Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners

Quotes of the day:

“A critic is a man who creates nothing and thereby feels qualified to judge the work of creative men. There is a logic in this; he is unbiased – he hates all creative people equally.”

– Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough for Love

"There are three things against which the human spirit struggles in vain: stupidity, bureaucracy, and catchwords."

– Hans von Seeckt

“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read.”

– James Baldwin

1. The Fortress That China Built for Its Battle with America

2. The End of Extended Deterrence in Asia?

3. How China co-opted the green movement

4. Killing of Embassy Staffers Stokes Israeli Fears of Increasingly Hostile World

5. Washington Deserved a Downgrade

6. Call the Trump Doctrine Mater-Realism

7. Why China’s Fighter Jets Should Worry the US and Taiwan

8. Sig Sauer's XM7 Rifle Gets Army's Seal Of Approval Despite Controversy

9. Pentagon accepts Qatari jet for Air Force One

10. Cots, MREs, Per Diem: Army Offers New Details for Soldiers Sent to Massive D.C. Military Parade

11. A Playbook for Industrial Policy: What Washington Can Learn From CHIPS

12. Maritime Domain Awareness or Silent War?

13. Autonomous Weapon Systems: No Human-in-the-Loop Required, and Other Myths Dispelled

14. The Map and the Territory: ISIS’s Hedgehog Leadership

15. India’s Wake-Up Call: Why US Defense Reform Must Match the Speed of Modern War

16. Coast Guard suspects Kinmen raft intrusions timed with Lai's 1st anniversary

17. Forget China's navy, Chinese small boats landings on Taiwan are a new source of concern

18. The Value of an Asian Tinder Box

1. The Fortress That China Built for Its Battle with America

For defense against what or offense against who? Do they really expect an American attack or are they building for an attack on Taiwan while developing military capabilities to support its activities around the world (while preparing for an American attack in response)?

My assessment remains that China seeks to export its authoritarian political system around the world in order to dominate regions directly and/or indirectly through proxies, co-opt or coerce international organizations, create economic conditions favorable to China alone, while displacing democratic institutions through subversion. It takes a long term approach, employing unrestricted warfare and its three warfares to set conditions and achieve objectives, with the main objective being the unification of China (i.e., the recovery of Taiwan)

China certainly seems to be taking a whole of society approach to its military modernization and global activities.

Graphics at the link.

The Fortress That China Built for Its Battle with America

Beijing is racing ahead in advanced technology, including in robots, satellites and AI—and in some cases is catching up with the U.S.

https://www.wsj.com/world/china/china-us-technology-economy-advancements-bb8d7439?st=747vsa&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

By Brian Spegele

May 21, 2025 9:00 pm ET

The storm clouds for China were gathering when leader Xi Jinping convened the country’s top scientists at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing in May 2018. The U.S. was beginning to clamp down on selling technology to China, with more restrictions on the way.

China must not be forced to beg others for technology, Xi said. Only through self-reliance “can we fundamentally safeguard national economic security,” he said.

Since then, China has raced ahead in many strategic sectors—and in some cases is catching up with the U.S. Its electric-car companies are among the world’s best. Chinese AI startups rival OpenAI and Google. The country’s biologists are pushing the boundaries of pharmaceutical research, and its factories are being filled with advanced robotics.

At sea, Chinese-made cargo vessels dominate global shipping. In space, the country has been launching hundreds of satellites to monitor every corner of the Earth. Beyond frontier technology, Beijing is pursuing greater self-reliance in food and energy, and has bulked up its military.

These successes and many others are helping to fortify China and its economy as Xi prepares the nation for an era of sustained hostilities with the U.S., including the continuing trade war. The two sides are entering complex negotiations, with many of the latest tariffs temporarily suspended.

The advances are making China less dependent on the rest of the world for goods and services. Imports overall fell to less than 18% of gross domestic product in 2023 compared with about 22% a decade earlier.

Yet China is unlikely to ever be fully self-reliant, having imported more than $2.5 trillion worth of goods last year, including $164 billion from the U.S. The sheer size of its population means that in some areas, total self-sufficiency is virtually impossible.

Xi says China’s system of socialism and state planning is well-suited to winning the race for technologies of the future, allowing the state to concentrate resources where needed. His effort could also backfire, with massive waste from the self-reliance campaign exacerbating China’s mountain of debt, and threatening to hold back its economy over the long run.

Money talks

China’s efforts to become more self-sufficient were well under way before Trump first took the White House. In 2015, a policy dubbed “Made in China 2025” identified 10 sectors as national priorities, including robotics, aerospace and new-energy vehicles.

Xi took on a more nationalistic tone after Trump launched a trade war against China in 2018. Calls for “self-reliance” became more prominent, especially after the pandemic struck, leading China to largely close its borders. Chinese officials gained confidence that their economy could survive reduced contact with the outside world when it grew 2.2% in 2020, the only major economy to expand that year.

China’s resolve strengthened in the Biden years, as Washington sought to work with European allies to choke off China’s access to advanced technologies such as semiconductors. “Western countries, led by the U.S., have implemented all-around containment, encirclement and suppression against us,” Xi said in 2023. He warned China to prepare for “extreme scenarios,” a thinly-veiled reference to the risk of conflict with the U.S.

Much of China’s success stems from its ability to direct enormous sums of money to prized sectors.

Last year, China invested $500 billion on research and development, triple from when Xi took office in 2012. China spends nearly as much on R&D as the U.S., adjusting for purchasing power parity, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Investment in AI is a major focus. One study last year found that Chinese government venture-capital funds invested nearly $200 billion across 9,600 AI firms between 2000 and 2023.

Local government investment arms have helped the push, backing companies such as Zhipu AI—one of the Chinese AI firms rivaling U.S. companies. The AI startups are also taking in capital from private venture funds and Chinese companies such as Alibaba and Tencent.

China’s technology push is boosting its manufacturing prowess. Chinese companies have been buying as many industrial robots as the rest of the world combined, enabling some factory owners to experiment with highly automated plants that can operate in the dark. For much of the past decade, three-quarters of the robots installed in China came from foreign manufacturers, such as in Japan or Germany. By 2023, Chinese robot makers captured nearly half of the local market, according to the International Federation of Robotics.

In the more intricate field of humanoid robotics, Chinese companies such as Shenzhen-based UBTech are competing with U.S. firms such as Elon Musk’s Tesla. In electric-vehicle factories, humanoid robots are being trained to work together to sort auto parts or lift heavy-duty containers and place them onto shelves.

Commuters at a subway station in Beijing last year. Photo: Na Bien/Bloomberg News

BYD cars lined up for export at a port in Yantai. Photo: Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

UBTech says that 90% of its more than 3,000 suppliers in recent years were based in China—a sign of how much China can rely on its own growing ecosystem of suppliers. The company is also incorporating technology from Chinese artificial-intelligence pioneer DeepSeek to help the robots make better decisions.

The self-sufficiency drive extends to highly sensitive areas such as nuclear power. At the Sanmen nuclear power plant, 150 miles south of Shanghai, the first two reactors put under construction in 2009 came from Pennsylvania-based Westinghouse, with key components shipped from the U.S. and American engineers on-site to help get the project online.

The next two reactors were also based on Westinghouse’s technology. Now, a new pair will be totally Chinese. Known as Hualong One, China’s homegrown reactor model allows Beijing to better control costs and construction timelines, while eliminating the danger that the U.S. could one day refuse to sell China more reactors.

Efficient government coordination, readily available financing from state banks and a highly-developed nuclear supply chain means China has already managed to build some Hualong One reactors in about five or six years. The latest Westinghouse reactors in the U.S. took more than a decade to complete, at far higher costs.

In many emerging sectors, China seeks to go beyond government subsidies and other financial support, pushing companies to compete with each other to boost efficiency and innovation.

Two of China’s leading battery makers, Contemporary Amperex Technology and BYD, have disclosed several billion dollars in subsidies between them over the past three years. At the same time, they say they have spent more than $20 billion combined on R&D.

Within weeks of one another recently, CATL and BYD each announced that they had developed new fast-charging systems that could bring down charging times for EVs to just five minutes.

The production line at a semiconductor manufacturer in Binzhou. Photo: Cfoto/Zuma Press

In space development, a key focus for Beijing has been improving Chinese satellites that capture images and other data for civilian industries such as construction, as well as for defense purposes. Last year, when a group of U.S. think tanks ranked the world’s best such commercial satellite systems, Chinese firms won five out of 11 gold medals. The U.S. had four.

One winner, Chang Guang Satellite Technology, was launched in 2014 with $30 million in intellectual property from a research institute under the state-run Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Today, the firm is well on its way to building the world’s largest constellation of commercial remote-sensing satellites. With 117 satellites already in orbit, the company says it can observe any point on Earth up to 40 times a day. Some Chinese users claim to have used the network to scope out the U.S.’s latest stealth bomber at an air base in the Mojave Desert.

In its push for self-sufficiency, China now has roughly two-thirds of global corn reserves, despite only having about 17% of the world’s population, and has built massive stockpiles of oil and metals. It is slowly expanding the use of its yuan currency in foreign trade and developing alternatives to Western financial payment systems. The Defense Department estimates that China has tripled its nuclear warhead stockpile to more than 600 in recent years.

Projecting power

China’s leaders present the self-reliance drive as something like insurance that must be paid to guard against foreign aggression. And it does confer advantages.

Last year, Chinese shipyards delivered 53% of global tonnage, according to shipping-information provider Clarksons Research, compared with 8% in 2002. Those gains reflected decades of state support, including cut-rate prices for land to build shipyards, favorable loans and subsidized steel. The U.S. made up just 0.1% of global commercial tonnage last year.

China’s shipbuilding prowess has helped it to build the world’s largest navy, with more than 370 ships and submarines today.

A state reserve grain depot for wheat, corn and rice in Hangzhou. Photo: Cfoto/Zuma Press

Large ships under construction in a shipyard in Shanghai. Photo: Cfoto/Zuma Press

Meanwhile, Huawei and other Chinese firms have made progress in reducing one of China’s biggest vulnerabilities: its lack of advanced semiconductors.

Washington in recent years has used export controls to try to choke off China’s access to the most sophisticated chips, such as Nvidia’s best-performing products—galvanizing China to build up its domestic production.

In 2023, Huawei grabbed U.S. attention when it released a high-end smartphone powered by an advanced processor that industry analysts say was locally produced in China. More recently, it has been gearing up to test a new chip it hopes will be more powerful than Nvidia’s H100 chip, released in 2022.

As China’s chips improve, Morgan Stanley projects the country’s self-sufficiency rate in graphics processing units—essential in creating AI systems—will jump to 82% by 2027 from 11% in 2021.

For all of China’s technological progress, it still faces enormous economic challenges, with sluggish growth and mounting fears domestically that standards of living might not catch up to those in the U.S.

One explanation, economists say, is that structural issues such as high debt levels and tanking real-estate prices are overriding gains from technology improvements.

Another possibility is that China’s state-led model is a big part of the problem. Financial waste and fraud have plagued the government’s spending on self-reliance. This month, the former chairman of a government-supported chip conglomerate was handed a de facto life sentence for alleged crimes including illegally acquiring $65 million of state assets.

In electric cars, 500 companies initially raced into the market to tap easy money from local governments. Most have since flopped, and many that remain are unprofitable.

The inefficient allocation of money has contributed to slowing productivity growth. Absent reforms, China may be able to sustain GDP growth of just 2.8% on average from 2031-2040, according to economists at the International Monetary Fund, compared with an average of around 6% over the past decade.

“In every country, even a country as vast as China, resources are limited,” said Carnegie Mellon economist Lee Branstetter. “If they’re used inefficiently, this will hold back living standards in the long run.”

The End of Extended Deterrence in Asia?

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/china/end-extended-deterrence-asia?utm

Foreign Affairs · by More by David Santoro · May 22, 2025

China Is Chipping Away at America’s Security Guarantees to Its Allies

David Santoro

May 22, 2025

A Chinese vessel blocking a Philippine ship in the South China Sea, March 2024 Adrian Portugal / Reuters

DAVID SANTORO is President and CEO of the Pacific Forum.

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For more than five years, Chinese vessels operating in the South China Sea have repeatedly collided with Philippine ships, sometimes dousing them with water cannons and injuring personnel. In response, the United States deployed a Typhon intermediate-range missile system to the island country last year. It was the first time since the end of the Cold War that the United States had supplied an ally with a weapon of such magnitude—and it kicked off a diplomatic storm. China’s foreign ministry argued that the installation “disrupts regional peace and stability, undermines other countries’ legitimate security interest, and contravenes people’s aspiration for peace and development.” China, the ministry continued, would “not sit idly by” if the Philippines refused to remove it.

Beijing’s actions and threats against the Philippines are part of a broader attempt to counter the United States’ policy of “extended deterrence,” a strategy that commits Washington to defending its allies against aggression, including, in certain cases, with U.S. nuclear weapons. Beijing has long been critical of U.S. extended deterrence, on the grounds that it is a way for the United States to advance its interests against China. Chinese officials are now ramping up their efforts to undermine it. They have portrayed the United States as a destabilizing force in the region, made attempts to peel off U.S. allies using economic enticements and penalties, and engaged in ever more confrontational military operations. Such acts are intended to sap the credibility of U.S. extended deterrence, which is predicated on trust in Washington and faith in the United States’ capabilities.

For the Trump administration, maintaining extended deterrence in the Indo-Pacific should be a priority. It should challenge Beijing’s rhetoric in diplomatic forums and counter Chinese gray-zone tactics, as well as strengthen military cooperation with regional allies. Otherwise, Washington’s power and influence in the region will soon be eclipsed.

THE VIEW FROM BEIJING

For Chinese leaders, U.S. extended deterrence is not a defensive strategy but part of a broader effort by the United States to contain and even roll back China’s rise. Beijing also dismisses the idea that extended deterrence exists because U.S. allies want it. Rather, Chinese officials see Washington’s strategy as an imposition on Australia, Japan, South Korea, and others that, in Beijing’s view, belong in China’s rightful sphere of influence.

American officials have long argued that U.S. extended deterrence keeps nuclear proliferation in check, because U.S. allies under the protection of the United States’ nuclear umbrella see no need to develop their stockpiles. That logic does not hold sway in Beijing. In the words of Guo Xiaobing, a scholar at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, “The concept of ‘extended deterrence’ itself is a major contributor to nuclear proliferation” since it spreads “nuclear weapons geographically.” China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs echoes this perspective, accusing the United States of having “double standards” on nonproliferation because it “exerts maximum pressure on so-called geopolitical adversaries” but also “strengthens nuclear sharing and extended deterrence arrangements” with its allies.

In diplomatic forums, Beijing has long sought to undermine U.S. extended deterrence by castigating the United States as a destabilizing force in the region. In a speech in 2014, Chinese President Xi Jinping signaled his displeasure with the United States playing the role of security guarantor. “It is for the people of Asia to run the affairs of Asia, solve the problems of Asia, and uphold the security of Asia,” Xi said. “The people of Asia have the capability and wisdom to achieve peace and stability in the region through enhanced cooperation.”

China has also attacked U.S. extended deterrence directly. Last year, during a meeting of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, the Chinese delegation advanced a no-first-use proposal and used it to attack extended deterrence, arguing that it is a threat to peace, contributes to nuclear proliferation, and prevents the establishment of nuclear-free zones. According to this view, there is no place for U.S. alliances in the region. As Beijing sees it, if the United States did not maintain such a large military presence in the Indo-Pacific, there would be fewer crises to manage. Hence, the way to prevent and mitigate crises in the area is for the United States to withdraw its forces—or to constrain their use considerably.

Beyond challenging U.S. alliances and extended deterrence in diplomatic forums, Beijing takes economic actions to weaken Washington’s regional role. It does so using both carrots and sticks. Before it began menacing Philippine ships at sea, Beijing had tried, in vain, to forestall deeper military cooperation between the Philippines and the United States by offering substantial infrastructure projects and economic incentives through its Belt and Road Initiative.

Maintaining extended deterrence in the Indo-Pacific should be a priority.

In 2016, after the United States stationed a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system in South Korea, Beijing banned Chinese group tours to South Korea, blacklisted South Korean celebrities so they could not appear on Chinese television programs, imposed restrictions on South Korean businesses in China, and excluded South Korea from a number of Chinese-led diplomatic and cultural initiatives. Similarly, after Australia began strengthening defense ties with the United States in the late 2010s, Beijing imposed restrictions on Australian exports.

Beijing’s military responses to U.S. extended deterrence have also become more assertive. In recent years, China has scaled up its use of gray-zone tactics against U.S. allies in many areas, but especially in the maritime and cyber domains, where there is no clear redline that would trigger a response from the United States. Beijing has gradually militarized the South China Sea, deploying the Chinese coast guard and maritime militia to harass U.S. allies’ vessels. Beijing has also orchestrated influence operations and cyber-campaigns against Taiwan and other American allies. Chinese hackers have also targeted U.S. critical infrastructure to demonstrate Beijing’s ability to disrupt essential services and deter American involvement in regional conflicts.

For years, China has patrolled and conducted military drills in contested waters, and it has increased the scale and scope of those drills significantly. Admiral Samuel Paparo, head of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, has called such exercises “rehearsals” because they simulate attacks on U.S. allies, such as an invasion of Taiwan. In 2024 and 2025, for example, China conducted large-scale exercises (Joint Sword-2024A and Joint Sword-2024B) that involved coordinated operations by the Chinese navy, air force, rocket force, and coast guard around Taiwan. Earlier this year, Beijing also ramped up military incursions into Taiwan’s airspace and waters.

Finally, Beijing is building up its military forces to allow for quick action, such as the seizure and control of territory close to China, and to make it prohibitively costly for the United States to intervene. At the 19th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in October 2017, Xi announced that China is committed to building “world-class military forces” by 2049. Since then, Beijing has made significant investments in conventional and nuclear weapons. According to the U.S. Department of Defense, China has the world’s most active and diverse ballistic missile development program and is currently pursuing a nuclear buildup. Beijing is also enhancing its capabilities in cyberspace, outer space, and electronic warfare.

Taken together, these steps are meant to make the United States hesitate to act in the event of a contingency—and to cast doubts in the minds of U.S. allies that Washington will abide by its defense commitments.

US AND THEM

China is hardly alone in pushing back against U.S. extended deterrence. Russia has long been critical of this strategy, and as of late, the two countries have joined forces to counter it. At a summit in Beijing in early 2022, just two weeks before Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Xi and Russian President Vladimir Putin declared a “friendship without limits.” In that spirit, Beijing and Moscow have promoted “global strategic stability,” calling for a more multipolar world and chastising the United States for its pursuit of “absolute security.” They have criticized the security arrangement among Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States (AUKUS) as one of the latest efforts to militarize the Indo-Pacific, and they have expressed alarm at U.S. plans to deploy more intermediate-range missiles in their respective regions.

