According to the Moscow Patriarchate, “…priests are to recite the prayer daily, both in church services and at home. They are also to recommend reciting it to monks and laypeople.” Many of those clerics who have spoken out have faced punitive repercussions: “Clergy have been defrocked and fined in court for speaking out against the war in Ukraine as the ROC brings members into line ideologically.” Continuing this vein of authoring the thoughts of believers, Kirill spoke out as well. On March 9, 2022, he said, “Our Church is one, whether in Russia or in Ukraine […] we shall pray for the Unity of Holy Rus’, so that no forces dare divide our nation and, of course, that no forces may divide our Church.” “Holy Rus” is a reference to “Kyivan Rus” – the birthplace of Modern Russia. Patriarch Kirill maintains the belief that Kyiv is part of Moscow, reminiscent of Peter the Great’s move to absorb Kyiv into the Moscow patriarchate in 1685. In contrast to Kirill’s (spiritual) call to prayer during this time of conflict, Ukrainian Metropolitan Onufriy called for a tangible ceasefire of what he termed a “fratricidal” war and requested the Ukrainian Army protect the Ukrainian land and people. Nonetheless, what is key here is that Peter the Great’s efforts to sanctify Russia’s political actions by making Kyiv part of the Moscow patriarchate seem to echo in modern times as the head of a religious institution has crossed the borders between the divine and the secular in an attempt to justify actions taken by the government. Peter the Great did so because Moscow was holy. And for the same reason, Patriarch Kirill spoke out.

A Shift from the Religious Standpoint

In December 2022, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church granted permission to its followers to celebrate Christmas on the Roman Catholic date – December 25th, rather than the Orthodox January 7th. An increasing number of Orthodox adherents have shifted their celebrations to December 25th as they seek to put distance between themselves and the ROC, even as Russia seeks to reduce the physical distance between itself and Ukraine. This demonstrates a conscious social divide of people shifting their recognition of ecclesiastic authority – and thereby, shifting their identities – in response to the attack on their territory and their ethnic identification, beliefs (i.e., Ukrainians are Slavic brothers and war against them is fratricide), and values.

Recommendations

Two questions were posed at the beginning of this article: from a religious perspective, how can one argue with the country destined to bring mankind back to God? And from a political perspective, how is it possible to reason with a country that believes its destiny is to dominate part of the world? The answer is to neither argue nor reason with the country, but rather limit its reach and the influence on the people it seeks to target. This necessitates identifying the means of influence and limiting or eliminating them entirely. Influence was not discussed within this article as the main subject. Nonetheless, it is a side effect of Russia’s teleological beliefs. Russia influences people in order to achieve its goals and fulfill its purpose; Russian Orthodox believers are affected by an influence that comes from the State and the Church. Therefore, it is this influence that must be combatted.

It is possible to counter Russia’s reach with soft power. To do this, though, it is important to realize the connections between religion, teleology, and the person. As a form of soft power, religion affects people directly and therefore can be understood as holding influence over them both directly – i.e., a minister delivering a sermon to a group of worshipers – and indirectly – i.e., a family experiencing feelings of sympathy for a suffering people and doubting their government’s actions upon watching a news story on Russian Orthodox believers. The result is a change in the teleological inclinations of the person. Rather than their personal telos, they experience a connection with Russia – and therefore gradually develop a need to dedicate themselves to it in some way and so foster the fulfillment of its destiny. Perhaps by moving to Russia in search of a better life, sharing with friends the “truth” about Russia that the government does not want us to know, or forming a lobby to broach dialogue with the government in the name of relations with Russia.

To counter the powerful connection between soft power and teleology, the informational sphere must be focused on. The Russian informational sphere is one of Russia’s strong manifestations of soft power, and in recognition of how the Russian Orthodox Church is a mouthpiece of the government in the informational sphere that is used to manipulate people and their loyalties, the following recommendations are geared towards this modern method of influence. Faith and purpose are timeless – they motivate people and drive countries. Countering them must be done on a wide-scale basis – but with an aim scaled down to the individual. Consequently, some suggestions for fighting back on the level of civilians and those prey to informational influences are:

1. Russian Orthodox rhetoric is potentially harmful as Russian Orthodoxy aligns with aspects of Western Christianity enough to form a sympathetic bond with the observer, who finds it sufficiently close to their teleological beliefs to be credible. To combat this, the US military should consider a proactive public education channel where articles and infographics can be produced and circulated on a weekly basis to the average citizen.
2. Varied electronic content should be produced that is related to the topics of this article and should be widely shared on the internet and the public education channel recommended in suggestion 1.
3.  A public-facing digital dashboard should be started, which US citizens can call to ask about the validity of rumors or internet claims they have encountered regarding Russian action across the Diplomatic, Informational, Military, and Economic (DIME) scale. This should be curated by the US military – ideally, a combination of military and civilian analysts utilizing the DIME instruments of national power.

As a political tool, Russian Orthodoxy is powerful because it is rooted in the values of the person. This means even non-believers may pay more attention to its messages and subconsciously absorb its teachings. This is why the Russian government’s utilization of the Church as a justification for its actions is so powerful. The government influences the Church, which impacts the individual, who then reacts as their values are invoked and their beliefs are challenged. Support and empathy for the Russian government’s causes can be built in this way and a voter base can be affected. Consequently, in answer to the question regarding how to reason with a country that believes its destiny is to dominate part of the world, some suggestions for counteracting Russia’s influence on individuals in the military are:

1. Weekly for your situational awareness(FYSA) bulletins may be written with updates on Russia’s activities across the DIME. Political comments or writings from prominent Russian Orthodox figures should be shared, elaborated on, and “debunked”.
2. In-person classes may be held once a quarter for officers and enlisted personnel, introducing and updating information on how Russia exercises informational influence against other countries and explicating various tools it has used in the past. The classes should develop an understanding of Russian Orthodoxy, Russian propaganda, and Russia as a nation and base their informational discussion on this.

