Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners

Quotes of the Day:

"Global SOF:The asymmetric strategic option for a volatile world"

– SOF Week 2025

"We offer decision-makers irregular, precise, fast, low-signature options across the spectrum. We do it all with partners, the global special operations network. When we talk about winning, we talk about our obligation to this Nation to be the asymmetric scalpel - to not just be fast and lethal, but also strategic.

....The fusion of what we have in this room — interagency, industry, academia, practitioners and policymakers — is tied together and galvanized towards irregular and asymmetric options. We're the scalpel, but when the time comes, we can bring the hammer too."

– U.S. SOCOM Commander Gen. Bryan Fenton during SOF Week 2025 keynote, May 6

"It's not by luck that we've been able to meet this demand — it's capability, it's training to standard, it's dedication and it's harnessing the power of partnerships."

– CSM Shane Shorter during SOF Week 2025 keynote, May 6

1. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth Delivers Keynote Address at Special Operations Forces Week 2025

2. Nation's Leaders Turning More to Special Ops in Volatile

3. Hegseth champions special operations as the force for today’s threats

4. US SOF making 'unique contribution' on Southern Border: Hegseth

5. Gen. Fenton: War in Ukraine demonstrates need for USSOCOM to innovate much faster

6. Facing 'fusion of foes,' special ops leaders envision 'SOF renaissance'

7. Electronic Warfare Lessons From Ukraine Informing Air Force Special Operations Future

8. The Warrior’s Renaissance (Day 2 SOF Week)

9. Venezuelan Opposition Activists Freed After Hiding From Maduro Regime

10. U.S. and Chinese Officials to Meet for Trade Talks

11. U.S. Orders Intelligence Agencies to Step Up Spying on Greenland

12. Down Go the Houthis?

13. What Trump Fails to Understand About Putin

14. India vs. Pakistan Is Also U.S. vs. China When It Comes to Arms Sales

15. Army infantry officer calls new XM7 'unfit for use as a modern service rifle'

16. Embracing the Inevitable: Integrating AI into Professional Military Education (PME)

17. Order by Hegseth to cancel Ukraine weapons caught White House off guard

18. The Trojan Horse Charges into the Future (Book Review)

19. China learns valuable lessons about war with America: analysts

20. Embassies disinvited from WWII ceremony after Europeans protested Russian invite

21. Operation Rype: Unveiling the legacy of U.S.-Norwegian cooperation during World War II

22. Crucibles, Not Comfort, Shape Future Military Leaders

23. How Much is a Hubcap Removal Tool Worth? Measuring The Value of Tactical Innovation

24. Fighter jet landing on USS Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier goes overboard, forcing pilots to eject

25. We Are Still Fighting World War II

26. Trump’s tariffs: ASEAN+3 reaffirms free trade stance

27. India Launches Military Strikes Against Pakistan

28. Truth to Power – Civics lesson for the SECDEF

29. From the Shadows to the Summit: Elevating Special Operations to the Joint Chiefs

1. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth Delivers Keynote Address at Special Operations Forces Week 2025

In addition to the transcript below you can watch and listen to his speech here: https://www.defense.gov/Multimedia/Videos/videoid/961221/

Transcript

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth Delivers Keynote Address at Special Operations Forces Week 2025

https://www.defense.gov/News/Transcripts/Transcript/Article/4176603/secretary-of-defense-pete-hegseth-delivers-keynote-address-at-special-operation/

May 6, 2025

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth

SECRETARY OF DEFENSE PETE HEGSETH: I cannot tell you how humbled I am to be in this room amongst the absolute and very best that our country produces. You could pick any other ballroom in the country, including in Washington DC, and you're not going to find the likes of Americans like we have in this room. So, good morning and thank you very much for having me. And I want to thank the mayor and Senator Collins and all of Tampa for the incredible and wholehearted support that it gives to the United States military. SOCOM, CENTCOM have no better home than here on the Gulf Coast.

Looking out at this crowd and hearing Jay speak, I'm reminded of one of the first SOF truths, which is "humans are more important than hardware." More than any other military formation, I saw it in a small way as a conventional infantryman 20 years ago, SOF is about people, it starts and ends with the troops downrange.

Each of you and your commitment to the mission is more important than any of the cutting-edge hardware and software we're going to see on the convention floor. And I look forward to seeing it. Gathered here in record breaking numbers are warriors, patriots, innovators, entrepreneurs, visionaries, allies and partners. It is an absolute honor, and I mean it, to be here with you.

Special operations has never been more important for our country. Yesterday was actually my 100th day in office as Secretary of Defense. And as I said from the beginning, this is the deployment of a lifetime. Each day I get a chance to see, like few others do, the great work that SOF does around the world.

The battle tested team in this room is essential to everything that President Trump does in his leadership to put America first and establish peace through strength. I wish everyone in this room could have a chance to be in the Oval Office like I was yesterday and watch how this Commander in Chief puts the interests of our nation first in advancing the safety and security of the American people. It's a thing to behold.

That first and foremost includes defending our homeland, our border, Golden Dome, standing up to the Communist Chinese and, of course, increasing burden sharing with our allies and partners. Border security equals national security. And we're going to get 100 percent operational control of our southern border. And SOF is making a unique contribution there as well.

Our long-standing relationship with our partners in Mexico is crucial to supporting NORTHCOM and securing our border, something that's ongoing to this day.

But homeland defense, as you all know, first and foremost is a global mission. In the last six months, SOF has eliminated over 500 terrorists who threaten our homeland directly.

And alongside global SOF partners your team has captured at least another 600 terrorists.

So, it starts and ends with the homeland. That's why we do this. We don't fight because we hate what's in front of us; we fight because we love what's behind us.

But second, overseas we are reorienting toward deterring the Communist Chinese, no doubt our pacing threat. As America's experts in irregular warfare, SOF brings to bear unique capabilities and leverages critical partnerships. SOF's global efforts, below the threshold of conflict, which you all know, and often out of sight, create the very dilemmas that the Communist Chinese need as we shape their perceptions.

You see we have to convince Xi Jinping that today is not the day to test the United States' resolve. And SOF underpins deterrence in the Indo-Pacific. At the same time, you're preparing the battlefield and standing ready to help us prevail if China were to choose conflict.

And third, as I've said many times before, but it's important to hear today with so many of our partners, America First does not mean America alone. We shift our focus as we do to the Indo-Pacific, President Trump looks to our partners throughout the world to put their shoulder to the plow and take their share of the burden in their own defense, which is a message you've heard from me on the world stage multiple times and we will continue to yell from the rooftops.

We look to our friends to be force multipliers alongside the United States. It has to be a two-way street. We can't want your security more than you want your own security. How many times have we seen that? SOF is playing a key role in accomplishing this goal shoulder-to-shoulder with our allies, many of which, as I mentioned, are with us this morning.

In addition to these ongoing efforts, SOF provides lethal precision and timely crisis response options to the Commander in Chief, President Trump. He confronts the hardest challenges in the world. As you know, no one brings easy problems to the Oval Office, but SOF brings solutions. When called, SOF snuffs out urgent threats, rescues American citizens and protects our diplomats.

In the last three years, these and other presidentially directed missions have increased by 200 percent. SOF has answered the call, and SOF has risen to the challenge every single time. They're doing this day in and day out around the world and around the clock, and I don't have to tell this group, sometimes in open combat, but more often in the twilight challenges just short of war.

Most of you in this room have done just that. So, the question is, following two decades of conflict in the Middle East, where do SOF and DOD go from here? Well, from day one at the Department of Defense, our overriding objectives have been clear: restore the warrior ethos, rebuild our military and reestablish deterrence.

It all starts with restoring the warrior ethos. When President Trump asked me to take this job, he told me, well, one key thing, but really two. The first was, "Pete, you're going to have to be tough as shit, [laughter] [applause] they're gonna come after ya." Boy, he was not kidding about that one. This job requires a steel spine and that's fine.

My job's easy compared to what you do. We're doing the work on behalf of the American people and the American warfighter. But then the president, after he said that went on to say, I need you and I want you to restore the warrior ethos in our military full stop. And that's been my first priority since day one is restoring the warrior ethos.

It's one of the most fundamental of those three objectives. Again, humans more important than hardware. Everything starts and ends with warriors, from training to the battlefield. We are leaving wokeness and weakness behind. No more pronouns. No more climate change obsession. No more emergency vaccine mandates. No more dudes in dresses, we're done with that shit [applause] [cheering].

We're focused on lethality, meritocracy, accountability standards and readiness. That's why since Election Day, since President Trump was elected, recruitment and retention numbers are up historically. Attracting military service is something Americans have long been attracted to. But more so when they see leadership they want to follow.

They want to be in disciplined formations that value them not for immutable differences, not for the color of our skin, or gender, but because of honor and integrity and grit and patriotism. They want a meritocracy where they can work hard, make themselves better, kick ass and rise up. They're looking for adventure, camaraderie, risk, danger.

They want to push themselves and test themselves against others. They want to flourish in an environment that embraces hard work, discipline and the warrior ethos. Special operators know a thing or two about all of those. I've experienced it firsthand across the world.

I have a chance to get up and do PT with the troops oftentimes when we're traveling. And some people think it's a novelty, it's not — it's always been a basic part of military service. You get up early, you get up and you work out because we're going to be fit and we're not going to be fat. And even if the SecDef has a little bit of time to do it, every troop has an opportunity to do it. The problem is it went from let's do PT with the troops to every special operations group in the world trying to smoke the SecDef [laughter].

I find myself almost blacking out by the end of the workout [laughter] and then having to hand out coins and try to stay right ways up. Appreciate that. You, this group, have long been the standard bearers of what it means to be an American warrior, an exclusive club where the cost of membership is commitment, toughness, courage, grit, paired with accountability, intelligence and skill.

At times, and this is a key thing and something we've seen firsthand, when the broader force has strayed from the path, has strayed from sanity, has strayed from standards, you have been keepers of the flame.

So, it's great to see so many outstanding leaders this morning who embody that warrior ethos. General Fenton, thank you for your courage, your determination and your grit showing your forces what right looks like. And of course, Command Sergeant Major Shorter, the real boss of SOCOM.

Thanks for leading your troops and demonstrating that the US military strategic advantage lies in the strength, and it's true, of our NCO corps. Like so many other SOF leaders past and present, you have kept the flame of the warrior ethos burning bright.

In 1943, Naval combat demolition units were preparing for the imminent invasion of Sicily. Lieutenant Commander Draper Kauffman compressed their physical training program into a demanding week known as Hell Week. Even with the demand to get many more sailors to the line more quickly, Lieutenant Commander Kauffman kept the standards high. Between 30 to 40 percent of students failed the program, but those who graduated were ready.

Today, the standards remain high across special operations training programs and I thank you for that. In fact, we're doing standards assessments across DOD, and we started at special operations, multiple accessions courses. And the report back from the Green Berets and the Army Rangers that we sent the Navy Seals to those courses standards still high, sir.

We're heading out to other formations in basic courses to determine why those standards have dropped and to make sure they're raised. In this particular instance, it included the Navy's rigorous basic underwater demolition school or BUDS, which traces its roots to Lieutenant Commander Kauffman's training. As you know, it still features Hell Week, high expectations and high attrition — soft, fat, easy, weak, mushy and quitter are not the adjectives that attract these types of professionals, it's the opposite and this will continue. We will never compromise; we cannot compromise on standards. Our standards will be high and in combat formations they will be gender neutral because the weight of a 155 round or a rucksack or a human being doesn't care if you're a man or a woman.

All that matters is whether you are capable of executing that combat mission in front of you. I spend a lot of time in a town in Washington DC where there's a deficit in one thing, common sense. I mean that's why President Trump is so popular. That's why the American people responded, he leads with common sense.

He's asked me to apply common sense. Our combat formations don't need to look like Harvard University. They need to look like killers, trained and skilled and prepared. The standards need to be high, and they need to be gender neutral, so that if you can do the job, you're in that formation and if you can't, you are not.

That is restoring the warrior ethos, and it's something we've seen across our formation that the troops are responding to — morale, recruiting, retention, readiness, training, capabilities, responding to common sense and a back-to-basics approach. That's the warrior ethos. So, we start there.

Our second priority is rebuilding the military. And President Trump has declared and delivered on a generational investment, rebuilding our military much like Ronald Reagan did in the 1980s. Our goal is to put the best systems in the hands of our warfighters because you, our warfighters, should never be in a fair fight. We're doing this by reviving our defense industrial base, reforming our acquisitions process and rapidly fielding emerging technologies.

Sure, Golden Dome for America is a part of that. The new sixth generation fighter, NGAD F-47 is a part of that, B-21s are a part of that. But what we see today and what you see in your formations are the fielding rapidly emerging technologies which are critically important, that help us remain the leader in the world for generations to come.

Everyone here today from SO/LIC to the SOF Secretariat to SOCOM and every special operations network has a role to play in rebuilding our military. Special operations forces have long operated like a tech startup, you're agile and nimble, lean and lethal. You leverage innovation to get more capability, and you push the limits of technology and human performance in ways that conventional formations just cannot.

You adopt advanced technologies early, you make them better and then you help them spread to the rest of the joint force. You are willing to experiment and fail while learning from each failure and each success. We need you to keep doing that.

I get a chance to see it with my own eyes. When I travel, I see it in the reports that are sent up from General Fenton and others. That rapid fielding, that rapid iteration, that feedback loop is critical across the joint force.

And this tradition of rapidly introducing trailblazing technology can be traced, of course, to SOF World War II roots and the Office of Strategic Services. They developed briefcase radios, modified small arms and more which met wartime needs. Today, that means loitering munitions, AI enabled targeting platforms and new counter UAS systems.

I want to recognize and thank a few DOD pathfinders in these critical efforts. SOF AT&L and their expert team of teams led by Melissa Johnson, callsign Mojo, and the Irregular Warfare Technical Support Directorate led by Gabe Ramos.

With their rapid prototyping and innovative partnerships, these teams and others like them are moving out with a sense of urgency. While some in Washington talk about acquisition reform — and I'll tell you there's plenty of white papers out there that will tell you about acquisition reform — you, they are acquisition reform.

So, we want to thank our industry partners, many of which are here today, over 800 companies this year at SOF Week, you're an essential part of the global Special Operations network. I'm grateful that so many of you participate in the events this week to enable the SOF enterprise.

You must know what we need, and we must know what you can build. And together, we can broaden the boundaries of what is possible. Because as we rebuild the military, we have to unlock the creativity of our companies for our arsenal of democracy. Even though we're not a democracy, we're a republic and we need to start teaching that in our schools again, [laughter] [applause].

You know it's the basic stuff they slip by us, the small lies they tell us, those are the ones that grow in the minds of young people who then turn around and don't love their country. A huge part of ensuring we have a room like this full in the future is ensuring our kids and grandkids know why America is such a special place.

What our founders gifted us 250 years ago, there's a reason we're going to have a big old Army parade on June 14th of 2025. It's because what we celebrate in this country is a reflection of what we value. There are a lot of vapid things to celebrate, plenty of reality shows and garbage music and stuff on Netflix. How about we hold up our special operations community? How about we recognize the Army and the Marine Corps and the United States at 250 years, the sacrifice of those men who stood on bridges 250 years ago and said we will live free.

We have an incredible story to tell, if we're willing to tell it, and then if we're willing to raise young men and women willing and able to raise their right hand to defend this nation. Never compromise on what you believe and why. You raised your right hand — you raised it to defend our country and the Constitution. Know the why and share it with your kids and grandkids, encourage them to serve.

It was one of the challenges of the book I wrote before I had this job, The War on Warriors. I was asking myself the same question, do I want to serve in today's military given what has happened to it. And I can tell you 100 days in, watching our Commander in Chief, what he has been willing to do, the common sense he has applied, the courage he has shown, I look forward to having a military, my kids would — I would proudly ask my kids to join.

I've got a 14-year-old boy, I look out, he's my oldest and 13-year-old and 12-year-old. And I'm fighting right now to create the kind of formations, to provide the kind of platforms that would serve them should they have the courage to do exactly what all of you have done.

So, we need to continue to reward innovation, encourage creative solutions, move faster than ever before. As General Fenton points out, threats evolve now in hours, not in years. In fact, I saw a report this morning on the plane here that demonstrated our enemies are adapting in a matter of hours, not in a matter of years. Days if we're lucky.

We can't and we won't fight today's opponent at yesterday's pace. When our opponents know that our military is armed with the most capable weapons systems known to man, wielded by skilled warriors with the will to prevail, they are less likely to challenge us on the battlefield and that is the point. Which leads to our third objective, restore the warrior ethos, rebuild the military and, third, reestablish deterrence.

After four years of deferred maintenance under the Biden administration; after a disastrous retreat from Afghanistan, which we are still investigating and we'll get completely to the bottom of, especially DOD's role; after what happened in October 7th in Israel; after the war that was unleashed in Ukraine the world saw what it — after a frigging spy balloon flew over our country for a week, the world saw what it believed was a feckless America. Not anymore. And a huge part of it is SOF's capabilities.

In today's contested world SOF does not go alone. They go first, but they also go with partners. SOF's ability to work by, with and through international partners pays huge dividends on our border, in the Indo-Pacific and around the world.

Partners, as I see so many of our partners right here in the front, are central to how SOF works. They have to believe that America is strong, that peace through strength is real, then they want to come into our orbit and be force multipliers. I'm talking about generational relationships that we have built with partner forces around the globe.

I can't tell you how many meetings I'm in here or around the globe where I meet with foreign ministers or ministers of defense from allied countries, or countries sort of on the brink of whether they're going to go our way or the way of the Communist Chinese. And I'm looking at a minister of defense who was a part of an exchange program 20 years ago with US special operators, with Green Berets. Or they went to a military education school at Fort Benning 20 years ago.

And so, their affinity for US troops, for the United States is real. That is mostly, especially on the leading edge, a product of SOF. The level of cooperation between US SOF and our allies and partners is unprecedented in scale and invaluable from what we gain from it.

Today, there are over 6,000 US special operations professionals at work outside the US in over 80 countries. Representatives from 60 of those countries are with us here at SOF Week, and we welcome all of them. We also have international partners from 28 nations stationed right here at SOCOM. These relationships and partnerships take years to build, and the impact will be — could be in some cases decades from now.

But these allies and partners strengthen our militaries as they build their own Tier 1, Tier 2 special operations forces. No one does that partnership better than SOF. And I know it's not a surprise to any of you.

Again, it's in your roots. In World War II, joint US and British teams went behind enemy lines with resistance fighters in Europe. In Vietnam, SOF worked closely with South Vietnamese counterparts on some of the most dangerous missions, including daring rescues of downed pilots. And more recently, special operators have worked shoulder to shoulder with partners across the globe, like assisting our Colombian and Filipino partners in fighting against insurgents. And that tradition continues today.

Just last month I was in Panama and saw how closely the US and Panamanian Special Forces work together to combat shared threats and achieve common goals. Just watching in our own hemisphere in Panama, but it's not just Panama. The way in which the Communist Chinese, through malign influence, attempt to leverage their relationships and just straight up money with local leaders to try to pull them in their direction, it's happening in real time.

And yes, we have diplomats and there's politicians that think about these problem sets. But for the most part it's special operators, its COCOM commanders, its others who are on the ground partnering, creating that enduring bond and relationship with local forces that pulls them out of that orbit and toward the United States.

In an instance of the Panama Canal, that's key terrain, a choke point built by Americans that ought have our focus. And the point of that trip was to partner with Panamanians and take back the Panama Canal from Chinese influence, a strategic prerogative, the president has pointed out, that special operations plays a large role in. so SOF Week helps us build these generational relationships and they are needed.