Beijing and Moscow are also strengthening their military cooperation, conducting numerous joint military exercises and joint air and maritime patrols in the Indo-Pacific and Euro-Atlantic, including near the territories of U.S. allies such as Japan and the Scandinavian countries. Moreover, according to a 2024 Reuters investigation, Moscow has established a covert program in China to develop long-range attack drones. The Russians are also assisting Beijing in developing a missile early warning system.

Since the first decades of this century, successive U.S. administrations have taken important measures to adapt to China’s evolving approach. The Biden administration has done much to strengthen regional alliances and its spearheading of the AUKUS security partnership has also helped promote stability in the region. The Trump administration appears committed to continuing the same trajectory and further strengthening regional defense and deterrence. To do so effectively, it should take further action across several additional fronts.

The United States and its allies must deepen their security cooperation.

In diplomatic forums, Washington should step up its efforts to challenge Chinese rhetoric about the United States’ role in the Indo-Pacific and the aim of U.S. extended deterrence. Chinese officials have portrayed the United States as a destabilizing force in the region, if not an existential threat to China. Speaking at the 2022 Shangri-La Dialogue, Asia’s largest annual defense summit, Wei Fenghe, then China’s defense minister, called the United States a “bully” and accused Washington of “interference” in territorial disputes in the region. “Some people in the U.S. try to suppress China on all fronts,” he said. To regain control of the narrative, American officials should set the record straight on the goals of extended deterrence and nuclear sharing. Washington should also call greater attention to China’s increasingly aggressive measures against U.S. allies, as well as to Beijing’s nuclear buildup.

Additionally, the United States should increase its efforts to counter Chinese gray-zone tactics. In recent years, Washington and its allies have enhanced intelligence collaboration, and they have countered disinformation and cyberattacks. They should further strengthen policy and operational coordination and enhance resilience in vulnerable regions, such as Southeast Asia and the Pacific. To counter Chinese disinformation campaigns, Washington and its allies should better integrate their economic tools, such as export controls and sanctions. In the absence of severe consequences, Beijing will continue and even intensify its coercive actions.

Crucially, the United States and its allies should develop military concepts and capabilities allowing them to respond to aggression quickly and effectively. In other words, they should make every effort to be able to deny territory grabs by China. They should be prepared to fight and win a conflict with Beijing, if necessary, despite the increasingly long nuclear shadow that China casts over the region. They should, in turn, consider how they can best leverage their collective military might, including nuclear weapons, against China.

Finally, Washington and its allies should expect Beijing and Moscow to strengthen security ties in the years ahead. The relationship between China and Russia has significant implications for both the Indo-Pacific and the Euro-Atlantic. As both ratchet up their defense cooperation, the United States and its allies from these regions must likewise deepen their security cooperation. Failure to do so could prove fatal to U.S. extended deterrence, with far-reaching consequences for U.S. power and influence.

DAVID SANTORO is President and CEO of the Pacific Forum.

Foreign Affairs · by More by David Santoro · May 22, 2025

3. How China co-opted the green movement

A form of China's Unrestricted Warfare?

Have we been playing checkers for decades while China plays Go/Wei Chi?

Excertps:

Ultimately, the only way for the West to get to “net zero” by 2050 — something China just put off for at least another decade — can be accomplished is by squelching all future growth. As Deutsche Bank’s Eric Heyman observes, it would entail catastrophic effects on middle-class living standards in the West, This program, he suggests, can only succeed only by imposing “a certain degree of eco-dictatorship.” China’s leaders, for their part, are quite clear: they will not sacrifice their population to lower living standards, whatever the environmental cost. They understand clearly that declining living standards threaten their hold on absolute power.

The West needs to escape this trap. Fortunately, even some on the Left recognize the danger of dependency on China, with The New Republic recently suggesting that Washington needs to relearn “the language of mining and metallurgy.” The ultra-green Guardian has recently embraced the argument that US manufacturing needs to come back, allowing for “an exit path from neoliberal globalization” and the creation of higher-paid blue-collar jobs.

The West must choose not to surrender its productive economy to the polluting superpower in Asia. The notion of giving up progress and living standards for the middle and working classes — largely to sustain the same classes in China, Russia, and Iran — sounds like a bad bet. Voters will see it that way — and punish ruling classes that acquiesce, sooner or later.

How China co-opted the green movement

Development for Beijing, degrowth for us

unherd.com · by Joel Kotkin · May 20, 2025

Rising empires require collaborators to expand their influence and win over adversaries. In this respect, China and other anti-Western regimes increasingly count on green activists, investors, and media to advance their interests. Overall, the greens see China as “pivotal” in the global green-energy transition, as states Sustainability Magazine.

Indeed, over the past decade, the green movement has successfully trolled for big money from groups with strong links to the Chinese Communist Party, as well as some dollops from Vladimir Putin’s Russia, which has cynically backed efforts to curb the West’s production of natural gas, the easier to deepen its own energy dominance; and Qatar, known for financing Hamas and other Islamist groups.

Nowhere is the penetration more complete than in the universities, where Chinese and Qatari money are behind the largest proportion of the $29 billion of foreign money sunk into American universities between 2021 and 2024. This, and similar funds flooding Canadian, Australian, and British Universities, buy good will and political influence. Chinese students at institutions like Stanford are also closely monitored by the Beijing regime’s agents in order to stamp out or at least identify dissidents — and when possible, to purloin research for the motherland.

Climate change has emerged as one critical element of this collaboration. The Washington Free Beacon has reported on millions of dollars from a climate nonprofit called Energy Foundation China, run primarily out of Beijing by former Communist Party cadres, flooding campuses. The beneficiaries include the University of Maryland and Harvard (where a professor was arrested for lying to the FBI about his China ties, and then appointed at a Chinese university). The consulting firm Strategy Risks argued Harvard also hosted training sessions for XPCC, a Chinese paramilitary organization, subject to sanctions for being involved in the suppression of the Uyghurs.

The belle of the China ball, not surprisingly, is California. Engagement with the People’s Republic has been long required for elites in the Golden State, whose imports from China are roughly nine times its exports. For China, it is a wonderful place to do business. The country runs a roughly $107 billion trade surplus with California, and the disparities in such things as electronic machinery are immense. California fares better with services, notably software and other tech licenses as well as universities, but this only amounts to $5 billion. As climate policy hurts average Californians through deindustrialization, high energy prices, and climate regulation, it enriches China.

The outreach began under Gov. Gavin Newsom’s predecessor Jerry Brown, who now chairs the legislatively created California-China Climate Institute at the law school of the University of California, Berkeley. Berkeley has been particularly egregious in its embrace of China. So much so that the Government Select Committee on the CCP wrote an open letter to the school, venting “grave concern” about its “joint institute with state-controlled Tsinghua University and the Shenzhen government” and warning that Berkeley is facilitating Chinese espionage of American research.

Newsom is clearly a vassal in training, traveling to China and greeting Xi like a visiting sovereign when the dictator came here. Ahead of the visit, China and California issued a “first-of-its-kind” joint declaration pledging cooperation on subnational climate action, such as “aggressively cutting greenhouse gas emissions, transitioning away from fossil fuels, and developing clean energy.”

Not surprisingly, Beijing dreams of the pliable Newsom as President Trump’s successor. In July 2024, not long after Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance, several media outlets — including the Asia Times, South China Morning Post, and Business Insider — reported that Newsom was seen by the regime as “a fresh but also positive and more sober-minded politician in the US” who “could be a cool head among this anti-China US consensus”.

The greens are also “all in” for this kowtowing behavior. The Hill, quoting Alex Wang — a UCLA professor and former Natural Resources Defense Council attorney who helped establish the NRDC’s China office — praised the governor for being “engagement-oriented, at a time when engagement is seen as a dirty word by some people” and sending “a green light for more collaboration” with China “to move as quickly as possible on climate action and climate research.”

But it’s not just California politicians and NGOs on the Chinese green gravy train. The Energy Foundation has also lavished large grants on groups like the Rocky Mountain Institute, whose policy agenda includes the electrification of homes and EV mandates that benefit the Middle Kingdom. This reflects China’s industrial strategy that is in part built around capturing new markets, of which “green” products like EVs and solar panels are critical components.

The CEO and president of Energy Foundation China is Ji Zou, who previously served as a deputy director-general of China’s National Center for Climate Change Strategy and International Cooperation, under the government’s National Development and Reform Commission. In 2013 and 2014, he served as a Chinese representative to the UN Intergovernmental Committee of Experts on Sustainable Development Financing.

Of course, Chinese influence extends well beyond California. Right-wing groups have also been known to align with China, and its wealth has turned Republicans, like former House Speaker John Boehner and former Sen. David Vinter, into Beijing lobbyists and acolytes. But for the most part, China’s best allies are found, perhaps unwittingly, on the progressive Left, particularly in billionaires like Tom Steyer, Bill Gates, as well as powerful foundations like Rockefeller, MacArthur, Hewlett, and a large coterie of donor-funded NGOs. All are devoted to “fighting” climate change, whatever the cost to the unwashed.

As China gears up its increasingly anti-American response to President Trump’s trade antics, including racist AI-generated videos, it also can count on the behind-the-scenes backing of obliging Wall Streeters like Michael Bloomberg, Ray Dalio, and Larry Fink. Business is business, I suppose.

Similarly, Silicon Valley firms seem less committed to fulfilling American aspirations than enabling Xi Jinping’s “China dream” of greater state control, more wealth, and worldwide technological supremacy. Alexander Karp, co-founder of the defense-tech firm Palantir Technologies, has argued in his recent book that most social-media and internet CEOs view the US as a “a dying empire, whose slow descent cannot be allowed to stand in the way of their own rise.” Instead, they have become accomplices helping achieve Beijing’s stated aim of becoming the leading global superpower by 2025.

The rise of pro-China politics can be seen in other countries, too. The recently elected, pro-China Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney advocates for policies that would block oil drilling and place burdens on Canadian mining, agriculture, and industry for environmental reasons, even while stating no objections to China’s coal-plant building spree to power its own solar-panel industry. A greener Canada, as currently defined, will have to genuflect to China to procure the requisite rare earth minerals and the technology for processing the “renewable” energy that Canadian Liberals crave.

“China takes advantage of our liberal institutions — and our comparatively open economies — only to undermine them.”

This alliance between China and the greens can likewise be seen in Britain and Australia, where China has won over allies among center-Left parties. In Labour-run Britain, China is building a mega-embassy in London that will likely help the surveil and harass those who fled Communist Party rule for the assumed safety of Britain. In Germany, China has been very active in trying to evade climate-related duties on their exports. In December 2024, two of the largest German media companies conducted an investigation of “dozens of climate projects in China” that Germany approved for domestic “carbon credits” and found that the Chinese credits were “likely fake and part of a large carbon credit scam.”

Besides appealing to the profit motive of the plutocratic elites, China takes advantage of our liberal institutions — and our comparatively open economies — only to undermine them. The Chinese have become skilled at siphoning off the technological edge of the West. Chinese money also goes to diaspora groups that attack as “racist” anyone who protests CCP policies. For example, the Committee of 100, a China-aligned US group, singled out former Rep. Michelle Steel, a Korean native based in California, for being “racist.” Her real crime? Criticizing her Democratic opponent’s support for a China-backed program promoting Chinese language and culture in elementary schools.

China’s apologists justify their sympathy in large part on concern about our common earthly future. After all, the UN aid chief recently praised Beijing’s green “leadership.” Like almost anything that comes from Turtle Bay, this seems patently absurd. The country won’t stop building coal plants, at least not in the foreseeable future. Its 1,161 coal-power plants account for 55 percent of global carbon emissions from coal. China overall emits far more GHG pollutant than any country and is responsible for more than 30 percent of global carbon emissions as of 2024, twice the American share. Not content to spew at home, it is also building coal plants around the world as coal consumption hits a historic high.

The greens make little effort to demand that China stop its pollution, which no doubt the People’s Republic would refuse. Instead, the greens prefer to turn their ardor against Western industries and consumers. Greens, for example, barely raised a peep after China recently decided to slash its GHG-reduction pledge.

For China, this represents clever realpolitik. Demands for massive purchases of Chinese solar technology, rare earths, and EVs creates a huge boon to the Middle Kingdom. Current green policies necessitate a flood of Chinese EVs, as well as panels from its solar-panel industry, while green obsessions undermine Western industries.

China is already working to make sure that key solar manufacturing technology is not exported to potential competitors. The country boasts a huge lead in solar battery production, and increasingly dominates the production of the rare earth elements, which also figure prominently in wind turbines, solar panels, and EVs. As American electric-car firms struggle with production and supply-chain issues, China’s Warren Buffett backed BYD has emerged as the world’s top EV manufacturer, with big export ambitions, while Tesla focuses much of its future growth at its Chinese factories.

We already know who pays the price for kowtowing to China. It has meant a massive erosion of jobs and productive capacity. The United States has lost an estimated 3.4 million jobs since China was invited to the World Trade Organization at the turn of the century. The US deficit in trade goods with China has ballooned to $419 billion last year, up from under $10 billion in 1990. China’s ratio of imports to exports was 4 to 1 in 2018. Academics from the climate-industrial complex continue to claim renewable energy is cheaper and the move towards them is “unstoppable,” but virtually all the places with the highest energy costs are generally those with the strictest renewable policies — Germany, Britain, California.

This pro-China regime may have enriched some in the City of London, Wall Street, and Silicon Valley, but is clearly no boon to the rest of the Western population. Living standards in the post-industrial West have already worsened, particularly for the middle class. Europe has endured a decade of stagnation, while Americans’ peacetime life expectancy has gone down for the first time. China’s successful wooing of some on the Left seems odd not only because the country is spewing greenhouse gas and repressing its people, including Muslims, but also producing a society where income inequality exceeds that of the United States.

Ultimately, the only way for the West to get to “net zero” by 2050 — something China just put off for at least another decade — can be accomplished is by squelching all future growth. As Deutsche Bank’s Eric Heyman observes, it would entail catastrophic effects on middle-class living standards in the West, This program, he suggests, can only succeed only by imposing “a certain degree of eco-dictatorship.” China’s leaders, for their part, are quite clear: they will not sacrifice their population to lower living standards, whatever the environmental cost. They understand clearly that declining living standards threaten their hold on absolute power.

The West needs to escape this trap. Fortunately, even some on the Left recognize the danger of dependency on China, with The New Republic recently suggesting that Washington needs to relearn “the language of mining and metallurgy.” The ultra-green Guardian has recently embraced the argument that US manufacturing needs to come back, allowing for “an exit path from neoliberal globalization” and the creation of higher-paid blue-collar jobs.

The West must choose not to surrender its productive economy to the polluting superpower in Asia. The notion of giving up progress and living standards for the middle and working classes — largely to sustain the same classes in China, Russia, and Iran — sounds like a bad bet. Voters will see it that way — and punish ruling classes that acquiesce, sooner or later.

Joel Kotkin is a Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and a Senior Research Fellow at the Civitas Institute, the University of Texas at Austin.

4. Killing of Embassy Staffers Stokes Israeli Fears of Increasingly Hostile World

What a terrible tragedy on a personal level for their families, An American level, and a global level.

Excerpts:

Lischinsky immigrated to Israel from Nuremberg in Germany at age 16, and served in the Israeli military, according to his LinkedIn profile. He completed his undergraduate and master degrees in Israel, before moving to Washington to work in the political department of the embassy in September 2022.

...

Milgrim, who was American, worked at the Israeli Embassy’s department of public diplomacy and said on her LinkedIn profile that she was passionate about Israeli-Palestinian peace-building. She had worked as a Jewish educator.

Killing of Embassy Staffers Stokes Israeli Fears of Increasingly Hostile World

The shooting in Washington, D.C., follows a rise in violence against Israelis and Jews globally

https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/killing-of-embassy-staffers-in-d-c-stokes-israeli-fears-of-increasingly-hostile-world-e96b9e6f

By Anat Peled

and Dov Lieber

Updated May 22, 2025 7:25 am ET

Police officers secure the perimeter outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C. Photo: Mehmet Eser/Zuma Press

Key Points

What's This?

Two Israeli embassy staffers were killed in Washington, D.C., increasing safety concerns for Israelis and Jews.
The shooting follows rising antisemitism and a hostile environment for Israelis abroad since the start of the Gaza war.
Netanyahu ordered increased security at Israeli missions; violent attacks targeting Israelis and Jews have risen in the past 19 months.

TEL AVIV—Israelis woke up Thursday to the killing of two Israeli Embassy staffers in Washington, D.C., reinforcing a fear that the world has become increasingly dangerous for Israelis and Jews amid the war in Gaza and a global rise in antisemitism.

On Wednesday, a man who shouted “Free Palestine!” shot and killed a young couple from the Israeli Embassy in Washington outside a Jewish museum in the downtown area of the capital, law-enforcement officials said. The man, who was later arrested, was identified by police as 30-year-old Elias Rodriguez of Chicago. He paced outside the museum before approaching four people with a handgun and opening fire, police said.

The victims of the attack were identified as Sarah Lynn Milgrim, 26, and her partner Yaron Lischinsky, 30, who both worked at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, according to the Israeli Foreign Ministry. Israel’s ambassador to Washington, Yechiel Leiter, said Lischinsky had planned to propose to Milgrim.

Sarah Lynn Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky worked at the Israeli Embassy in Washington. Photo: Uncredited

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he ordered security to be increased at Israeli missions around the world and for the state’s representatives following the attack.

“We are witness to the terrible cost of the antisemitism and wild incitement against the State of Israel,” Netanyahu said. “Blood libels against Israel have a cost in blood and must be fought to the utmost.”

The shooting comes amid rising levels of antisemitism worldwide and what many feel is a hostile environment for Israelis abroad since the start of the war in Gaza which was launched after the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, attack that killed around 1,200 people and saw 251 people taken hostage.

“The world has become a frightening, terrible place,” said Lyudmila Kriasonov, a Russian-speaking Israeli, who said she tells people she’s Russian rather than Israeli when traveling. “We feel we don’t have any safety in this country or anywhere in the world.”

Lischinsky immigrated to Israel from Nuremberg in Germany at age 16, and served in the Israeli military, according to his LinkedIn profile. He completed his undergraduate and master degrees in Israel, before moving to Washington to work in the political department of the embassy in September 2022.