Educational endeavors are key because they reach the person. It is the person who is targeted for their allegiance by Russia. The person is targeted for the same reason their religion is scrutinized – teleology. The person’s purpose can be many things. Governments may contribute to the formation of a person’s regard for their purpose – be it to live in the pursuit of happiness or spread worldwide revolution. Closer examination may even reveal the person’s “purpose” is supported by the government and aligns with its goals – and this cause for concern should be met proactively to staunch the problem before it begins.

Concluding Thoughts

War is war, regardless of the environment within which it is waged or the instruments used to conduct it. Russia’s civilizational war between Orthodox Christianity and the West on the whole should be treated exactly as this – a war. Even if this civilizational war tends to be more metaphysical than tangible, it is a war, nonetheless. It is a war that will claim the minds of people as Russia seeks to spread its influence, thereby expanding the Russian informational reach if it is allowed to continue without counteraction. The Russian Orthodox Church perpetuates this goal by disseminating Patriarch Kirill’s messages to its members – wherever they are located.

Military actions in Russia have roots that go beyond supporting strategic or political goals. In Russia, the military is the chosen instrument of national power used by a government that works to project its national power to the international sphere as it strives to maintain its position in world politics and pursue its destiny. To understand the Russian operational environment and the usage of its instruments of national power, a study of its cultural, historical, religious, and philosophical spheres is necessary. These areas shed light on why Russian authorities continue to be willing to sacrifice Russian manpower and why negotiations to conclude their actions in Ukraine are, and will continue to be, difficult. This article has endeavored to foster an understanding of the Russian operational environment and, in doing so, explained a motivating factor in Russia’s actions. Within the greater military conflict in Ukraine, another war between the Orthodox East and the Christian West is visible. This conflict stands on civilizational faults and, as carefully devised speeches flood the airways and propaganda fills people’s minds, leads the fight for the person’s destiny – one can be an individual fulfilling their own individual purpose or one can be a tool in a government’s plan to fulfill its goals in pursuit of what rests in the eternal.

Decisions made in the conflict in Ukraine must be placed in the context of Russian history, as well as Russia’s future ambitions, which are intrinsically connected. It cannot be assumed that the Russian government will remain content with sections of Ukraine. Furthermore, Russian-speaking populations exist in Moldova, Armenia, and the entire Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) region. Will these eventually fall prey to the Third Rome’s destiny? From the Russian perspective, actions are made for a greater purpose, more than merely political. Russia’s telos is to submit the world to itself. From this perspective, one life or a hundred lives is not significant. One year or ten years to take a region does not matter. This is what should be remembered while following the war in Ukraine. In this conflict, one may look at Russia’s actions as work as ensuring a world in line with Russian teleological thought. Within this scope, the war waged by the East has the potential to grow into something much bigger than anticipated, wherein whether one is liberal or conservative, Catholic or Protestant, university-educated or skills-trained does not matter. Ultimately, Russia utilizes its religious reach to sway the teleological understandings that people hold, thus spreading its dominion. Aided by such influence, the Third Rome’s goals can ultimately be achieved.

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Tags: Russia, Russia-Ukraine, Russia-Ukraine War, Russian Orthodox Church, Vladimir Putin

About The Author

• 
  
• Karolina Beshenich
• Karolina Beshenich is a doctoral candidate at the Department of Political Philosophy, Institute of Political Science and International Relations in Kraków, Poland. She holds a Master's degree in International Security and Development from Jagiellonian University, a Master's degree in Philosophy from the Pontifical University of John Paul II in Krakow, and a Bachelor's degree in International Relations and Russian Area Studies from Jagiellonian University. A Russian and Eastern European specialist, Ms. Beshenich has participated in numerous international projects and is a published author, with articles analyzing the Russian and Eastern European area, as well as issues connected to philosophy and ethics.

12. Move Fast, but Obey the Rules: China’s Vision for Dominating A.I.

Summary:

China wants to dominate AI, but also to control it. Xi Jinping calls AI an epoch-making revolution and warns it must not “spiral out of control.” The state pushes firms to sprint while following expanding rules that stress information control and data protection. Zhipu AI, seeking a Hong Kong Stock Exchange listing, warned compliance burdens are heavy and uncertain, including acting as a gatekeeper for “illegal” information. Access to Nvidia chips still matters, but regulation is another constraint versus OpenAI and Anthropic. Rules have shifted through drafts, lobbying, and new concerns like companion chatbots and autonomous driving after a fatal Xiaomi crash.

Comment: China, rules?

If Beijing demands both maximum speed and tighter control, where is the point at which compliance becomes a drag that undercuts the very innovation the Party says it needs?

If AI systems must police “illegal” information and shape user behavior, what happens to trust, reliability, and global competitiveness when political risk, not technical merit, becomes the decisive design constraint?

When China seeks to follow "rules" I do not think they mean the same rules that we think of with the rule of law. For China it is rule by law.

Move Fast, but Obey the Rules: China’s Vision for Dominating A.I.

NY Times · Xinyun Wu · February 2, 2026

Beijing wants to lead the world in developing cutting-edge artificial intelligence, but it also wants companies to adhere to an increasingly complex set of rules.

By Meaghan Tobin and Xinyun Wu

Reporting from Taipei, Taiwan

Feb. 2, 2026

Updated 2:30 a.m. ET

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/02/business/china-ai-regulations.html 

Executives at Zhipu AI, one of China’s most promising A.I. start-ups, alongside others, at a launch event at the Hong Kong Stock Exchange last month.

In late January, China’s leader, Xi Jinping, told a gathering of officials from across the country that China was on the cusp of an “epoch-making major technological revolution.”