Our adversaries are working together as well, China, Iran, Russia, North Korea. And so, we have to as well. Harnessing our partnerships gives us strategic and tactical advantage, achieving peace through strength. Under the leadership of President Trump, the message to our adversaries has been undeniably clear — America is back.

SOF amplifies this message and carries it to all the far-flung corners of the world. It's a pivotal mission that is laser focused on warfighting. As I know all of you are, we're restoring the warrior ethos, rebuilding our military and reestablishing deterrence. Enemy aggression will be met swiftly and harshly, and we're beginning a new golden age of America and a golden age of national defense. But there is no time to waste.

As General Fenton said, and he's right, we're in the midst of a special operation forces renaissance. And I know I can count on SOF to step up and meet this moment, to set the standards, to serve at the tip of the spear. And my pledge to you is the same pledge that President Trump has made to me that has asked me to share with all the formations I meet with when I travel abroad and talk to formations here at home.

He tells me to tell every warrior out there we have your back. That's all I ever wanted when I was a rifle platoon leader leading 40 men in combat. I wanted to know my company commander, my battalion commander, my brigade commander, my division commander had my back — in any difficult situation I was in.

Where split second decisions are made in the fog of war, sometimes you're right, sometimes you're wrong. Sometimes you hit the right target, sometimes you miss. Most politicians can't understand the impossible dynamics that our special operators face. Take what I experienced and make it 25x what special operators experience.

What he did in his first term, President Trump, and what he has pledged in his second and is ongoing to this day is we will have your back. As you execute violently the defense of our nation, our job is to ensure we have yours. So, I want to thank you for everything you do and the best gift I can give you is getting up every day, working as hard as I can with my staff from the West Wing to the Pentagon to ensure you have everything you need.

And when you make that tough call your Commander in Chief, your Secretary of Defense and your country are behind you because we are grateful — beyond grateful for what you, your families give on behalf of this nation.

No one serves alone, it's you, your kids, your spouses, your communities, your churches, the people that love you, the people that support you that believe in what we do. We have your back, and we love you too. God bless the United States and all of our warriors. Thank you. [Applause]

2. Nation's Leaders Turning More to Special Ops in Volatile

I have to say General Fenton and CSM Shorter have set the standard for command teams. I know it is second nature in SF and SOF for commanders and CSMs to be joined at the hip but over the last three years they have showed the power of being a dynamic duo and they have had some positive influence over other command teams to the point where at nearly every congressional hearing or public event the commander calls out his senior enlisted leader (SEL) and highlights the importance of that person representing our great NCO corps in all our services.

The back and forth between the General and the CSM today was funny, entertaining, and educational. I think they provided a timely and timeless description of SOF and what it has done, will do, and must do for our nation.

SOF week was/is very impressive this year. There is an amazing turnout of more than 60 nations special operations leaders. It is really incredible to see this global SOF network and partnership.

Certainly USSOCOM exemplifies "America, First, Allies Always" and the world should know that "Allies are America's Asymmetric Advantage - and USSOCOM exemplifies Assurance to our Allies.

Nation's Leaders Turning More to Special Ops in Volatile Environment

https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/4176560/nations-leaders-turning-more-to-special-ops-in-volatile-environment/

May 6, 2025 | By Matthew Olay, DOD News |

The role of special operations forces in global conflicts has steadily increased amid what the U.S. Special Operations Command's top leader called the most complex security environment the United States has faced in decades.

Army Gen. Bryan P. Fenton, Socom commander, discussed the current and future role of special operations forces while delivering keynote remarks today at the start of Special Operations Forces Week 2025 in Tampa, Florida.

"For the most pressing problems facing the nation, senior leaders are turning to SOF [and] it's all against the backdrop of the most complex, asymmetric and hybrid threat security environment we've seen in 38 years of service," Fenton said.

He was joined by Socom's senior enlisted leader, Army Command Sgt. Maj. Shane Shorter.

Fenton said today's threat environment includes adversaries operating in isolation, multiple threats converging, and a rapid pace of technological change that hasn't been seen in the past.

"Special operations forces are the asymmetric strategic option for this volatile world; it's the theme of this conference for that very reason," he said, adding that SOF is a "scalpel" in "a world demanding precision."

Shorter said adversaries such as Iran, China, Russia, North Korea and various terrorist groups have begun merging efforts in what Socom labels a "fusion of foes."

"Threats aren't just coming together through convergence, they're collaborating," he said.

To counter this fusion, Fenton said SOF must operate asymmetrically — that is, through "unconventional," "irregular" [and] "asynchronous" efforts — across its three primary missions: crisis response, counterterrorism and deterrence. These efforts also include ongoing training and transformation to ensure future success.

"I think everyone in this room knows that we don't train and get it right once. … We do it over and over and over again until we can never, ever get it wrong," he said.

Fenton added that SOF's global network of partners provides a critical advantage. For instance, special operations personnel representing 60 countries attended SOF Week 2025. He also noted that the crisis response mission demand for SOF has gone up 200% in the past three and a half years, which he called unprecedented.

Additionally, Shorter said the demand for SOF as a deterrent has increased globally by 35%.

"It's not by luck that we've been able to meet this demand — it's capability, it's training to standard, it's dedication and it's harnessing the power of partnerships," Shorter said.

Looking ahead, Fenton said SOF must continue doing what works while adapting quickly to changing threats.

"We're going to keep doing what we do best, and we know we [have to] transform to meet this changing and complex environment. We [have to] do it at speed and we [have to] do it to dominate," Fenton said.

He emphasized that SOF partnerships will continue to play a key role in building interoperability and shaping the environment before conflict even begins.

So, while adversaries have begun merging efforts and becoming a "fusion of foes," Fenton said he is relying on the strength of another fusion — the personnel attending SOF Week 2025.

"The fusion of what we have in this room — interagency, industry, academia, practitioners and policymakers — is tied together and galvanized towards irregular and asymmetric options," he said, adding, "We're the scalpel, but when the time comes, we can bring the hammer too."

3. Hegseth champions special operations as the force for today’s threats

Hegseth champions special operations as the force for today’s threats

militarytimes.com · by Todd South · May 6, 2025

TAMPA, Fla. – The secretary of defense championed special operations forces as a key leader in the Pentagon’s priorities of maintaining high standards and meeting threats with asymmetric tools.

“Special Operations have never been more important in our country,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said at the annual Global SOF Foundation Special Operations Force Week in Tampa.

Hegseth noted that over the past three years SOF-specific missions have risen by 200%. And over the past six months, SOF units have killed 500 enemy combatants and captured another 600 in operations throughout the globe, Hegseth said.

That increase was coupled with a 35% surge in deterrence support that has been requested of SOF units and Special Operations Command.

SOCOM must improve high-risk training oversight, report says

Parachute and combat dive training incidents account for the bulk of special operations training mishaps.

The head of that command, Gen. Bryan Fenton, echoed his boss’ comments, stressing the asymmetrical nature of what the force does.

“We’re the scalpel, but if the time comes we can bring the hammer,” Fenton said. “We’re tailor-made for this era ... where asymmetry matters more than it ever has.”

Those advantages will wither, however, without the right technology — part of the pitch for this conference connecting industry entities with special operations planners.

“We can’t and we won’t fight today’s opponents at yesterday’s pace,” Hegseth said.

That means rapid adaptation and evolving capabilities.

The defense secretary called rapid fielding, innovation and feedback critical for SOF success.

Fenton noted that adversaries such as Russia, China, Iran, North Korea and terrorist organizations are “fusing” their efforts to work collaboratively.

The four-star said that with the increase in missions also comes more challenges as an ever-growing portion of the areas in which they operate are contested by adversary systems.

Fenton pointed to Sonic Spear, an exercise conducted in April that merged communications, virtual constructions and live training. The exercise tested SOCOM’s ability to host and synchronize all the way from the seabed to low-Earth orbit.

Experts analyzed how SOCOM contributes to the joint force’s ability to sense and strike targets across various spectrums.

“Sonic Spear 25 is our first go at this,” Lt. Gen. Francis Donovan, SOCOM vice commander, told Defense Scoop at a National Defense Industrial Association event in February. “Let’s push our autonomous investments, some other investments we’re making. ... What do our forward forces need to be able to control ourselves, control our robots and then link in with the joint force?”

The aim now is to create an O-6 level multidomain special operation task force. The Army has created similar units known as Multi-Domain Task Forces, two for the Pacific theater and one designated for Europe.

Real world scenarios, meanwhile, are showing the need for change.

“If we’ve learned anything from our partners in Ukraine, you innovate in minutes, days and weeks, not years and decades,” Fenton said.

About Todd South

Todd South has written about crime, courts, government and the military for multiple publications since 2004 and was named a 2014 Pulitzer finalist for a co-written project on witness intimidation. Todd is a Marine veteran of the Iraq War.

4. US SOF making 'unique contribution' on Southern Border: Hegseth

It is fascinating to see what new organizations select to report on from the SECDEF's speech.

US SOF making 'unique contribution' on Southern Border: Hegseth - Breaking Defense

Hegseth made his comments as the keynote speaker kicking off SOF Week in Tampa.

breakingdefense.com · by Andrew White · May 6, 2025

Leaders assigned to U.S. Special Operations Command greet the Honorable Pete Hegseth, U.S. Secretary of Defense, at MacDill Air Force Base, Florida, May 6, 2025. (U.S Air Force photo by Senior Airman Zachary Foster)

SOF WEEK — US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth today stated that US special operations forces (SOF) are actively supporting multi-agency efforts to secure the southern border.

In his keynote address on the first day of the SOF Week conference in Tampa, Fla., Hegseth said that SOF are making a “unique contribution” in this particular area of operation.

Speaking to delegates, including Gen. Bryan Fenton, Commanding General of the US Special Operations Command (SOCOM), Hegseth proclaimed, “Border security equals national security and we’re gonna get 100 percent operational control of our southern border.

“SOF is making a unique contribution there as well,” he said, later adding “Our longstanding relationship with our partners in Mexico is crucial in supporting NORTHCOM and securing our border —something that is ongoing today.” (Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, this week said she rejected a recent offer from US President Donald Trump to deploy the US military in her country.)

However, Hegseth did not provide any further details regarding US SOF units participating in operations to secure the border.

On March 20, Hegseth authorized US military personnel to conduct “enhanced” detection and monitoring tasks in support of US Customs and Border Protection (CBP), according to a NORTHCOM statement published at the time.

“These additional authorities enable service members to conduct mobile ground-based monitoring support to detect, track, and monitor movements of suspected illegal activity using military tactical vehicles or foot patrols within zones assigned by CBP. They also allow Department of Defense (DoD) ground mobility support to transport CBP personnel using military tactical vehicles along patrol routes,” the NORTHCOM statement added.

NORTHCOM could only confirm the US Army’s 2nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team could be “more effectively utilized by Joint Task Force – Southern Border (JTF-SB)” in support of the CBP. There was no direct mention of support from USSOCOM.

Breaking Defense approached SOCOM to discuss the role of SOF along the southern border. However, an official spokesperson for the Tampa-based command was unable to provide any further details regarding special operations in the area of operation.

Finally, Hegseth stressed homeland defense is also much more of a global mission for the DoD, stretching far beyond just the southern border.

“In the last six months, SOF has eliminated over 500 terrorists who threaten our homeland directly. And alongside international SOF partners, your team has captured over another 600 terrorists,” he concluded.

breakingdefense.com · by Andrew White · May 6, 2025

5. Gen. Fenton: War in Ukraine demonstrates need for USSOCOM to innovate much faster

Gen. Fenton: War in Ukraine demonstrates need for USSOCOM to innovate much faster - Military Embedded Systems

militaryembedded.com · by OpenSystems Media

News

May 06, 2025

Dan Taylor

Technology Editor

Military Embedded Systems

MES staff photo

TAMPA, Florida. The war in Ukraine shows the necessity for U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) to innovate much more quickly than it has in the past, Gen. Bryan P. Fenton, USSOCOM commander, said during his keynote address at SOF Week here on Tuesday.

"We've got to get away from current processes that deliver us yesterday's requirements today," he said. "If we've learned anything from our partners in Ukraine, it's that we need to innovate now in minutes, days, and weeks, not years and decades. And we've got plans to trailblaze this change."

He pointed to constant innovation in the commercial sector that could become useful to the U.S. military, from driverless taxis to drones that deliver pizzas.

"We need those kinds of systems for the special ops community that are waiting for it: attritable, asymmetric, affordable, and plentiful at scale to deceive, dazzle, sense, make sense of, and act addressing the multiple challenges we've laid out," Fenton said. "We see companies -- small companies, big companies, many others -- with unique breakthrough ideas that are game-changing in sensing and disrupting our adversaries' kill chains, and they are bringing incredible solutions to our Global SOF warfighters, helping us with problems and giving us novel ways to think about modernizing existing capabilities."

He pointed to tech such as quantum computing and artificial intelligence as good examples of the kind of technology the SOF community should be taking advantage of.

militaryembedded.com · by OpenSystems Media

6. Facing 'fusion of foes,' special ops leaders envision 'SOF renaissance'

Facing 'fusion of foes,' special ops leaders envision 'SOF renaissance' - Breaking Defense

"In an era where technological advancement is rapidly changing, the character of war and threats are covering globally, our eight decades of experience has tailor-made SOF for strategic competition's return,” USSOCOM chief Gen. Bryan Fenton said in his keynote address at SOF Week.

https://breakingdefense.com/2025/05/facing-fusion-of-foes-special-ops-leaders-envision-sof-renaissance/

breakingdefense.com · by Andrew White · May 6, 2025

U.S. Naval Special Warfare operators and U.S. Coast Guard Maritime Security Response Team (West) members conduct visit, board, search, and seizure training aboard the 2nd Lt. John P. Bobo-class cargo ship USNS PFC Dewayne T. Williams (T-AK 3009) in the Andaman Sea, Dec. 15, 2024. (U.S. Navy Photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Alex Perlman)

SOF WEEK — The US military is facing an evolved threat in the form of a “fusion” of different adversaries, but with that danger comes a potential “renaissance” for special operations forces (SOF), two senior-most special ops leaders told the SOF Week conference today.

“A SOF renaissance is now upon us. In an era where technological advancement is rapidly changing, the character of war and threats are covering globally, our eight decades of experience has tailor-made SOF for strategic competition’s return,” US Special Operations Command chief Gen. Bryan Fenton declared.

Sharing the podium with Fenton was USSOCOM’s Command Sergeant Major, Shane Shorter, who said “complexities” associated with great power competition mean the United States is now facing a “fusion of foes,” including overlapping threats from China, Iran, North Korea, Russia and terrorist groups.

“Individually, each is dangerous. Together they are fusing. Adversaries coming together through convergence to collaborate. It’s a fusion of foes,” he warned.

Fenton went onto echo US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s comments made earlier in the day in which he said crisis response missions conducted by US SOF were up by 200 percent over the last three years. “That’s unprecedented,” Fenton added.

“Responding to those crises are way more challenging than they’ve ever been because the environment is contested and congested with integrated air missile defense in places we haven’t seen before. And that will continue,” he said. “And alongside our partners, we’ve been busy eliminating terrorists and ripping apart violent extremist organization [VEO] networks as part of our homeland defense mission. And even that’s gotten harder with state actors and terrorist organizations looking to fuse together, combine the threat of advanced conventional weapons and with all that in the mix, it’s a new ball game.”

To stay in that game, Shorter said it was critical that SOF innovate at breakneck speed.

“Now we need to modernize in weeks, sometimes in just days and this isn’t just about keeping pace, it’s about setting pace. And if you think about how SOF fights against fusion of foes, I think we need to be going after some of these game-changing technologies which sit firmly in the private sector now,” he added, referring to open-source intelligence from satellite images and software defined radios.

Shorter added USSOCOM has to “dominate uncrewed systems in the air, maritime surface and sub-surface.”

Fenton said, “If we have learned anything from our partners in Ukraine, it’s that you innovate in minutes, days and weeks, not years and decades.”

Finally, Fenton considered the future of special operations in the next five years and disclosed the completion of the first ever Global SOF Command Team conference, conducted at the USSOCOM headquarters at MacDill Air Base prior to SOF Week.

Describing how the event featured 300 senior SOF leaders from 63 partner nations, Fenton said the Global SOF network is now the “first mover in terms of achieving strategic outcomes” internationally.

breakingdefense.com · by Andrew White · May 6, 2025

7. Electronic Warfare Lessons From Ukraine Informing Air Force Special Operations Future

Electronic Warfare Lessons From Ukraine Informing Air Force Special Operations Future

Observations from Ukraine about rapidly adapting platforms and systems to changing battlefield realities is also driving major change in AFSOC.

Howard Altman

Updated May 5, 2025 7:11 PM EDT

twz.com · by Howard Altman

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As it looks to remain relevant in a future that could see conflict with a great power like China, Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC) is seeking to apply key lessons learned from the war in Ukraine, a high-ranking U.S. Air Force official told The War Zone. The ability to operate in a dense electronic warfare environment and to adapt very quickly to new tactical challenges, in particular, are great areas of interest, spurring a review of how the command views training and new acquisitions, the official said.

For the past two decades, AFSOC’s arsenal of aircraft operated in largely benign electromagnetic combat environments, often guided by special tactics airmen on radios, in virtually uncontested airspace against insurgent groups possessing no electronic warfare (EW) capabilities.

In Ukraine, both sides possess such robust EW abilities that each has resorted to fiber optic cables, impervious to jamming, for a significant portion of their FPV drone operations. Communications there are often highly degraded, and offensive and defensive measures are constantly being updated by the combatants in an endless game of whack-a-mole. Jammers exist on many individual vehicles, and GPS is also under constant electronic attack. Even U.S.-donated munitions like the Ground Launched Small Diameter Bomb (GLSDB) have seen their effectiveness reported thwarted, at least in part, by EW.

One of the major takeaways from Ukraine is figuring out how special operations forces (SOF) airpower can fight “in environments that are heavily degraded, in terms of jamming, in terms of electronic warfare, electronic attack,” said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss planning issues. The command needs to “increase our acumen and our skill set and our ability and capability and capacity” to ensure EW success, both offensively and defensively.

U.S. Air Force Aircrew, 34th Special Operations Squadron, Hurlburt Field, Florida, maintain the U-28A Draco aircraft during Northern Strike 24-1, Jan. 25, 2024, at Alpena Combat Readiness Training Center, Mich. (U.S. Air National Guard photo by Master Sgt. Scott Thompson) Master Sgt. Scott Thompson

In future “GPS-denied environments, how do you have alternate [precision, navigation and timing] PNT? Resilient PNT? How do you fight and survive? Really, both of those sides of the coin in an environment like Ukraine have provided a wealth of information and lessons learned, and how you do that in an environment that is really unique to what we’ve seen over the last several decades?”

The Russian “Black Eye” EW system that jams FPV and Mavic video is now in mass production and is appearing across the whole front.

This is a serious development for Ukraine as one system can shut down radio drone operations across an area of 2-4 km when located high enough.

1/ https://t.co/x3CCyU7sm6 pic.twitter.com/NYALxs21Lc

— Roy (@GrandpaRoy2) May 4, 2025

As a result of these takeaways, the official said AFSOC is considering changing the way it prepares for war.

“Our people are a decisive advantage, more important than hardware,” the official posited. “So how do we train all the way from our ground forces, the Special Tactics units, how do we train them? How do we equip them to be relevant in the EW fight, but also then onto our platform? So we’re looking at, how do you leverage aircrew back onto certain platforms? … What platforms might require some of our combat systems officers to be put back into the crew complement? Once you do that, how are you training them to be effective from day one, as they come to us out of their initial qualification training, what systems are those?”