Nissim Otmazgin, a dean at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem who taught Lischinsky, said he was gentle, hardworking and an idealist who was interested in building bridges between Israel and other countries. He spoke English, Hebrew, German and Japanese.

“He knew he wanted to be a diplomat. It was his dream,” he said. “A dream that shattered.”

Milgrim, who was American, worked at the Israeli Embassy’s department of public diplomacy and said on her LinkedIn profile that she was passionate about Israeli-Palestinian peace-building. She had worked as a Jewish educator.

“Her energy, thoughtfulness, and unwavering belief in dialogue, peace, and equality inspired everyone who had the privilege to work alongside her,” said a statement by Tech2Peace, an organization that Milgrim had worked at that brings together Palestinians and Israelis through tech.

Violent attacks targeting Israelis and Jews have increased around the world in the past 19 months. Israeli soccer fans were attacked in Amsterdam in November 2024 after calls for a “Jew hunt.” A Chabad rabbi in Dubai was kidnapped and killed later that month, shocking the small Jewish community in the United Arab Emirates. In France, a Jewish man wearing a skullcap was violently beaten in front of a synagogue in March 2024 after being told he was “killing people in Gaza.”

Protests across European capitals and on U.S. college campuses often use what some Jews feel is incendiary language that calls for not only an end to the war but for the destruction of the state of Israel.

Some Israeli officials and Jewish leaders have blamed chants like “globalize the intifada” and “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” which are common at protests against Israel, for spurring violence.

The shooting in Washington comes amid rising levels of antisemitism worldwide. Photo: Andrew Leyden/Zuma Press

The killings come as Israel contends with growing foreign opposition to Netanyahu’s expansion of the Gaza war, which has already killed more than 53,000 Palestinians, according to local health authorities, who don’t say how many are combatants, and has left swaths of the enclave in ruins. Israel recently launched a new offensive in Gaza after a more than two-month-long blockade on the enclave with Netanyahu announcing that Israel would take over all areas in the strip.

Some of Israel’s closest allies, such as the U.S., U.K. and France, have urged the prime minister to end the war. The U.K., France and Canada this week threatened consequences if the offensive continued.

Even in Israel, opposition to the war is growing. Polls now consistently show that 70% of Israelis want the war to end in exchange for the release of the remaining hostages.

Yuval Harel, 31, from Jaffa, said that she was scared for own safety after the Oct. 7, 2023, attack, and tells people she is from Portugal when she travels abroad. But now she has also come to oppose the war on moral grounds, angered by the toll it is taking on Palestinians in Gaza, particularly children.

“I’m embarrassed and afraid,” she said.

Write to Anat Peled at anat.peled@wsj.com and Dov Lieber at dov.lieber@wsj.com

5. Washington Deserved a Downgrade

It is a strategic imperative that we have to get our fiscal house in order. If we do not we will not be able to fund the military we need (let alone the military we want).

The challenge is we want to reduce the debt using everyone else's benefits/entitlements and discretionary and nondiscretionary funding but our own. You can cut anything except what is on my own pet agenda. Make everyone else sacrifice but me. (note sarcasm).

Washington Deserved a Downgrade

U.S. debt is a spending problem, which neither party wants to stop.

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/moodys-rating-downgrade-united-states-credit-debt-spending-washington-e1eb2d56?mod=hp_opin_pos_1

By The Editorial Board

May 19, 2025 5:55 pm ET

The U.S. Capitol in Washington. Photo: sarah silbiger/Reuters

Moody’s Ratings service waddled in Friday to state the obvious, which is that the U.S. is on an unsustainable debt trajectory. We’d like to know where Moody’s was when the Biden Administration was spending at record levels, but there’s still a warning here for the Republicans now in charge in Washington.

Moody’s downgraded U.S. debt to a notch below its top rating, citing chronic budget deficits and rising debt-service costs. The rating agency lagged behind S&P Global Ratings and Fitch, which downgraded the U.S. in 2011 and 2023, respectively. Moody’s may have been late because it believes in the Keynesian model that government spending lifts economic growth.

Markets on Monday reacted poorly to the downgrade, as well as comments by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent that there may be more bad tariff news coming. He said the April 2 “reciprocal” tariffs could return for some countries if they don’t agree to President Trump’s supposedly generous terms. The 30-year Treasury bond yield hit 5% for the first time since autumn 2023, before falling back, and the 10-year appears to be settling near 4.5%.

Moody’s is no oracle, but its downgrade is a moment to explain America’s real deficit and debt issue. The problem is spending, which neither political party wants to restrain. More revenue from faster economic growth would help, but supply-side growth policies have ebbing political support, even in the GOP.

The nearby chart tells the Washington fiscal story as a share of gross domestic product from 1995 through the present and estimated through 2030. Revenues have held within a fairly narrow band not far off from the 17.2% average from 1995 through last year.

Revenues fell with the 2008-2009 recession, and again modestly and for a short time with the Trump tax reform that began in 2018. But they are back to the long-term trend and on current policy will increase over the next decade and beyond.

Spending is a different tale. The average for outlays from 1995-2024 is 21.1%, but they spiked to more than 24% amid the Obama spending blowout after the financial panic. The GOP Congress elected in 2010 shrunk outlays back down to the average, mainly by cutting domestic and defense discretionary spending. Entitlements kept growing.

Then the pandemic hit, and outlays exploded under Presidents Trump and Biden. They’ve declined some in the last two years, but they were still 23.4% of GDP in fiscal 2024.

That left a budget deficit of 6.4% of GDP last year, which is unheard of when the economy is growing and there is no war or emergency. The Congressional Budget Office says spending will keep growing as a share of the economy, as entitlements continue to boom. Spending is the debt driver.

Republicans could do something about this but may not have the votes. DOGE has cut around the edges, but President Trump won’t touch Medicare or Social Security. Too many Republicans won’t even fix Medicaid, which has soared since ObamaCare expanded coverage to able-bodied young men. The current House budget bill doesn’t do much more than sustain the Biden spending path.

Democrats and the press want to blame the tax portion of the House GOP bill, but that mainly keeps the current tax rates. The new Trump tax ideas—expanding social handouts via the tax code and state-and-local tax deductions for wealthy blue-state residents—do nothing for growth.

But its pro-growth tax provisions will at least kick back some revenue to Treasury, unlike more social-welfare spending. And if the bill fails to pass, the economy will be hit with a $4.5 trillion tax increase. Add Mr. Trump’s tariff tax of some $300 billion or so, and the economy might go into recession. Then watch spending and the deficit explode. Extending the lower tax rates and deregulation are crucial to keep the economy growing.

None of this is a fiscal or financial crisis, at least not yet. The dollar’s reserve-currency status gives the U.S. a unique borrowing privilege. There will always be buyers for Treasury bonds, though the question is at what price? Higher interest rates mean net interest on the federal debt is now 3% of GDP and closing in on $900 billion a year.

The Moody’s downgrade joins the list of warnings to Washington that the country needs better economic and fiscal policies. We wish we could see more signs of them.

Call the Trump Doctrine Mater-Realism

His Riyadh speech lays out a foreign policy stressing U.S. economic interests shorn of idealism.

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/theres-a-doctrine-in-the-housecall-it-mater-realism-foreign-policy-negotiations-trump-e3b8f2e9

By Gerard Baker

May 19, 2025 12:03 pm ET

Why China’s Fighter Jets Should Worry the US and Taiwan

The air force hasn’t caught up to America’s yet, but the gap is narrowing.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2025-05-21/why-china-s-fighter-jets-should-worry-the-us-and-taiwan?utm

May 21, 2025 at 3:00 PM EDT

By Karishma Vaswani

Karishma Vaswani is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering Asia politics with a special focus on China. Previously, she was the BBC's lead Asia presenter and worked for the BBC across Asia and South Asia for two decades.

Pakistan Air Force J-10C fighter jets.Photographer: Aamir Qureshi/AFP/Getty Image

The recent aerial clash between Pakistan and India offers a glimpse of how China is narrowing the gap in military airpower with the US. It’s a warning not just for Washington, but for Taipei, too.

Claims from both sides remain contested, but a broader picture is emerging among experts who track China’s air force and fighter jet development: Beijing’s defense systems are growing increasingly credible. Pakistan said its deployment of Chinese-manufactured J-10C fighters downed multiple Indian aircraft, although New Delhi denies this.

There are caveats: Even if Islamabad’s claims are accurate, Beijing’s equipment doesn’t offer a direct comparison to US capabilities. The J-10C isn’t a full stealth fighter like the F-22 or F-35, but it does have some features to make it less visible to radar. Still, the incident highlights the significant investments the Communist Party has made in the People’s Liberation Army Air Force, and speaks to President Xi Jinping’s target for full military modernization by 2027.

The use of the J-10C in this regional conflict suggests that goal may be steadily progressing, despite ongoing high-profile graft issues. Several senior military officers have been removed from their posts because of allegations they were involved in corruption.

The US Is Ahead But China Is Slowly Catching Up

This is how their aircraft numbers compare

Source: World Air Forces Report 2025, FlightGlobal

For now, the US is still the world leader, with more military aircraft than Russia, China, India, South Korea and Japan combined, notes FlightGlobal’s World Air Forces 2025 report. But much of America’s inventory is beyond its prime, filled with decades-old fighters, bombers, and tankers. Meanwhile, the PLA’s air force is growing quickly, although it remains far from rivaling the US in overall size.

But it is catching up. Washington currently maintains an advantage in fifth-generation aircraft such as the F-22 and F-35, although Beijing is closing the gap there, too. It’s reportedly manufacturing more than 100 fifth-generation J-20 fighters annually, and nearly tripling production of other aircraft types, such as the J-10C and J-16, notes the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

This is possible because of the PLA’s centralized, whole-of-government approach. Taken together, the manufacturing of major combat assets like ships and planes shows a military and industrial base increasingly prepared for conflict with the US, CSIS adds.

China is also beginning to match the US when it comes to systems integration, notes Mike Dahm, senior resident fellow for aerospace and China Studies at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. “The US military has excelled at linking different ground, space, and airborne systems together in an effective kill chain,” he told me. “I believe the Chinese have now demonstrated that in the India-Pakistan conflict.”

Geography matters, too, Dahm said. Beijing has the advantage of being in the same neighborhood as the potential wars it might fight. That’s not the case for the US, even with its numerous bases in the Indo-Pacific.

How Do They Compare?

China and US aircraft capabilities

Source: Center for Strategic & International Studies

Note: 2024 Rebuilding the Arsenal of Democracy report

Beijing’s airpower capabilities have been ringing alarm bells in Washington. The latest Pentagon annual China Military Power Report points to a dramatic rise in the PLA’s nuclear, space, missile, and aviation capabilities in recent years.

China wants to expand its long-range reach beyond the First Island Chain, a virtual line drawn from the islands of Japan, passing the Philippines, and curving at the southern end of the South China Sea between Malaysia and Vietnam, the report notes. The chain is a key aspect of Washington’s security architecture in the Indo-Pacific — but crucially, it also encompasses Taiwan, which Beijing claims as its own.

Xi has vowed that China will unify with the self-ruled island by 2049 — it’s a central part of his national rejuvenation plan. But that timeline might change.

For the first time in its annual military drills earlier this year, Taiwan’s Defense Ministry cited 2027 as a potential year for a Chinese invasion. That would align with Xi’s goal of building a modern military by then. US officials have also echoed that view, citing China’s rapid buildup of warships, fighter jets and missile stockpiles since 2020.

Still, capability doesn’t equal intent but China’s expanding reach raises the stakes for both the island’s defense and American military dominance in the region. Admiral Samuel Paparo, commander of US Indo-Pacific Command, said the PLA demonstrated growing capabilities through persistent operations against Taiwan, which escalated by 300% in 2024. Testifying before Congress in April, he also warned they were not merely exercises but “dress rehearsals for forced unification.”

Taiwan is already reassessing its defense strategy, with purchases of Patriot PAC-3 systems and PAC-3 MSE anti-aircraft missiles capable of intercepting threats. In theory, this will also allow it to detect advanced fighters at higher altitudes. Despite the ongoing gridlock in parliament over the defense budget, Taipei will be under increasing pressure to expand its military spending.

Washington should also keep investing in next-generation aircraft technology to stay ahead of Beijing, which is working on a so-called sixth-generation fighter jet of its own. Embracing allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific would also help — a task made more difficult by the White House tone on defense and trade.

The India-Pakistan clash was a taste of what China’s air force may now be capable of. Washington and Taipei shouldn’t wait till the next demonstration.

Sig Sauer's XM7 Rifle Gets Army's Seal Of Approval Despite Controversy

The XM7 rifle, which was recently lambasted by an Army captain, also received its official M7 designation as part of the milestone.

Howard Altman

Updated May 21, 2025 8:11 PM EDT

137

twz.com · by Howard Altman

The TWZ Newsletter

Weekly insights and analysis on the latest developments in military technology, strategy, and foreign policy.

Sig Sauer’s controversial 6.8x51mm XM7 service rifle has now received a formal standard type classification, with the official designation changing to M7. This is a vote of confidence for the weapon weeks after an Army captain publicly criticized the rifle as potentially unsafe, ineffective, and overly expensive, claims that the service and Sig Sauer subsequently vehemently rebutted. You can read more about that in our deep dive here.

Along with the M7, Sig Sauer’s XM250 light machine gun (now designated the M250) achieved Type Classification-Standard status, the Army announced yesterday. The service described this as a “major program milestone” for the Next Generation Squad Weapons (NGSW) program, which includes both guns, as well as the XM157 computerized optic and the accompanying family of 6.8x51mm ammunition. This new status means the weapons meet “the Army’s stringent standards for operational performance, safety, and sustainment,” per the Army.

A soldier aims a Sig Sauer M7 rifle. (U.S. Army)

“This milestone reflects our commitment to delivering cutting-edge capabilities that give our Soldiers the tactical advantage and lethality required on the battlefield,” said Col. Jason Bohannon, Project Manager Soldier Lethality. “We remain focused on equipping our force with the most reliable and effective tools to ensure mission success.”

The new classification for these weapons ensures that they are “acceptable for Army use prior to spending procurement funds at the Full-Rate Production Decision Review,” Alton E. Stewart, an Army spokesman, told TWZ Wednesday afternoon. It “satisfies DoD requirement to designate when a system is approved for service use.”

Army combat experiences from the Global War on Terror, especially operations in Afghanistan, where reports often emerged of U.S. forces being outranged, helped drive the core requirement for guns firing larger rounds that offer greater range and terminal ballistic performance. Concerns about improving adversary body armor were also a factor. The M7 and the M250, respectively, are set to replace a significant portion of the M4A1 carbines and M249 Squad Automatic Weapons (SAW) now in Army service. Both the M4A1 and M249 are chambered to fire the 5.56x45mm cartridge.

A US Army Ranger fires an M250 light machine gun. (U.S. Army)

As we previously explained, the M7 is “a 6.8x51mm version of Sig Sauer’s increasingly popular MCX Spear family of rifles. Though Sig’s MCX family is a separate development, the core design is derived from the AR-15/M16 pattern family of rifles, and upper receivers from certain versions of the former can be directly paired with lower receivers from the latter with the help of an adapter. The overall configurations of guns in both families are very similar, as are the basic ergonomics and control arrangements.”

“MCX rifles notably use a gas piston operating mechanism rather than the direct impingement method found on AR-15/M16 types. Direct impingement (DI) involves propellant gases directly blowing into the main action to cycle it, which can more quickly lead to fouling on key components without regular cleaning. Piston systems that keep gas away from a gun’s internal works can offer improved overall reliability in certain circumstances, although they tend to be heavier than their DI counterparts.”

The Army’s new designation of these weapons won’t affect how they are being fielded, Stewart told us, but it serves to further rebut a scathing critique by Army Capt. Braden Trent. He presented his findings, which come from an unclassified student thesis, at the annual Modern Day Marine exposition in Washington, D.C., on April 29. The Army infantry officer did his work while attending the Expeditionary Warfare School, part of the Marine Corps University in Quantico, Virginia.

What is now designated the M7 has suffered from serious reliability and other issues, including having cartridge cases “ripped apart by the internal pressure of the system,” excessive barrel wear, and regular breakages of key components, Trent stated. He claimed that these problems, together with a host of other factors, including the weight and recoil of the rifle, make the gun “unfit” for its intended purpose.

Trent said he observed and/or learned of several other serious technical issues after being given the chance to interview “over 150 soldiers, maintainers, and leaders,” as well as inspect a sample set of 23 XM7 rifles, all from the 1st Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division. The brigade’s 1st Battalion, 506th Infantry Regiment was the first operational Army unit to begin receiving XM7s and the rest of the NGSW family of systems.

A member of the US Army seen with what was previously designed the XM7 rifle. (U.S. Army)

In an interview with TWZ on the symposium’s show floor, Sig Sauer vociferously pushed back on Trent’s assertions.

“I believe that Captain Trent had some shortcomings and difficulties in understanding the totality of the NGSW program and some significant blind spots into the progress that the NGSW program has made over the last let’s call it 24 months,” Jason St. John, senior director of strategic products for the Defense Strategies Group at Sig Sauer, told us. “By him not having any clarity on any of the engineering change proposal efforts, and understanding of the 101st [Airborne Division’s] fielding efforts, the actual pacing of the program … and really the ongoing product improvement efforts that the program office and Sig Sauer are doing in concert with each other, really clouded his perspective, and I believe his opinions that he represented. There are significant misrepresentations and holes in those statements [that he made].”

A soldier from the 10th Mountain Division firing an M7 with a suppressor at a range. (U.S. Army)

In 2022, the Army awarded Sig Sauer a 10-year, $20.4 million initial production contract to produce M7s and M250s, following a 27-month evaluation of three competing weapon systems. By that point, more than 500 soldiers, Marines, and special operators had conducted a combined 20,000 hours of testing as part of the NGSW program, according to the Army.

As of last year, the Army said its “acquisition objectives” included the purchase of 111,428 M7s and 13,334 M250s.

“It’s an exciting day for everyone involved, whether that is Sig Sauer, the U.S. Army as a whole, and especially the soldiers, who can have confidence that they are being equipped to enhance their mission success and truly possess tactical superiority in their small arms,” St. John told us Wednesday afternoon in an email.

There is the possibility that other branches of the U.S. military could adopt the M7 in the future. At Modern Day Marine in April, the service noted that it had just recently completed an evaluation of the NGSW family of systems and had begun processing the results to determine what, if any, steps forward will be taken. For now, the primary arm of the Marines remains the M27 Infantry Automatic Rifle (IAR), which is, in turn, a variant of the HK416. The HK416 is a gas-piston derivative of the AR-15/M16 series.