Artificial intelligence, he said, is as transformative as the steam engine, electricity and the internet. But for all of its promise, China must not let the new technology “spiral out of control,” Mr. Xi warned during a study session for leaders of the Chinese Communist Party, according to state media. China must act early and decisively, anticipating and preventing problems with prudence and caution, he said.

Mr. Xi’s remarks highlight a tension shaping China’s tech industry. China’s leadership has decided that A.I. will drive the country’s economic growth in the next decade. At the same time, it cannot allow the new technology to disrupt the stability of Chinese society and the Communist Party’s hold over it.

The result is that the government is pushing Chinese A.I. companies to do two things at once: move fast so China can outpace international rivals and be at the forefront of the technological shift, while complying with an increasingly complex set of rules.

When Zhipu AI, one of China’s most promising A.I. start-ups, filed for a public listing in Hong Kong last month that valued the company at over $6 billion, it warned investors about the substantial burden of complying with half a dozen or more A.I.-related regulations. Similar to OpenAI, Zhipu develops A.I. models and applications that use them, such as the ChatGLM chatbot.

China is pushing its A.I. companies to move fast so it can outpace international rivals but also to comply with a complex set of rules.Credit...Tingshu Wang/Reuters

Among the specific compliance requirements, the rules forced Zhipu to act as a gatekeeper to prevent the spread of information that the Chinese government deemed illegal. Zhipu could not be assured that regulators would always find the company in compliance, which “may expose us to significant legal, financial and operational consequences,” it said in a filing.

The internet was once seen as an existential threat to the ruling Communist Party, but Beijing instead brought it to heel through a system of censorship and tight control over China’s largest internet companies. Artificial intelligence poses a similar dilemma: a transformative force that promises economic gains while having the potential to undermine the party’s grip on power.

Although the Trump administration has eased trade restrictions on certain powerful A.I. chips made by Nvidia, the dominant concern for China’s A.I. industry has been access to the semiconductors needed to power advanced systems.

But China’s regulatory guardrails add another layer of constraint and put Chinese firms like Alibaba, DeepSeek and Zhipu in the difficult position of sprinting to develop A.I. systems as powerful as their foreign rivals, like OpenAI and Anthropic, while keeping their products in line with more regulations than their global competitors do.

“What OpenAI and Alibaba are legally required to do in terms of predeployment testing is quite different,” said Scott Singer, a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

California’s new A.I. law, for example, requires companies to plan for the possibility that an A.I. system could exceed human control or cause a large number of deaths. China’s rules, by contrast, focus more heavily on information control and data protection, Mr. Singer said.

Since 2022, Chinese tech companies have been required to provide the government with details about the algorithms behind features such as endless video scrolling in apps like RedNote and the domestic version of TikTok, Douyin.

Jensen Huang, the chief executive of Nvidia. Despite eased U.S. limits on some Nvidia A.I. chips, China’s industry is focused on gaining access to the semiconductors that power advanced systems.Credit...Mikayla Whitmore for The New York Times

Companies need to tell the government about how their apps work and keep officials updated as the technology evolves. The greater the influence that regulators perceive an app to have on public opinion, the closer attention they pay to it.

But the government has sought to avoid limiting innovation or companies’ ability to experiment with new technologies, said Jiang Tianjiao, an associate professor at Fudan University.

“China does not want legislation and strict rules, especially hard law, to harm companies’ incentives to innovate,” Mr. Jiang said.

Some influential Chinese technology companies have also been successful at lobbying for changes in policies during the draft stages, said Alice Zhu, a partner at the law firm Fangda Partners in Hong Kong, who has represented Alibaba.

After ChatGPT set off a global craze for chatbots, Chinese officials quickly announced draft rules for A.I. systems capable of answering questions, carrying on conversations and creating pictures and videos.

These systems learn by ingesting large amounts of data, and early Chinese models, like those developed elsewhere, were trained on widely available open-source models such as Meta’s Llama. Those models include internet sources, like Reddit and Wikipedia, that contain information censored in China.

Initially, officials drafted a regulation that required all training data sources to comply with the government’s information controls and to reflect “core socialist values.” If it had been put in effect, such a rule would have set back Chinese tech companies by months in training new models without information from the wider internet.

China’s tight regulatory guardrails leave firms like DeepSeek racing to match the A.I. abilities of its global rivals like OpenAI and Anthropic.

When the final edict was released in July 2023, however, the requirements had changed. Companies were required to ensure that the information produced by their A.I. systems complied with China’s information controls only if that output was accessible to the general public.

“Chinese regulators think that A.I. technology will be transformative and that, therefore, the state should guide how it is transformative,” said Graham Webster, a professor focused on geopolitics and technology at Stanford.

But Chinese officials have to consider “whether their enforcement of laws and regulations could undermine entrepreneurship and business vitality,” he said.

In December, Beijing announced a new set of draft policies for A.I. services that provide “humanlike” interaction, such as the popular companion chatbot Xingye, made by the Chinese start-up Minimax.

These new rules seek to prevent people from becoming dependent on companion chatbots. Companies must not have “design goals of replacing social interaction,” the rules said.

This draft set of rules contained several provisions that analysts say could technically be difficult to comply with. As with the initial rules on generative A.I., China again stipulated that companies must ensure that chatbots are trained solely on government-approved information. The companies are also required to create emotional profiles of users, so they can intervene if they show signs of wanting to harm themselves.

One area in which regulators have recently shown greater caution is self-driving cars, a key application of artificial intelligence.

Xiaomi faces regulatory setbacks in China’s leading push for driverless cars after a fatal crash last March slowed approvals for autonomous driving systems.Credit...Andrea Verdelli for The New York Times

Building on Chinese companies’ success in producing electric vehicles, China has moved more aggressively in testing and deploying driverless cars than any other country. Chinese automakers had expected the government to approve certain types of autonomous driving systems last year and had started preparing to mass-produce vehicles with the necessary sensors and equipment.