AFSOC

Beyond how it utilizes its airmen, AFSOC is also rethinking its acquisition process, with an eye on becoming far more nimble in this regard than in the past.

“This need to really be proactive and dynamic, to change the capabilities of either the platforms or just jump from platform to platform, in terms of capability to respond to the dynamic environment that you’re experiencing. You’ve seen this probably plenty in your own reporting about how quickly both sides are adapting their capabilities to employ in combat, and the need to react to that rapidly. And so what that means to me, in the position that I’m in, you start to think about how do I apply this to – we talk in terms of programs of record, but maybe I need to be talking about programs of capability,” the official suggested.

“There’s certainly your major platforms… But in some of the lower-level kinds of things – offensive asymmetric capabilities – what do you do there? You see… a lot of systems every day in that theater being employed, but if we are trying to plan to gain a capability, how are we flexibly able to determine what might be viable today that may not be viable, maybe in a few weeks or six months, or a year from now? So you want to have flexible programs of capability so that you can now leap to the thing that works today, may not work a year from now. So I’ve got to be able to make that leap in a very dynamic, rapid way to be relevant on the battlefield.”

A U.S. Air Force CV-22B Osprey tiltrotor aircraft, assigned to the 81st Expeditionary Rescue Squadron, conducts tactical air refueling from a U.S. Marine Corps KC-130J Hercules over Eastern Africa, 1 Nov., 2023. (U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Edward Coddington) Staff Sgt. Edward Coddington

Moving away from so-called ‘exquisite’ systems that are very complex, expensive, and time-consuming to build to more affordable and attritable ones is also a possibility for some mission sets and capability needs, according to the official.

“Oftentimes, we think in terms of major weapon systems. Well, some of these capabilities we may need to think more of in terms of consumables, more like ammunition. That we can employ them [in a way] if we lose them, that’s not a concern the way that it would be with a major weapon system platform, so that we can then either divest and move to the next thing, or we’ve employed them and we’ve lost some, and that’s okay, too.”

As for programs of record, the official said that AFSOC’s recent acceptance of the last of the AC-130J Ghostrider gunships and MC-130J Commando II transport/tankers it plans to purchase “is something to be celebrated, and that’s a great milestone. But that doesn’t mean we’re anywhere near being done with the work that we would want to put into them to keep them relevant in the scenarios that you’re asking about, certainly with what we’re learning.”

An MC-130J Commando II. Sierra Nevada Corporation An AFSOC MC-130J Commando II. This particular example has gone through a number of recent upgrade programs, including one that adds the new Silent Knight terrain-following/terrain avoidance radar to the nose. Sierra Nevada Corporation

The need to be able to rapidly update these platforms and other systems to keep them relevant is growing larger by the day. Addressing this, too, via systemic procurement and development changes is also important, according to the official:

“And then, in terms of the systems themselves, this is where we’re working with, both the service and SOCOM, where you have autonomous systems. You get into radios that we want to be software defined, so that you aren’t constantly chasing what I call the ‘Box of the Month Club,’ where by the time you have laid a great deal of resourcing into a system, it’s got to be so dynamic that you aren’t vendor locked. Thereby. You need open systems architecture, you need modularity and this notion of government reference architectures between SOCOM and the Air Force, so that you can then rapidly iterate to change, in some cases, the actual functionality of the system itself to be responsive to now what you’re seeing on the battlefield.”

“How are we training our people? Do we have the right systems on the airplanes? How are we integrating those with the broader SOF and joint force to make them relevant? Those are all really key foundational considerations” that AFSOC is working on.

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

8. The Warrior’s Renaissance

The author covers some important events that I was not able to attend - there are just too many to take advantage of them all. But his insights from the panels below are instructive and important.

The Warrior’s Renaissance

By Chad Williamson

May 07, 2025

https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2025/05/07/the_warriors_renaissance_1108684.html?mc_cid=7c9a39c851

Day 2 at SOF Week and the Quiet Battle Within

Day 2 of SOF Week 2025 began with fire and ended with reflection.

The morning keynote from Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth was delivered with steel-spined clarity, reinforcing three imperatives…

Restore the warrior ethos
Rebuild the military
Reestablish deterrence

“Humans are more important than hardware,” Hegseth declared, echoing the foundational SOF truth that people—not platforms—determine the outcome of war. But beneath the applause and patriotic cadence, the day’s true heartbeat pulsed elsewhere, in the invisible battles many warfighters fight alone.

Following the keynote, General Bryan Fenton and Command Sergeant Major Shane Shorter took the stage to “All I Do Is Win”—a message both confident and complex. Although there were plenty of industry exhibitions to witness, it seemed the human element needed deep attention. The SOF community may win the visible fight, but the afternoon reminded us of the internal war that often follows.

The Battle After the Battle

In two afternoon panels—“Advancing the Warrior’s Edge: Leveraging Breakthroughs in Human Performance for Lasting Impact On and Off the Battlefield” and “The Invisible Enemy: SOF Moral Injury and Intervention”—experts, operators, and caregivers reframed the warfighter not just as a physical or cognitive system, but as a moral and emotional being. The message was unambiguous—the future of SOF must account for the wounds we can’t always see.

Dr. Anna Simons question lingered long after the session ended, “Could it be that in the future, the working assumption is that everybody in SOF has suffered moral injury?” If we accept that premise, then the burden shifts—not to the individual to hide their pain, but to the institution to create the conditions for acknowledgment, healing, and post-traumatic growth.

This is where true evolution is happening. No longer is the battlefield just external. The warfighter is often in battle with themselves—navigating decisions made in the fog of war, reconciling with actions necessary for survival, and managing the emotional residue of missions conducted in the shadows.

Empathy as Doctrine

And yet, this is precisely where SOF is leading—not just in irregular warfare, but in the conversation of irregular care. In this VUCA world—volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous—special operations forces flourish. But they do so not only through superior tactics, but through shared stories, deep bonds, and an unbreakable empathy forged in adversity.

As Reverend Christopher Shimmen reminded us, spiritual resilience is not a luxury—it is a force multiplier. And empathy, both for others and oneself, may well be the most powerful cognitive advantage in the SOF toolkit. “Warriorhood,” he said, “is not an outer role, but an inner spiritual achievement.”

That spiritual achievement demands storytelling—not just after retirement, but throughout a warfighter’s journey. Stories allow the invisible to become visible. They link our common humanity, de-stigmatize struggle, and form the connective tissue of a community built on trust. But when the mission ends, who checks in? Where are the touchpoints post-service? Who ensures the invisible wounds are not left untreated once the uniform comes off?

We need career pipelines that don’t just train for peak performance but build long-term durability. Not just metrics for readiness, but measures for resonance—how connected a warfighter feels to their purpose, people, and past.

The Renaissance Within

If SOF is truly in a renaissance—as both Secretary Hegseth and General Fenton insist—then it is not just technological or tactical. It is moral. It is emotional. It is spiritual. As Dr. David Rudd and others made clear, we can no longer afford to separate the battlefield from the body, the mission from the mind, or the warrior from the human being who returns home carrying more than gear.

Neale Donald Walsch once wrote, “If you don’t go within, you go without.” That may be the most critical line of doctrine for SOF’s future. If we fail to look within—both as individuals and as an enterprise—we risk going without the very thing that makes this community elite, its humanity. This is as true for the institution as it is for the operator. For every command team. For every family. For every soul that walks the long road from the battlefield back to themselves.

The next chapter of deterrence won’t be built on technology alone. It will be written by those who had the courage to do the hardest work of all, to look within—and lead from there.

Chad Williamson is a military veteran and is currently pursuing his graduate degree in national security policy. He lives on Capitol Hill with his wife, Dr. Heather Williamson, and their two chocolate labs, Demmi and Ferg.

9. Venezuelan Opposition Activists Freed After Hiding From Maduro Regime

A "precise operation?" A "successful rescue?" No further details.

I imagine this could have been like a Bull Simons type rescue of Americans in Iran in 1980.

Excerpts:

Five Venezuelan opposition activists who had been hiding for months from President Nicolás Maduro’s regime in the Argentine embassy in Caracas, Venezuela’s capital, have been freed and are now on American soil, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Tuesday night.

Rubio, a vocal opponent of Maduro’s authoritarian government, called the episode at the Argentine compound a “successful rescue” but didn’t provide other details, such as whether the Trump administration had orchestrated it or if U.S. forces were involved.

“The U.S. welcomes the successful rescue of all hostages held by the Maduro regime,” he wrote. “Following a precise operation, all hostages are now safe on U.S. soil.”

Venezuelan Opposition Activists Freed After Hiding From Maduro Regime

Secretary of State Marco Rubio says the five activists are now on U.S. soil following ‘a precise operation’ in the Venezuelan capital

https://www.wsj.com/world/americas/venezuelan-opposition-activists-freed-after-hiding-from-maduro-regime-bf5f8d75

By Juan Forero

Updated May 6, 2025 11:06 pm ET

Police on a street leading to Argentina’s embassy in Caracas, Venezuela, on Tuesday. Photo: Cristian Hernandez/AP

Key Points

What's This?

Five Venezuelan opposition activists, sheltered in Argentina’s embassy in Caracas, have been freed and are on U.S. soil.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio called it a ‘successful rescue’ but didn’t detail U.S. involvement in the activists’ release.
The activists worked with Maria Corina Machado, a prominent opposition leader, who celebrated their liberation.

Five Venezuelan opposition activists who had been hiding for months from President Nicolás Maduro’s regime in the Argentine embassy in Caracas, Venezuela’s capital, have been freed and are now on American soil, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Tuesday night.

Rubio, a vocal opponent of Maduro’s authoritarian government, called the episode at the Argentine compound a “successful rescue” but didn’t provide other details, such as whether the Trump administration had orchestrated it or if U.S. forces were involved.

“The U.S. welcomes the successful rescue of all hostages held by the Maduro regime,” he wrote. “Following a precise operation, all hostages are now safe on U.S. soil.”

The secretary of state offered his gratitude to “all personnel involved in this operation and to our partners who assisted in securing the safe liberation of these Venezuelan heroes.”

Maduro and other regime figures didn’t immediately comment on the developments. The Venezuelan president was in Moscow, invited by his ally, President Vladimir Putin, for Russia’s annual military parade marking the victory over Nazi Germany in World War II.

The regime opponents who had been in the embassy have worked with Venezuela’s most prominent opposition leader, Maria Corina Machado, who has been close to Rubio and other members of the Trump administration.

Machado has been in hiding after leading a presidential campaign last year that resulted in former diplomat Edmundo González handily beating Maduro in a July 28 vote, according to voting tallies and electoral observers.

The regime, however, said Maduro had won the vote and launched a crackdown that led to the arrests of more than 2,000 people, dozens of them children. Four months earlier in March of last year, six opposition figures allied with Machado had fled into the Argentine embassy. One of the six, Fernando Martínez Mottola, later left the embassy for health reasons and died.

In the months that followed, the regime cut off water and electricity to the embassy and surrounded the building, in a leafy residential neighborhood, with security forces.

Machado, who is 57 and had been barred by the regime from running in the presidential election, celebrated the news that her colleagues were safely out of Venezuela.

“An impeccable and epic operation for the freedom of five heroes of Venezuela,” Machado said in a post on X, responding to Rubio’s posting. “We will free each and every one of our 900 heroes jailed by this tyranny.”

Argentina’s president, Javier Milei, who has sparred on X with Venezuelan regime figures, in a statement thanked Rubio and others he said were involved “in this operation, which has made possible that these true heroes finally get their freedom.” Milei added that the Argentine government is working to win the freedom of Nahuel Gallo, an Argentine arrested in December by the regime while visiting family in Venezuela. Gallo, a corporal in Argentina’s gendarme police, was accused of terrorism by Venezuela’s regime, infuriating Argentina’s government, which calls the detention a kidnapping.

It remained unclear on Tuesday night whether there had been an operation to extract the Venezuelans or whether negotiations had played a role. Machado didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment, nor did her liberated colleagues.

“What I can say is there were no negotiations with the regime,” said a person close to the Machado camp who asked to remain unnamed.

Madelein García, a regime journalist who publishes government-approved developments, posted a video on Instagram outside the Argentine embassy in which she said that there was no rescue but rather a negotiation involving Maduro’s government.

A person close to the Trump administration echoed the assertion, saying that it was a negotiation in which Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s government played a role. He didn’t elaborate.

Brazil, which unlike Argentina has maintained normal relations with Venezuela’s regime, took charge of the embassy last year as a gesture toward Milei’s government and those in hiding.

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

10. U.S. and Chinese Officials to Meet for Trade Talks

Finally.

U.S. and Chinese Officials to Meet for Trade Talks

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer are set to meet with Vice Premier He Lifeng in Switzerland

https://www.wsj.com/world/china/u-s-chinese-officials-to-meet-amid-trade-war-9da6b64e

By Brian Schwartz

and Lingling Wei

Updated May 7, 2025 4:16 am ET

U.S. Orders Intelligence Agencies to Step Up Spying on Greenland

Effort underscores seriousness of Trump’s intent to acquire the island from Denmark

https://www.wsj.com/world/greenland-spying-us-intelligence-809c4ef2

By Katherine Long

and Alexander Ward

May 6, 2025 7:00 pm ET

Greenland has significant deposits of rare-earth minerals as well as untapped oil and natural-gas reserves. Photo: Oscar Scott Carl for WSJ

Key Points

What's This?

The U.S. is increasing intelligence efforts in Greenland as President Trump has expressed interest in the island.
Intelligence agencies are to identify Greenland and Denmark residents who support U.S. objectives.
Trump has said he wants to take over Greenland for security purposes.

The U.S. is stepping up its intelligence-gathering efforts regarding Greenland, drawing America’s spying apparatus into President Trump’s campaign to take over the island, according to two people familiar with the effort.

Several high-ranking officials under Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard issued a “collection emphasis message” to intelligence-agency heads last week. They were directed to learn more about Greenland’s independence movement and attitudes on American resource extraction on the island.

The classified message asked agencies, whose tools include surveillance satellites, communications intercepts and spies on the ground, to identify people in Greenland and Denmark who support U.S. objectives for the island.

The directive is one of the first concrete steps Trump’s administration has taken toward fulfilling the president’s often-stated desire to acquire Greenland.

A collection-emphasis message helps set intelligence-agency priorities, directing resources and attention to high-interest targets. The Greenland order, which went to agencies including the Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency, underscores the administration’s apparent commitment to seeking control of the self-governing island. It forms part of the Kingdom of Denmark, a North Atlantic Treaty Organization member and a decadeslong ally.

James Hewitt, a National Security Council spokesman, said the White House doesn’t comment on intelligence matters, but added: “The president has been very clear that the U.S. is concerned about the security of Greenland and the Arctic.”

In a statement, Gabbard said: “The Wall Street Journal should be ashamed of aiding deep state actors who seek to undermine the President by politicizing and leaking classified information. They are breaking the law and undermining our nation’s security and democracy.”

Down Go the Houthis?

Trump gets America a win, if it sticks. But Iran’s proxy is still a threat.

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/houthis-donald-trump-deal-ship-attacks-iran-israel-5bb776b6

By The Editorial Board

May 6, 2025 5:44 pm ET

Houthi supporters shout slogans during an anti-USA protest, in Sana'a, Yemen Photo: yahya arhab/Shutterstock

President Trump declared victory over the Houthis, Iran’s terrorist proxy in Yemen, on Tuesday. “They have capitulated,” he said amid an Oval Office meeting with Canada’s Prime Minister. “They say they will not be blowing up ships anymore,” he added, “and I will accept their word, and we are going to stop the bombing of the Houthis.”

Mission accomplished? If the Houthis—whose slogan is “God is the Greatest, Death to America, Death to Israel, Curse be upon the Jews, Victory to Islam”—stop shooting at U.S. vessels, then yes. That was the objective presented when the U.S. began bombing.

“It has been over a year since a U.S.-flagged commercial ship safely sailed through the Suez Canal, the Red Sea, or the Gulf of Aden,” the White House said in its March 15 statement. “No terrorist force will stop American commercial and naval vessels from freely sailing the Waterways of the World.”

This would satisfy that criteria, though some senior Houthi officials deny the group will end its Red Sea blockade. We may learn more when their leader, Abdul Malik al-Houthi, gives his weekly speech Thursday, but the real test is when U.S. vessels transit the waters again. And how about ships from other states? The U.S. has an interest in preventing any group of modern-day pirates from denying commercial traffic access to vital sea lanes.

The deal comes via Oman, the Gulf sultanate that is also mediating nuclear talks between the U.S. and Iran. This suggests it could have been arranged over most Houthi leaders’ heads. After threats by Mr. Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to hold Tehran accountable for its proxy’s fire, Iran has reason to de-escalate.

Credit Mr. Trump for using sustained force against the Houthis and threatening their weapons-suppliers in Tehran. President Biden wouldn’t do either, even as the Houthis tanked Red Sea traffic, raised costs and prices worldwide, and fired with impunity at the U.S. Navy.

To appease Iran, Mr. Biden had taken the Houthis off the terror list and withdrew U.S. military support for the Saudi-led defense of Yemen’s government. Iran took advantage, activating the Houthis soon after Oct. 7, 2023, to shoot at Israel and disrupt global trade.

Israelis have learned the hard way that “deterring” terrorists ultimately is no substitute for eliminating their capabilities. No one should pretend the Houthi threat is finished, as Iran could reactivate its proxy whenever it’s advantageous. There’s also no sign the Houthis will cease firing ballistic missiles at Israel; one struck near Ben-Gurion airport Sunday.

The deal with the U.S. blindsided Jerusalem, though Israel’s retaliation against the Houthis earlier on Tuesday, which destroyed their main airport and link to Iranian weapons, may have helped clinch it. Iran doesn’t need another proxy overwhelmed. The key for the U.S. will be keeping Iran in retreat.

What Trump Fails to Understand About Putin

Russia’s dictator, steeped in myth, couldn’t care less that ‘too many people are dying’ in Ukraine.

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/what-trump-fails-to-understand-about-putin-ukraine-war-negotiations-72ac9f12

By Barton Swaim

May 6, 2025 5:00 pm ET

Vladimir Putin in Murmansk, Russia, and President Donald Trump in Washington. Photo: olga maltsevasaul loeb/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

The ugly truth is at last dawning on the White House—or let’s hope it is—that Vladimir Putin has no interest in settling for a tie in Ukraine. The administration has spent weeks lamenting the pointlessness of the war. “Stop the killing” and “stop the bloodshed,” President Trump has said repeatedly to the combatants in press gaggles and on social media.

The phrases, coming from him, sound disingenuous. They would sound credible if Mr. Trump were a typical Western liberal who believes killing and bloodshed happen mainly when people fail to appreciate the benefits of stability and prosperity. But Mr. Trump doesn’t think that way and never has, which is why he also doesn’t offer similar laments over the bloodshed happening in Haiti, Myanmar, Nigeria, Somalia, Sudan and other places.

The Russian army’s refusal to stop launching attacks on Ukrainian civilians, Mr. Trump pronounced on April 26, “makes me think that maybe he”—Mr. Putin—“doesn’t want to stop the war, he’s just tapping me along.” Plainly Mr. Trump knows his Russian counterpart is a one-eyed jack, but he concluded that statement with another seemingly credulous appeal to liberal values: “Too many people are dying!!!”

Mr. Trump understands cutthroat opportunism, but not honor-based savagery. The people advising him—notably the real estate investor Steve Witkoff and Vice President JD Vance—seem to take Mr. Putin for a crafty Western-style pol angling for pecuniary and political advantage.