It is unclear whether or how the Army’s type classification decision might affect the Marines’ plans. We have reached out to the Corps and will update this story with any pertinent information provided.

The Army is now continuing to move ahead with its plans to field what are now designated the M7 rifle and M250 light machine gun.

Contact the author: howard@thewarzone.com

Howard Altman

Senior Staff Writer

Howard is a Senior Staff Writer for The War Zone, and a former Senior Managing Editor for Military Times. Prior to this, he covered military affairs for the Tampa Bay Times as a Senior Writer. Howard's work has appeared in various publications including Yahoo News, RealClearDefense, and Air Force Times.

twz.com · by Howard Altman

9. Pentagon accepts Qatari jet for Air Force One

The fundamental question that is answered for me is why has Boeing not been able to fulfill its contract on time?

Pentagon accepts Qatari jet for Air Force One

militarytimes.com · by Stephen Losey · May 21, 2025

The Pentagon announced Wednesday it has accepted a $400 million jet from Qatar, a week after the Gulf state was reported to be providing the plane as a gift to President Donald Trump for use as Air Force One.

“The Secretary of Defense has accepted a Boeing 747-8 from Qatar in accordance with all federal rules and regulations. The Department of Defense will work to ensure proper security measures and functional-mission requirements are considered for an aircraft used to transport the President of the United States,” Pentagon Spokesman Sean Parnell wrote in a statement Wednesday.

The Air Force said it is also preparing to award a contract to convert the Boeing 747-8 into a presidential transport plane, though details on that deal are classified and would not be released.

Experts: Qatar-gifted Air Force One may be security, upgrade disaster

Upgrading a Qatar-donated 747 into a new Air Force One would take a large sum of money and years to complete, aviation experts said.

Many Democrats in Congress — and some Republican media figures — have questioned whether such a gift is legal, or even practical, given the extensive overhaul necessary to ensure the plane complies with security protocols and military standards.

When asked about the gift at an event from the Oval Office on Wednesday, Trump grew visibly angry and repeatedly attacked the reporter who posed the question.

“They’re giving the United States Air Force a jet, and it’s a great thing,” Trump said.

Article I of the Constitution specifically bans U.S. government officials from accepting titles or gifts from foreign monarchs without the approval of Congress.

Rep. Joe Courtney of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services subcommittee that oversees Air Force One, has critiqued the gift, filing an amendment during a marathon session of Congress this week that would ban any funds from helping to renovate the airplane for military use.

Some lawmakers and aviation experts have also expressed concern about the complexity and potential security ramifications of modifying a foreign-gifted Boeing 747-8 into an aircraft that must essentially be a flying White House situation room.

Air Force One aircraft are typically upgraded with secure communications systems, military-grade power systems and classified self-defense systems in case an adversary tries to attack the president.

They also have medical facilities that would allow doctors to treat an injured or sick president while in flight.

If a nuclear war or other catastrophic emergency erupts, the president must be able to direct U.S. forces and other assets securely from the plane.

Boeing is now converting another pair of 747-8s into Air Force One planes under the VC-25B program. But that effort has been in the works for the better part of a decade and is far behind schedule, due to challenges such as supply chain issues and difficulties finding enough workers with the requisite security clearance to work on the planes.

The new Air Force One aircraft were originally due to be delivered in 2024 but are now not expected until 2029. The Air Force said earlier this month it is considering changes to the requirements for the jets that would allow it to shave about two years off the schedule.

But critics of the Qatari 747 plan say it’s unrealistic to expect this jet to be ready for Trump’s use by the end of the year, without taking shortcuts that could compromise the plane’s readiness and security.

Air Force Secretary Troy Meink told lawmakers Tuesday that transforming any civilian aircraft, including this one, into an Air Force One would require “significant modifications.” Meink said the Air Force is now studying what work will need to be done on the Qatari 747.

Meink also told Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., that he would not allow security standards for the plane to slip, and would warn Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth if the Air Force is unable to address any threats while modifying the plane.

From the Oval Office on Wednesday, Trump himself mentioned the undelivered Air Force One jets, gesturing to a model of one on a nearby table.

“Boeing’s a little bit late, unfortunately,” Trump said.

“I’m sorry I don’t have a plane to give you,” South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa, who was meeting with the president, said to laughter.

About Stephen Losey and Noah Robertson

Stephen Losey is the air warfare reporter for Defense News. He previously covered leadership and personnel issues at Air Force Times, and the Pentagon, special operations and air warfare at Military.com. He has traveled to the Middle East to cover U.S. Air Force operations.

Noah Robertson is the Pentagon reporter at Defense News. He previously covered national security for the Christian Science Monitor. He holds a bachelor’s degree in English and government from the College of William & Mary in his hometown of Williamsburg, Virginia.

10. Cots, MREs, Per Diem: Army Offers New Details for Soldiers Sent to Massive D.C. Military Parade

I am sure the SECDEF and the Vice President know from their personal experience that most military personnel do not enjoy marching in parades. The question for the troops is how many rehearsals will they have to do? And the real question is how far their $69 per day for incidendentals will go in the nearby bars/clubs (if any) that will likely jack up already high DC prices due to the influx of GIs.

Cots, MREs, Per Diem: Army Offers New Details for Soldiers Sent to Massive D.C. Military Parade

military.com · by Drew F. Lawrence · May 22, 2025

Thousands of soldiers flying or busing into Washington, D.C., next month from more than a dozen Army divisions across the force will be sleeping on cots, eating mostly MREs (and hot chow for dinner), and showering in contracted trailers during the Army's multimillion-dollar 250th birthday festivities, service officials said Wednesday.

The soldiers -- totaling about 6,700 -- will stay in two government buildings close to the events, which will include a military parade that coincides with President Donald Trump's birthday as well as musical performances, flyovers from 50 modern and legacy aircraft, and a fitness competition, officials said. Soldiers will receive $69 per day for "incidentals" should they explore the nation's capital, pending freedoms authorized by their commanders, the officials added.

The Army officials, who briefed the media on the plans, said they did not expect any costs to be incurred by individual soldiers and that amenities have been contracted by more than a dozen participating Army divisions, which are responsible for funding travel, so troops will not have to use government travel cards for expenses.

One-hundred and fifty tanks, Bradley Fighting Vehicles, Strykers, Paladins and other vehicles will be mostly transported by rail to Maryland, from where they will then travel by truck to stage south of the parade route, passing in front of the White House on June 14 where Trump -- whose 79th birthday falls on the same day -- will receive a folded American flag from the Army's Golden Knights parachute team later that evening after they land on the Ellipse.

Those vehicles, specifically 28 M1 Abrams coming from Fort Cavazos in Texas, were already being loaded onto trains Wednesday and will take more than a week to get to D.C. The Army will add roughly one-inch metal plates to various parts of the route a couple days before the parade and fix new pads to the vehicles' tracks to avoid damage from the 60-ton tanks, a point of contention from city officials.

Army officials said they weren't expecting any damage to the roads, but would pay for repair costs should it happen. It was unclear whether the Army would pay for trash collection, road closure efforts or other support for the parade.

Soldiers participating in the parade will don uniforms representing U.S. conflicts since the Revolutionary War as tanks and other vehicles, including Shermans and jeeps, will rumble down Constitution Avenue alongside 34 horses, two mules and a dog, officials said. Displays, musical events and demonstrations will occur across the National Mall. There will be a wreath-laying ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery the morning of the parade.

At the end of the parade, Trump will enlist or reenlist 250 soldiers hand-selected by their commands to participate in the ceremony, Steve Warren, an Army spokesperson, told reporters at a news conference Wednesday.

"This has been the Army's birthday. We've had 249 previously of these," Warren said. "We're excited that the commander in chief is interested in the Army's 250th anniversary and that he will want to view it."

The Army will not do a full-scale rehearsal prior to the parade, but key leaders will go over tabletop plans and soldiers will practice drill and ceremony. Recovery vehicles will be on site in the event a vehicle malfunctions during the parade, officials said.

B-25, C-47 and P-51 aircraft will make a flyover as Vietnam-era Huey helicopters buzz through the air, a sensitive issue following January's deadly midair collision of a Black Hawk and a passenger jet over the Potomac River. Army officials said they were working closely with the Federal Aviation Administration to coordinate air traffic.

The Army expects roughly 200,000 people to attend, citing initial estimates, and that the total cost for the service during the weeklong celebration will be between $25 million and $40 million. That estimate did not include the total government cost for the events, which is being supported by various local and federal entities.

"It is a lot of money. But I think that amount of money is dwarfed by 250 years of service and sacrifice that American soldiers have given this country," Warren said. "We're looking at this as an opportunity to really strengthen the connection between America and her Army."

Warren said that planning for the Army's 250th birthday celebration started roughly two years ago, but that the idea for the parade was introduced as part of the plan this year. Trump had attempted to host a military parade during his first term, but was unsuccessful due to ballooning costs and what he claimed were price-gouging attempts from D.C. officials.

When asked whether the White House specifically requested the parade, Warren said "this was not a directive that I'm aware of or told, this is something that grew out of discussions over a period of time, I don't know who gets the credit for saying let's do a parade."

The event is considered a "national security special event," akin to the Super Bowl or a state funeral, he added.

The June 14 events start at 9:30 a.m. with a fitness competition and will conclude with fireworks around 9:45 p.m. Country musicians Noah Hicks and Scotty Hasting, an Army veteran, will perform during the festivities, and the NFL will host a "Kids Zone" across from the Smithsonian Castle.

military.com · by Drew F. Lawrence · May 22, 2025

11. A Playbook for Industrial Policy: What Washington Can Learn From CHIPS

Conclusion:

Doing industrial policy well is not easy. It requires scaling up production quickly and carving out a place in government that can act like a private-sector startup by staffing up, implementing new processes, and finding creative ways to avoid delays. The U.S. government, bogged down by rules and bureaucracy, is not the ideal home for a startup. But with the right playbook, it can become a more hospitable one. As CHIPS demonstrated, policymakers need to make government an attractive place to work for people from finance and industry, identify and mitigate sources of delay, and measure success against clear and definable metrics. At the same time, policymakers should push for structural reforms to make government work better. Under the best of circumstances, industrial policy is an uphill battle. Making smart early decisions can make the climb a little easier.

A Playbook for Industrial Policy

Foreign Affairs · by More by Nikita Lalwani · May 22, 2025

What Washington Can Learn From CHIPS

May 22, 2025

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi signing the CHIPS and Science Act in Washington, D.C., July 2022 Jonathan Ernst / Reuters

NIKITA LALWANI is a Nonresident Scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. She served as Director for Technology and National Security at the National Security Council and as Senior Adviser to the Director of the CHIPS Program Office at the U.S. Department of Commerce during the Biden administration.

SAM MARULLO is a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Progress. He served as Counselor to the Secretary of Commerce and as Director of CHIPS Policy during the Biden administration.

More by Sam Marullo

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The 2022 CHIPS and Science Act was the United States’ most ambitious foray into industrial policy in more than half a century. The bill included roughly $50 billion to revitalize the U.S. semiconductor industry, which had been hollowed out over decades as manufacturing migrated overseas. Industrial policy, long eschewed in policy circles, had come back in vogue as a way to strengthen supply chain resilience for industries critical to economic and national security. Moving the legislation through Congress required a multiyear process that involved lengthy negotiations and complex maneuvering. But passing the law was just the beginning. As soon as it was signed, the action moved from Congress to the Department of Commerce, which had to figure out, quickly and with little room for error, how to stand up a new office and infrastructure to deliver on its aims.

Washington was out of practice when it came to industrial policy, which the United States had largely abandoned since the Cold War. So there was no playbook available to the new CHIPS Program Office, which was established to administer the bill’s $39 billion in semiconductor manufacturing incentives (another $11 billion or so was for semiconductor-related research and development). Where possible, the office drew lessons from past large-scale grant and loan initiatives, such as the 2008 Troubled Asset Relief Program; the 2009 Presidential Task Force on the Auto Industry, which bailed out automakers; and the Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office, which has financed more than $40 billion in clean energy and advanced transportation projects. But much of the time, the program was building the plane as it flew.

It’s too early to pass a final judgment on how well it did: the semiconductor industry is fast-moving and cyclical, and many projects are just getting underway. But the program has made real progress. In two and a half years, it has unlocked more than $450 billion in private investments, helped support the construction of 17 new semiconductor fabrication plants (known as fabs), and made the United States the only country to secure manufacturing commitments from the world’s five leading chip manufacturers. When the CHIPS Act was passed, the United States produced none of the most advanced logic or memory chips, the hardware used in smartphones, laptops, and powerful AI systems; it is now projected to produce 20 percent of the world’s leading-edge logic chips by 2030 and ten percent of its dynamic random-access memory chips by 2035.

CHIPS set itself up for success in part thanks to clever statutory drafting and early choices on hiring, goal setting, and structure. Amid bipartisan consensus to expand industrial strategy beyond CHIPS, future programs would do well to learn from its example. Of course, there is no one way to do industrial policy, and the details will vary by sector and circumstance, but one constant is that large federal programs require the government to work quickly, efficiently, and well. That requires establishing nimble and dynamic teams with sophisticated expertise; building productive and transparent relationships with industry, other governments, and the general public; and figuring out how to overcome sources of delay—within government and outside of it—that make it hard to build new things. Most important, industrial policy requires clarity of purpose: a concrete set of specific objectives to guide investments and against which to measure success.

SETTING UP SHOP

The first days of any new program are when the most critical decisions are made. For CHIPS, having a director that did not require Senate confirmation was an early advantage, since it meant that Michael Schmidt—whom Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo tapped to head the office—was able to get working right away. Requiring a Senate-confirmed leader for an industrial policy program would, in most cases, be a mistake: confirmation takes a long time and can dissuade people from taking on the role. During the Biden administration, confirmations took an average of 192 days from official submission—nearly three times as long as they took under President Ronald Reagan. That is time an industrial policy program cannot afford to waste.

Most government programs take months to get off the ground. In its first few months, however, the CHIPS team released its first funding opportunity for commercial chip fabs, published an investments strategy paper, and hired dozens of staff across investments, strategy, legal, and external affairs. Raimondo also appointed a chief investment officer with private-sector investment experience and credibility with large industry players to work with Schmidt. Hiring from the private sector was essential for an industrial policy program intended to go toe-to-toe with some of the biggest, most sophisticated companies in the world. At the same time, the point of industrial policy is to meet economic and national security objectives, not just earn market returns. So the CHIPS team also needed staff that could evaluate deals based not just on financial terms but also by judging whether they would improve supply chain resilience, meet the needs of the defense industrial base, and strengthen cybersecurity.

Industrial policy is not about onshoring all production to the United States.

Hiring for these roles is easier said than done. By broad consensus, federal hiring is a mess. In 2024, it took the government more than 100 days, on average, to hire new employees. But even that number understates the problem, as it includes various forms of expedited hiring that are often not possible. Typical government hiring, through competitive public job announcements, takes significantly longer. What’s more, federal offices responsible for screening résumés rarely have the financial and technical expertise to evaluate applicants for specialized jobs and tend to review résumés more for consistency with the wording of the job announcement than for the substantive qualifications needed for the role. That’s one reason that, according to Jennifer Pahlka, who helped found the U.S. Digital Service, roughly half of all competitive federal job announcements fail, resulting in no hire.

The Office of Personnel Management (OPM), the independent agency that oversees the federal workforce, should systematically overhaul and improve government hiring. But in the meantime, high-priority programs need to be creative to get good people in the door quickly. For CHIPS, bureau heads in the Commerce Department temporarily loaned staff to get the nascent office off the ground. To build up its full-time staff, meanwhile, the CHIPS Office sought permission from the OPM to use two expedited hiring authorities that were critical to the program’s success: direct hiring, which bypasses most HR screenings, and excepted service hiring, which allows managers to hire without HR involvement. CHIPS hired more than 150 people using expedited authorities. The CHIPS Act itself also included a special hiring pathway, allowing the program to recruit its most senior staff quickly and pay them above-standard government rates.

For industrial policy to work well, recruiting is essential. The government needs to draw sharp minds from finance, industry, and other federal agencies. For workers in the private sector, a federal job means much lower pay; it might also mean long commutes or relocation to Washington. During the early months of the CHIPS program, CHIPS relied on personal outreach from Raimondo and from office leadership. Their pitches were simple: get in on the ground floor of a once-in-a-generation experiment in industrial policy. When the ask was made directly, most people said yes.

VISION FOR SUCCESS

Equally important to staffing is developing an investment strategy—figuring out what, exactly, the United States is buying with its congressional funding. This strategy should be clear, provide concrete goals and metrics, and be accessible to the public so that Americans can judge whether the program is succeeding on its own terms and whether those terms are the right ones. Such a strategy, though hardly unique to industrial policy, is critical for a program’s operational and political success. Not every worthy project can receive funding. By specifying clear criteria by which applications for funding would be evaluated and by publishing a vision of success that set specific production objectives across the semiconductor industry, the CHIPS office could manage expectations for stakeholders both within and outside of government.

Importantly, the vision for success served as a guide to actual investment decisions. CHIPS tasked teams to evaluate how every potential deal would advance the program’s aims. In working on individual deals, however, it’s easy to get caught up in negotiations with specific companies over minute details and lose sight of the bigger picture. To offset that effect, the office also established an investment committee, composed of CHIPS leadership and a few outside experts, whose job was to recommend deals to a committee of senior Commerce Department leaders based on a portfolio-level view of the office’s investments. To manage industry expectations and ensure that there was enough money for a broad range of projects, CHIPS made clear that successful applicants would generally receive grants worth no more than 15 percent of a project’s capital expenditures.

A successful industrial policy also must incorporate foreign, state, and local governments. Foreign governments matter because modern goods have complex global supply chains and are sold into global markets. Industrial policy is not about onshoring all production to the United States. Even had that been the goal for CHIPS, $39 billion would not have been enough. Instead, industrial policy should identify which components must be made in the United States and work with friendly partners to create robust and resilient global supply chains for those that cannot be. For CHIPS, those partners included Costa Rica, Europe, Japan, Mexico, South Korea, and Taiwan, many of which had their own chip subsidy programs. To avoid duplicative efforts and to prevent companies from playing countries off each other in search of the highest award, CHIPS hired an international team responsible for monitoring global subsidies, developing a global strategy, and working with the White House and State Department to communicate or reinforce specific requests of foreign partners. CHIPS also developed close relationships with state and local governments, which provided their own subsidies in addition to controlling site selection and various permitting levers.