But regulators slowed approvals for the technology after a crash last March killed three women, all university students, who were using Xiaomi’s “assisted-driving” mode.

Even as Chinese officials seek to balance the promise of artificial intelligence with an aversion to risk, the technology has become increasingly important to Beijing amid slowing economic growth.

Since the Chinese start-up DeepSeek released its popular A.I. model in late 2024, followed by a series of high-performing releases from Alibaba and Zhipu, local governments across the country have rushed to proclaim that they are using A.I. in all parts of their economy from hospital wards to factory floors.

“Because economic growth is so important to the party’s legitimacy, it wants to make sure that A.I. rules are not so burdensome that it stalls growth and scares away investment,” Mr. Singer of Carnegie said.

A correction was made on

Feb. 2, 2026

:

An earlier version of this article misstated the location where Alice Zhu works. It is Hong Kong, not Shanghai.

When we learn of a mistake, we acknowledge it with a correction. If you spot an error, please let us know at Learn more

Meaghan Tobin covers business and tech stories in Asia with a focus on China and is based in Taipei.

Xinyun Wu is a reporter and researcher covering technology and business in China and Taiwan and is based in Taipei, Taiwan.

NY Times · Xinyun Wu · February 2, 2026

13. Taiwan’s omission from Trump’s new defence strategy raises alarm in Taipei

Summary:

The article says Taipei is alarmed that the 2026 National Defense Strategy contains no direct mention of Taiwan, unlike the 2022 version. This comes amid continued People's Liberation Army sorties near the median line, which Taiwan’s defense ministry says it monitored and answered with aircraft, ships, and coastal missiles. Some analysts and opposition Kuomintang lawmakers argue the omission signals POTUS priorities and leaves Taipei bitter despite arms purchases. Democratic Progressive Party officials caution actions matter more than documents. The strategy still cites denial defense along the First Island Chain and prioritizes homeland defense and the Asia-Indo-Pacific.

Comment: If Taiwan is omitted while the First Island Chain is emphasized, should Taipei treat this as negotiating flexibility toward Xi Jinping or as an early signal of reduced political commitment that requires a faster shift in Taiwan’s own deterrence posture? Does CBMLS apply to Taiwan or just our treaty allies? "Critical but more limited support" was used 9 times in the NDS.

Taiwan’s omission from Trump’s new defence strategy raises alarm in Taipei

the-independent.com

Document asks allies to take primary responsibility for their own defence with ‘more limited support’ from American forces

Vishwam Sankaran

Sunday 01 February 2026 06:12 EST

https://www.the-independent.com/asia/east-asia/taiwan-trump-defence-strategy-document-beijing-b2911661.html

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The absence of any mention of Taiwan in Washington’s new defence strategy document has raised concerns in Taipei, at a time when Beijing continues to threaten the island with naval and air force sorties.

The 2026 National Defense Strategy has been described by analysts as a dramatic reordering of the Trump administration’s defence priorities, and where it sees its limitations.

And while the 2022 edition of the document mentioned Taiwan several times, with Beijing described as launching “increasingly provocative rhetoric and coercive actions” that “threatened stability” across the Taiwan Strait, there was not a single direct reference to Taiwan in the new version released last week.

Earlier editions made note of China’s overt threats to Taiwan – Chinese president Xi Jinping has vowed to “reunite” the self-governed island with the mainland by force, if necessary, and the US is bound by treaty to help arm Taipei to defend itself from attack.

One Sunday, Taiwan’s defence ministry said it detected a People’s Liberation Army (PLA) helicopter and six naval vessels on sorties that crossed the median line between the island and the mainland.

The defence ministry said it deployed aircraft, naval ships, and coastal-based missile systems in response. “We have monitored the situation and responded,” it said in a post on X.

Some experts said the omission of Taiwan from the NDS document was part of a wider strategy for the Trump administration to remain open for negotiations with Beijing.

Soldiers operate a Taiwan-made attack drone during an annual military exercise (REUTERS)

Trump is scheduled to meet the Chinese president in April, according to Dennis Weng, a Taiwanese political scientist.

“This document adopted a more restrained, pragmatic and even reconciliatory language for Beijing,” Dr Weng, founding director of the Asia Pacific Peace Research Institute (APPRI), said in a post on Facebook.

Taiwan’s main opposition party, Kuomintang (KMT), raised concerns over what message the omission sends before Trump’s planned meeting with Xi.

“Even though we have spent so much buying US arms, there is no mention of Taiwan’s security in this strategy. That shows where Trump’s priorities lie,” KMT legislator Lai Shyh-bao told SCMP.

“Taiwan has met what the US demanded, but cannot even get a single mention in return. That leaves people with a bitter feeling,” said Wang Hung-wei, another KMT lawmaker.

Missile boats take part in the spring military drills at the Tsoying Naval Base in Kaohsiung (AFP via Getty Images)

Officials from the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) cautioned against reading too much into the report, arguing that Americas’s “actions and institutions” meant more than any strategy document.

The document also appeared to suggest that the new US defence strategy would focus more on internal security.

“As US forces focus on Homeland defence and the Indo-Pacific, our allies and partners elsewhere will take primary responsibility for their own defence with critical, but more limited support, from American forces,” the document noted, indicating a reduction in US military presence in other parts of the world.

Taiwan's first domestically built defence submarine Narwhal (Taiwan Military News Agency/AFP)

The document does mention security in the Asia-Pacific region, even if it is short on details. The document says the US military will “erect a strong denial defence along the First Island Chain” – a string of islands that includes Taiwan, Japan, and the Philippines.