That is precisely what he isn’t. As Gary Saul Morson explained in a superb 2023 essay, “Do Russians Worship War?,” Mr. Putin fully embraces the centuries-old myth of Russia as the victim of betrayal and exploitation. The Mongols in the 13th century, the Turks in the 18th, the British and the French in the 19th, Germany in the 20th—always, in minds like Mr. Putin’s, steeped in the myth, Russia must fight foes bent on stealing its wealth and destroying its people.

May 9, the day Nazi Germany surrendered to the Soviet Union in 1945, is, for Russians, “the most important holiday of the year, consecrated by the Russian Orthodox Church,” Mr. Morson writes. “They sense their kinship with the mystical body of the people, past and present.” War in Russia, he explains, is a kind of civic sacrament: Newlyweds frequently place flowers on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Moscow, and criticizing the military is often considered blasphemous. In American war movies, “the true heroes (or most of them) survive. By contrast, countless Russian war movies and novels feature as much death as possible. The story is not complete if anyone beside the one reporting the events survives. The more death, the greater the heroism.”

Mr. Trump’s lamentations about all the killing and destruction in Ukraine will likely have the opposite of the intended effect on Mr. Putin. That, at any rate, is a reasonable conclusion from Mr. Putin’s latest pronouncement that any agreement to end the war must include Russian control of four territories not currently under full Russian control: Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia. So after weeks of browbeating Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky and portraying Mr. Putin as a reasonable man—“a straightforward guy,” as Mr. Witkoff called him in an interview with Tucker Carlson—the administration managed to extract from the Russian dictator exactly nothing. Less than nothing, actually. Mr. Putin now wants more, not less.

It is a useful exercise to ask how a government’s behavior will be perceived by readers of history a century later. If, in the end, Mr. Trump listens to Mr. Vance and Donald Trump Jr. and cuts off aid to Ukraine, the outcome will invite comparisons to the allies in 1939. I’m not referring to the Munich Agreement, which happened the previous year, but to the failure of Britain and France to support Poland, as both had pledged to do, in its courageous but doomed stand against the German Wehrmacht.

The reasons for the allies’ nonintervention seemed sound at the time. Halik Kochanski, in her book “The Eagle Unbowed” (2012), writes that Britain and France moved from “a reluctance to take any action in support of Poland that might lead to German retaliation against them” to “deluding themselves that there was nothing they could do in any case because their armed forces were not ready for war, to the final justification that there was no point in taking any action because Poland was being so rapidly overrun.” The allies’ excuses in 1939 echo in the rhetoric of Mr. Zelensky’s despisers in 2025: Russia might retaliate with nukes, NATO is too weak to fight, Ukraine can’t win.

In fairness to Britain and France, they would have had to confront Hitler in Poland with their own soldiers and airmen. Yet the disgrace is real, and every informed Briton and Frenchman knows it. America need only send weapons, not men, to Ukraine. If we can’t manage that, we will deserve the scorn of our grandchildren.

Mr. Swaim is an editorial page writer for the Journal.

14. India vs. Pakistan Is Also U.S. vs. China When It Comes to Arms Sales

The global wei chi/Go board is complicated.

India vs. Pakistan Is Also U.S. vs. China When It Comes to Arms Sales

Increasing Western military support to India, and China’s to Pakistan, signals a shift in global alignments — and another potential flashpoint for international tensions.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/07/world/asia/india-pakistan-weapons.html

Indian security forces in Wuyan, on the Indian-controlled side of Kashmir, on Wednesday. India has sharply reduced purchases of low-cost arms from Russia, its Cold War-era allyCredit...Tauseef Mustafa/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

By Mujib Mashal

Reporting from New Delhi

May 7, 2025, 2:05 a.m. ET

Want to stay updated on what’s happening in Central Asia, East Asia and Eastern Europe? Sign up for Your Places: Global Update, and we’ll send our latest coverage to your inbox.

The last time India and Pakistan faced off in a military confrontation, in 2019, U.S. officials detected enough movement in the nuclear arsenals of both nations to be alarmed. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was awakened in the middle of the night. He worked the phone “to convince each side that the other was not preparing for nuclear war,” he wrote in his memoir.

That clash quickly cooled after initial skirmishing. But six years later, the two South Asian rivals are again engaged in military conflict after a deadly terrorist attack against tourists in Indian-controlled Kashmir. And this time there is a new element of uncertainty as the region’s most important military alliances have been redrawn.

Changing patterns in the flow of arms illustrate the new alignments in this particularly volatile corner of Asia, where three nuclear powers — India, Pakistan and China — stand in uneasy proximity.

Where India and Pakistan get their arms

80%

India

75%

Russia used to be

India’s main arms

supplier ...

Russia

36%

France

33%

... but India now buys

Army infantry officer calls new XM7 'unfit for use as a modern service rifle'

Officials with the Army and Sig Sauer pushed back on the findings of the research, which was conducted by an Army infantry officer and presented at this year's Modern Day Marine exhibition in Washington, D.C.

Jeff Schogol

taskandpurpose.com · by Jeff Schogol

An Army infantry officer has made a series of criticisms of the Army’s Next Generation Squad Weapon rifle, which is meant to replace the M4A1 carbine.

The Army introduced the XM7 rifle and XM250 light machine gun — both of which chamber a 6.8mm round — partly due to concerns that modern body armor could stop the 5.56mm rounds fired by the M4A1 and M249. The bigger round is also meant to give the XM7 an increased range based on lessons from Afghanistan.

But Army Capt. Braden Trent presented his research into the XM7 at the Modern Day Marine exhibition in Washington, D.C. — research he claims shows that the rifle is inferior to the M4A1.

As part of his research, Trent said he visited the 1st Brigade Combat Team “Bastogne,” 101st Airborne Division, which was the first active-duty Army unit to receive the XM7. Trent said he interviewed more than 150 soldiers and disassembled 23 XM7 rifles.

His 52-page report on the subject, which included testing with experts, ballistic research, and input from soldiers, concluded that the XM7 is “unfit for use as a modern service rifle,” Trent said on April 29 during his presentation at Modern Day Marine.

Trent said his research has shown that soldiers equipped with the XM7 in a live-fire exercise quickly run out of ammunition because its magazine only holds 20 rounds. He also said that gouges and scratches can form in the barrel after firing more than 2,000 rounds, the rifle’s weight makes it hard for soldiers to maneuver.

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Trent also said that soldiers told him that nearly all of their engagements in a military exercise were taking place within 300 meters, negating the XM7’s advantage at longer ranges, he said.

“The XM7 is a tactically outdated service rifle that would be better classified as a designated marksman rifle, if that,” Trent said during his presentation. “This rifle is a mechanically unsound design that will not hold up to sustained combat on a peer-on-peer conflict.”

Sig Sauer and the Army respond

However, a representative of Sig Sauer, which the Army selected in 2022 to build the Next Generation Squad Weapon rifle and machine gun, disputed Trent’s findings.

“We have a very large staff of individuals that work daily on that rifle to ensure that every aspect of its performance is scrutinized, every aspect of its safety is criticized,” said Jason St. John, the senior director of strategic products for Sig Sauer. “We are highly confident that we have provided the U.S. Army soldier with a very robust weapon system that is not only safe, but it performs at the highest levels.”

St. John said he did not want to issue a point-by-point rebuttal for all of Trent’s conclusions “because most of them are patently false.”

David H. Patterson, Jr., a spokesman for Program Executive Office Soldier, also said that the Next Generation Squad Weapon is well suited for close combat. Specifically, the weapon “provides greater effects within 300 meters,” he said.

“As the secretary of the Army and chief of staff highlighted in their Army Transformation Initiative memo to the force, ‘Yesterday’s weapons will not win tomorrow’s wars,’” Patterson wrote in an email on Monday to Task & Purpose. “The Next Generation Squad Weapons (NGSW) program provides unmatched lethality to our Close Combat Force (CCF). The Army is committed to accepting soldier feedback and enhancing weapons for optimal use.”

A soldier conducts training with XM7 at Fort Stewart, Georgia, June 20, 2024. Army National Guard photo by Spc. Turner Horton.

Not an official report

Trent is currently a student at the Marine Corps’ Expeditionary Warfare School and was presenting his personal views on the subject, and his research for the school’s fellowship program is not sponsored or endorsed by the Army, Marine Corps, or Defense Department, according to his research paper, which was obtained by Task & Purpose.

In a statement provided by a Marine Corps spokesman, Trent said he was selected by the Expeditionary Warfare School to conduct a fellowship project on small arms lethality that focused on the XM7.

“The project began as a fact-finding effort to evaluate how the XM7 enhances soldier lethality,” Trent said in the statement. “The goal was to provide unclassified, accessible information to soldiers and leaders to support informed decision-making at the tactical, operational, and strategic levels when employing the new system to maximize lethality.”

Trent is scheduled to graduate from the Expeditionary Warfare School on Thursday as a Distinguished Graduate, and he is also the recipient of the Yeosock Memorial Award for the best sister service writing project at Marine Corps University, according to the Marine Corps.

The Modern Day Marine exhibition encourages collaboration and the sharing of ideas, especially among noncommissioned officers and company grade officers who use some weapons and systems showcased at the exhibition, said Marine Corps spokesman Lt. Col. Nick Mannweiler.

“While it remains solely his personal opinion, Capt. Trent’s presentation exemplifies the type of dialogue and feedback we wanted with student presentations,” Mannweiler wrote in an email to Task & Purpose. “This is what the profession of arms looks like.”

In his research project, Trent wrote that his paper is “in no way intended to disparage the United States Army, acquisitions personnel, or private contractors/manufacturers.”

Trent also wrote that the Army can still “rectify the decision to adopt the XM7,” adding that soldiers deserve to go into battle knowing they have been given the best weapons available.

“They deserve to be given a weapon that is safe and efficient to operate,” Trent wrote. “They deserve a rifle capable of providing the fire superiority they need to close with and destroy the enemy. The men and women of the infantry have always fought at the fullest extent of their capabilities, willing to achieve victory at the price of ‘the last full measure of devotion.’ The Army must continue to provide them with weapons capable of matching that devotion.”

A soldier engages targets with the XM7 rifle and XM157 scope, part of the Next Generation Squad Weapon system, during testing of the rifle on June 13, 2024. Army photo by Sgt. 1st Class Jon Soucy.

Barrel and rifle gouging

The most serious problem Trent said he noticed was that some XM7 rifles developed a scratch or gouge in their barrel after firing more than 2,000 rounds, Trent said.

“This can lead to all kinds of problems with accuracy and safety, and I recommend a full investigation by those who are more qualified — engineers with bore scopes, etc, that I did not have available with me during my time at 1st Brigade,” Trent said.

In his project paper, Trent wrote, “Surface damage to the rifling was visible to the eye at the same location on rifles that had exceeded the 2,000 round count.”

But St. John said Trent’s findings on gouges and scratches in the XM7’s rifle barrel were based on a superficial examination of the weapon.

“Capt. Trent looked down a barrel naked eye, didn’t use a boroscope, didn’t use any gauging to determine if there was any sort of erosive nature to that weapon system, is indistinct in his ability to say what he witnessed other than he believes by naked eye looking down a barrel with natural light that he witnessed some issues,” St. John said.

According to St. John, the XM7 can fire more than 10,000 rounds before the barrel fails — twice the program’s requirement.

Patterson, the Army spokesperson, said the service fired more than 20,000 rounds per barrel while testing the XM7 and found that the rifle’s performance and accuracy were not affected.

Soldiers run out of ammo quickly

Another issue raised by Trent is the 20-round capacity of the XM7’s magazine, compared with the M4A1, which has a 30-round magazine.

If soldiers armed with both weapons are expected to carry seven magazines into battle as part of their universal basic load, or UBL, soldiers with M4A1 carbines would carry 210 rounds while soldiers armed with the XM7 would have 140 rounds, Trent said at Modern Day Marine.

“Now again, a 70-round difference may not seem significant, but to the soldier in the fight, it absolutely is a difference, not to mention that every magazine added to the XM7 — each 20-round loaded magazine — adds another 1.25 pounds to the soldier’s load, meaning that if troops equipped with the XM7 tried to match their old UBLs, they’re going to have even more weight being carried,” Trent said.

Indeed, during a company live-fire exercise that he observed, a platoon of soldiers armed with XM7s tasked with suppressing an objective while other soldiers could maneuver, burned through their ammunition quickly, Trent said.

“Within 10 minutes, the platoon I observed was almost completely out of ammunition after starting the engagement,” Trent said. “And by 15 minutes, their ability to produce effective suppression had become almost zero. This is after having taken spare magazines for the XM7 from radio operators, medics, platoon leadership, etc.”

When asked about the exercise in which soldiers ran out of ammunition, St. John said Sig Sauer has no opinion about how the Army uses the XM7.

“That’s way outside of our realm,” St. John said. “How the Army trains, how the Army utilizes it, what the Army’s tactics, techniques, and procedures are, that’s way beyond Sig Sauer’s opinion level. We’re in the delivering firearms business.”

Patterson said the Army has conducted several different exercises that looked at how much ammunition soldiers armed with the XM7 use.

“Following the completion of the exercises, there was enough ammunition remaining to conduct a follow-on action,” Patterson said.

Patterson also said there is no doctrine dictating a “Universal Combat Load.”

The Army’s Training Publication for infantry platoons and squads says that a platoon’s basic load depends on the mission and may be determined by the unit’s leader or standard operating procedure.

“The unit basic load includes supplies kept by the platoon for use in combat,” the publication says. “The quantity of most unit basic load supply items depends on how many days in combat the platoon might have to sustain itself without resupply. For Class V ammunition, the higher commander or [standard operating procedure] specifies the platoon’s basic load.”

UPDATE 1: 05/06/2025; this story was updated with information from the Army about exercises involving how much ammunition soldiers armed with the XM7 used and who determines how much ammunition platoons carry as part of their unit’s basic load.

UPDATE 2: 05/06/2025; this story was updated with a statement from Army Capt. Braden Trent provided by a Marine Corps spokesman.

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Jeff Schogol is a senior staff writer for Task & Purpose. He has covered the military for nearly 20 years. Email him at schogol@taskandpurpose.com ; direct message @JSchogol73030 on Twitter; or reach him on WhatsApp and Signal at 703-909-6488.

Tech & Tactics

taskandpurpose.com · by Jeff Schogol

16. Embracing the Inevitable: Integrating AI into Professional Military Education (PME)

Is AI literacy a strategic imperative? I concur with the authors but I think it is well beyond necessary for faulty development and the tasks outlined below (such as work flows). Upon reflection it is one thing that cuts across all branches and disciplines and has application for so many problems (perhaps all problems?). And it now must begin in commissioning sources and basic courses across the services. I think I will have to add AI studies to my five basic components of PME: military history, military theory, military geography, operational art, and strategy.

Excerpts:

The integration of AI into faculty development and PME curriculum is not merely an option; it is a strategic imperative. By empowering faculty with the knowledge and tools to effectively leverage AI, PME institutions can cultivate a generation of military leaders who are aware of AI and critical thinkers capable of harnessing its power responsibly and ethically.

Opinion / Perspective| The Latest

Embracing the Inevitable: Integrating AI into Professional Military Education (PME)

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/05/07/embracing-the-inevitable/

by Kelly Ihme, by Matt Rasmussen

05.07.2025 at 06:00am

Abstract

This was adapted with Gemini using the prompt: “Using this article, make me a 2-3 sentence abstract”

This article examines a faculty approach to integrating Artificial Intelligence (AI) into Professional Military Education (PME), starting with faculty development. We argue that AI literacy among faculty is a strategic imperative to prepare future military leaders for an AI-driven operational environment, highlighting specific applications of AI tools.

Introduction

In the fall of 2022, ChatGPT blinked in existence and with it came the hopes and fears of an artificial intelligence (AI) revolution. Immediate reactions across government, industry, and academia spanned the gamut of multiple Sci-Fi screenplays. Some institutions tried to vehemently shut the proverbial barn door on the AI horse already out in the field of public access. Some investors flocked to this promise of new wealth while numerous geniuses warned of humanity’s imminent collapse from sentient computers. Between the extremes of techno-optimism and dystopian fear, there was much prevaricating over whether AI would replace human workers, promote cheating and laziness, or erode human creativity and critical thinking. Over the last three years, global reactions to AI matured and cooled; becoming even dismissive to its potential. Media trends as many articles dismissing the “AI boom” as those touting it will “bust” shortly.

Beneath that din, some institutions took a measured approach to receiving, assessing, and implementing AI. Our experience at the US Army War College demonstrates a positive evolution in the measured adoption of AI tools. We felt that our personal journey of self-discovery and implementation, bounded by sensible and forward-leaning policy, would be a useful tutorial for others in professional military education struggling to integrate AI while maintaining academic rigor.

The Imperative for AI in PME Faculty Development

The ghosts of military historical analysis continue to provide stark warnings of strategic and intellectual stagnation. In 1940, Marc Bloch noted in his journal (published posthumously as Strange Defeat) that France capitulated so quickly in 1939 in part due to ossified thinking perpetuated at the French Staff College. We in the contemporary PME community would do well to heed the lesson! In an era defined by rapid technological advancement and complex global challenges, PME must evolve to prepare leaders for the future operating environment. AI presents unprecedented opportunities to the Warfighter, but that capability must be accompanied by an education necessary to use them effectively. PME enables senior leaders to match tasks to talent by providing them time and space to think critically about employment, ethics, and consequences. This understanding requires more than osmosis; it requires active engagement, critical analysis, and the development of cognitive frameworks capable of navigating the nuances of AI-driven warfare. As PME educators, we commit a disservice to our students if we bury our heads in the analog sand. Our sense of urgency stems from the rapidity with which our adversaries are adapting and implementing AI onto the cyber battlespace. Examples like the Ukraine and Nagorno-Karabakh War demonstrate that to neglect AI integration is to risk graduating leaders ill-prepared for the complexities of a future battlefield dominated by intelligent systems. Our goal is to enhance faculty development, personalize learning experiences, and cultivate critical thinking skills among military professionals. We assess that the judicious integration of AI into PME is not merely a technological upgrade but a strategic imperative for maintaining a competitive edge in national security.

Effective education about AI necessitates that faculty themselves are AI-literate and adept at leveraging its potential. AI tools offer innovative solutions to personalize learning, streamline administrative tasks, and foster more interactive educational environments. Integrating AI tools into faculty workflows unlocks significant benefits, providing experiential learning on AI capabilities while enabling visualization for AI integration in the classroom. Embracing AI for faculty development is not about replacing the expertise of seasoned educators; rather, it is about augmenting their capabilities, enabling them to operate with greater efficiency and impact. The key areas we find AI most helpful are creating adaptive curriculum content, streamlining workflows, augmenting feedback and grading, and expanding student engagement.

The “How”: Practical Applications of AI in PME Faculty Development

Numerous free and paid AI tools exist, with expanding options surfacing almost weekly. Our use of AI developed organically over three years of use, comparing results across tools, and following leading tech writers and experts whose insights rounded out our knowledge. Our go-to tools are NotebookLM, Google’s Gemini, Microsoft’s Co-Pilot, OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Thesify, and Perplexity. The choice of tool is less important than consistent practice with AI. Through our process of experimentation and application, we identified several specific tasks where AI tools provided the most significant benefits to faculty efficiency and effectiveness:

Adaptive curriculum content: AI’s ability to summarize and categorize vast datasets allows faculty to tailor learning materials to individual student needs. NotebookLM is particularly adept for this, providing AI-generated podcasts suited to auditory learners and mind maps to assist visual learners. By uploading relevant course readings, websites, or videos, faculty can use NotebookLM to generate concise summaries, thematic analyses, frequently asked questions, study guides, and even quizzes based on the source material.