MOVE FAST, DON’T BREAK THINGS

The same political will that drove the passage of CHIPS—and which may drive future industrial policy bills—also created a demand for fast results. But government processes rarely move quickly, and there are lots of opportunities for outside players—other agencies, courts, and Congress—to slow momentum.

Government differs from the private sector in the sheer number of actors that can impede progress. To be sure, officials outside an industrial policy program—in a legislative affairs office, on a communications team, or at the National Security Council—can spot gaps or missing priorities. But although many of them know the importance of their functions, few are able to trade off between them—to decide, for example, when a national security imperative outweighs a labor concern, or vice versa. Resolving such disagreements can slow things down. CHIPS was largely able to avoid such delays thanks to a statute that granted substantial discretion to Commerce and a funding process that gave the CHIPS office the flexibility to make policy tradeoffs during negotiations.

Other programs may not be so lucky. It could help for them to have a full-time coordinator at the White House, as CHIPS did, tasked with moving the program forward and resolving conflicts before they resulted in significant delay. A White House coordinator can also help ensure a comprehensive approach to industrial policy that aligns funding with other tools, such as export controls, tariffs, and government procurement.

Designing an industrial policy involves difficult tradeoffs between speed and nuance.

Courts can serve as another source of delay. In theory, nearly any program decision can eventually be litigated in court, and even if no suit is ultimately filed, processes are designed in the shadow of potential litigation. Consider the National Environmental Policy Act, a law that requires the federal government to evaluate possible environmental impacts of proposed action. NEPA reviews come on top of ordinary permitting requirements and apply only to federal projects. Although well intentioned, such reviews can take years, and if an opponent of the project sues, even longer. The original version of CHIPS required NEPA reviews for CHIPS projects; to comply, the office built an environmental team and published a 200-page programmatic environmental assessment. This strategy would have sped up reviews, but it would still have been vulnerable to lawsuits and considerable delay. In the end, two years after passing the CHIPS Act, Congress exempted most CHIPS projects from NEPA, easing this burden. But including a NEPA waiver in the initial law, and broadening it to cover all projects, would have saved a lot of time and effort.

Congress can also act as a source of friction. Ideally, the statute that creates any new program will include sufficient money and authorities to achieve its goals, but that is not always the case. Asking Congress to address an urgent need can take months or even years, as was the case for the NEPA exemption for CHIPS projects. Careful legislative drafting—including waivers of other laws where necessary—can make a big difference. Appropriating the entire budget of the program up front can help a program make long-term plans without worrying about political disruptions.

Finally, state and local governments can create permitting bottlenecks, which lead to years of delay. States want to win big projects, however, so the best approach to such obstacles is to set up a competitive dynamic among them. CHIPS, for its part, explicitly rated applications based on how quickly they could be constructed, including permit timelines. This created incentives for interested states to strengthen their processes and adopt reforms, such as creating fast tracks and a single permitting point of contact for a project. CHIPS also engaged early and often with local governments to break through logjams when they arose.

THE PROCEDURE FETISH

When making difficult decisions, the U.S. government often justifies outcomes by reference to a scrupulously fair, diligent, and transparent process. Such processes often lead to the right outcomes, and strictly following them can help protect ambitious government programs from legal consequences and reputational harm when some investments inevitably fail. But they can also be inflexible, counterproductive, and time-consuming. A successful program thus hews to standard rules where appropriate but seeks workarounds where necessary.

Take, for example, the rules governing federal grants. The rules run 180 pages long with 12 appendices, and it can be difficult to parse what is mandatory and what is merely standard practice. Because many of these rules are ill suited to ambitious industrial policy, Commerce appealed to Congress to include in the bill a special exemption from grant rules known as “other transaction authority.” A typical government grant simply reimburses applicants for the cost of their activities, which means that negotiations over cost are limited if they happen at all. But CHIPS wanted to have holistic negotiations with companies over how many and what kind of fabs companies would build and how much funding the government would provide—an iterative process that was critical to ensuring projects met ambitious economic and national security goals. Unlike the traditional government grants process, in which applicants set project scope, most CHIPS negotiations involved pushing applicants to build more, which paid off handsomely when companies such as TSMC agreed to construct additional fabs in the United States.

Another source of procedural delay are statutes such as the Paperwork Reduction Act, which requires two separate comment periods to evaluate the necessity and burden of providing information to the public, making it difficult to quickly announce funding opportunities. Procurement laws, meanwhile, can require monthslong competitions among potential bidders before a program can purchase outside services. A critical job for early staff is to identify and, to the extent possible, work around such obstacles by leveraging statutory exceptions and other available “fast track” procedures.

Finally, designing an industrial policy involves difficult tradeoffs between speed and nuance. One example is the complex process the CHIPS office designed to determine grant subsidies, which included calculating the rate of return for proposed projects. To avoid wasting taxpayer dollars, CHIPS deal teams sought to bring the rate of return for CHIPS projects close to the company’s standard rate of return. But rate of return is a difficult number to model, and small changes in assumptions can lead to big changes in the result. A simpler approach might have opened negotiations over grant size at a fixed percentage of total costs, avoiding drawn-out debates over model assumptions. Such an approach, however, would have been less accurate and might have resulted in overpaying companies that could have executed projects with less government money. CHIPS calculated that a more involved process was worth it for larger fab projects, particularly to signal to the biggest companies that the team was ready for serious, financially sophisticated negotiations. When it came to designing a funding process for semiconductor suppliers, which are smaller and sometimes less well-resourced than other program applicants and for which long negotiations are impractical, CHIPS followed the simpler approach, fixing most awards at ten percent of the project’s capital expenditures.

MOVING FORWARD

CHIPS was not without its critics. The program faced early pushback, for example, for embodying “everything bagel liberalism”—an attempt to shoehorn too many social and economic goals into a national security program. When the first funding opportunity was published in February 2023, critics took issue with language that encouraged labor agreements and required applicants requesting more than $150 million to submit a plan to provide childcare to their workforce. There were no signs that the language deterred companies from participating, and many companies spoke publicly about the need for affordable childcare options to meet workforce demands. But the blowback sapped some of the bipartisan support for the program, and the Trump administration has resurfaced some of the criticisms. This is not to say industrial policy programs should never include additional policy requirements, but these should always be in service of the overall goal: onshoring sufficient production capacity for technologies critical to economic and national security.

In addition, getting early design choices right does not inoculate a program against issues down the line. This is especially true for programs, such as CHIPS, that target a cyclical and sometimes unpredictable industry. When Intel’s stock nosedived in 2024, for example, the CHIPS team had to scramble to finalize a deal with the company to secure important projects while safeguarding taxpayer money in the event of the company’s collapse. NEPA delays remain a concern for projects that were not exempted from its reviews. And some external statutory requirements, such as retroactive prevailing wage requirements under the Davis-Bacon Act, have slowed and complicated funding negotiations.

Doing industrial policy well is not easy. It requires scaling up production quickly and carving out a place in government that can act like a private-sector startup by staffing up, implementing new processes, and finding creative ways to avoid delays. The U.S. government, bogged down by rules and bureaucracy, is not the ideal home for a startup. But with the right playbook, it can become a more hospitable one. As CHIPS demonstrated, policymakers need to make government an attractive place to work for people from finance and industry, identify and mitigate sources of delay, and measure success against clear and definable metrics. At the same time, policymakers should push for structural reforms to make government work better. Under the best of circumstances, industrial policy is an uphill battle. Making smart early decisions can make the climb a little easier.

SAM MARULLO is a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Progress. He served as Counselor to the Secretary of Commerce and as Director of CHIPS Policy during the Biden administration.

Foreign Affairs · by More by Nikita Lalwani · May 22, 2025

12. Maritime Domain Awareness or Silent War?

Conclusion:

At this critical juncture, with an upcoming QUAD summit, the QUAD must act decisively to integrate the region’s disparate maritime domain awareness systems into a cohesive, QUAD-led framework. This effort would provide the transparency, interoperability, and enforcement capabilities needed to confront grey-zone threats head-on. China’s little blue men are no longer a peripheral challenge; they represent a sophisticated arm of coercion that exploits ambiguity and fragmentation among like-minded states. Without a unified response, these militias will continue to blur maritime borders, weaken alliances, and erode the rules-based order in the Indo-Pacific. The upcoming QUAD summit is not merely an opportunity, it is a test of resolve.

Maritime Domain Awareness or Silent War?

irregularwarfare.org · by James Park · May 20, 2025

By James Park

President Trump’srecent bilateral summits with Japan and India underscore a tacit trend: the central role of US allies in the Indo-Pacific region. In particular, evolving US-India ties have significant implications for the rest of the Quadrilateral Dialogue (QUAD) member states and other US alliance structures in the region. These trends reflect the degree to which the Indo-Pacific region has emerged as a key American foreign policy priority, as underscored by a joint statement issued by the QUAD nations in January 2025.

This growing emphasis builds on earlier efforts by QUAD nations to enhance regional security cooperation. In 2022, for example, the QUAD nations launched the Indo-Pacific Maritime Domain Awareness (IPMDA) initiative to unify real-time data processing for all vessels in the region. This would provide increased transparency and accountability. Since its inception in May of that year, however, the IPMDA has remained relatively underdeveloped, despite initial enthusiasm.

The diplomatic challenges surrounding the integration and de-confliction of diverse Maritime Domain Awareness systems and initiatives is the primary reason the QUAD-initiated IPMDA remains largely dormant. Overcoming this hurdle is essential for the IPMDA to fulfill its role in countering grey-zone threats, especially when facing Chinese grey-zone tactics at sea.

Addressing these integration challenges is not merely a technical hurdle—it is a strategic imperative in the face of escalating grey-zone threats from China. To effectively counter China’s maritime tactics—particularly the use of its maritime militia or “little blue men”—the QUAD nations must urgently revitalize and integrate IPMDA into a unified, coordinated framework that can provide real-time visibility, enable rapid legal enforcement capability, and contribute to strategic deterrence across the region. Together, the QUAD can proactively seek ways to counter threats in the Indo-Pacific that challenge the normative and inclusive international order, an order that is underpinned by principles such as freedom of navigation and a rules-based approach to international conduct.

Grey Zone Threats

At the forefront of the region’s grey-zone challenges is China’s maritime militia, colloquially known as the “little blue men.” Operating under the guise of civilian fishing vessels, the exact number of vessels in the militia remains unclear. However, participants are drawn from China’s vast fishing fleet, which comprises 21 million fishermen and 439,000 motorboats. The little blue men provide the People’s Liberation Army Navy with deniability while contributing to China’s area-denial efforts against US naval operations and neighboring countries’ forces.

These militias use irregular tactics such as “rafting,” which involves chaining tens or hundreds of ships together to create makeshift maritime outposts for saber-rattling. They also infiltrate other nations’ exclusive economic zones without technically violating international law, as they are not actively exploiting maritime resources. In employing such tactics, these little blue men raise serious concerns under international law and the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. Despite questions of legitimacy, they serve as a key instrument of China’s grey zone strategy: blurring the line between civilian and military actions to gain strategic advantage while avoiding open conflict.

The power of these grey zone tactics is vast. The little blue men can leverage their numbers to swarm and disperse, effectively interdicting US or allied naval vessels who are operating under conventional rules of engagement. For example, these militias can carry out a surprise amphibious action on small rocky shoals and uninhabited islands in the Indo-Pacific, which are crucial for maritime territorial demarcation.

Perhaps more insidious, the little blue men intentionally defy maritime domain awareness methods and international norms by disabling their automatic identification systems (AIS), which allows them to evade detection while raising questions about their true intent. This deliberate evasion creates space for illicit activity that directly undermines the rules-based international order in the Indo-Pacific.

As more Indo-Pacific nations forge small-scale agreements with China, the little blue men may no longer remain “little.” They may become more deeply involved in activities that blur demarcated maritime lines and borders. They could evolve into an even more formidable force, further destabilizing maritime security and exploiting the grey zone beyond their current malign activity. This was exemplified in 2021 by their saber-rattling in swarming the Whitsun Reef, a feature the Philippines claims. Such actions risk irreversibly undermining the inclusive international order in the region that like-minded states have fought hard to secure.

Inadequate Countermeasures

In light of these threats, the United States could recommit to coordinating with allies to develop more effective countermeasures. However, the February 2025 US-India summit may have fallen short of directly addressing the growing threat posed by the little blue men. The bilateral agenda did not prioritize a crucial component: revitalizing the IPMDA to directly meet challenges posed by China. The agenda did, however, include plans to enhance shared airlift capacity for civilian disaster response and improve maritime patrol interoperability.

The US currently holds separate naval exercises with regional maritime powers, including Balikatan with the Philippines, Keen Sword with Japan, and Talisman Sabre with Australia. Improved IPMDA could bolster these and other exercises, each covering vast regions of the Indo-Pacific. IPMDA could do this by providing real-time, visual tracking information for all vessels in regional waters. At a minimum, QUAD states could consider issuing a declaration that the current IPMDA will officially undergo enhancements to more fully address the evolving threats in the Indo-Pacific.

If fully operational, IPMDA could enable participating Indo-Pacific nations to share a common operating picture of all surface vessels in the region, theoretically alerting stakeholders of little blue men activities. However, the system’s current reliance on ships maintaining active AIS signals poses a major limitation—precisely because China’s maritime militia often disables AIS to evade detection. While IPMDA’s use of real-time satellite imagery helps bridge this gap, it is not a panacea. Unmanned aerial systems can further enhance IPMDA’s effectiveness by providing additional data to update the common operating picture more comprehensively and in real time.

Strengthening Maritime Coordination

The real challenge for the IPMDA lies within the QUAD and its partner nations. China’s lack of transparency, coupled with violations of international norms, offers a watershed moment for any upcoming QUAD summits. The IPMDA requires rich, vast, and real-time data from all vessels in the region to function effectively. However, the Indo-Pacific’s sheer size has led to the proliferation of multiple, well-established maritime domain awareness systems with different operational frameworks that require deconfliction to avoid data-process confusion. These include the European Union-backed Critical Maritime Routes Indo-Pacific system, the ASEAN-supported Indo-Pacific Regional Information Sharing Platform, Canada’s Dark Vessel Detection Program, and India’s Information Fusion Center-Indian Ocean Region. These frameworks are already contributing to regional maritime security, albeit separately, further highlighting the need to increase integration.

Unifying MDA systems is more critical than ever. This unification could be a key discussion topic for the next QUAD summit. Some experts argue that China’s campaign to dominate the Indo-Pacific without firing a shot is already underway. Chen Yuhua, a China studies professor at Akita International University, suggested that China would “take US allies out of Washington’s orbit” in an attempt to drive a wedge between the US and its key allies. Beijing has strategically exploited fractures in the internal political dynamics of Indo-Pacific nations, leveraging diplomatic and economic influence to secure port access and own infrastructure. Some of these efforts, particularly in Sri Lanka, Djibouti, and Pakistan, are designed to enhance China’s access to the Indian Ocean. All of this further solidifies China’s regional foothold, enabled by the little blue men.

Conclusion

At this critical juncture, with an upcoming QUAD summit, the QUAD must act decisively to integrate the region’s disparate maritime domain awareness systems into a cohesive, QUAD-led framework. This effort would provide the transparency, interoperability, and enforcement capabilities needed to confront grey-zone threats head-on. China’s little blue men are no longer a peripheral challenge; they represent a sophisticated arm of coercion that exploits ambiguity and fragmentation among like-minded states. Without a unified response, these militias will continue to blur maritime borders, weaken alliances, and erode the rules-based order in the Indo-Pacific. The upcoming QUAD summit is not merely an opportunity, it is a test of resolve.

James JB Park is a Captain (R) of the Republic of Korea Army. He is a 2024 Non-resident James A. Kelly Korea Studies Fellow at the Pacific Forum and an Indo-Pacific Geopolitics Fellow at the Indo-Pacific Studies Center. From 2017 to 2019, Captain Park served as a staffer in Korea’s Presidential Blue House and its Office of National Security (U.S. National Security Council equivalent), where he was a bridge between the Blue House, the White House, and high-profile U.S. officials.

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

Image credit: U.S. Navy photo.

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13. Autonomous Weapon Systems: No Human-in-the-Loop Required, and Other Myths Dispelled

Finally, finally.

Excerpts:

The Trump administration could, of course, decide to revise or even replace the directive, but at present it still governs policy on autonomy in weapon systems. Currently, policy requires additional review of some kinds of autonomous weapon systems, but does not prohibit anything or require a human in the loop. Instead, the requirements in the directive are an aggregation of the requirements that all weapon systems need to meet to ensure they can be used effectively in ways that enhance the ability of the United States military to achieve its objectives in a war. Thus, following the requirements does not place an undue burden on any military service that wishes to develop an autonomous weapon system. They just need to prove it can be effectively and legally used, like any weapon system.

However, these continuing misinterpretations about Department of Defense policy threaten to undermine the adoption of autonomy in weapon systems with responsible speed. Moving forward, the Department of Defense should more clearly communicate to its stakeholder communities that defense policy does not prohibit or restrict autonomous weapon systems of any sort. It only requires that some autonomous weapon systems go through an additional review process on top of the reviews that all weapon systems are required to undergo.

The Department of Defense should also direct officials across the services to discuss the importance of human responsibility for the use of force, rather than the need for a human in the loop, given the way the conflation of tactical and operational loops can quickly lead to confusion.

Finally, the existence of the directive, however, provides a reminder to senior leaders to take an extra look at autonomous weapon systems that might otherwise raise eyebrows or where operators might have initial hesitation about using them. By ensuring that capabilities go through the review process, the Department of Defense can increase trust and confidence among warfighters in ways that would make their end use, if needed, more effective.

Finally, the directive also sends a strong signal internationally. In concert with the Political Declaration on Responsible Military Use of Artificial Intelligence and Autonomy, the directive provides a role model for capacity building as countries make their own policy decisions about incorporating autonomy into their weapon systems, building on lessons learned from the Russo-Ukrainian War or elsewhere.

Autonomous Weapon Systems: No Human-in-the-Loop Required, and Other Myths Dispelled - War on the Rocks

warontherocks.com · by Michael C. Horowitz · May 22, 2025

References by Pentagon officials, the think tank world, and various world leaders to autonomous weapon systems often cite a U.S. military policy requirement that doesn’t even exist. Published in 2012 and updated in 2023, Department of Defense Directive 3000.09, Autonomy in Weapon Systems governs the Pentagon’s deployment and use of semi-autonomous and autonomous weapon systems. An autonomous weapon system is a weapon system that, once activated, can select and engage targets without further intervention by an operator. A semi-autonomous weapon system is something like the precision-guided weapons of today. Most prominently, the policy requires that, for some kinds of autonomous weapon systems, senior Defense Department leaders have to do two extra rounds of review, on top of the usual checks all weapon systems go through. This happens once before the system is approved to enter the acquisition pipeline and again before it’s used in the field. The reviews use a simple checklist, based on rules that already exist, to make sure any proposed autonomous weapon system works as it should and follows U.S. law.