It adds that the US military presence in East Asia would continue “to ensure that neither China nor anyone else can dominate us and our allies”.

the-independent.com

14. Taiwan-US ‘firepower’ center to hone asymmetric warfare tactics

Summary:

The article reports a proposed US-Taiwan Joint Firepower Cooperation Center to practice asymmetric air and sea defense against a potential People’s Liberation Army attack, with some analysts pointing to 2027 as a benchmark for Chinese readiness. US support may include equipment and industrial cooperation, citing a Northrop Grumman ammunition test range in Taiwan and Anduril efforts to source components for its Ghost-X autonomous air vehicle. Taiwan would contribute elite troops; US personnel might support from Guam or elsewhere, though US Indo-Pacific Command pointed to reports saying no troop deployment to the center. Analysts argue Taiwan should focus on air denial, using surface-to-air missiles, drone swarms, and better ISR, early warning, and targeting. Both militaries are sparse on details.

Comment: This is the first report I have seen since the one in the Korean media. If the goal is air denial and integrated firepower, what is the single weakest link the center must fix first: ISR and early warning, targeting and coordination, or the survivability of air-defense and drone systems under sustained PLA strikes? (I think it is all of the above).

Taiwan-US ‘firepower’ center to hone asymmetric warfare tactics

Defense News · Military Times staff Feb 2, 2026, 06:51 AM

https://www.defensenews.com/global/asia-pacific/2026/02/02/taiwan-us-firepower-center-to-hone-asymmetric-warfare-tactics/

HONG KONG — The United States and Taiwan are expected to roll out their latest hardware and use elite Taiwanese troops under a joint project to prepare for asymmetric warfare in case the island government’s long-time political rival China attacks, according to military experts.

That effort, the Joint Firepower Cooperation Center, as first reported by Taiwan’s United Daily News late last month, would help coordinate a Taiwanese defense against the People’s Liberation Army forces ahead of 2027, when some American think tanks believe China will have sufficient attack capability.

The United States would likely offer military equipment made by some of its major contractors to the Joint Firepower Cooperation Center, the latest preparedness measure as Beijing steps up military pressure, according to Taiwanese media reports and analysts in Taipei.

Northrop Grumman, for example, has already installed a medium-caliber ammunition test range in Taiwan, letting the island’s defense ministry run tests on “global industry standards” and allowing transfers of technology to support home-grown hardware, the de facto U.S. embassy, the American Institute in Taiwan, wrote on its website on Jan. 22.

Fellow American contractor Anduril has also set up an “initiative” to find local suppliers for key components for its Ghost-X autonomous air vehicle, the website says.

Deliveries from previously agreed U.S. arms sales from Taiwan could be added to the cooperation effort as those deals lead to deliveries, said Huang Chung-ting, assistant research fellow with the Institute for National Defense and Security Research in Taipei.

Taiwan, for its part, would contribute “elite troops,” and Washington might assign personnel in Guam or elsewhere in the Indo-Pacific region to help as “they understand Taiwan’s military status,” Huang said.

The big idea is to help Taiwan practice asymmetric air and sea warfare, the strategy where a numerically weaker force fights off a stronger one through unconventional means, analysts say. China’s military is significantly larger than Taiwan’s.

“In the event of a kinetic conflict with China, Taiwan has no chance of succeeding at a traditional strategy of air superiority,” said Bethany Allen, head of China investigations with the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.

“But as we’ve seen in Ukraine, a militarily weaker actor can successfully defend against an invasion through air denial,” Allen said. “In Taiwan’s case, a strategy of air denial could be especially effective, since Taiwan is an island and no invasion by land route can occur. To that end, surface to air missiles, drone swarms, and other anti-aircraft weapons could be very effective.”

Taiwan, though it has missiles and batteries, lacks certain military intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance “capacity,” said Alexander Huang, strategic studies professor at Taiwan’s Tamkang University. The military could particularly use improvements in interceptions and early warnings, he added.

“I think a joint collaboration would provide Taiwan with better targeting and better signaling,” the professor said.

China, about 100 miles away from Taiwan at its closest point, sees the self-ruled island as part of its territory and has not ruled out military force if other unification efforts fail. Since August 2022 it has flown military aircraft near the island almost daily and carried out seven large-scale drills at sea.

“We’d need to avoid letting the PLA’s units challenge Taiwanese airspace, it would be that kind of goal,” Huang Chung-ting said. If the firepower cooperation effort worked out, he said, “coordination between weapons and personnel would be all the better”.

Neither side’s military has elaborated.

The U.S. Indo-Pacific Command in Hawaii declined to comment in late January but pointed to online news reports indicating that the United States would not deploy troops to the joint firepower center.

A media liaison with Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense said last week it was “inconvenient to disclose details” about the cooperation center but that it had already “systemized” and “deepened” cooperation with the U.S. military to strengthen its capabilities.

Since 1950, the United States has sold Taiwan nearly $50 billion in defense “equipment and services”, the Council on Foreign Relations think tank says in a 2024 study. The U.S. government had troops in Taiwan until 1979, the year it switched diplomatic recognition to Beijing, but Washington still considers the island a quiet security partner in view of China’s growing strength.

Beijing has indicated that it’s unfazed.

Taiwanese weapons, even if “coordinated” under the firepower cooperation center, “are not that advanced” and “no match for the Chinese People’s Liberation Army”, the Beijing-based Global Times said Jan. 26, quoting a Chinese military expert.

15. DOD ordered to study mental health impacts among military drone pilots

Summary:

Congress directed the Pentagon to study mental health impacts on combat drone, imagery, and targeting personnel, with a report due to the House and Senate Armed Services Committees by December. The mandate requires assessing prevalence of PTSD, depression, anxiety, burnout, moral injury, and other conditions, then comparing rates to conventional combat aircrew and non-combat flying roles. The article notes research suggesting remotely piloted aircraft crews show greater psychiatric symptoms than crewed-aircraft crews. A cited stressor is prolonged surveillance that creates “intimacy” with targets before lethal orders, plus “psychological whiplash” from striking remotely and then returning to normal life. The study must evaluate stressors like shift work, remote witnessing, isolation, and civilian-casualty exposure, and review adequacy of tailored mental health support.