Streamlining Workflows: AI can automate time-consuming tasks such as lesson planning, freeing up faculty to focus on more complex tasks. Our current Learning Management System, Blackboard, provides AI text generation to speed lesson creation within the platform. NotebookLM can rapidly cut, paste, and frame text from multiple sources. This shifts faculty effort from tedious manual word processing to more critical tasks of refining, revising, and adding intellectual value to the AI-generated framework. LLMs like ChatGPT and CoPilot can generate tables of search queries, reducing time to build charts in Excel or PowerPoint.

Augmenting Feedback and Grading: Providing timely, detailed, and constructive feedback is crucial for student development but can be incredibly time-intensive for faculty. Using NotebookLM, Thesify serving as virtual teaching assistants and significantly reducing the workload on educators. AI is useful to refine the tone and phrasing of feedback; we often use AI assistance to rewrite critical comments, ensuring they are constructive, specific, and tailored to the student’s learning level, thereby increasing the likelihood that the student will be receptive to the critique.

Expanding Student Engagement: Paradoxically, AI is useful for stimulating critical thinking by presenting students with AI-generated content from AI tools, like ChatGPT or Gemini, that they must evaluate and critique. By analyzing AI’s responses to prompts, students are challenged to identify biases, inaccuracies, and areas for improvement in the AI response, thereby honing their analytical skills.

The transition to an AI-integrated PME environment contains challenges. Academia writ large harbors concern about academic dishonesty, the potential for AI to supplant their roles, and the ethical implications of using such powerful tools. For PME, there is elevated awareness that controlled, classified, and sensitive information remain out of open-source tools, and content used within AI systems is unclassified and does not originate from protected sources. To effectively integrate AI into PME, it is essential for organizations to develop clear policies and guidelines on the ethical use of AI, addressing issues such as academic integrity, bias, and data privacy. Faculty and students require training and support effective AI use, including prompt engineering, critical evaluation of AI-generated content, and ethical considerations. We provide faculty development and speak at conferences on faculty integration of AI. Educators should foster collaboration and innovation in the use of AI, encouraging faculty to experiment with new AI tools and share best practices. Finally, institutions should invest in the infrastructure and resources necessary to support the effective use of AI, including access to AI tools, data, and expertise.

The integration of AI into faculty development and PME curriculum is not merely an option; it is a strategic imperative. By empowering faculty with the knowledge and tools to effectively leverage AI, PME institutions can cultivate a generation of military leaders who are aware of AI and critical thinkers capable of harnessing its power responsibly and ethically.

Editors Note:

These are the authors’ views and not those of the United States Army War College, the US Army, the US Air Force, or the Department of Defense.

We hold no conflicts of interest.

While AI was used in the research and editing of this article, the writing was solely from the authors.

Tags: AI, Artificial Intelligence, PME

About The Authors

Kelly Ihme
Lt Col Kelly RM Ihme, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Distance Education at the US Army War College. A graduate of SUNY Brockport, she holds a master’s degree in American history from the American Military University and a PhD in Organization Development and Leadership Psychology from the University of Arizona. Her main research areas are mindfulness, cyber defense, and behavioral health as they intersect with national defense. LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kelly-ihme-phd/
View all posts
Matt Rasmussen
LTC Matt Rasmussen is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Distance Education and co-teaches the Futures Seminar at the US Army War College. A graduate of West Point, he holds master's degrees from the Naval War College (2011) and the US Army War College (2022). His main research areas are emerging technology, cybersecurity, and their intersection with national security and strategy. LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matt-rasmussen-b6826518/

17. Order by Hegseth to cancel Ukraine weapons caught White House off guard

I am thinking of a snarky comment about the lack of communications devices.

But it is not a good thing to not keep the boss informed.

Order by Hegseth to cancel Ukraine weapons caught White House off guard

By Erin Banco, Phil Stewart, Gram Slattery and Mike Stone

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/order-by-hegseth-cancel-ukraine-weapons-caught-white-house-off-guard-2025-05-06/

May 6, 20254:41 PM EDTUpdated 13 hours ag

Item 1 of 6 U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth looks on, as President Donald Trump delivers remarks, in the Oval Office at the White House, in Washington, D.C., U.S., March 21, 2025. REUTERS/Carlos Barria/File Photo

[1/6]U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth looks on, as President Donald Trump delivers remarks, in the Oval Office at the White House, in Washington, D.C., U.S., March 21, 2025. REUTERS/Carlos Barria/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab

Summary

Hegseth's order caused confusion among national security officialsWhite House claims Hegseth followed Trump's directive to pause aidInternal disputes have sometimes led to haphazard Ukraine policies

NEW YORK/WASHINGTON, May 6 (Reuters) - Roughly a week after Donald Trump started his second term as president, the U.S. military issued an order to three freight airlines operating out of Dover Air Force Base in Delaware and a U.S. base in Qatar: Stop 11 flights loaded with artillery shells and other weaponry and bound for Ukraine.

In a matter of hours, frantic questions reached Washington from Ukrainians in Kyiv and from officials in Poland, where the shipments were coordinated. Who had ordered the U.S. Transportation Command, known as TRANSCOM, to halt the flights? Was it a permanent pause on all aid? Or just some?

The Reuters Tariff Watch newsletter is your daily guide to the latest global trade and tariff news. Sign up here.Top national security officials — in the White House, the Pentagon and the State Department — couldn’t provide answers. Within one week, flights were back in the air.

The verbal order originated from the office of Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, according to TRANSCOM records reviewed by Reuters. A TRANSCOM spokesperson said the command received the order via the Pentagon's Joint Staff.

The cancelations came after Trump wrapped up a January 30 Oval Office meeting about Ukraine that included Hegseth and other top national security officials, according to three sources familiar with the situation. During the meeting, the idea of stopping Ukraine aid came up, said two people with knowledge of the meeting, but the president issued no instruction to stop aid to Ukraine.

The president was unaware of Hegseth’s order, as were other top national security officials in the meeting, according to two sources briefed on the private White House discussions and another with direct knowledge of the matter.

Asked to comment on this report, the White House told Reuters that Hegseth had followed a directive from Trump to pause aid to Ukraine, which it said was the administration's position at the time. It did not explain why, according to those who spoke to Reuters, top national security officials in the normal decision making process didn’t know about the order or why it was so swiftly reversed.

“Negotiating an end to the Russia-Ukraine War has been a complex and fluid situation. We are not going to detail every conversation among top administration officials throughout the process,” said Karoline Leavitt, the White House spokeswoman. “The bottom line is the war is much closer to an end today than it was when President Trump took office.”

The cancelations cost TRANSCOM $2.2 million, according to the records reviewed by Reuters. In response to a request for comment, TRANSCOM said that the total cost was $1.6 million – 11 flights were canceled but one incurred no charge.

An order halting military aid authorized under the Biden administration went into effect officially a month later, on March 4, with a White House announcement.

The story of how flights were canceled, detailed by Reuters for the first time, points to an at-times haphazard policy-making process within the Trump administration and a command structure that is unclear even to its own ranking members.

The multiday pause of the flights, confirmed by five people with knowledge of it, also shows confusion in how the administration has created and implemented national security policy. At the Pentagon, the disarray is an open secret, with many current and former officials saying the department is plagued by internal disagreements on foreign policy, deep-seated grudges, and inexperienced staff.

Reuters couldn’t establish exactly when Hegseth’s office ordered the freight flights canceled. Two sources said Ukrainian and European officials began asking about the pause on February 2. The TRANSCOM records indicate that there was a verbal order from “SECDEF” – the secretary of defense – that stopped the flights and that they had resumed by February 5.

“This is consistent with the administration's policy to move fast, break things and sort it out later. That is their managing philosophy,” said Mark Cancian, a retired Marine officer and defense expert with the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank. “That is great for Silicon Valley. But when you’re talking about institutions that have been around for hundreds of years, you are going to run into problems.”

The stop in shipments caused consternation in Kyiv.

The Ukrainians quickly asked the administration through multiple channels but had difficulty obtaining any useful information, according to a Ukrainian official with direct knowledge of the situation. In later conversations with the Ukrainians, the administration wrote off the pause as “internal politics,” said the source. Ukrainian officials did not respond to requests for comment.

The shipping of American weapons to Ukraine requires sign-off from multiple agencies and can take weeks or even months to complete, depending on the size of the cargo. The majority of U.S. military assistance goes through a logistics hub in Poland before being picked up by Ukrainian representatives and transported into the country.

That hub can hold shipments for extended periods of time. It’s not clear if the 11 canceled flights were the only ones scheduled that week in February, how much aid was already stockpiled in Poland and if it continued to flow into Ukraine despite the U.S. military's orders.

The revelations come at a time of upheaval in the department. Several of Hegseth’s top advisers were escorted from the building April 15 after being accused of unauthorized disclosure of classified information. The secretary continues to face scrutiny, including from Congress, about his own communications. Previously he’s attributed allegations of upheaval to disgruntled employees.

The canceled flights contained weapons that had long been approved by the Biden administration, authorized by lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

Reuters couldn’t determine if Hegseth or his team knew how the order to TRANSCOM would play out or that the order would be a substantial change in U.S. policy on Ukraine. Three sources familiar with the situation said Hegseth misinterpreted discussions with the president about Ukraine policy and aid shipments without elaborating further.

Four other people briefed on the situation said a small cadre of staffers inside the Pentagon, many of whom have never held a government job and who have for years spoken out against U.S. aid to Ukraine, advised Hegseth to consider pausing aid to the country.

Two people familiar with the matter denied there was a true cutoff in aid. One of them described it as a logistical pause.

“(They) just wanted to get a handle on what was going on and people, as a result, misinterpreted that as: ‘You need to stop everything,’” said one.

FLIGHTS CANCELED

According to two sources with knowledge of the meeting, Hegseth arrived at the January 30 Oval Office meeting with Trump with a memo drafted by some of his top policy advisers, advocating that their boss push the White House to consider pausing weapons deliveries to Ukraine to gain leverage in peace negotiations with Russia.

The sources said the secretary attended the meeting with other top officials involved in Ukraine policy, including National Security Adviser Mike Waltz and Ukraine envoy Keith Kellogg. The group broadly discussed U.S. policy on Ukraine and Russia, including potentially tightening sanctions on Moscow.

It’s not clear the extent to which Hegseth proposed stopping aid during the meeting, but the idea came up in discussions, said one of the sources and another person familiar with the meeting.

Since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, the U.S. had approved billions of dollars worth of military aid to Ukraine. Most was delivered under the Biden administration. But a few shipments remained in the pipeline, scheduled into this summer.

Trump had threatened to freeze aid repeatedly on the campaign trail, but had yet to do so. And during the meeting, he again declined to stop aid to Ukraine or order Hegseth to implement any policy changes when it came to sending equipment to Kyiv, the sources said.

An order effectively freezing any military support for an ally would normally be discussed intensively among top national security officials and approved by the president. It requires the coordination of multiple agencies and often multiple freight companies.

None of that discussion or coordination happened when Hegseth’s office canceled the scheduled flights carrying American artillery shells and ammunition to Poland from Al Udeid military base in Qatar and the Dover U.S. military base in Delaware, three of the sources said.

The pause came as Ukraine’s military was struggling to fend off Russian forces in eastern Ukraine and in the consequential battle for the Kursk region of Russia, where Ukrainian forces were losing ground and have since all but been expelled.

Close Trump advisers got tipped off to the pause by Pentagon staffers and discussed with the president whether to restore the aid shipments, according to two sources. By then, TRANSCOM had canceled 11 flights, according to the records reviewed by Reuters. Some media outlets, including Reuters, wrote about the pause but Hegseth’s role was previously unknown.

It’s unclear if Trump subsequently questioned or reprimanded Hegseth. One source with direct knowledge of the matter said National Security Adviser Waltz ultimately intervened to reverse the cancelations. Waltz was forced out on Thursday and is expected to be nominated as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

GROWING INFIGHTING

When Trump entered office, aid to Ukraine continued flowing and he pledged to work with Ukraine and Russia to end the war – or at the very least broker a ceasefire.

Two of his most prominent envoys, Kellogg, a supporter of Kyiv who worked with Trump in his first administration, and Steve Witkoff, a real-estate magnate and close friend of the president, set out to negotiate with both parties.

Separately, at the Pentagon, some of Hegseth’s policy advisers privately started drafting proposals to pull back American support for Ukraine, according to two sources briefed on the matter.

That group of staffers align themselves closely with the anti-interventionist philosophy.

Some have previously advised Republican lawmakers advocating for an America-first approach to foreign policy and have called publicly, in writings and talks, for the U.S. to pull back from military commitments in the Mideast and Europe – a view similarly held by Vice President JD Vance. Several have advocated that the U.S. instead focus on China.

Supporters of the staffers have slammed those pushing back on the anti-interventionist movement in the administration, claiming Vance and others are merely trying to save the lives of people living in warzones like Ukraine and prevent future American military deaths.

The infighting has complicated the policy-making process, according to a person familiar with the matter and four other sources. At a time when Kellogg and Witkoff are trying to broker a peace deal with Russia and Ukraine, the staffers have advocated behind the scenes for the U.S. to draw back its support for Kyiv – a policy that has angered Ukrainian officials and pressured European allies to fill the gap, five people with knowledge of the situation said.

Washington has signed a deal with Kyiv for rights to its rare earth minerals – an agreement U.S. officials say is an attempt to recoup money America has spent to prop up Ukraine’s war effort.

At least one of the staffers who had previously pushed for the administration to pull back its support for Kyiv, Dan Caldwell, was escorted out of the Pentagon for a leak he claims never happened. Caldwell, a veteran, served as one of Hegseth’s chief advisers, including on Ukraine.

Despite the brief pause in February and the longer one that began in early March, the Trump administration has resumed sending the last of the aid approved under U.S. President Joe Biden. No new policy has been announced.

Reporting by Erin Banco, Phil Stewart, Gram Slattery and Mike Stone. Editing by Don Durfee and Lori Hinnant.

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Erin Banco

Thomson Reuters

Erin Banco is a national security correspondent focusing on the intelligence community. She covers everything from the wars in Ukraine and Gaza to U.S. covert operations overseas. She previously worked at POLITICO as a national security reporter. Banco has a long history covering the Middle East region, from Cairo to Baghdad to Aleppo where she’s reported on the Arab Spring and its aftermath, including the civil war in Syria and the rise of ISIS. Her 2017 book, Pipe Dreams, focuses on the development of the oil and gas industry in the northern Kurdistan region of Iraq. Banco attended The University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she majored in Arabic and journalism. She earned a master’s in public administration from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs in 2014.

Phil Stewart

Thomson Reuters

Phil Stewart has reported from more than 60 countries, including Afghanistan, Ukraine, Syria, Iraq, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, China and South Sudan. An award-winning Washington-based national security reporter, Phil has appeared on NPR, PBS NewsHour, Fox News and other programs and moderated national security events, including at the Reagan National Defense Forum and the German Marshall Fund. He is a recipient of the Edwin M. Hood Award for Diplomatic Correspondence and the Joe Galloway Award.

Gram Slattery

Thomson Reuters

Gram Slattery is a White House correspondent in Washington, focusing on national security, intelligence and foreign affairs. He was previously a national political correspondent, covering the 2024 presidential campaign. From 2015 to 2022, he held postings in Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo and Santiago, Chile, and he has reported extensively throughout Latin America.

Mike Stone

Thomson Reuters

Mike Stone is a Reuters reporter covering the U.S. arms trade and defense industry. Most recently Mike has been focused on how the war in Ukraine has changed the future of war and how industry has adapted, or faltered. Mike, a New Yorker, has extensively covered how the U.S. has supplied Ukraine with wepons, the cadence, decisions and milestones that have had battlefield impacts. Before his time in Washington Mike’s coverage focused on mergers and acquisitions for oil and gas companies, financial institutions, defense compnaies, consumer product makers, retailers, real estate giants, and telecommunications companies.

18. The Trojan Horse Charges into the Future (Book Review)

We ignore deception at our peril. Some say with global persistence surveillance deception is impossible. I heard a speaker remark yesterday that China has developed a surveillance system that can see every US ship on the west Coast and track it leaving port and surveil it across the entire Pacific and target it at any time. Some might say that deception is impossible to achieve with such existing capabilities. I would argue these conditions require us to develop deception capabilities. Because despite the type of surveillance China and our other adversaries are surely developing deception capabilities.

Afterall, didn't Sun Tzu say, "All warfare is based on deception." And of course there are many forms of deception that do not require overcoming persistent surveillance.

Wise counsel here.

Excerpts:

Americans like to think of war as a straightforward matter of overwhelming force. We take our cues from such film classics as The Longest Day (1962), which shows GIs hitting the beach at Normandy on D-day, or Patton (1970), which depicts “Old Blood and Guts,” as General George S. Patton was known, hammering his way to battlefield success. We love shock and awe in wartime, just as we love the ground game in football, but the enemy gets a vote, as the saying goes. And that vote is sometimes for Pearl Harbor or for 9-11. Or for Trojan horses.

Today, as in days long ago, the battle is not to the strong. Deception matters.

The Trojan Horse Charges into the Future

https://www.hoover.org/research/trojan-horse-charges-future?utm

On battlefields literal and virtual, fatal deception thrives.

Monday, May 5, 2025 5 min read

By: Barry Strauss

The latest book by historian Barry Strauss, Hoover’s Corliss Page Dean Senior Fellow and a recipient of the 2025 Bradley Prize, is the forthcoming Jews vs. Rome: Two Centuries of Rebellion Against the World’s Mightiest Empire (Simon & Schuster, 2025).

Of all the Greek myths, none resonates like the Trojan horse. You know the story. After trying and failing to take the city of Troy for ten years, the invading Greek army employs a ruse. They up stakes and pretend to go home, leaving behind only a towering wooden horse as a gift to the gods. The war-weary Trojans open their gates and triumphantly bring in the horse. But they discover that night that the “horse” is full of Greek soldiers. The intruders come down on the sleeping city and, with the help of the rest of their army, hidden nearby, destroy it.

The story is not fact, although it may dimly reflect the history of an era long ago in which deception played a part in war. But don’t dismiss the horse as just a tall tale. Deceit has always been with us, and not just on the battlefield. Today, information is the battlefield and our phones are all invaders. For that matter, so are our letters and potentially the pills we take. You might even say that we live in the era of the Trojan horse.

The Trojan horse has gone digital. Consider the infamous Trojan horse virus or, rather, malicious software or malware. Unlike a virus, which replicates on its own, Trojan horse malware works only if someone voluntarily opens the gates by downloading it. “Urgent! Your computer has been hacked. Click on this link for help.” Or “You’ve won a free phone! Click here!” typify the come-ons aimed at unsuspecting users. One click and your information is at the mercy of a hacker.

Then there are telemarketing scammers who usually prey on the elderly, promising huge rewards in return for, say, giving up their bank account information. Lonely seniors may know on some level that they are being cheated but they forge ahead because they just want some company. In one case, an elderly widow defended her scammer after he was exposed, calling him her friend. It’s as if Cassandra, the wise Trojan seer who tried in vain to stop the horse, instead welcomed it into Troy because she missed the Greeks.

In politics, labeling an opponent or an initiative a Trojan horse is now a cliché, so much so that comments have piled up blaming the other side for using it. Scholars even publish about the dangers of “Trojan horse discourse” in populist politics. In 2020 President Donald Trump, running for re-election, took heat for repeatedly pinning the Trojan horse label on his opponent, then–Vice President Joe Biden. That did not stop Trump’s foes from calling him a Trojan horse in 2024, or Vice President Kamala Harris’s antagonists from making the same charge against her.