Unfortunately, there are myths about current U.S. policy on autonomy in weapon systems that are creating imaginary — and then real — barriers to the U.S. military developing and deploying greater autonomy. And I should know, since the office I worked in in the Pentagon rewrote the updated directive during the Biden administration.

The original 2012 directive was the world’s first policy on autonomous weapon systems, but after a decade, it was time for an update. The original directive was widely misunderstood in multiple ways. Outside the Pentagon, advocacy groups seemed to think that the Department of Defense was stockpiling killer robots in the basement, while inside, many believed that autonomous weapon systems were prohibited. That gap in understanding alone made a refresh worthwhile. Moreover, the war between Russia and Ukraine demonstrated the utility of AI-enabled weapons and their necessity given the way electronic warfare can disrupt remotely-piloted systems.

Additionally, advances in AI and autonomous systems meant the science fiction of a decade prior was now in the realm of the technologically possible in some cases, while the Department of Defense itself had also changed. Since 2012, the Department of Defense has adopted principles for the use of artificial intelligence, created a new organization to accelerate AI adoption (the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office), and made a number of other reforms. Further, Department of Defense directives have to be reviewed every 10 years and either canceled, extended, or revised. Thus, we updated the directive in 2023.

As often happens, however, updating the policy did not fully address three myths and misunderstandings that had built up over time: First, there is a myth that the directive prohibits either some or all autonomous weapon systems, which is not the case. Second, there is a myth that the directive requires a human in the loop for the use of force at the tactical level, which is also not the case. Third, there is a myth that the directive regulates research and development, experimentation, and prototyping of autonomous weapon systems, which is untrue. These myths are holding back the Department of Defense’s ability to scale autonomy in weapon systems with responsible speed as the technology improves, because they create barriers due to fear of bureaucratic constraints, rather than the state of the technology. We worked to correct these myths, but clearly there is more work to do on this front. Especially when it comes to the second myth, which is perhaps the most pernicious, it may be time to abandon language about humans being “in,” “on,” or “out” of the loop for autonomous weapon systems. The “loop” language creates unnecessary confusion by falsely implying continuous human oversight at the tactical level that even existing conventional weapon systems do not have. Instead, we should emphasize human judgment, clearly reflecting the critical and accountable role humans play in authorizing force before a weapon is deployed.

As the U.S. military prepares for potential combat in the Indo-Pacific without reliable communications, autonomous weapon systems are increasingly critical. Dispelling myths about autonomy is essential to rapidly building an AI-enabled force that maintains human accountability and responsibility.

Let’s take each of these myths in turn.

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Myth #1: Fully Autonomous Weapon Systems Are Prohibited

The reality is that there are no types of autonomous weapon systems prohibited by Department of Defense Directive 3000.09. That does not mean there are no rules surrounding autonomous weapon systems. The directive contains several requirements that make explicit criteria that weapons developers should already be meeting.

For example, all semi-autonomous and autonomous weapon systems have to go through the evaluation process described in Section 3 of the directive, which maps onto the rigorous requirements that the Department of Defense already has for ensuring weapon systems function as intended and have minimal failures (some degree of accidents are inevitable).

Some autonomous weapon systems then require additional review by senior officials before they reach the formal development stage (after experimentation and prototyping and prior to acquisition) and again prior to fielding. Autonomous systems designed to protect military bases and ships from various forms of attack (which have existed for decades), as well as non-lethal systems, are carved out from the additional review because existing review processes sufficiently ensure their safe development, deployment, and fielding. Section 4 of the directive lays out the requirements that systems need to meet for approval in that review process. These are commonsense requirements that any weapon system should be able to meet, such as demonstrating the ability to use the system in a way that complies with U.S. law. For example, an autonomous weapon system that could not be used in compliance with international humanitarian law and the law of armed conflict would fail the legal review required in Section 4 of the directive. But the directive is simply restating a requirement that all weapon systems have to meet.

It is also certainly the case that, based on the state of the technology and views of senior leaders, there are some missions where autonomous weapon systems might be more plausible and desirable than others. For example, it is easier to imagine demonstrating the effectiveness of autonomous weapon systems with algorithms able to very accurately target adversary ships or planes than autonomous weapon systems trained to attack individual humans, or even more to make a judgement without human intervention about whether an individual human was a combatant and thus able to be targeted lawfully.

Myth #2: Humans Must Be in the Tactical Loop

There is no requirement for a human in the loop in the directive. Those words do not appear in the document. This omission was intentional. What is required is having appropriate levels of human judgement (Section 1.2) over the use of force, which is not the same as a human in the loop. While the two phrases sound similar, they mean distinctly different things. Appropriate human judgment refers to the necessity for an informed human decision before the use of force, ensuring accountability and compliance with law.

Existing autonomous weapon systems demonstrate the role of human judgment. The Navy has deployed the Phalanx Close-In Weapon System since 1980. It is a giant Gatling gun designed to protect ships from close-in threats, whether missiles, aircraft, or something else. Normally, the system is directly controlled by a human, but if the number of incoming threats is larger than a human can track and engage, the operator can activate an automatic mode that will engage the threats faster than a human could achieve. This system has been used safely for decades, including in the last two years in the Red Sea to protect Navy ships from Houthi missiles. In this case, there is human judgment at the command level authorizing the use of the system to protect the ship, and at the tactical level by a human operator who switches the system into automatic mode. The directive does not require a review of the Phalanx as an autonomous weapon system since it is purely defensive and thus excluded from the requirement for additional review, but it illustrates how, even in the case of an autonomous weapon system, there is human judgment, even when autonomous force is being employed.

Now, imagine a next-generation missile with AI-enabled targeting being used in an air-to-air engagement in a communications-denied environment. In that case, a human commander would have already authorized the use of force, providing human judgment. A human operator would launch the missile, providing tactical human judgement. The missile would then turn on a seeker and look for a target using a computer vision algorithm, vectoring to destroy a target once it is identified. There is no ability to overrule the missile after launch. In this case, there is a decision by an accountable human to authorize the use of force and of the weapon system, just as there is with the use of an AIM-120 air-to-air missile or a radar-guided missile. The difference is that the seeker used to identify the target is now smarter.

Here is a harder case. The collaborative combat aircraft being pursued by the Air Force are designed for autonomy in many areas, including flight, but with the use of force still overseen by a human pilot flying with them. Now, imagine a second-generation collaborative combat aircraft in an active war zone, authorized to target adversary bombers. For the system to be fielded with that level of autonomy, the updated autonomy software would have been through the Pentagon’s rigorous testing and evaluation process and demonstrated the ability to accurately target the relevant adversary aircraft. In that case, a human commander would have authorized the use of force and the use of the collaborative combat aircraft for a given mission, providing human judgment. These autonomous aircraft would then follow the mission orders, launching missiles at adversary bombers once they are identified. The human commander who authorized their use on the mission would be accountable and responsible for the use of force.

A third example is an autonomous tank. This is a harder case because an autonomous ground combat tank is probably one of the hardest things to create and test, given the variety of different circumstances and targets it could encounter. So, an autonomous ground combat tank would probably have a large degree of human oversight and a more constrained mission set, absent substantial advances in AI that truly changed the technological realm of the possible. The rule of thumb is that the “cleaner” the battlefield environment, given current AI technology, the easier it is to envision how autonomous weapon systems might function effectively without reducing human accountability for the use of force.

Stepping back, senior defense leaders sometimes talk about a human in the loop requirement, even though no such requirement exists. Why is this? Senior leaders will occasionally say things that do not reflect official policy, which can be inevitable in such a large military system. For example, a senior Air Force official once talked about the Air Force’s commitment to “meaningful human control” of the use of force, a phrase used by the civil society “Campaign to Stop Killer Robots.” The U.S. government and Department of Defense have consistently opposed the phrase “meaningful human control” because it implies an unrealistic level of human supervision not met by many existing semi-autonomous precision-guided weapon systems, let alone unguided weapons. But even then, the official discussed meaningful human control of the use of force, which is different than meaningful human control of an individual weapon system.

Having a human in the loop can mean different things in tactical and operational contexts, which is what leads to confusion. Since the inconsistencies in how people talk about a human in the loop are endemic, the updated directive only requires human judgment. Operationally, there is always a human responsible for the use of force, meaning there is always a human authorizing lethality, approving a mission, and sending forces into the field. It’s clearer and more consistent to talk about how there is always a human responsible for the use than to talk about a requirement for a human in the loop.

The exception to what I have described here is nuclear weapons. The 2022 Nuclear Posture Review states that “In all cases, the United States will maintain a human ‘in the loop’ for all actions critical to informing and executing decisions by the President to initiate and terminate nuclear weapons employment.” The phrasing is still awkward in the nuclear context, but arguably makes sense given the unique destructive power of nuclear weapons and the importance of being clear that decisions about nuclear use are made at the highest level.

Myth #3: There are Limits in Research and Development, Prototyping, and Experimentation on Autonomous Weapon Systems

There is nothing in the directive regulating those activities. For autonomous weapon systems where additional senior-level review is required, the first stage of the review process occurs when a weapon system is about to enter the acquisition system after research and development, prototyping, and initial experimentation. The directive does not limit these activities in any way.

Next Steps

The United States has a strong policy on autonomy in weapon systems that simultaneously enables their development and deployment and ensures they could be used in an effective manner, meaning the systems work as intended, with the same minimal risk of accidents or errors that all weapon systems have. Department of Defense Directive 3000.09 should reinforce confidence that any autonomous weapon systems the U.S. military develops and fields would enhance the capabilities of the military and comply with international humanitarian law and the law of armed conflict. Addressing these myths can help turn that into a reality.

The Trump administration could, of course, decide to revise or even replace the directive, but at present it still governs policy on autonomy in weapon systems. Currently, policy requires additional review of some kinds of autonomous weapon systems, but does not prohibit anything or require a human in the loop. Instead, the requirements in the directive are an aggregation of the requirements that all weapon systems need to meet to ensure they can be used effectively in ways that enhance the ability of the United States military to achieve its objectives in a war. Thus, following the requirements does not place an undue burden on any military service that wishes to develop an autonomous weapon system. They just need to prove it can be effectively and legally used, like any weapon system.

However, these continuing misinterpretations about Department of Defense policy threaten to undermine the adoption of autonomy in weapon systems with responsible speed. Moving forward, the Department of Defense should more clearly communicate to its stakeholder communities that defense policy does not prohibit or restrict autonomous weapon systems of any sort. It only requires that some autonomous weapon systems go through an additional review process on top of the reviews that all weapon systems are required to undergo.

The Department of Defense should also direct officials across the services to discuss the importance of human responsibility for the use of force, rather than the need for a human in the loop, given the way the conflation of tactical and operational loops can quickly lead to confusion.

Finally, the existence of the directive, however, provides a reminder to senior leaders to take an extra look at autonomous weapon systems that might otherwise raise eyebrows or where operators might have initial hesitation about using them. By ensuring that capabilities go through the review process, the Department of Defense can increase trust and confidence among warfighters in ways that would make their end use, if needed, more effective.

Finally, the directive also sends a strong signal internationally. In concert with the Political Declaration on Responsible Military Use of Artificial Intelligence and Autonomy, the directive provides a role model for capacity building as countries make their own policy decisions about incorporating autonomy into their weapon systems, building on lessons learned from the Russo-Ukrainian War or elsewhere.

Become a Member

Michael C. Horowitz is the Richard Perry professor at the University of Pennsylvania and senior fellow for technology and innovation at the Council on Foreign Relations. The views in this article are those of the author alone and do not represent those of the Department of Defense, its components, or any part of the U.S. government.

Commentary

warontherocks.com · by Michael C. Horowitz · May 22, 2025

14. The Map and the Territory: ISIS’s Hedgehog Leadership

Excertps:

In the end, al-Baghdadi was killed in a U.S. raid in Syria, and while ISIS affiliates persist in other regions, the core caliphate project lies in ruins. The organization’s legacy is a cautionary tale about the dangers of ideological extremism and the limits of brute force as a political strategy. ISIS pushed its enemies out entirely, occupying all major locations, enslaving much of the population, and ruling over the rest under its black banner. But to simply rule over a conquered population isn’t the same as governing or building a stable state. To create these kinds of sociopolitical hybrids, the constituent parts need to have several points of compatibility. It’s less about manufactured fusion and more about cultural diffusion in a broader sense—an organic, unsystematic blending of ideas, customs, and practices through everyday exchange and interaction.

It may seem like an academic distinction, but the key is that ISIS is structured in a way that makes such an exchange impossible. The whole thing is built on crushing regional cultures and assimilating people into this massive, rigid totalitarian system. There can be no synthesis and thus no state with ISIS because ISIS cannot survive with regional differences and an interplay of ideas. Totalitarianism dominates everything outside the state but skips the process of actually building that state.

The Map and the Territory: ISIS’s Hedgehog Leadership

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/05/22/the-map-and-the-territory-isiss-hedgehog-leadership/

by Siamak Naficy

05.22.2025 at 06:00am

How one views the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) (and I’m referring to the original group and not to the off-brand in Afghanistan or the off-off-brand across Africa) and its leader, Abu-Bakr al-Baghdadi, depends very much on one’s politics and ethics. To many—likely most of us—they’re brutal slavers and a cultish, malignant raider gang, like something torn straight from a Mad Max nightmare. Some argue that Iraq is an example of how Western intervention and failing state services create the very environment of raw, divisive resentment that benefits black-clad violent ideologues like ISIS. Still, others—some rigid Salafi-jihadist types for instance—could try and argue that a vicious and threatening world requires a vicious form of ‘resistance’, even if that means brutally exterminating rivals. Whatever the take, the fact is that al-Baghdadi failed in his endeavors. And he failed because he was too much of a hedgehog. This essay focuses on the original ISIS—centered in Iraq and Syria under al-Baghdadi—and argues that the organization’s meteoric rise and catastrophic collapse can best be understood through Isaiah Berlin’s famous metaphor: the fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing. Al-Baghdadi was a hedgehog—singular in focus, uncompromising in ideology, and ultimately inflexible in strategy.

ISIS’s origins lie in the geopolitical chaos of the early 2000s. The 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq dismantled Saddam Hussein’s Baathist regime and disbanded the Iraqi military, creating a power vacuum and a deep pool of disenfranchised Sunni Arabs. Many of these individuals became the base for insurgent movements, including AQI, led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. After Zarqawi’s death in 2006, the decline of AQI due to U.S. counterinsurgency efforts and the Sunni Awakening, the group rebranded itself as the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) and later expanded into Syria, exploiting the chaos of the civil war.

Al-Baghdadi was a hedgehog—singular in focus, uncompromising in ideology, and ultimately inflexible in strategy.

The Caliphate That Wasn’t

After years of insurgency, ISIS formally declared itself as a caliphate in 2014. Al-Baghdadi’s leadership, since 2010, was instrumental in ISIS’s early successes, particularly during its rapid expansion across Iraq and Syria. He soon upped the game and began forging the region—all languages, religions, and cultures—into a single LARP-ing “the-7th-century-but-with-Kalashnikovs” society in a strict and unforgiving totalitarian supertribe. In its thankfully short existence in the region, ISIS was an imperialist, genocidal, and largely homogenizing force that tried to obliterate the identity of every group it conquered.

It’s important to note that “Abu Bakr” al-Baghdadi, born Ibrahim al-Badri, didn’t choose the rubric of the 1st Caliph of the Rashidun Caliphate out of delusion or mere classical fetishism. He was working within an ideological framework, and he had clear goals. He picked the name because he thought it would work. He believed in ISIS. He believed he had crafted a template for a society equal to the challenges of the post-jihad world—a society that could and would survive.

Map of ISIS’s territorial control in Syria and Iraq in 2015. ISIS control is highlighted by gray coloring. Source.

But, observation demonstrates that he often did wildly impractical things. One of the most impractical things al-Baghdadi ever did was the very declaration of a caliphate. While it was a powerful propaganda move that attracted foreign fighters and temporarily legitimized ISIS in the eyes of jihadist supporters, it was also strategically flawed.

By declaring a caliphate, ISIS committed itself to governing territory rather than remaining a fluid insurgency. This made it a clear and stationary target for state and substate polities, including the U.S., Iran, the Kurds, and Russia. Unlike groups that operate in shadows, ISIS now had to defend fixed positions, provide services, and maintain control over a hostile population. This overextension ultimately led to its downfall, as it provoked overwhelming military responses that eroded its territory and resources.

Al-Baghdadi’s decision to take on the entire world while trying to function as a state was both ambitious and deeply impractical. Al-Baghdadi never considered that his plan may have been flawed, that outside factors doomed his army, or that perhaps his goal of uniting and governing the region and militarily annihilating his enemies was not the same objective. He had a very romanticized view of war—a view colored by his preferences and presuppositions more than by objective assessment. Part of this is that al-Baghdadi saw retreat not as a tactical maneuver but as a moral failing.

In a 2016 audio message, he urged his fighters: “Do not retreat… Holding your ground with honor is a thousand times easier than retreating in shame.” Under his leadership, ISIS emphasized the doctrine of steadfastness (sabr) and martyrdom in battle, promoting the idea that fighters should hold their ground at all costs. This view was rooted in a rigid, absolutist interpretation of jihad, where dying in combat was glorified, and retreat was often equated with cowardice or betrayal of the cause.

His leadership style was marked by ideological rigidity and an unwillingness to adapt. His commanders often found themselves in hard situations, where the expectation was to succeed through sheer willpower rather than strategic flexibility. Infighting was common, as the leadership was quick to execute those who showed divergent thinking, in cycles of purges that weakened ISIS’s ability to operate effectively.

Policy-wise, ISIS enforced extreme measures to maintain control. Governance was dictated through fear, with public executions and brutal punishments ensuring compliance. While ISIS attempted to provide basic state functions such as taxation, policing, and social services, these were secondary to its primary focus on expansion and ideological purity. This approach meant that while ISIS could control territory and sell some fake, off-the-rack 7th-century Arabia nostalgia, it struggled to build the institutions necessary for long-term governance.