Comment: Perhaps we can get ahead of this issue (for once). If remote warfare can deepen moral injury through intimacy with targets and repeated exposure to lethal imagery, how should the services redesign readiness metrics and support systems so psychological risk is treated as an operational variable, not a personal weakness?

DOD ordered to study mental health impacts among military drone pilots

militarytimes.com · Hope Hodge Seck Friday, Jan 30, 2026

https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2026/01/30/dod-ordered-to-study-mental-health-impacts-among-military-drone-pilots/

Tucked inside the more than 3,000 pages of the recently passed defense budget for Fiscal Year 2026 is a mandate that the secretary of defense carry out a study focused on the mental health impacts of piloting unmanned aircraft systems in combat.

The rise of military drone pilots as a profession has brought with it a fair share of jeers and suspicion. In 2013, when the Pentagon rolled out a “Distinguished Warfare Medal” to honor drone operators, troops dubbed it the “Nintendo Medal.”

It was canceled soon after and replaced with an “R” device — for “remote warfare” — in 2016. But research shows that the impacts of combat trauma on drone operators are real, and could be even more profound than those on pilots of manned aircraft.

A 2023 literature review published in the Journal of Mental Health & Clinical Psychology found that crews of remotely piloted aircraft “exhibit greater psychiatric symptoms, in general, as compared to crews that work with crewed military aircraft.”

Seth Norrholm, an associate professor of Psychiatry at Wayne State University in Michigan and the lead author on the study, told Military Times that, perhaps counterintuitively, remote warfare requires a level of intimacy with a prospective strike target that conventional air warfare may not.

“A lot of these pilots and crews are tracking targets for a period of weeks, months and sometimes years. They get to know the daily lives of the people that they’re tracking,” Norrholm said. “They may be playing soccer, football, you know, outside, eating meals together. So, you really see this person’s life. And you get to know this person from afar, and then potentially you’re given the order to take them out, you know, the next day. So there’s unique intimacy that can develop between the targets and the RPA crews, because they really have gotten to know this person at a really personal level, even though they’ve never met.“

Then there’s the potentially jarring juxtaposition of conducting strikes with lethal effects from a U.S.-based operations center and being able to re-enter the comforts of everyday American life following a work shift.

Norrholm noted that the services have made changes to create clearer lines between combat operations and home life, to prevent what has been called “psychological whiplash.”

“The long-term effects of these types of ‘whiplash’ are still being investigated and not yet well understood,” the paper notes.

According to the language in the recently enacted National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal 2026, the Pentagon study must include an “assessment of the prevalence of post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, anxiety, burnout, moral injury and other mental health conditions” among not only the pilots who fly combat drones but also those who analyze combat imagery or conduct targeting assessments.

These rates will be compared against those of aircrew who engage in conventional combat flight operations and troops deployed in non-combat flying roles.

It also must evaluate unique operational stressors for RPA pilots, including “shift work and sleep disruption; remote witnessing of lethal operations; emotional disengagement and isolation; and exposure to civilian casualties or traumatic visual content.”

Included in the study will also be an assessment of available mental health support services and an evaluation if those services are “adequate, accessible, and appropriately tailored” for RPA pilots, along with recommendations for improving screenings, treatment and prevention.

The report will be due to the House and Senate Armed Services Committees no later than this December.

It’s not the first time Congress is expressing concern over the wellbeing of military drone pilots. In 2023, lawmakers called on the Air Force to work with U.S. Special Operations Command to adopt a program that would support RPA pilots’ holistic wellbeing.

As far back as 2014, an Air Force study of 1,000 drone pilots documented the prevalence of post-traumatic stress disorder in the community.

For Norrholm, the new study mandate is significant because the data it produces will drive resource allocation and development of policy.

“The military tends to work slowly in terms of affecting change,” he said. “But if there’s data out there that suggests that you can improve operator readiness by taking some of these steps, you know, they’re receptive to it.”

While the rise of increasingly capable autonomous platforms is once again recasting the role of human operators in combat, Norrholm said the presence of a human in the loop means the question of psychological impacts and how to treat them will remain relevant.

“It’s not going to be a reliance on technology alone. It’s not going to be an AI-driven decision to carry out these missions, or at least it shouldn’t be,” he said.

“Anytime there’s a human element, there’s always the possibility for psychological consequences, which affects operational readiness and national security,” he added. “So, as long as humans are engaged in warfare, whether it’s conventional or remote warfare, there’s always the potential for psychological consequences. ... That needs to be addressed, and will continue to need to be addressed.”

16. Xi the Destroyer: The Latest Military Purge Signals China’s Leader Is Entering a New Era

​Summary:

The authors argue the January 24 purge of Zhang Youxia, China’s top general and long-time Xi ally, signals a sharper, more ruthless phase in Xi’s rule and deep distrust of the PLA. They treat corruption claims as likely pretext, noting endemic graft and Zhang’s past control of procurement. Removing him now, rather than letting him retire ahead of the next party congress, is framed as a deliberate public “flex” that shows no one is safe. The purge caps a decade-long effort to politicize the PLA and build warfighting capacity, leaving the Central Military Commission hollowed out and giving Xi a blank slate to repopulate or restructure it, potentially adding civilians to tighten party control. The authors argue Xi feels externally comfortable enough, including across the Taiwan Strait, to take this risk now, while still preparing for conflict.

Excerpts:

Xi’s willingness to strip the high command down to its studs and renovate it at this moment is also a signal that he is relatively comfortable with China’s external environment—especially the cross-strait dynamic. The Trump administration does not seem to be especially ready to defend Taiwan: U.S. President Donald Trump said “it’s up to Xi” what China does regarding Taiwan, and the National Defense Strategy released by his administration last month omitted any mention of Taiwan. Meanwhile, the political dynamic in Taiwan seems to be shifting in Beijing’s favor ahead of the island’s next national election in 2028. Support for Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te and his Democratic Progressive Party, which takes a harder line against Beijing, has declined since its failed effort last summer to recall legislators in the opposition party, the Kuomintang, and a new leadership in the Kuomintang is calling for more reconciliation with Beijing.