Sports are relatively free of Trojan horses, but they are full of ruses and feints, so it is no surprise that the label pops up from time to time. Football’s hallowed trick plays, for example, ranging from the quarterback sneak to the halfback pass, have been labeleled . . . what else? Trojan horses.

But the Trojan horse truly reaches bluegrass country when it comes to warfare. Hannibal, the Vikings, and an Italian Renaissance warlord all used Trojan horse tactics, as did the British against Native Americans and Americans against Filipino rebels (or freedom fighters, depending on your point of view).

In 1943, during the Second World War, British intelligence launched Operation Mincemeat, originally called Operation Trojan horse. They dressed up a civilian corpse as a British officer and had him wash up from the sea in Spain. He was carrying fake secret documents, aimed at misleading the other side. As hoped, the documents fell into enemy hands and tricked the Germans into expecting an allied invasion of Greece or Sardinia. Their defenses were down when the Allies invaded the real target, Sicily.

Fast forward eighty years to 2003. In the Iraq War that summer, US Marines were faced with continual ambushes by criminals and Saddam loyalists in central Iraq. One of the Marines’ more effective methods to counter them was to run so-called “Trojan horse” convoys through the area. They took Humvees and other small tactical vehicles and lined them with walls of MRE (meals ready to eat) boxes. Inside were Marine riflemen, ready to attack. It took only a few days to drive the ambushers away from the roads.

The Russians too disguised their weapons as harmless vehicles when they invaded Crimea in 2014. They smuggled arms to their invasion troops by hiding the weapons in what looked like ambulances—Trojan ambulances, if you will.

Which brings us to 2024’s Israeli “Grim Beeper” operation, as one pundit has called it. It was a modern-day Trojan horse, as the major media around the world agreed. In that operation, Israel threw Lebanon’s Hezbollah militia into disarray by simultaneously exploding thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies owned by members of the terrorist group. Israeli intelligence had planted the miniature explosives in the pagers and walkie-talkies, working for years to pull off the mission. Israel set up shell companies that persuaded Hezbollah to buy the gadgets that led to their own ruin. The explosions injured thousands and killed more than thirty people, almost all Hezbollah members and supporters, some mid- or high-level operatives, but also a few civilians. The operation shredded the terror group’s morale and softened it up for Israeli follow-up attacks by air and ground. In November, Hezbollah sued for peace.

Like many of its predecessors, the mission was ingenious and effective, but it did not win the war singlehandedly. Trojan horse operations almost never do. The operations discussed here were all tactical. We are currently living through what may be the biggest Trojan horse of all, and it is not merely tactical but strategic. That horse is China.

In 1999, two Chinese colonels published a book called Unrestricted Warfare. They argued that future wars would be fought less on the battlefield than in other realms such as trade, finance, culture, information, and the cyber realm. They saw the United States as the enemy and they recognized that China lacked the strength to attack directly. Instead, they called for espionage, sabotage, and theft, all while putting on a friendly face. They wrote in the tradition of the classic Chinese strategist Sun Tzu, who wrote that “all war is the art of deception.” And they followed China’s late-twentieth-century leader, Deng Xiaoping, who advised his countrymen to “hide your strength, bide your time.”

Americans love Chinese apps such as TikTok, WeChat and, recently, Red Note. But the apps are Trojan horses that camouflage espionage as entertainment. They suck up the data on users’ phones and send it back to China, where it is used to hone propaganda messages aimed at getting Americans to see the world China’s way. The apps have been described as effective political warfare. That’s why the United States is insisting that TikTok be sold to an American company or shut down.

Now, amid President Trump’s trade war, the gloves have come off. More and more commentators speak openly of China’s growing military, industrial, and pharmaceutical strengths as a threat to the United States. The Chinese, for their part, have replaced “hide your strength” with so-called “wolf warrior” diplomacy, an aggressive stance based on a Chinese action-film series. Chinese propaganda describes Americans as fat and lazy peasants who are doomed to “wail” in the face of China’s superior civilization. It is as if the Greeks came out of the Trojan horse, brandished their weapons, and announced their presence within the walls.

China is the leader in weaponizing information on a global scale, but it is not alone. Russia has been a trailblazer in disinformation going back to czarist days, when the secret police forged The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, an alleged exposé of a plot for world domination by Freemasons and Jews. It took years to spread and establish that malicious fraud, but nowadays nanoseconds would suffice. Russia currently uses artificial intelligence to generate prettily packaged disinformation to share on social media with unsuspecting users.

The threat of biological warfare opens another door to Trojan horse attacks. Most states have signed the 1975 Biological Weapons Convention and renounced biowarfare, but that doesn’t cover nonstate actors. Moreover, states have been known to break treaties. A biological attack has already happened: after the attacks of September 11, 2001, someone sent anthrax spores through the US mail. Unsuspecting people opened a letter; five Americans died and seventeen were injured. The FBI called this postal Trojan horse the worst biological attack in American history, but far worse might happen. Imagine someone poisoning on an industrial scale a popular medicine, say, a dietary supplement. Hundreds of people might blithely take their daily pill and fall dead before the word got out to stay away. Or imagine poisoning the feed of thousands of livestock. Every day, advanced methods to produce pathogens become easier and cheaper. Biological warfare could kill millions. One wonders if even now people are plotting ways to trick an enemy into voluntarily accepting the microorganism that will destroy them.

Digital Trojan horses are inescapable. Biological Trojan horses represent a looming threat, while old-fashioned, physical Trojan horses remain a standard part of warfare. If we want to protect ourselves in this new age of anxiety, we need to accept that we live in haunted woods. We need to think differently. That presents a particular challenge to Americans.

Americans like to think of war as a straightforward matter of overwhelming force. We take our cues from such film classics as The Longest Day (1962), which shows GIs hitting the beach at Normandy on D-day, or Patton (1970), which depicts “Old Blood and Guts,” as General George S. Patton was known, hammering his way to battlefield success. We love shock and awe in wartime, just as we love the ground game in football, but the enemy gets a vote, as the saying goes. And that vote is sometimes for Pearl Harbor or for 9-11. Or for Trojan horses.

Today, as in days long ago, the battle is not to the strong. Deception matters.

19. China learns valuable lessons about war with America: analysts

Watch and learn.

China learns valuable lessons about war with America: analysts

Newsweek · by Ryan Chan · May 6, 2025

China is watching the intensifying American naval operations against the Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen for lessons, including the U.S.'s use of aircraft carriers and its defense against a range of threats, as it prepares for a potential invasion of Taiwan, experts told Newsweek.

Why It Matters

Under the orders of President Donald Trump, the U.S. military has been carrying out an air and naval campaign against the Houthis across western Yemen since March 15. The Pentagon has also enhanced its force posture in the Middle East, including by re-tasking an aircraft carrier group from the Pacific.

The U.S. Navy has played a central role in the airstrikes against the Houthis through the deployment of two naval strike groups led by the aircraft carriers USS Harry S. Truman and USS Carl Vinson. The Houthis have made several attempts to strike U.S. warships in the waters near Yemen with missiles and drones.

China has threatened to take self-ruled Taiwan by force. The Taiwan Relations Act of 1979 requires that the United States provide defensive arms to the island while maintaining its own capability to resist any attempt to change the cross-Taiwan Strait status quo by other than peaceful means.

The Chinese Defense Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The United States Navy aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson conducts a replenishment with a helicopter in the Central Command's area of responsibility in the Middle East on April 19, 2025. The United States Navy aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson conducts a replenishment with a helicopter in the Central Command's area of responsibility in the Middle East on April 19, 2025. U.S. Navy

Asymmetric Threats

Houthi targeting of U.S. warships have shown that drones, shore-based precision strike weapons, and innovative tactics can challenge or even neutralize more traditional and expensive naval assets, Phil Yu, a nonresident senior researcher at the Atlantic Council think tank, said.

Not only will the People's Liberation Army Navy need to "prepare to counter such tactics, but it must also consider how Taiwan and other regional actors might adopt similar asymmetric shore-based systems to blunt Chinese maritime power projection," Yu told Newsweek.

Like the Houthis', Taiwan's military capabilities are inferior to and smaller in number than those of its enemy. At Washington's urging, Taipei has developed weapons for asymmetric warfare—cheaper and more survivable weapons systems that include missiles capable of striking China's naval fleet, which is among the largest in the world.

"I think from the Chinese point of view, it may be most relevant to observe exactly how effective U.S. and Western capabilities are in dealing with a range of threats, including ones not previously in widespread use," said Alex Luck, an Australia-based naval analyst.

Luck was referring to the Houthi group's use of ballistic and cruise missiles, as well as their unmanned aerial, surface, and underwater vehicles. China may be interested in observing how U.S. forces can deal with offensive capabilities that the PLA would, to some extent, employ, he told Newsweek.

An F/A-18E fighter jet launches from the United States Navy aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman in the Central Command's area of responsibility in the Middle East on May 4, 2025. An F/A-18E fighter jet launches from the United States Navy aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman in the Central Command's area of responsibility in the Middle East on May 4, 2025. U.S. Navy

Limited Magazine Depth

The U.S. military has expended a significant amount of munitions on the operation around Yemen, as well as on defending military and civilian ships in the Red Sea from the Houthi attacks, raising concerns about available weapons stockpiles to support a sustained campaign.

According to the U.S. Navy, warships and aircraft assigned to the Dwight D. Eisenhower carrier strike group used a total of 770 weapons for self-defense and pre-planned strikes during their combat operations in the Middle East from November 2023 to June 2024.

"A navy will need to improve its targeting and weaponeering, pursuing offensive solutions and should defer to low-cost tools unless absolutely necessary," Shawn Creamer and Rich Butler, both nonresident senior researchers at the Atlantic Council, said.

In addition, a navy must be prepared to carry out actions for extended periods of time with minimal assistance by other parties, the analysts told Newsweek, adding that asymmetric foes like the Houthis require actions of a joint force to defeat, including "expeditionary land power."

United States Navy aviation ordnancemen transport ordnance in the hangar bay of the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson in the Central Command's area of responsibility in the Middle East on April 28, 2025. United States Navy aviation ordnancemen transport ordnance in the hangar bay of the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson in the Central Command's area of responsibility in the Middle East on April 28, 2025. U.S. Navy

Global Military Presence

"The PLA Navy could learn the importance of overseas bases and access as a way to sustain operations far from home waters," said Daniel Byman, director of the Warfare, Irregular Threats, and Terrorism Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank.

China currently maintains two overseas military outposts, one located in Djibouti near the Red Sea and another located in Cambodia on the South China Sea, which opened last month.

In its latest report on Chinese military power, the Pentagon said China is expanding its military reach and presence within and beyond the Western Pacific Ocean. It seeks to grow its overseas bases to allow the PLA to project and sustain military power at greater distances, the report said.

What People Are Saying

Phil Yu, nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council's Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security: "The intensive and sustained dual-carrier strike group campaign against Yemen's Houthi rebels offers critical insights into contemporary naval power projection, especially in contested environments shaped by asymmetric threats."

Daniel Byman, director of the Warfare, Irregular Threats, and Terrorism Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies: "Going after a target like the Houthis requires sustained operations, and it also requires superb intelligence. Simply destroying what little infrastructure Yemen has does not accomplish much."

Shawn Creamer and Rich Butler, nonresident senior fellows at the Atlantic Council's Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security: "For the time being, the U.S. appears committed to disproportionately carrying the load to maintaining open sea lines of communication [in the Red Sea]. Allowing the U.S. to carry the load to keep the commons open may serve as a distraction from shifting U.S. strategy toward the Western Hemisphere and the Indo-Pacific."

Alex Luck, Australia-based naval analyst: "The various weapon systems used by the Houthi are, for the most part, not very sophisticated. However, the complexity of attacks including targeting techniques, combining various drones, ballistic and cruise missiles are still relevant in a notional peer to peer-conflict."

Newsweek · by Ryan Chan · May 6, 2025

20. Embassies disinvited from WWII ceremony after Europeans protested Russian invite

Sigh... It seems from this article that this is an event organized by a private organization and not the US government. I doubt that State or any US government protocol office would have stepped into this mindfield.

Excerpts:

One foreign embassy official said the group had told event organizers it would be impossible for them to participate, explaining, “We cannot put a wreath with our national colors next to a Russian wreath.”

Friends of World War II Memorial spokesperson Scott Warner confirmed via email that while allies normally participate in war commemoration events, “no embassy representatives will participate in this year’s ceremony as part of the official program.” The White House noted that the event is not organized by the administration and declined to comment further.

A second official described the initial list of invitees as “a very strange group,” noting that it includes not only Russia, but Brazil and Slovakia, while excluding the Czech Republic, which broke from Slovakia in 1992.

A copy of the original invitation obtained by POLITICO lists Australia, Belarus, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, France, Greece, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Russia, Slovak Republic, Ukraine and the U.K.

The event, which will feature performances by the U.S. Army band, speeches by National Parks officials and a recognition of American veterans of WWII, will now likely be much smaller than other celebrations in allied capitals.

Embassies disinvited from WWII ceremony after Europeans protested Russian invite

By Paul McLeary and Robbie Gramer

05/06/2025 03:30 PM EDT

Politico

Foreign embassies were invited — then uninvited — after backlash from U.S. allies.

A member of the U.S. Marine band salutes during the D-Day 80th Anniversary commemoration at the World War II Memorial in Washington on Thursday June 6, 2024. | Jose Luis Magana/AP

05/06/2025 03:30 PM EDT

Foreign embassies have been disinvited from an annual Washington event commemorating the end of World War II in Europe this week, after a group of European embassies protested the organizers’ decision to include ambassadors from Russia and its close ally Belarus.

The invitation to the Russians and Belarusians marked the first time since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 that the two nations were invited to the May 8 ceremony, which is organized by the Friends of the National World War II Memorial, a non-profit organization.

A number of European ambassadors banded together to threaten to boycott the event, according to three European officials. That prompted the nonprofit to withdraw invitations to all foreign embassies, leaving the United States as the only formal participant in an event that has regularly drawn European ambassadors and symbolizes close historic transatlantic ties.

Organizers sent an email Tuesday telling embassies that the event — which this year marks the 80th anniversary of the end of the conflict — is now an America-only ceremony.

“We have made the decision to scale back this year’s ceremony to keep the focus squarely on the 16 million Americans who served in the U.S. Armed Forces during World War II,” the group said in the email, which was obtained by POLITICO.

The dustup underscores how toxic any formal engagement with Russia remains for many of the United States’ closest allies amid the war in Ukraine — while the Trump administration looks to re-engage with Moscow in peace talks to end the war. It comes one month before the annual NATO leaders meeting in The Hague, where the raw feelings between Washington and its closest allies in Europe will likely be on display as those leaders come face-to-face with President Donald Trump, who is expected to attend and again demand that NATO allies increase their defense spending significantly.

One senior European official familiar with the matter called the idea of inviting Russia to the event as a “slap in the face.” This official said the invitation to embassies were likely withdrawn because of the sharp backlash. Like others, the official was granted anonymity to speak candidly on internal diplomatic reactions to the event.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to launch an unprovoked, full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has led to hundreds of thousands of deaths and the largest war in Europe since World War II. U.N. investigators have accused Russian forces occupying Ukraine of myriad atrocities including the murder of civilians and systematic torture and sexual violence.

One foreign embassy official said the group had told event organizers it would be impossible for them to participate, explaining, “We cannot put a wreath with our national colors next to a Russian wreath.”

Friends of World War II Memorial spokesperson Scott Warner confirmed via email that while allies normally participate in war commemoration events, “no embassy representatives will participate in this year’s ceremony as part of the official program.” The White House noted that the event is not organized by the administration and declined to comment further.

A second official described the initial list of invitees as “a very strange group,” noting that it includes not only Russia, but Brazil and Slovakia, while excluding the Czech Republic, which broke from Slovakia in 1992.

A copy of the original invitation obtained by POLITICO lists Australia, Belarus, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, France, Greece, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Russia, Slovak Republic, Ukraine and the U.K.

The event, which will feature performances by the U.S. Army band, speeches by National Parks officials and a recognition of American veterans of WWII, will now likely be much smaller than other celebrations in allied capitals.

21. Operation Rype: Unveiling the legacy of U.S.-Norwegian cooperation during World War II

It is great to see this OSS/special operations history honored by the US army during SOF Week.

Operation Rype: Unveiling the legacy of U.S.-Norwegian cooperation during World War II

https://www.army.mil/article/285226/operation_rype_unveiling_the_legacy_of_u_s_norwegian_cooperation_during_world_war_ii

By Sgt. 1st Class Anthony BryantMay 5, 2025Share on Twitter Share on Facebook Share on Reddit Share on LinkedIn Share via Email

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Operation Rype, the only combat mission conducted by U.S. forces in Norway during World War II, exemplifies the extraordinary collaboration between the U.S. and Norway under the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). This mission highlights the capabilities of the OSS Norwegian Special Operations Group (NORSO) and serves as a testament to the resilience, adaptability, and bravery of American and Norwegian personnel working together to counter a shared enemy.

The OSS, established in 1942 as America’s first centralized intelligence and special operations agency, coordinated covert missions abroad. One of its specialized units, NORSO, was composed of Norwegian-Americans recruited from the 99th Infantry Battalion. Many of these operatives had previous experience in mountain and winter warfare, making them uniquely qualified for missions in Norway’s icy terrain.

During the spring of 1945, the Allied forces intensified efforts to dismantle Nazi Germany’s war infrastructure. Norway’s strategic position as a supply and communication hub for the German military made it a prime target for Allied sabotage operations. Among the critical objectives was disabling the Nordland Railway, a vital transport artery that could have allowed 150,000 German troops to reinforce Europe’s central theater.

Operation Rype (meaning “grouse” in Norwegian) thus launched on March 25, 1945. Maj. William Colby led the mission alongside Norwegian Resistance fighters, using local knowledge and expertise.

Eighty years later, Green Berets with the 10th Special Forces Group (Airborne) explored firsthand Operation Rype's historical context, operational objectives, challenges, and enduring significance in Trøndelag, Norway, from March 20 to 29, 2025.

Operation Rype's primary objective was to destroy segments of the Nordland Railway to disrupt German troop movements and hinder reinforcements from arriving on the European mainland.

S.O.E. Expeditions, a private adventure expedition company, guided the Special Forces Operators along the same routes used to sabotage railroad tracks and bridges by OSS NORSO.

The 10th SFG(A) Green Berets are part of a U.S. Special Forces team conducting High North training operations in Norway. High North Special Forces teams are specialized military units focused on combat within polar and sub-polar regions. The team has partnered with the Norwegian Home Guard and the Norwegian Armed Forces’ special forces unit, Forsvarets Spesialkommando (FSK).

“Working with and through a European partner is truly what we do and what we have been doing,” said the 10th SFG(A) High North detachment commander. “That is how we operate in harsh environments where the next hospital might be four hours away, the next airport five hours away, and the next ferry seven hours away…Nothing happens without the partner, so a good and fruitful alliance with the locals and local authorities is crucial.”

The miles-long expedition presented more opportunities for the Green Berets to ski and practice cold-weather survival skills, such as building shelters with local materials, making fires, and boiling snow for water, which NORSO operatives likewise did.

“The climate and the geographic conditions [of Norway] require a lot of training…mobility training, survival training,” said a 10th SFG(A) Special Forces warrant officer. “Training is based on reducing the environmental impact on us so we can conduct operations in inhospitable climates that people normally can’t survive in.”

Norway’s unforgiving environment posed significant challenges during Operation Rype. Operatives endured freezing temperatures, fluctuating weather conditions, and grueling physical exertion; each saboteur carried a 60-pound rucksack of explosives, ammunition, and gear, often accompanied by sleds carrying even more equipment. The mix of snow, rain, and rugged terrain tested their survival skills.

The terrain and weather were no different for the Green Berets on their expedition.