Foxes and Hedgehogs

Long before 7th-century Arabia, a fragment of Greek poetry declared, “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.” In the 1950s, political theorist Isaiah Berlin expanded on this idea, using the fox and the hedgehog as archetypes for how people approach politics and philosophy. Seeing the world through the lens of a single grand idea—ideology—is the hallmark of a hedgehog.

Ideology is a map of the world. It provides context, shows the relationships between things, and helps us navigate political and philosophical terrain. But like any map, ideology shapes what we pay attention to—it simplifies, distorts, and omits more than it reveals. Clinging to a single ideology is like seeing only one map. A road atlas is useful if you stay on the highways, but if you venture off-road, you’d be better off with a whole set of maps, each for where you are headed. Instead of forcing the world to fit your map, let the terrain determine which map you use.

Foxes are agile and adaptive; they switch maps as needed. Hedgehogs, by contrast, cling to one grand idea. Al-Baghdadi, the hedgehog, had only one map—he knew one big thing and stuck to it.

In contrast, a fox’s war is messy, adaptive, and uncomfortable. A fox doesn’t need history to rhyme—it just needs it to make sense for long enough to get to the next move. It builds coalitions across contradictions, co-opts rivals instead of eliminating them, and never mistakes purity for strength. It’s closer to what the Kurds did in Rojava—flexible governance, localism, tactical alliances with the U.S. one day and Assad the next. Or what Iran’s Quds Force orchestrated: networks of client militias, ideological only when convenient, brutal but deeply contextual. These weren’t moral actors—but they were foxes. And they’re still standing.

Al-Baghdadi, meanwhile, tried to play the game with only one rule: ‘Caliphate, or bust.’ No bargaining, no hedging, no slow-building soft power. Just shock, awe, and black flags—until it all collapsed under the weight of its own certainty.

To mix these metaphors further, foxes build webs; hedgehogs build walls. One flexes. One fractures. And history tends to favor the fox—not because it’s cleverer, but because it listens. Because it waits. Because it knows that no map, no matter how sacred, is ever the terrain.

Skipping Steps

What looked like governance was a kind of theater—power cosplayed in the costume of a medieval caliphate.

ISIS, at first glance, appears to be a fusion of cultures (i.e., Arab and non-Arab, local recruits and foreign fighters), perspectives, and experiences—hammer-forged into a single mold with a single worldview. But it isn’t a fusion. It’s a top-down imposition of a single vision. Its constituent cultures aren’t absorbed but brutally destroyed. The men are either conscripted into ISIS’s army and subjected to its discipline at all times or killed. The women are enslaved, and any surviving children are raised within ISIS.

For all his fixation on early Islamic history, al-Baghdadi jumps straight to the Caliphate, skipping over the long process of building institutions that made the early Caliphates durable. He is less like the Rightly Guided Caliphs and more like a warlord leading his army on a perpetual campaign of conquest. He was less Omar and more Alexander. Like Alexander, there was always a high probability that his empire would die with him because it had little else holding it together.

To be sure, ISIS understood the aesthetics of statecraft better than many actual states. They printed their own currency, ran courts, distributed leaflets, even renamed streets. They posted glossy photos of traffic cops and garbage collectors like a dystopian Instagram state. But these were symbols masquerading as substance. Real governance means bureaucracies that can last beyond the charismatic leader and institutions that can accommodate dissent or failure. Al-Baghdadi’s regime had none of that. It had rituals, not rules. What looked like governance was a kind of theater—power cosplayed in the costume of a medieval caliphate. The hedgehog doesn’t know the difference between a symbol and a system. So, ISIS poured its energy into optics instead of infrastructure, domination instead of durability.

Comparisons to Other Historical Movements

ISIS’s trajectory mirrors other radical movements that attempted to impose totalitarian rule through extreme violence. The Khmer Rouge in Cambodia similarly sought to create a utopian society by eradicating existing cultural and political structures, leading to mass killings and societal collapse. Nazi Germany, too, pursued ideological purity at the expense of military pragmatism, with Hitler’s refusal to retreat or adjust strategy leading to devastating losses. Like these movements, ISIS was ultimately unsustainable because it lacked the ability to govern in a stable manner, relying instead on perpetual conflict to maintain its existence.

The hedgehog doesn’t know the difference between a symbol and a system.

In the end, al-Baghdadi was killed in a U.S. raid in Syria, and while ISIS affiliates persist in other regions, the core caliphate project lies in ruins. The organization’s legacy is a cautionary tale about the dangers of ideological extremism and the limits of brute force as a political strategy. ISIS pushed its enemies out entirely, occupying all major locations, enslaving much of the population, and ruling over the rest under its black banner. But to simply rule over a conquered population isn’t the same as governing or building a stable state. To create these kinds of sociopolitical hybrids, the constituent parts need to have several points of compatibility. It’s less about manufactured fusion and more about cultural diffusion in a broader sense—an organic, unsystematic blending of ideas, customs, and practices through everyday exchange and interaction.

It may seem like an academic distinction, but the key is that ISIS is structured in a way that makes such an exchange impossible. The whole thing is built on crushing regional cultures and assimilating people into this massive, rigid totalitarian system. There can be no synthesis and thus no state with ISIS because ISIS cannot survive with regional differences and an interplay of ideas. Totalitarianism dominates everything outside the state but skips the process of actually building that state.

Tags: Iraq, ISIS, Islamic State, Islamic State caliphate, Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, Syria

About The Author

Siamak Naficy
Siamak Tundra Naficy is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Defense Analysis at the Naval Postgraduate School. An anthropologist by training, he brings an interdisciplinary perspective to the study of strategic culture, conflict resilience, and the human dimensions of security. His work draws from both naturalist and classical realist traditions, emphasizing how power, interests, the history of ideas, and human nature shape conflict. His research interests span conflict theory, wicked problems, leadership, sacred values, cognitive science, and animal behavior—viewed through an anthropological lens. The views expressed are his own and do not represent those of the Department of Defense, the U.S. Navy, the U.S. Army, or the Naval Postgraduate School.

15. India’s Wake-Up Call: Why US Defense Reform Must Match the Speed of Modern War

Excerpts:

The next war won’t give the US five years to prepare. It may not give the US five months. The lesson of Operation Sindoor is not just that India is rising—it’s that the United States can fall behind.

We cannot deter a war we are not prepared to fight. And the US cannot win a war it can’t afford, can’t scale, and can’t keep up with. The time for US defense reform is not coming. It’s already late.

The power of the United States in World War II didn’t just come from the bravery and quality of its soldiers or its decentralized battlefield leadership—though those were essential. It also came from something we’ve since allowed to atrophy: an industrial base that was flexible, innovative, and shockingly fast. America’s military industrial complex could adapt, surge, and produce at a scale no enemy could match. The US has lost that edge.

To meet the speed of modern war, reform cannot be confined to factories and procurement cycles. It must extend to how we learn. The United States should establish permanent, deployable learning teams—designed not to sift lessons from media reports, but to gather them directly from the ground. These teams must operate forward, embedded where history is unfolding: in urban combat zones, in drone labs, in dispersed logistics hubs. From Ukraine to India, battlefield truths are being written in real time. The US must capture them not passively, but through deliberate collection, analysis, and integration into our own systems—with one goal in mind: making the US defense ecosystem the most efficient, adaptable, and dominant in the world.

To deter war with China—the world’s largest military by active personnel, with approximately two million soldiers, and a population over four times the size of the US—it won’t be raw numbers that determine the outcome. It will be a holistic defense capability: a system that can innovate, produce, scale, and fight at speed. That is the true challenge. That is the reform we need. To lead again, America must not only revive its defense industrial power—it must master the physics of lethality at scale, speed, and sustainability. And the clock is ticking.

India’s Wake-Up Call: Why US Defense Reform Must Match the Speed of Modern War

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/05/22/indias-wake-up-call-why-us-defense-reform-must-match-the-speed-of-modern-war/

by John Spencer, by Vincent Viola

05.22.2025 at 06:00am

The United States is in urgent need of fundamental defense reform. Not just adjustments. Not just marginal gains. A full-scale overhaul. The wars of today—and the even more brutal ones looming on the horizon—will not be won by the slow, the bloated, or the bureaucratically constrained. They will be won by those who can think faster, build faster, and fight smarter—and above all, by those who master the physics of lethality required on the modern battlefield. Right now, that’s not us.

The goal of modern war is no longer to prepare for indefinite, grinding campaigns. The objective is clear: wars must be won quickly and decisively with superior military capabilities. That demands a defense ecosystem built not just for speed—but for scale. The United States has fallen into the trap of believing that one magic platform, one exquisite system, can win future wars. It can’t. Winning will require modularity, volume, redundancy, and continuous adaptation—built into a system that is ultimately faster, leaner, and more efficient. That means rapidly identifying battlefield requirements, acquisition, research, iterative development and manufacturing, and deployment across an industrial base designed to surge—not stall. India just proved what that looks like.

America’s Acquisition Pipeline Is Too Slow for Modern War

The war in Ukraine laid bare a staggering truth: America’s research, development, and deployment cycle is operating on a timeline the battlefield no longer respects. Ukraine’s defense since 2022 has leaned heavily on western systems like Javelins anti-armor system, High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS), and air defense Stinger missiles—but even this modest proxy war pushed U.S. defense production to the brink. The Pentagon had to scramble to restart dormant Stinger lines. Javelin production was capped at peacetime capacity. HIMARS launchers, though effective, were too few, too expensive, and too slow to replenish.

Perhaps most telling was the U.S. military’s inability to produce enough artillery shells to keep pace with battlefield consumption. In a high-intensity war, the need for hundreds of thousands of shells per month has outstripped America’s industrial capacity. Instead of ramping up quickly, the Pentagon found itself reliant on stretched supply chains, outdated manufacturing infrastructure, and timelines measured in years—not weeks.

Since 9/11, many of the most effective frontline battlefield solutions—the real “tip of the spear” technologies—haven’t come through the formal acquisition pipeline at all. They’ve come from outside it. Programs like the Rapid Equipping Force, Joint Urgent Operational Needs Statements (JUONS), and commander discretionary funds were built as temporary workarounds to bypass a system too slow and too rigid to meet battlefield urgency. These stopgap authorities allowed private firms and battlefield commanders to field lifesaving tools—from counter-IED gear to surveillance drones—without waiting for years for approval. But these were improvisations, not reforms. The result is a two-track system: an official pipeline too bureaucratic to fight a modern war, and an unofficial one too fragile to scale. Instead of codifying the agility created in wartime, the US let it dissolve in peacetime. The US has been surviving on battlefield duct tape—when what we need is a complete redesign.

These are not exceptions—they are symptoms. The US acquisition model, built around Cold War cycles and peacetime audits, is too brittle to support the demands of wartime replenishment, rapid adaptation, or scalable production under fire.

Cost Structures Are Unsustainable

The US is not just too slow. It is also too expensive. American weapons are among the most advanced in the world—but that edge is being priced out of viability. A single Tomahawk missile costs up to $2 million. A single HIMARS launcher costs over $5 million. Meanwhile, adversaries and allies alike are building systems with similar or superior battlefield impact for a fraction of the cost. Iran’s loitering munitions, for instance, cost a fraction of their US counterparts.

Drones are the new artillery shells of the modern battlefield. Armies don’t need dozens—they need thousands. Cheap, expendable, and ubiquitous, drones must come in variety and volume to swarm, surveil, strike, and survive. But the US defense industry has not embraced this truth. Instead, it continues to push costly, exquisite platforms built for yesterday’s wars.

Even US President Donald Trump recently criticized America’s drone cost structures, pointing to the disparity between Iranian drones that cost just $40,000 and a US defense contractor’s $41 million quote. “You look at these drones they’re sending in,” Trump said. “They’re good, they’re fast, and they’re deadly.” But we don’t need to copy Tehran. Better models already exist in allies like Israel and India.

America’s Defense Industrial Base Is Captured and Uncompetitive

The core of the problem is industrial. America’s defense manufacturing process is dominated by a small cartel of primes that, while capable, have little incentive to drive innovation, reduce cost, or adapt quickly. There is no real market competition. This is not competition—it’s cartelized domination. And the consequences are on display.

US defense giants produce exquisite systems, but often at boutique pace and boutique prices. There is no agile, scalable, layered, fast-response production network. No real surge capacity. The primes effectively control the process from design to deployment, and they are not optimized for the speed or scale of modern war.

Contrast that with what Ukraine has done.

Since 2014, the Ukrainian Armed Forces have been experimenting with a hybrid defense model—a national military seasoned with western ideas, supported by a scrappy, innovation-driven defense industry. The result? In less than a decade, Ukraine has transformed into a global pioneer in drone warfare and real-time target acquisition—out-innovating larger militaries by adapting commercial technologies into lethal, battlefield-ready systems. Their adaptation of commercial drones into loitering munitions and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) platforms came not from billion-dollar defense firms, but from battlefield ingenuity and necessity. It emerged from necessity, competition, and survival in war.

An example: by 2023, Ukraine had developed and deployed autonomous unmanned systems, capable of AI-assisted target recognition and strike coordination—leveraging edge computing to execute missions without constant human input. These drones can identify enemy vehicles, transmit coordinates in real-time, and engage targets under human-supervised autonomy—blurring the lines between ISR and direct action. This isn’t theoretical: Ukrainian operators are already integrating AI-driven systems into daily battlefield use, often outpacing the doctrinal and technical experimentation of far larger Western militaries.

Critics may argue that Ukraine’s transformation was driven by wartime necessity—that the U.S., not facing an immediate existential conflict, lacks the same urgency to overhaul its defense model. That’s precisely the problem. Waiting for catastrophe to force adaptation is not a strategy; it’s a gamble. The U.S. has the unparalleled advantage of learning from others’ wartime experience without suffering the same losses. Ukraine’s improvisations were born of desperation—but their effectiveness has now been validated. For the United States, mimicking that innovation should not require a crisis. The smarter path is proactive reform, not reactive scramble. In war, time is the one resource you can’t buy back.

India’s Operation Sindoor: A Blueprint for What Comes Next

India, too, offers a compelling model. In 2014, after its own moment of strategic introspection, New Delhi launched the “Make in India” initiative—reforming its defense sector around domestic production, self-reliance, and strategic speed. A decade later, that investment paid off in Operation Sindoor.

Operation Sindoor was more than a swift and precise military response to another cross-border terrorist attack. It marked a strategic inflection point. In just four days, India used domestically developed systems to strike hardened targets across the border with precision, speed, and overwhelming effect. No US systems. No foreign supply lines. Just BrahMos missiles, Akashteer air defense units, and loitering munitions designed or assembled at home.

India’s overwhelming success demonstrated something more enduring than airpower. It validated a national defense doctrine built around efficient domestic industrial strength. And most significantly, it delivered a clear message to its strategic rival. Pakistan—a Chinese proxy by armament, alignment, doctrine—was completely outmatched. Its Chinese-made air defense systems could not stop, detect, or deter India’s precision strikes. In Sindoor, India didn’t just win. It demonstrated overwhelming military superiority against a Chinese-backed adversary.

The BrahMos missile—a supersonic cruise missile co-developed with Russia but now largely manufactured in India—costs approximately $4.85 million per unit. While more expensive than the older U.S. Tomahawk ($1 to $2.5 million, depending on the variant), BrahMos delivers unmatched speed and kinetic impact at nearly Mach 3—a distinct performance advantage. Meanwhile, India’s Akashteer system—an AI-integrated air defense control and reporting network—is being fielded at a fraction of the cost of U.S. systems like NASAMS or Patriot. With a contract value of just $240 million for a full suite of integrated capabilities, Akashteer exemplifies India’s ability to deploy high-performance, scalable systems without the financial burdens typical of Western platforms. Together, these investments reflect a strategic model built on capability, speed, and cost-efficiency—one the United States would do well to study.

India’s drone usage during Sindoor reinforced the point. The SkyStriker—an Israeli-developed loitering munition assembled domestically—and the Harop, a long-range autonomous loitering munition, proved critical to India’s ability to identify and strike key terrorist targets with precision.

This wasn’t theory. It was execution. These systems were not boutique prototypes—they were deployed, tested, and validated in a real war.

Meanwhile, Pakistani defenses—built largely around older Chinese systems like the LY-80, HQ-9/P, and FM-90—were powerless to detect, deter, or respond to the strikes. In the skies over Pakistan, India didn’t just dominate. It redefined regional deterrence.

India has already moved from 30% to 65% domestic sourcing in defense capital procurement, with a goal of 90% by the decade’s end. It increased capital outlays for domestic production from $6 billion in 2019-2020 to nearly $20 billion in 2023-24. It allowed up to 74% FDI in defense, bringing in foreign partners while building indigenous capacity. India didn’t just talk about reform. It executed it. And it won.

India has become a master of the physics of lethality. The United States can learn from their success and model some of their changes for its own needs.

The Strategic Choice Before America

India’s success—and Ukraine’s innovation—should be a wake-up call. They are building the warfighting models of the future. The US is still operating with Cold War machinery and Gulf War assumptions.

If the United States wants to remain a global military power—let alone deter China—it must reform:

Rebuild the acquisition process around speed, iteration, and field feedback, not static 10-year programs.
Break up defense industrial monopolies or at least introduce real competition and alternative suppliers.
Shift focus from perfection to effectiveness from gold-plated systems to scalable, rugged, modular platforms.
Treat allies like India and Israel as co-equal production partners not just buyers or tech recipients.

The next war won’t give the US five years to prepare. It may not give the US five months. The lesson of Operation Sindoor is not just that India is rising—it’s that the United States can fall behind.

We cannot deter a war we are not prepared to fight. And the US cannot win a war it can’t afford, can’t scale, and can’t keep up with. The time for US defense reform is not coming. It’s already late.

The power of the United States in World War II didn’t just come from the bravery and quality of its soldiers or its decentralized battlefield leadership—though those were essential. It also came from something we’ve since allowed to atrophy: an industrial base that was flexible, innovative, and shockingly fast. America’s military industrial complex could adapt, surge, and produce at a scale no enemy could match. The US has lost that edge.

To meet the speed of modern war, reform cannot be confined to factories and procurement cycles. It must extend to how we learn. The United States should establish permanent, deployable learning teams—designed not to sift lessons from media reports, but to gather them directly from the ground. These teams must operate forward, embedded where history is unfolding: in urban combat zones, in drone labs, in dispersed logistics hubs. From Ukraine to India, battlefield truths are being written in real time. The US must capture them not passively, but through deliberate collection, analysis, and integration into our own systems—with one goal in mind: making the US defense ecosystem the most efficient, adaptable, and dominant in the world.