But cutting this deeply into his own network to excise the rot in the PLA does not indicate that Xi is distracted from the possibility of military conflict over Taiwan. Instead, it shows just how serious he is about ensuring that the military is ready for such an unwelcome eventuality. He is taking advantage of the cross-strait calm to prepare. And as the PLA’s major military drills around Taiwan in December demonstrated, China can already respond to provocations and even inflict punishment on the island short of an invasion. It has built a significant lethal force that could respond in a variety of ways if called on.

Who, exactly, will field the call, should Xi make it, is a mystery for now. But whenever he names a civilian to the CMC, that person will be seen as the de facto front-runner to succeed Xi as China’s next leader, thus injecting a new character into this swirling drama. It is worth remembering that Xi began his anticorruption campaign around 2012 after the downfall of Bo Xilai, who had been his rival to succeed Hu Jintao. In its lurid details, that case evoked an airport novel: Bo’s wife had murdered a British businessman who had been a fixer for the family. Although we do not yet know what operatic feuds or basic miscalculations led to Zhang’s demise, his ouster is a reminder about the folly of applying algebraic logic to the dramatis personae of China’s political hierarchy. There are likely to be many more acts in this unfolding play. The real question for Xi is whether he can author the denouement that so far seems to have eluded him: a military that lives up to his unforgiving standards of party loyalty and operational proficiency.

Xi the Destroyer

Foreign Affairs · More by Jonathan A. Czin · February 2, 2026

Jonathan A. Czin and John Culver

The Latest Military Purge Signals China’s Leader Is Entering a New Era

February 2, 2026

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/china/xi-destroyer

Chinese President Xi Jinping at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, December 2025 Sarah Meyssonnier / Reuters

JONATHAN A. CZIN is Michael H. Armacost Chair in Foreign Policy Studies and a Fellow in the John L. Thornton China Center at the Brookings Institution. He was Director for China at the National Security Council from 2021 to 2023 and a member of the Senior Analytic Service at the CIA.

JOHN CULVER is a Nonresident Senior Fellow in the John L. Thornton China Center at the Brookings Institution. He served for 35 years as a CIA officer, including as National Intelligence Officer for East Asia from 2015 to 2018.

• More by John Culver

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The January 24 purge of Zhang Youxia, China’s top general, was a Shakespearean moment in Chinese politics. Even after a decade of high drama in the People’s Liberation Army, the decision by Chinese leader Xi Jinping to remove Zhang from the PLA’s top governing body, the Central Military Commission (CMC), suggests a new level of intrigue. Xi and Zhang have known each other for decades: Xi’s father and Zhang’s father were comrades-in-arms during China’s ferocious civil war, and Zhang was widely seen as Xi’s closest ally in the army’s high command. As recently as 2022, after a flurry of purges of other senior leaders, Xi not only allowed Zhang to stay in office past the unofficial retirement age but also promoted him to the top position for a military officer. A relationship that long and deep is valuable in any setting, but especially in the vicious, low-trust world of Chinese politics.

Zhang’s dismissal is thus the ultimate illustration of just how little trust Xi has in the PLA. As we argued in our August 2025 essay on Xi’s efforts to remake the military, “Xi wants to ensure he can employ violence with confidence, but Xi’s confidence seems to be the rarest and most precious commodity for an otherwise well-resourced military.” But Zhang’s unceremonious dismissal also illustrates the depths of Xi’s ruthlessness in managing the PLA. It is one thing for a leader to show no mercy to his enemies; it is quite another for him to be so pitiless with his friends.

There is a lot of speculation about what Zhang did—or didn’t do—to provoke Xi’s ire as well as what the purge means for the Chinese leader’s grasp on power and his military objectives vis-à-vis Taiwan and the United States. While those elements of the saga may reveal themselves in time, what is clear now is Xi’s belief that power exists in its exercise. In making a public spectacle of pushing Zhang aside, Xi has laid bare a defining feature of his political style. No one is safe—not even those with deep personal connections to Xi. As PLA Daily, the military’s official periodical, stated the day after Zhang’s ouster, Xi’s campaign has “no off-limit zones.” Even by the standards of Xi’s unsparing rule, this is a seismic shift in Chinese politics.

TIMING IS EVERYTHING

The outstanding question for many observers is why Xi made this move against Zhang now. In its official account, PLA Daily declared that Zhang was removed for fueling “political and corruption problems that threaten the party’s absolute leadership over the armed forces and undermine the party’s governance foundation,” and his actions “caused immense damage to the construction of combat capabilities.” Given that corruption in the PLA is endemic, these claims are rightly seen by many outside observers as a pretext for removing Zhang rather than the true cause. This is especially true since Zhang previously ran the Equipment Development Department (formerly the General Armaments Department), which is responsible for procuring military supplies and is riddled with graft; as we highlighted in August, it was remarkable—and a sign of Xi’s faith in him—that Zhang had not been purged since several previous leaders of the department had already fallen.

The timing of the removal becomes more interesting when you consider that Xi could have easily waited until next year to let Zhang retire peacefully. After all, Zhang, who is 75 years old, is already past the unofficial retirement age of 68, and the next Chinese Communist Party Congress—which ushers in a new cohort of Chinese officials every five years—is only around 18 months away. Removing Zhang now thus looks and feels very similar to the political flex that Xi made at the last party congress in 2022, when he had his predecessor, Hu Jintao, publicly and forcibly escorted from the proceedings while Xi looked on impassively. Xi’s eviction of Hu—as well as his decision to force the rump remnants of Hu’s faction into an early retirement—seemed gratuitous at the time; Xi had already effectively marginalized Hu’s power base by either usurping his supporters’ authority or relegating them to inconsequential positions, and centralizing power in his own hands. But in the end, Xi’s moves signaled his desire for complete dominance of Chinese politics—and his ability to populate the uppermost echelons of the party with men he had known for decades, including Zhang.