“It’s special as members of a Norway-aligned [Special Forces] detachment to look back on our [lineage]—which extends to NORSO—and draw parallels between what we are currently doing, what we could be asked to do, and what was done 80 years ago,” said the detachment commander. “Partnerships start with the individual, whether during World War II with Americans and Norwegians training small unit tactics side by side or today, working together doing the same stuff just with modern technology. It starts there, which can translate into strategic-level success.”

Operation Rype underscores the importance of adaptability, collaboration, and cultural understanding in special operations. In 1949, the U.S. and Norway were among the 12 original countries that signed the North Atlantic Treaty establishing NATO to safeguard the freedom and security of its members. Rype laid the foundation for a durable partnership between the U.S. and Norway, grounded in shared values and mutual respect, and continues to influence military cooperation today. With modern challenges like Arctic security and new forms of conflict, this legacy remains as relevant today as it was during World War II.

22. Crucibles, Not Comfort, Shape Future Military Leaders

Excerpts:

The military is in a moment of inflection. The demands of great power competition, strategic ambiguity, and cognitive warfare are already redefining what it means to lead. If the American military does not recover the crucible, it risks fielding leaders who are compassionate but unformed, intelligent but brittle, inclusive but untested.

Perfect conditions don’t build character. The tree without wind may look healthy — until the storm comes. To lead in that storm, leaders must be formed in challenge, not protected from it.

America needs the wind back.

Crucibles, Not Comfort, Shape Future Military Leaders - War on the Rocks

warontherocks.com · by J. William DeMarco · May 7, 2025

A few years ago, a young U.S. military officer asked me a pointed question: “Do you think we’re getting too soft?” I paused, not because I didn’t have an answer, but because I knew the weight behind his words. My answer was yes. The U.S. military has overcorrected. Across talent management systems, performance evaluations, and even professional military education, it has embraced a well-intentioned shift toward empathetic leadership and psychological safety — seen in trends like inflated evaluations, universal academic passing standards, structured self-examination, and 360-degree feedback models that prioritize harmony over critique. Professional military education, in particular, has long wrestled with these challenges, often criticized for valuing credentialing over intellectual rigor. The recent cultural shift didn’t cause this problem, but it may have hardened it — removing friction from the learning environment and replacing it with comfort. In the process, the military has sidelined one of its most essential developmental forces: the crucible.

What’s missing today is what many now recognize as a resilience gap: the absence of deliberate, sustained formative experiences that challenge officers morally, cognitively, and emotionally across time and career stages. The U.S. military should rethink how it develops leaders — not by returning to toxic attrition models, but by embedding sustained crucibles across professional military education. These crucibles are not one-time ordeals or symbolic tests. They are continuous exposures to ethical ambiguity, intellectual discomfort, and identity-defining reflection deliberately built into professional military education from accession to command. This isn’t about toughness for its own sake. It’s about developing leaders who can make principled decisions amid uncertainty, absorb failure without folding, and grow stronger because of adversity — not despite it.

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There’s a story from Biosphere 2 that sticks with me. Inside that sealed ecological experiment, scientists tried to replicate Earth’s ecosystems. Trees grew quickly but fell over just as fast. The problem? No wind. Without stress, the trees failed to develop strong root systems. What looked like perfect conditions produced brittle life. The metaphor for today’s military leadership culture is hard to miss.

To be clear, the shift toward compassion, emotional intelligence, and holistic leadership was needed. The U.S. military made critical progress in rooting out toxic environments and improving the mental well-being of servicemembers, as reflected in initiatives like the Integrated Resilience Directorate, the inclusion of emotional intelligence in leadership curricula, and expanded access to embedded behavioral health professionals. But somewhere along the way, the military began to mistake comfort for care.

Policies and practices designed to support mental wellness — such as flattened hierarchies, universal academic passing standards, and performance systems hesitant to deliver hard feedback — have, in some cases, dulled the military’s edge. The result is a growing resilience gap: a disconnect between the psychological formation of emerging leaders and the chaotic, morally ambiguous environments they will face in modern conflict.

Today’s junior officers are increasingly well versed in psychological terminology, mental health support systems, and inclusive leadership practices. These are all good things. Many have overcome real hardship — personal, economic, and familial — and bring deep emotional insight to their service. But despite these experiences, some arrive at leadership roles without having faced the kind of sustained professional adversity that military life uniquely demands. They may not have encountered prolonged moral ambiguity, high stakes decisions under uncertainty, or the identity-fracturing pressure of command in a combat zone. These stressors require more than technical skill — they demand intentional formation.

There are signs of this gap in many places: risk aversion in decision-making, emotional fragility in feedback environments, paralysis in the face of moral complexity. Removing friction from developmental pipelines may avoid short-term harm but fails to prepare leaders for long-term endurance.

So what is the crucible, and why does it need to be recovered?

A crucible is not suffering for its own sake. It is structured hardship with a purpose — formative, identity-shaping, and enduring. It’s knob year at The Citadel. It’s SERE school. It’s the first combat crisis where the mission and morality pull in opposite directions. Yes, the military already subjects new recruits to crucibles: basic training, deployments, elite courses like Ranger School. But these are primarily physical or procedural trials, tightly controlled and temporally bounded. What’s increasingly absent are the professional and ethical crucibles that challenge emerging leaders over time — those that forge judgment, humility, and the moral courage to lead in ambiguity. The problem isn’t that crucibles don’t exist. It’s that they’re too often front-loaded and siloed, treated as discrete events rather than a developmental thread. Crucibles test, break, and reform — but only when they evolve alongside the leader.

They are the wind.

They build root systems deep enough to withstand the winds of war. And perhaps most importantly, they reveal that suffering is not merely an obstacle, but a teacher. When adversity strikes, it can be hard to find meaning in it — but it is often the very path through which maturity, depth, and resilience are formed. The process of becoming stronger almost always involves pain, reflection, and reorientation. Without purposeful suffering, growth is shallow, and leadership remains fragile.

This need for hardship in growth is not new. Marcus Aurelius wrote, “The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.” Aristotle believed virtue was cultivated through habit and challenge. The Buddha taught that suffering is not only inevitable but can become a path to enlightenment if rightly understood. Even the oft-maligned Niccolò Machiavelli recognized that effective leadership required the ability to endure hardship and adapt through difficulty. The New Testament offers a similar vision: The Epistle of James calls on one to “consider it pure joy… whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance.” Across cultures and centuries, wisdom traditions have agreed: the forge is essential.

More recently, Nassim Nicholas Taleb coined the term “antifragility” to describe systems that don’t merely survive stress but thrive because of it. Jennifer Garvey Berger emphasizes that leadership in complexity requires “vertical development.” This doesn’t only require new skills. It demands new ways of making sense of challenge. Thomas Kolditz has explored how leadership develops under extreme stress — particularly in combat, crisis, and other life-defining moments. He argues that leaders shaped in these environments emerge with stronger identities, clearer missions, and more lasting capabilities. Challenge, in his view, is not incidental to growth; it is essential. Crucially, Kolditz also cautions that this kind of deep transformation cannot simply be engineered in safe, sanitized classroom settings. It must be lived. Leadership in the 21st century demands more than resilience. It demands transformation through dissonance. The goal is not to bounce back but to build forward, stronger. Not just resilient leaders, but antifragile ones — in the truest sense of the word.

Psychological research supports this. Stress inoculation training shows that exposure to manageable, meaningful stressors builds mental toughness and adaptive capacity. In educational theory, Jack Mezirow’s transformative learning model emphasizes that true growth arises from disorienting dilemmas — precisely the kind of formative experience that has been systematically removed in many leadership development environments.

The modern operating environment demands leaders who can act decisively in uncertainty, navigate moral ambiguity, and inspire others under conditions that are often volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous.(VUCA) Strategic competition with peer adversaries, the psychological toll of distributed operations, and the high cognitive demands of AI-enabled warfare will place burdens on tomorrow’s officers that no slide deck or sanitized case study can prepare them for. American adversaries are not likely to offer psychological safety, so leaders must be prepared to lead and endure without it. Only lived challenge — faced with structure, purpose, and support — can build that kind of depth.

The pandemic era illustrated this vividly. Junior leaders were tasked with unprecedented problems — logistics, personnel management, health policy, morale maintenance — without a roadmap. Some thrived. Many struggled. And it wasn’t a lack of knowledge. It was a lack of internal formation, a lack of tested frameworks for acting under pressure.

Closing the Gap: Designing for Resilience

To close the resilience gap, the U.S. military does not need to return to toxic attrition models — but it does need to reintroduce structured adversity into leadership development. These experiences should be deliberately designed to cultivate not just tactical acumen but the moral, cognitive, and emotional durability required in contemporary conflict. Over the past decade, scholars and practitioners across professional military education, military leaders, federally funded research and development centers, and operational commands have proposed tools that move beyond traditional training, offering leaders controlled exposure to complexity, ambiguity, and friction.

Much of today’s professional military education embraces a synthesis model of case studies, historical analysis, and scenario-based exercises scaffolded with theory and structured reflection. This model remains essential. But synthesis alone is not enough. True formation demands an experiential model — one that creates conditions for real-time ethical strain, operational ambiguity, and meaningful failure, followed by rigorous reflection. Leaders cannot merely study crucibles. They must live through them.

Wargaming has long been a tool for tactical training, but recent work by Kelsey Atherton and other colleagues demonstrates how it can also serve as a crucible for ethical decision-making. Their analysis shows that when games are designed to include legal, moral, and informational ambiguity, they allow participants to grapple with the kinds of high-stakes dilemmas where law, values, and mission success collide. These scenarios help build what Atherton refers to as “ethical agility” — the ability to make principled choices under stress, a skillset increasingly essential on the future battlefield.

Meanwhile, Olivia Garard emphasizes the importance of structured reflection in leadership education. She argues that discomfort and dissonance are not threats to learning but essential conditions for growth. By incorporating adversarial reflection — through Socratic seminars, red-teaming of personal failure narratives, and dialectical methods — leaders can begin to develop the moral courage and resilience required to make tough calls in the fog of war. Her work points to the value of confronting uncertainty not just intellectually, but communally. Similarly, Celestino Perez Jr. contends that strategy must be treated not as abstract theory but as performance — messy, iterative, and human. In his view, military education often overlooks the experiential, practice-oriented nature of strategy, failing to fully prepare leaders for the friction-filled, morally ambiguous realities they will face. Taken together, these perspectives call for an education that embraces challenge, not avoids it, and sees reflection as an operational necessity — not an academic luxury.

In the realm of anticipatory leadership, Sean McFate and his contemporaries such as August Cole and P.W. Singer advocate for embedding futures literacy into professional military education. They argue that preparing leaders for disorientation is not a luxury but a necessity. The late Maj. Gen. (ret.) Robert Scales argued that by exposing officers early to horizon scanning, scenario planning, and red-team exercises, educators could instill habits of anticipatory thinking that help leaders navigate the volatility of modern conflict environments.

Finally, Gen. (ret.) Charles Krulak’s enduring contributions to leadership theory — including his “Three Block War” construct — underscore the need for trials that go beyond physical endurance. Krulak and those who have built on his ideas call for developmental crucibles that reflect the emotional, intellectual, and moral complexity of contemporary warfare. When these experiences are intentionally designed with embedded meaning-making and guided reflection, they forge not only capability but character, producing leaders who are cohesive, grounded, and authentically strong.

These are not nostalgic throwbacks — they are strategic necessities. But fully reclaiming the crucible requires a sharper distinction between training and education environments. Military training programs — such as basic training, SERE, or Ranger School — are crucibles in the traditional sense: intense, high-stress environments that test physical limits and psychological endurance. However, they are also bounded, tightly scripted, and focused on compliance and technical mastery. Education crucibles, by contrast, should provoke moral uncertainty, intellectual conflict, and identity tension. They must be revisited not once, but continuously — as a thread running through professional military education, staff rides, leadership seminars, and command development courses. This is not simply about toughness; it’s about meaning-making under ambiguity.

Such transformation must also be modeled at senior levels. If junior officers never see their superiors acknowledge failure, name formative struggles, or reflect openly on their own disorienting dilemmas, they will learn that suffering is weakness, not instruction. Reclaiming the crucible requires leaders at all levels to value what it produces — and to create environments where adversity is not avoided, but metabolized.

Such transformation should be systemic, not symbolic. Imagine a military where crucibles are embedded across the institution itself: officers earning “warfighting scores” as part of their evaluations, assessed through rigorous wargames and operational exams (an idea once floated by Adm. Mike Mullen); general officers facing off in force-on-force campaign simulations (joint task force versus joint task force), where the stakes aren’t merely theoretical; professional military education courses where students could actually fail — not for misconduct, but for failing to demonstrate growth, judgment, or command readiness. These reforms aren’t about gatekeeping. They’re about building an institutional culture that values challenge as preparation, not punishment.

Now extend that vision across an individual career. Picture the crucible not as a single event, but as a throughline — a fire returned to again and again. It begins in pre-commissioning with scenario labs that test moral courage before tactical skill. It deepens at Squadron Officer School, not through rote lectures, but through red-team peer critiques and crisis simulations where failure is embraced as feedback. At intermediate and senior-level professional military education, the crucible sharpens: officers must lead teams through future scenarios and ethical wargames, with failure not just possible, but necessary. Staff rides become reflective pilgrimages; command courses culminate in narrative reckonings with personal and institutional failure. At the general officer level, leaders confront one another in operational design contests — public, scored, and hard. Throughout the journey, senior leaders model vulnerability, not polish, showing that struggle is not a blemish, but the source of real strength.

The military is in a moment of inflection. The demands of great power competition, strategic ambiguity, and cognitive warfare are already redefining what it means to lead. If the American military does not recover the crucible, it risks fielding leaders who are compassionate but unformed, intelligent but brittle, inclusive but untested.

Perfect conditions don’t build character. The tree without wind may look healthy — until the storm comes. To lead in that storm, leaders must be formed in challenge, not protected from it.

America needs the wind back.

Become a Member

J. William “BILL” DeMarco, D.Prof is the director of innovation and analysis at Air University where he is also an assistant professor. He is a retired U.S. Air Force colonel with five command tours spanning mobility, refueling, and joint operations. A former Hoover fellow at Stanford and research fellow at Cambridge University, he focuses on operational design, intrapreneurship, and leadership innovation in complex military systems. The views in this article are those of the author and not those of Air University, the Air Force, the Department of Defense, or any part of the U.S. government.

Image: Midjourney

Commentary

warontherocks.com · by J. William DeMarco · May 7, 2025

23. How Much is a Hubcap Removal Tool Worth? Measuring The Value of Tactical Innovation

These three young Captains are why I am not worried about the future of our Army. They are thinking deeply about their profession. We have the young officers, NCOs, and soldiers who can innovate. Now we have to listen to them.

Excerpt:

Tactical Innovation requires a unique investment with an expectation of nontraditional returns. Unlike traditional DoD investments that are directly tied to predefined outcomes, the investors of time, money, and people into grassroots soldier innovation, and the underwriters of the associated risk, must see the value of the process and, more importantly, the unappreciated value of failure. We have countless pathways that can deliver a solution given a requirements document, but now is the time to value the return on investing in the development of soldiers’ innovative solutions to problems we can’t yet foresee, and accepting that this does not follow a straight path. This requires developing and resourcing not only a culture but an infrastructure of grassroots innovation. Leaders should continue to resource tactical innovation at all levels and should evaluate ROI based on key but too often unappreciated outcomes: more soldiers with technical problem-solving skills, rapidly developed stopgaps and surrogate solutions, and actionable feedback provided to the acquisitions community from real soldiers. The next war will be won by the nation that can narrow the gap between problems at the operational edge and the resources to develop technical solutions to those problems; tactical innovation is bridging that gap for the United States Army.

How Much is a Hubcap Removal Tool Worth? Measuring The Value of Tactical Innovation - Modern War Institute

mwi.westpoint.edu · by Chris Aliperti · May 6, 2025

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AI-enabled spectrum reconnaissance, 3D printed drones, and autonomous combat vehicles. These are no longer the dream ventures of Silicon Valley startups; these are products being created by soldiers at Army bases across the country thanks to the explosion of tactical innovation throughout the service. What started as a few soldiers with simple prototypes in ad hoc makerspaces has transformed into formal innovation cells operating out of research and development labs embedded within operational units. A handful of creative inventions has grown to multimillion-dollar portfolios of products scaling across the Army. As the grassroots efforts grow, kudos and accolades from senior leaders have shifted to calls for accountability and apprehension about these disruptive teams’ breaks from bureaucracy. With every success of tactical innovation, the demand signal for increased resourcing grows louder, but matching its crescendo is the question from the bill payers: What is the ROI—the specific return on this investment?

Impactful tactical innovation requires investing money, people, and space—and most importantly underwriting of risk—into an inherently entrepreneurial venture that is uncommon in the Department of Defense. The return on these investments has been disproportionately high, but difficult to quantify. Understandably, this gives leaders at every echelon hesitation about further investing in these efforts. Much of this concern comes from a discrepancy in expectations. We have had the opportunity to explain tactical innovation, and the expected return on an investment in it, to countless leaders by framing it in terms of three outcomes.

Outcome 1: Talent Development and Management

The Army is a people business. The next war will undoubtedly be won by the military force that can develop and integrate technological solutions at the tactical edge and scale solutions from the bottom up. To do this, the US Army needs soldiers at every rank who are capable of analyzing complex undefined problems and comfortable with using cutting-edge technology to produce solutions. These are not considered basic warfighting skills and therefore are not being taught during the Army’s share of the nearly $14 billion DoD spends annually on institutional training. They are, however, being practiced every day inside tactical innovation labs. Within these labs, soldiers are collaborating with DoD contractors, academia, and industry to learn and implement skills in coding, additive manufacturing, computer-aided engineering, and agile design thinking by solving real problems. In addition to developing new skills, these labs serve as an excellent recruiting and retention tool for those who already possess technology and innovation skills. An investment in tactical innovation recruits, trains, and retains the unique talent required to win on tomorrow’s battlefield. As a result, an important way of measuring ROI is in terms of technically skilled soldiers in operational formations, equipped for the complexities of the modern battlefield.

Outcome 2: Stopgaps and Surrogates

Yes, there are a plethora of ongoing and heavily funded initiatives to develop new battlefield technology. And yes, a few soldiers working away in a makerspace are at best duplicating efforts, and are at worst putting time, effort and resources into a solution that won’t come close to what a few billion dollars and a lab full of PhDs could develop. But, in the likely event these same soldiers are sent forward into enemy territory tomorrow, will they be satisfied when told to wait five more years for that perfect solution being developed elsewhere to make its way through the bureaucracy and down to them? When that solution eventually arrives, will they have the training with or confidence in the technology to properly integrate it and employ it to its maximum effectiveness? No and no. Tactical innovation affords the opportunity to produce stopgap solutions to emerging issues, allowing soldiers to train with a surrogate in garrison and have an immediately available asset in their hands if sent forward. The design methodology practiced in tactical innovation labs lowers the barrier to entry for soldiers who have ideas for new products but lack the resources or skills to develop them on their own. An investment in tactical innovation turns soldiers’ ideas into reality and expedites the process of delivering technology into the hands of soldiers. A second way the Army should measure ROI, then, is in terms of new technology in soldiers’ hands for near-term implementation while waiting for long-term solutions to be fielded.