To deter war with China—the world’s largest military by active personnel, with approximately two million soldiers, and a population over four times the size of the US—it won’t be raw numbers that determine the outcome. It will be a holistic defense capability: a system that can innovate, produce, scale, and fight at speed. That is the true challenge. That is the reform we need. To lead again, America must not only revive its defense industrial power—it must master the physics of lethality at scale, speed, and sustainability. And the clock is ticking.

Tags: defense industrial base, Defense Reform, India-Pakistan Conflict, Russia-Ukraine War

About The Authors

John Spencer
John Spencer is chair of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute, codirector of MWI’s Urban Warfare Project, and host of the Urban Warfare Project Podcast. He served twenty-five years as an infantry soldier, which included two combat tours in Iraq. He is the author of the book Connected Soldiers: Life, Leadership, and Social Connections in Modern War and coauthor of Understanding Urban Warfare.
View all posts
Vincent Viola
Vincent Viola is the former Chairman and CEO of the New York Mercantile Exchange. He is the founder of the Madison Policy Forum.

16. Coast Guard suspects Kinmen raft intrusions timed with Lai's 1st anniversary

At an event this week I heard a phrase that I will now use. Perhaps these two are the leading edge of the "million man swim" preparing for the invasion of Taiwan.

"Million man swim" is now added to my lexcon.

Coast Guard suspects Kinmen raft intrusions timed with Lai's 1st anniversary | Taiwan News | May. 21, 2025 16:19

2 Chinese men on rafts detained off Kinmen's Erdan Island

taiwannews.com.tw · May 21, 2025

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — The Coast Guard on Tuesday said it detained two Chinese men on styrofoam floats in Kinmen waters and suspects China may have sent them that day to coincide with President Lai Ching-te's (賴清德) first anniversary.

At 5:08 a.m., the Coast Guard, using an infrared thermal imaging system, detected two Chinese men attempting to land illegally on Erdan Island, southwest of Kinmen County's Lieyu Township. The suspects were seen deploying polystyrene flotation boards from a small wooden sampan.

The Coast Guard immediately dispatched a patrol boat and a coastal patrol vessel to intercept the men. At 7:53 a.m., the two Chinese nationals were apprehended, and one sampan registered in China was seized.

The two suspects will be investigated for breaching the Immigration Act and the Cross-Strait Act. They face detention, up to five years in prison, and a fine of up to NT$500,000 (US$16,500).

The Coast Guard said its surveillance and reconnaissance efforts at sea and along the coast have long prioritized national security and maritime law enforcement. On Taiwan proper, the focus is on monitoring encroachments by Chinese fishing boats, maritime militia, research ships, and Chinese-owned ships that operate under flags of convenience.

In offshore islands such as Kinmen and Matsu, the priority is detecting small targets. Recently, the number of incidents involving incursions by small craft sent by the CCP has surged, becoming a key aspect of gray-zone harassment and cognitive warfare.

Following Lai’s inauguration on May 20 last year, China launched the "Joint Sword-2024A" military exercises around Taiwan. With Tuesday marking the anniversary of Lai’s inauguration, the Coast Guard said it does not rule out the possibility that this illegal entry incident was another CCP attempt at cognitive warfare, seeking to achieve the goal of maximum disruption to public morale at minimal cost.

A father and son were apprehended on Friday after they landed on a beach in Taoyuan in a small, inflatable boat. On Sunday, a Chinese man claimed that he crossed the Taiwan Strait in a rubber boat to plant a Chinese flag on a Taoyuan beach before returning to Fujian Province.

The Coast Guard hopes that during the Legislative Yuan’s review of the Special Act for Strengthening Economic, Social, and National Security Resilience in Response to International Circumstances on Wednesday, it will gain full support to ensure national security and social stability.

On April 24, the Cabinet approved the bill to enable it to draw an additional NT$410 billion to meet economic and security challenges facing Taiwan over the next two years, per CNA. Of those funds, NT$150 billion would be earmarked to strengthen Coast Guard operations, develop drone infrastructure, and upgrade information and communications systems and facilities.

Coast Guard patrol boat nears Chinese man paddling on styrofoam float. (CGA photo)

Coast Guard officers order Chinese man to board sampan. (CGA photo)

taiwannews.com.tw · May 21, 2025

17. Forget China's navy, Chinese small boats landings on Taiwan are a new source of concern

Forget China's navy, Chinese small boats landings on Taiwan are a new source of concern

mundoamerica.com · by AP · May 20, 2025

China has long sought to intimidate Taiwan with its massive navy, air force and the world's largest standing army, but it's mere dinghies that are now causing the most consternation.

Taiwan's coast guard has documented five cases totaling 38 Chinese citizens crossing the 160-kilometer (100-mile) wide Taiwan Strait separating the self-governing island democracy from the authoritarian Chinese mainland, according to the body's deputy director-general Hsieh Ching-chin.

That includes at least one case posted to Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, in which a man speaking with a strong mainland Chinese accent is seen planting a Chinese flag on what he says is a Taiwanese beach. Scenes in the background appear to show a stretch of coastline south of the capital Taipei.

China claims Taiwan as its own territory, to be conquered by force if necessary. The man has not been found or publicly identified, and Taiwanese authorities are seeking to ascertain whether he received help from anyone on the island.

Another case involved a father and son who were apprehended shortly after reaching land, along with a man who came ashore at a fishing port in a popular tourist area north of Taipei.

The small size of the boats, some just inflatables for having fun at the beach, makes it difficult for Taiwan's radar to pick them up. More cameras and other detection devices and manpower would be needed to cover the vast spaces of inhospitable coastline surrounding the island, but the terrain would make a Chinese D-Day-type landing highly challenging.

While such cases are not unheard of, they come amid a rise in tensions between the sides, with Taiwan's President Lai Ching-te designating China as an enemy to be defended against, and China holding frequent military exercises seen as a rehearsal for an invasion or boycott of Taiwan.

Those entering Taiwan illegally are liable to a fine of 500,000 Taiwan dollars ($16,666) and five years in prison, but such penalties are usually waived as long as no one is hurt and there is no property damage. In the 1990s, there was a wave of hijackings by Chinese to Taiwan, but the perpetrators were sent home after serving brief prison terms in Taiwan.

In addition to facing China's formidable military, Taiwan faces a range of so-called "gray area" strategies, including in the media and among entertainers hoping to grab a share of the massive Chinese market. Taiwan has also deported the Chinese wives of Taiwanese men for posting videos supporting a takeover of the island.

The small boat landings may be a further attempt to confuse and undermine confidence among the public, Hsieh said.

mundoamerica.com · by AP · May 20, 2025

18. The Value of an Asian Tinder Box

" A tinder box has value?" "Constructive dynamic?" "An arms race to ward off conflict?"

Certainly a thought provoking interview here.

Excerpts:

You wrote about China’s significant naval buildup, including the projection that its fleet would increase from 355 ships in 2021 to 460 by 2030. How have you evaluated the qualitative advancements in Chinese naval capabilities since you wrote this piece — particularly regarding their aircraft carriers and missile systems?

China’s fleet has not grown at the frenetic pace predicted by observers five years ago, and this may be due in part to self-inflicted disruptions caused by COVID-19 restrictions imposed by Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping, which permanently undermined productivity. Tariffs raised during U.S. President Donald Trump’s first term (2016-2020) further strained the resources necessary for warship manufacturing.

While China has added 20 advanced cruiser and frigate platforms since 2021 — and focused on expanding its fifth-generation low-observability aircraft and long-range missile inventory — the United States has largely kept pace with its series of long-range anti-air, anti-ship, and anti-radiation missiles. More importantly, America’s infrastructure development of bases on the Philippine Island of Luzon enables non-refueled, maximum-load aircraft to operate from various dispersed airfields — significantly complicating China’s tactical planning. China’s addition of seven Type 055D cruisers since 2021 — or approximately 1.3 vessels per year — suggests it will take decades before Beijing can confront the combined U.S. fleet of Arleigh Burke-class destroyers and Ticonderoga-class cruisers, if its objective is to dominate its littoral and secure a free hand over Taiwan. In that case, the buildup is well tailored — except that the Chinese navy then does not yet have a force structure capable of addressing the inevitable U.S. naval blockade likely to be imposed at the initiation of hostilities.

Finally, with the benefit of hindsight, is there anything you would change about your original argument?

Fears of arms races — typical of the battleship competition of World War I, concerns raised by war profiteers of the 1930s, and nuclear proliferation during the Cold War — are specific to their particular eras. As a nationalist power with little universal appeal, communist China is focused on reversing its historical humiliation for its domestic audience. It is not knowledgeable about how to invest in a global narrative for peace. As a result, there is little propaganda emanating from Beijing warning of the dangers of arms races — unlike the continuous messaging transmitted from Moscow during the Cold War. This simplifies the efforts of the U.S. and Japanese navies to convince their civilian authorities to commit the significant sums necessary to sustain armaments purchases and enforce a robust deterrence.

The Value of an Asian Tinder Box - War on the Rocks

https://warontherocks.com/2025/05/the-value-of-an-asian-tinder-box/

Julian Spencer-Churchill

May 21, 2025

Members

In 2021, Julian Spencer-Churchill wrote “Embrace the Arms Race in Asia,” where he argued that an arms race in Asia was a constructive dynamic that would ward off conflict. Four years on, with numerous developments in the Indo-Pacific and around the world, we asked him to reassess his argument.

Image: Petty Officer 3rd Class Ethan Morrow

In 2021, you wrote “Embrace the Arms Race in Asia,” arguing that, contrary to conventional wisdom, an arms race in the Indo-Pacific would ward off conflict. Four years later, how do you see the state of the arms race? Has the balance of power between China, the United States, and regional allies shifted in ways you anticipated or in surprising directions?

The Pacific naval arms race — primarily between the U.S. Navy, the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force, the Republic of China (Taiwan) Navy, and China’s People’s Liberation Army Navy — has not created dramatic windows of opportunity that tempt or provoke political elites to decide for war. China’s navy is investing heavily in air defense by building cruiser and frigate platforms that maximize multi-loading vertical launch systems for launching ballistic and air defense missiles. Taiwan’s investment in corvettes has also led to a 50 percent increase in vertical launch system capacity, although that still only amounts to 10 percent of the Chinese navy’s total for these systems. While the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force has increased its vertical launch system capacity by 10 percent, the U.S. and Australian navies have shrunk their capacities by a small margin.

Indo-Pacific Command Chief Admiral Samuel Paparo is correct in his general observation that China is outbuilding the United States at a steady pace of six Chinese vessels to 1.8 American. However, China’s growth has been far less than the most alarmist views, which predicted a fleet of 460 vessels by 2030. Most importantly, the arms buildup is steady — without the oscillations that produce tensions, opportunities, and incentives for surprise attacks. Even at this stage, China’s carrier fleet — likely fully operational by 2030 — is ill-equipped to challenge the United States for sea control of the “blue water” ocean.

You presented a strong counterargument to the “spiral model” theory, which suggests arms races increase tensions and lead to war. Has your view on deterrence theory evolved four years later, or have recent geopolitical developments reinforced your position?

The spiral model, in which a competitive buildup compels two adversaries to increasingly focus on each other’s arsenal — particularly the details of advantages and disadvantages that may lead to exploitation of opportunities for a first strike — does not currently apply, for three reasons.

First, the Chinese navy lacks the capacity for a secure amphibious landing against Taiwan, meaning the seizure of a beachhead without significant interference from U.S. forces. U.S. Air Force air superiority flights and anti-ship missile raids from Okinawa, Kyushu, Guam, and Luzon in the Philippines would need to be intercepted with a high degree of reliability to protect the Chinese navy’s principal landing ships. This is not yet the case.

Second, the Chinese navy is insufficiently strong to challenge the U.S. Navy in the open seas —without which it can neither efficiently blockade Taiwan nor break a blockade on itself.

Third, China is half a generation behind in network-centric warfare needed to operate long-range ordnance and at least a generation behind in joint warfare capabilities required to cross the Strait of Formosa.

You highlighted the importance of alliances in the Indo-Pacific region, including the Asian Quad. How do you assess the evolution of security arrangements like the AUKUS trilateral security partnership and the Asian Quad since 2021? Have they developed the coherence and capability you believe necessary for effective deterrence?

Pacific alliances, principally the AUKUS trilateral security partnership and the Asian Quad, are far less critical than the unilateral recognition in Japan and Taiwan of the importance of taking responsibility for defense. The AUKUS partnership revolves around technology transfer to Australia’s submarine program, which is a decade from being fully realized — by which time China may have already attacked Taiwan. Besides, Australia is a minor player whose navy has marginally shrunk since 2021. The Asian Quad was a measure adopted by Japan and the United States to engage India in an anti-China coalition, despite New Delhi being explicit that it would neither join the United States and its allies in a blockade nor a war against China in the event of an invasion of Taiwan.

India’s defense depends heavily on its long-term alliance with Russia — which, with India, shares a long border with China — and is, therefore, a more reliable defense development and energy-providing partner.

The alliance between the United States, South Korea, and Taiwan is driven primarily by South Korea’s rapprochement with Japan over North Korea’s nuclear developments and Japan’s unilateral efforts to arms itself, despite a shallow U.S. pivot to Asia. Tokyo is aware that its armament actions are a powerful bellwether to Washington politicians and that Japan is, in some ways, leading preparations to confront Chinese aggression. Taiwan, aware of the costs borne by Ukraine in its war — and America’s reluctance to help Kyiv — is slowly acquiescing to the need for a military buildup among the East Asian democracies.

You wrote about China’s significant naval buildup, including the projection that its fleet would increase from 355 ships in 2021 to 460 by 2030. How have you evaluated the qualitative advancements in Chinese naval capabilities since you wrote this piece — particularly regarding their aircraft carriers and missile systems?

China’s fleet has not grown at the frenetic pace predicted by observers five years ago, and this may be due in part to self-inflicted disruptions caused by COVID-19 restrictions imposed by Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping, which permanently undermined productivity. Tariffs raised during U.S. President Donald Trump’s first term (2016-2020) further strained the resources necessary for warship manufacturing.

While China has added 20 advanced cruiser and frigate platforms since 2021 — and focused on expanding its fifth-generation low-observability aircraft and long-range missile inventory — the United States has largely kept pace with its series of long-range anti-air, anti-ship, and anti-radiation missiles. More importantly, America’s infrastructure development of bases on the Philippine Island of Luzon enables non-refueled, maximum-load aircraft to operate from various dispersed airfields — significantly complicating China’s tactical planning. China’s addition of seven Type 055D cruisers since 2021 — or approximately 1.3 vessels per year — suggests it will take decades before Beijing can confront the combined U.S. fleet of Arleigh Burke-class destroyers and Ticonderoga-class cruisers, if its objective is to dominate its littoral and secure a free hand over Taiwan. In that case, the buildup is well tailored — except that the Chinese navy then does not yet have a force structure capable of addressing the inevitable U.S. naval blockade likely to be imposed at the initiation of hostilities.

Finally, with the benefit of hindsight, is there anything you would change about your original argument?

Fears of arms races — typical of the battleship competition of World War I, concerns raised by war profiteers of the 1930s, and nuclear proliferation during the Cold War — are specific to their particular eras. As a nationalist power with little universal appeal, communist China is focused on reversing its historical humiliation for its domestic audience. It is not knowledgeable about how to invest in a global narrative for peace. As a result, there is little propaganda emanating from Beijing warning of the dangers of arms races — unlike the continuous messaging transmitted from Moscow during the Cold War. This simplifies the efforts of the U.S. and Japanese navies to convince their civilian authorities to commit the significant sums necessary to sustain armaments purchases and enforce a robust deterrence.

***

Julian Spencer-Churchill, Ph.D., is an associate professor of international relations at Concordia University and author of Militarization and War (2007) and Strategic Nuclear Sharing (2014). He has published extensively on Pakistani security issues and arms control, and he has completed research contracts for the Office of Treaty Verification at the Office of the Secretary of the Navy and the former Ballistic Missile Defense Office. Churchill has conducted fieldwork in Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Egypt, and Taiwan, and works as a consultant. He is a former operations officer with the 3 Field Engineer Regiment, serving from the latter years of the Cold War to shortly after 9/11.

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

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

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

Access NSS HERE

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Killing of Embassy Staffers Stokes Israeli Fears of Increasingly Hostile World

The shooting in Washington, D.C., follows a rise in violence against Israelis and Jews globally

Washington Deserved a Downgrade

U.S. debt is a spending problem, which neither party wants to stop.

Call the Trump Doctrine Mater-Realism

His Riyadh speech lays out a foreign policy stressing U.S. economic interests shorn of idealism.

Why China’s Fighter Jets Should Worry the US and Taiwan

The US Is Ahead But China Is Slowly Catching Up

How Do They Compare?

Sig Sauer's XM7 Rifle Gets Army's Seal Of Approval Despite Controversy

Howard Altman

Senior Staff Writer

Pentagon accepts Qatari jet for Air Force One

Cots, MREs, Per Diem: Army Offers New Details for Soldiers Sent to Massive D.C. Military Parade

A Playbook for Industrial Policy

What Washington Can Learn From CHIPS

SETTING UP SHOP

VISION FOR SUCCESS

MOVE FAST, DON’T BREAK THINGS

THE PROCEDURE FETISH

MOVING FORWARD

Maritime Domain Awareness or Silent War?

Autonomous Weapon Systems: No Human-in-the-Loop Required, and Other Myths Dispelled - War on the Rocks

The Map and the Territory: ISIS’s Hedgehog Leadership​

The Caliphate That Wasn’t

Foxes and Hedgehogs

Skipping Steps

Comparisons to Other Historical Movements

About The Author

India’s Wake-Up Call: Why US Defense Reform Must Match the Speed of Modern War

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/05/22/indias-wake-up-call-why-us-defense-reform-must-match-the-speed-of-modern-war/​

America’s Acquisition Pipeline Is Too Slow for Modern War

Cost Structures Are Unsustainable

America’s Defense Industrial Base Is Captured and Uncompetitive

India’s Operation Sindoor: A Blueprint for What Comes Next

The Strategic Choice Before America

About The Authors

Coast Guard suspects Kinmen raft intrusions timed with Lai's 1st anniversary | Taiwan News | May. 21, 2025 16:19​

Forget China's navy, Chinese small boats landings on Taiwan are a new source of concern

The Value of an Asian Tinder Box - War on the Rocks

The Map and the Territory: ISIS’s Hedgehog Leadership

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/05/22/indias-wake-up-call-why-us-defense-reform-must-match-the-speed-of-modern-war/

Coast Guard suspects Kinmen raft intrusions timed with Lai's 1st anniversary | Taiwan News | May. 21, 2025 16:19