Zhang at the Western Pacific Naval Symposium, Qingdao, China, April 2024 Florence Lo / Reuters

The other intriguing element of the official rationale for Zhang’s removal was that it was not just for corruption but also for “political” problems that could affect the party’s control over the military. Some have read this to mean that Zhang intentionally flouted or challenged Xi’s rule. Although this is a possibility, it is unlikely given their long-standing relationship. Moreover, if Zhang posed a political challenge to Xi, Zhang probably would have been the first to go down in the most recent anticorruption push, which got underway in 2023, rather than the last.

Given the paranoid streak in Chinese politics, it is always possible that Xi may have merely suspected that Zhang posed some kind of challenge to his power. If that is the case, it raises questions about whether Xi is succumbing to the pervasive and damaging suspicion that afflicts so many other dictators. But Xi has a long and well-documented history of hardhearted rationality. He does not generally act without reason. It is more likely that Zhang simply outlived his usefulness to Xi. Having relied on Zhang to consolidate his own power in the PLA and eliminated most of Zhang’s generational cohort, Xi may have calculated that it no longer made sense to keep an aging and corrupt officer in the top job.

THE GRAND FINALE

In this way, Zhang’s purge should be seen as the climax in a longer drama. The ouster, after all, did not occur in a vacuum. For more than a decade, Xi has endeavored to puncture the military’s insularity, assert his control, and bend the organization to his will. Zhang’s removal seems to be the culmination of Xi’s campaign not just to extirpate corruption from the PLA high command but also cull nearly an entire generation of senior officers from service. Xi seems to have concluded that virtually none of the military leaders in the current leadership generation were up to the twin tasks he had set for them: ensuring that the military is thoroughly politicized and thus willing to fulfill its role as the ultimate guarantor of party rule should it be challenged by internal unrest; and building a military that can fight foreign adversaries if he needs it to, including the U.S. military.

The result is that of the seven members who were on the CMC at the start of Xi’s third term in 2023, only one uniformed member and one civilian (Xi) are left standing. Tellingly, the lone military survivor is the officer responsible for overseeing corruption investigations; he was promoted to vice chairman last fall amid a different wave of military purges. The virtually wholesale removal of the commission’s leadership now affords Xi a blank slate. Ahead of next year’s party congress, he can both repopulate and even restructure the commission, choosing not only who will serve but also which parts of the military are represented.

Xi has already done this kind of overhaul once: a decade ago, he renovated and streamlined the high command, in part by kicking the service chiefs off the CMC. Xi could make additional tweaks this time around, or he may have concluded that the effort to reform the PLA has failed and that the PLA cannot reform itself. Given the dearth of senior officers left, he has fewer options for replenishing the top ranks. He may instead install more civilians on the commission—traditionally, a second civilian is installed only when he becomes the heir apparent—which would help cement party control of the military.

Xi’s desire to revamp the PLA goes far beyond corruption or effectiveness. Just months after Xi joined the CMC as a vice chairman in the fall of 2010, the Arab Spring unfolded, and he watched several authoritarian regimes collapse because their security services put their own interests above the ruling party’s. Breaking the military’s capacity to resist the party’s commands, especially in a crisis, is of utmost importance to Xi—even more so than ensuring combat readiness. His driving concerns about party control of the military are not just operational; they are existential.

EYES ON THE PRIZE

Xi’s willingness to strip the high command down to its studs and renovate it at this moment is also a signal that he is relatively comfortable with China’s external environment—especially the cross-strait dynamic. The Trump administration does not seem to be especially ready to defend Taiwan: U.S. President Donald Trump said “it’s up to Xi” what China does regarding Taiwan, and the National Defense Strategy released by his administration last month omitted any mention of Taiwan. Meanwhile, the political dynamic in Taiwan seems to be shifting in Beijing’s favor ahead of the island’s next national election in 2028. Support for Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te and his Democratic Progressive Party, which takes a harder line against Beijing, has declined since its failed effort last summer to recall legislators in the opposition party, the Kuomintang, and a new leadership in the Kuomintang is calling for more reconciliation with Beijing.

But cutting this deeply into his own network to excise the rot in the PLA does not indicate that Xi is distracted from the possibility of military conflict over Taiwan. Instead, it shows just how serious he is about ensuring that the military is ready for such an unwelcome eventuality. He is taking advantage of the cross-strait calm to prepare. And as the PLA’s major military drills around Taiwan in December demonstrated, China can already respond to provocations and even inflict punishment on the island short of an invasion. It has built a significant lethal force that could respond in a variety of ways if called on.

Who, exactly, will field the call, should Xi make it, is a mystery for now. But whenever he names a civilian to the CMC, that person will be seen as the de facto front-runner to succeed Xi as China’s next leader, thus injecting a new character into this swirling drama. It is worth remembering that Xi began his anticorruption campaign around 2012 after the downfall of Bo Xilai, who had been his rival to succeed Hu Jintao. In its lurid details, that case evoked an airport novel: Bo’s wife had murdered a British businessman who had been a fixer for the family. Although we do not yet know what operatic feuds or basic miscalculations led to Zhang’s demise, his ouster is a reminder about the folly of applying algebraic logic to the dramatis personae of China’s political hierarchy. There are likely to be many more acts in this unfolding play. The real question for Xi is whether he can author the denouement that so far seems to have eluded him: a military that lives up to his unforgiving standards of party loyalty and operational proficiency.

Foreign Affairs · More by Jonathan A. Czin · February 2, 2026

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

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Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

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