Outcome 3: Informing Soldier-Centric Acquisitions

The key tenet of engineering design: Define your problem and allow your stakeholders to continually refine it. The industry standard process in product design prioritizes consistent interaction with stakeholders and experiments that put prototypes in users’ hands. The agile approach allows design teams to gather data directly from end users and adjust requirements and designs to fit the end users’ changing needs before putting too many resources into a mass-production-level product. This is nearly impossible to properly practice within the confines of traditional Army processes. Tactical innovation labs leverage their proximity to operational units and their regular training exercises to experiment with new technology and get immediate feedback from end users in the actual environment where they will be using the technology. This feedback is invaluable and incredibly difficult for Army research and development and acquisitions programs to acquire on their own or in a timely manner. An investment in tactical innovation gets actionable feedback from end users to adequately design and acquire new technology. So a third way to measure ROI is in terms of the degree to which requirements are influenced by direct soldier feedback.

A Last Point: Rethinking Transitions

There is one important discrepancy in expectations that must be addressed in order to fully appreciate the ROI on tactical innovation: the definition of a technology transition. Traditionally, programs are evaluated as successful when they have transitioned their products to formal programs of record. The tactical innovation methodology was not created purely to develop program of record solutions. Instead, it allows us to think of technology transition as a spectrum. An innovated solution to a simple local problem, such as the hubcap removal tool invented by a mechanic in the 3rd Infantry Division, should be celebrated as a successful transition. Distributing the CAD files for a novel device to expedite camo net emplacement to all mechanized units so they can produce prototypes locally should be celebrated as a successful transition. Handing off the results of tactical-level experimentation with a locally developed prototype to a capabilities requirement writer should be celebrated as a successful transition. Even better than that, reshaping the vision of a future product to better meet soldiers’ needs should be celebrated as a successful transition. Instead of implementing a binary measure of success when evaluating transition of tactical innovation projects, the Army should adopt a reframed set of expectations built around a fundamental question: Did this help a soldier? Let’s reconsider what level of return is expected in the context of a relatively low-cost investment in tactical innovation.

Tactical Innovation requires a unique investment with an expectation of nontraditional returns. Unlike traditional DoD investments that are directly tied to predefined outcomes, the investors of time, money, and people into grassroots soldier innovation, and the underwriters of the associated risk, must see the value of the process and, more importantly, the unappreciated value of failure. We have countless pathways that can deliver a solution given a requirements document, but now is the time to value the return on investing in the development of soldiers’ innovative solutions to problems we can’t yet foresee, and accepting that this does not follow a straight path. This requires developing and resourcing not only a culture but an infrastructure of grassroots innovation. Leaders should continue to resource tactical innovation at all levels and should evaluate ROI based on key but too often unappreciated outcomes: more soldiers with technical problem-solving skills, rapidly developed stopgaps and surrogate solutions, and actionable feedback provided to the acquisitions community from real soldiers. The next war will be won by the nation that can narrow the gap between problems at the operational edge and the resources to develop technical solutions to those problems; tactical innovation is bridging that gap for the United States Army.

Captain Chris Aliperti is an instructor within the US Military Academy’s Department of Civil and Mechanical Engineering. Chris additionally serves as an associate director in the department’s Center for Applied Engineering and is a cofounder of the Tactical Innovation Institute.

Captain Eden Elizabeth Lawson is the deputy innovation officer for the 101st Airborne Division. She is a 2020 USMA graduate who has served in the 101st as an engineer officer and in both the brigade- and division-level innovation officer positions.

Captain Chris Flournoy is currently a student at the Maneuver Captains Career Course. He previously served as the director of the Marne Innovation Center at Fort Stewart, Georgia, and is a cofounder of the Tactical Innovation Institute.

The views expressed are those of the authors and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.

Image credit: Sgt. Jameson Harris, US Army

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mwi.westpoint.edu · by Chris Aliperti · May 6, 2025

24. Fighter jet landing on USS Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier goes overboard, forcing pilots to eject

Oh no...

Thankfully the crew was recovered unhurt.

Excerpt:

The F/A-18 Super Hornet landed on the Truman after a flight, but “the arrestment failed,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity as they weren’t authorized to speak publicly about the incident now under investigation.

“Arrestment” refers to the hook system used by aircraft landing on carriers, which catches steel wire ropes on the flight deck. It remains unclear what part of the system failed.

The two pilots on board were later rescued by a helicopter and suffered minor injuries in the incident, the official added. No one on the flight deck was hurt.

Fighter jet landing on USS Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier goes overboard, forcing pilots to eject

By JON GAMBRELL

Updated 4:05 AM EDT, May 7, 2025

AP · May 7, 2025

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — An F/A-18 fighter jet landing on the USS Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier in the Red Sea went overboard, forcing its two pilots to eject, a defense official told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

The incident Tuesday marks the latest mishap to mar the deployment of the Truman, which has been essential in the airstrike campaign by the United States against Yemen’s Houthi rebels.

On Tuesday, President Donald Trump and Oman’s foreign minister both said a ceasefire had been reached with the Houthis, who would no longer target ships in the Red Sea corridor — something not immediately acknowledged by the rebels.

Meanwhile, the Houthis continue to assess the damage after daytime Israeli airstrikes targeted Yemen’s rebel-held capital of Sanaa.

Landing goes wrong on carrier

The F/A-18 Super Hornet landed on the Truman after a flight, but “the arrestment failed,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity as they weren’t authorized to speak publicly about the incident now under investigation.

“Arrestment” refers to the hook system used by aircraft landing on carriers, which catches steel wire ropes on the flight deck. It remains unclear what part of the system failed.

The two pilots on board were later rescued by a helicopter and suffered minor injuries in the incident, the official added. No one on the flight deck was hurt.

CNN first reported on the incident.

Tuesday’s incident was the latest to see the Navy lose an F/A-18, which cost about $60 million. In April, another F/A-18 fighter jet slipped off the hangar deck of the Truman and fell into the Red Sea. The crew members who were in the pilot seat of the Super Hornet and on the small towing tractor both jumped away.

In December, the guided-missile cruiser USS Gettysburg mistakenly shot down an F/A-18 after ships earlier shot down multiple Houthi drones and an anti-ship cruise missile launched by the rebels. Both aviators in that incident also survived.

And in February, the Truman collided with a merchant vessel near Port Said, Egypt.

The Truman, based out of Norfolk, Virginia, has seen its deployment extended multiple times amid the Houthi airstrike campaign. It had been joined recently by the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier operating out of the Arabian Sea.

Houthi attacks on shipping

The Houthis had been waging persistent missile and drone attacks against commercial and military ships in the region in what the group’s leadership has described as an effort to end Israel’s war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

From November 2023 until January 2025, the Houthis targeted more than 100 merchant vessels with missiles and drones, sinking two of them and killing four sailors. That has greatly reduced the flow of trade through the Red Sea corridor, which typically sees $1 trillion of goods move through it annually.

The Houthis paused attacks in a self-imposed ceasefire until the U.S. launched a broad assault against the rebels in mid-March.

AP · May 7, 2025

25. We Are Still Fighting World War II

There is only one constant that is not sufficiently mentioned: geography does not change. (and also possibly the desire for more real estate)

Excerpts:

As the discussions at Yalta continued at the Potsdam conference in August 1945, Stalin’s desire to expand Soviet territory became clear. He showed interest in assuming control of former Italian colonies in Africa and suggested the removal of Franco in Spain. “It must be very pleasant for you to be in Berlin now after all your country has suffered,” Averell Harriman, the U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union, remarked to Stalin during a break in the talks. Stalin eyed the ambassador without changing his expression. “Tsar Alexander went all the way to Paris,” he replied. The line was hardly a joke—the year before, the Soviet leadership had ordered plans to be drawn for an invasion of France and Italy and a seizure of the straits between Denmark and Norway. In 1945, Soviet General Sergei Shtemenko told Sergo Beria, whose father had been a feared Soviet secret police chief during the Stalin era, “It was expected that the Americans would abandon a Europe fallen into chaos, while Britain and France would be paralyzed by their colonial problems.” This, Soviet leaders thought, created an opening. Only on learning that the United States was close to building the atom bomb were the plans abandoned—even if Moscow’s appetite for expansion was not.

....

Today, as Russia prepares to celebrate Victory Day on May 9, Putin is determined to milk the story of his country’s “Great Patriotic War” for all it’s worth. He may well revert the name of the city of Volgograd to Stalingrad—it was changed in 1961 as part of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev’s de-Stalinization campaign—to highlight the Red Army’s eventual victory over the Axis invaders in the Battle of Stalingrad in 1943, the great psychological turning point of the war. He may also sharpen the worst of his historical distortions, attempting to justify his continued war in Ukraine by claiming that the Ukrainians are “Nazis,” contradicting his own insistence before the invasion that Ukrainians were no different from Russians.

In truth, there is no one set of conclusions to draw from World War II. The war defies generalization and does not fit into easy categories. It contains countless stories of tragedy, corruption, hypocrisy, egomania, betrayal, impossible choices, and unbelievable sadism. But it also contains stories of self-sacrifice and compassion, in which people clung to a fundamental belief in humanity despite appalling conditions and overwhelming oppression. Their example will always be worth remembering and emulating, no matter how dark today’s conflicts become.

We Are Still Fighting World War II

Foreign Affairs · by More by Antony Beevor · May 7, 2025

The Unsettled Legacy of the Conflict That Shaped Today’s Politics

Antony Beevor

May 7, 2025

U.S. soldiers landing on the beach on D-Day near Vierville-sur-Mer, France, 1944 Cpt Herman Wall / US National Archives / Reuters

ANTONY BEEVOR is the author of Berlin: The Downfall 1945 and Russia: Revolution and Civil War 1917–1921.

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History is seldom tidy. Eras overlap and unfinished business from one period lingers into the next. World War II was a war like no other in the magnitude of its effects on the lives of people and the fates of nations. It was a combination of many conflicts, including ethnic and national hatreds that followed the collapse of four empires and the redrawing of borders at the Paris Peace Conference after World War I. A number of historians have argued that World War II was a phase of one long war lasting from 1914 to 1945 or even until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991—a global civil war, first between capitalism and communism, then between democracy and dictatorship.

World War II certainly brought the strands of world history together, with its global reach and its acceleration of the end of colonialism across Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. Yet despite sharing this international experience, and entering the same order built in its wake, every country involved created and clung to its own narrative of the great conflict.

Even the matter of when the war began is still debated. In the American telling, it started in earnest when the United States entered the conflict after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and the German dictator Adolf Hitler declared war on the United States a few days later. Russian President Vladimir Putin, meanwhile, insists that the war began in June 1941, when Hitler invaded the Soviet Union—ignoring the joint Soviet and Nazi invasion of Poland in September 1939, which marks the start of the war for most Europeans. Yet some trace its origin back further still. For China, it began in 1937, with the Sino-Japanese War, or even earlier with the Japanese occupation of Manchuria in 1931. Many on the left in Spain are convinced that it began in 1936 with General Francisco Franco’s overthrow of the republic, launching the Spanish Civil War.

These clashing worldviews remain a source of tension and instability in global politics. Putin cherry-picks from Russian history, combining homage to Soviet sacrifice in the “Great Patriotic War,” as World War II is known in Russia, with the reactionary ideas of exiled tsarist White Russians after their defeat by the communist Reds in the Russian Civil War of 1917–22. The latter include religious justifications for Russian supremacy over the entire Eurasian landmass—“from Vladivostok to Dublin,” as Putin’s ideologue Aleksandr Dugin has put it—and a deeply rooted hatred of liberal western Europe. Such ideas have also begun to circulate within U.S. President Donald Trump’s orbit.

Putin has rehabilitated the World War II–era Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, who, as the Soviet physicist and dissident Andrei Sakharov has said, was directly responsible for even more millions of deaths than Hitler. The Russian president goes so far as to insist that the Soviet Union could have won the war against Nazi Germany on its own when even Stalin and other Soviet leaders privately acknowledged that the Soviet Union would not have survived without American aid. They also knew that the U.S.-British strategic bombing campaign against German cities forced the bulk of the German Luftwaffe back home from the eastern front, thus giving the Soviets air supremacy. Above all Putin refuses to acknowledge the horrors of the Stalinist era. As Mary Soames, daughter of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, recounted to me at a dinner in 2003, Churchill asked Stalin during an informal meeting in October 1944 what the Soviet leader regretted most in his life. Stalin took a moment to reflect before he quietly answered, “The killing of the kulaks”—the landowning peasants. This campaign peaked with the Holodomor in 1932–33, in which Stalin deliberately inflicted famine on Ukraine, killing more than three million people and instilling a hatred of Moscow among many survivors and their descendants.

World War II also produced an often uneasy balance between Europe and the United States. Hitler’s hegemonic ambitions forced the United Kingdom to abandon its self-appointed role of world policeman and turn to the Americans for aid. The British were genuinely proud of their part in the ultimate Allied victory, but they tried to hide the sting of their declining global influence by spouting the cliché that the United Kingdom had managed “to punch above its weight” in the war and by clinging to their “special relationship” with the United States. Churchill was dismayed by the prospect that U.S. troops might simply go home after the war in the Pacific ended in 1945. Although American attitudes continued to fluctuate between seeking an active global role and retreating into isolationism, the threat from Moscow ensured that Washington would remain deeply engaged in Europe until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Today, the first major continental war in Europe since World War II is in its fourth year, driven in part by Putin’s selective reading of Russian history, while deadly conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere threaten to spread further. The Trump administration, meanwhile, appears to be casting aside the United States’ global leadership in a confused tantrum. Eighty years ago, the end of World War II paved the way for a new international order based on respect for national sovereignty and borders. But now, a steep bill for American ambivalence, European complacency, and Russian revanchism may finally be coming due.

MORE THAN A NUMBER

The sheer cruelty of World War II was seared into the memories of several generations. It was the first modern conflict in which far more civilians were killed than combatants. This could have been made possible only by an ideologically fueled dehumanization of the enemy—nationalism stirred to a fever pitch and racism promoted as a virtue on one side, and Leninist class warfare that endorsed exterminating all opposition on the other. (Tellingly, after the war, Soviet diplomats fought to prevent class warfare—which would have included the Soviet Union’s mass killing of aristocrats, bourgeoisie, and land-owning peasants—from being mentioned in the United Nations’ 1948 Genocide Convention.)

In all, some 85 million people died in World War II, a figure that includes those who perished from famine and disease. Nazi Germany killed around six million Jews, among other people, in the Holocaust. Almost a fifth of the Polish population, also nearly six million people, was lost. The Chinese lost well over 20 million, more of whom perished from famine and disease than from fighting on the battlefield. Estimates of Soviet deaths range from 24 million to 26 million, many of them needless. Stalin was aware in 1945 that the total exceeded 20 million, but he owned up to just a third of that loss as he tried to conceal the extent of the horror he had unleashed on his people. The international relations scholar David Reynolds has noted that Stalin “settled for 7.5 million as a figure that sounded suitably heroic, but not criminally homicidal.”

World War II brought the strands of world history together.

It is not enough to remember the dead, many of whom were deliberately rendered nameless by their killers. For those who survived, the prisoners of war and the civilians imprisoned in camps, the conflict changed life in incalculable ways. Those resigned to their lots were often early victims. The most likely survivors were those with a burning determination to return to their families, to hold on to their beliefs, or to bear witness to unspeakable crimes.

Many other captured soldiers did not make it home. Those from the Soviet Red Army who had been forcibly recruited by the German military were rounded up while in German uniform in France and handed over to Soviet officers, who executed suspected leaders in the woods before transporting the rest back to the Soviet Union. There, the soldiers were sentenced to slave labor in the frozen north. Just days after Germany’s surrender, British forces in Austria ordered that more than 20,000 anti-Communist Yugoslav nationals in the area under their jurisdiction to be handed over to Communist Yugoslav authorities, who shot and then buried them in mass graves. British forces also handed over to Soviet authorities Cossacks who were Soviet citizens but had fought for Germany. The British government almost certainly knew that a harsh sentence awaited these soldiers but feared that letting them go would mean the Soviet authorities would hold onto British prisoners of war that the Red Army had liberated in Poland and eastern Germany. The Red Army also rounded up 600,000 Japanese soldiers in northern China and Manchuria; all of them were sent to labor camps in Siberia and worked to death.

For decades after the war, its memory lived on in those who had experienced it firsthand. The postwar order was shaped by generations whose aim was to prevent such a tragedy from ever occurring again. But for those who did not experience the conflict and look back from today, the casualty count of World War II may just be a figure—it is difficult to truly absorb the reality of tens of millions of deaths. Losing this direct connection to the past means losing the shared resolve that for 80 years has produced an unbroken, if highly imperfect, great-power peace.

THE FIGHTS THAT DIDN’T END

The war left the world an entirely changed place. In the combatant nations, few lives were left untouched. Many women whose fiancés were killed in action never married or had children. Others found that returning men could not cope with the reality that women had taken over the running of everything, making the men feel redundant. The backlash was strongest in continental Europe. In Germany, men who had been imprisoned during the war heard for the first time of the mass rapes committed mainly by the Red Army. They felt humiliated that they had not been there to defend their women. Nor could they handle learning that the women had dealt with the trauma in the only way possible—by talking to each other about it. In France and other occupied countries, men who returned from prison camps and forced labor in Germany wondered how women without any means of support had managed to survive and began to suspect them of relationships with enemy soldiers or black marketeers. Not surprisingly, these responses produced a socially reactionary period that lasted through the 1940s and 1950s.

Intense political conflict persisted even after the end of hostilities. In August 1945, well after the fighting in the European theater had ended, the Soviet Union began to release ordinary Italian soldiers it had captured in the latter part of the Axis powers’ campaign to take Stalingrad. These soldiers were sent home without their officers, however, because the leader of the Italian Communist Party had appealed to Moscow to delay the return of higher-ranking prisoners who might publicly condemn the Soviet Union and hurt the party’s chances in upcoming elections. Communist groups gathered at railway stations in Italy to welcome the returning soldiers, who they expected to be more sympathetic to their cause. They were appalled to see the soldiers had scrawled the words abbasso comunismo—down with communism—on the train cars, and fights broke out at the stations. The communist press labeled the returnees who criticized the Soviet Union in any way as fascists.

The sheer cruelty of the war was seared into the memories of generations.

Borders were obliterated or redrawn during and after the war. Many people who had been displaced no longer knew their nationalities. Large populations, sometimes entire cities, were uprooted, evacuated, or killed by paramilitaries, secret police, and troops. In 1939, Poles from what suddenly became western Ukraine had been dumped in the deserted spaces of Kazakhstan or Siberia and left to starve. The Polish city of Lwow was occupied twice by the Soviets and once by the Nazis, who sent its Jews to death camps. After the war, Lwow was given a new Ukrainian name, Lviv. At the Yalta conference in February 1945, where British, Soviet, and U.S. leaders met to discuss the organization of postwar Europe, Stalin forced the Allied powers to accept that the whole of Poland was to be shifted to the west, receiving former German provinces on the western side while the Soviet Union absorbed Polish provinces to the east. To complete the execution of this plan, the Red Army carried out the largest systematic forced removal of a population in modern times, transplanting more than 13 million Germans, Poles, and Ukrainians.

As the discussions at Yalta continued at the Potsdam conference in August 1945, Stalin’s desire to expand Soviet territory became clear. He showed interest in assuming control of former Italian colonies in Africa and suggested the removal of Franco in Spain. “It must be very pleasant for you to be in Berlin now after all your country has suffered,” Averell Harriman, the U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union, remarked to Stalin during a break in the talks. Stalin eyed the ambassador without changing his expression. “Tsar Alexander went all the way to Paris,” he replied. The line was hardly a joke—the year before, the Soviet leadership had ordered plans to be drawn for an invasion of France and Italy and a seizure of the straits between Denmark and Norway. In 1945, Soviet General Sergei Shtemenko told Sergo Beria, whose father had been a feared Soviet secret police chief during the Stalin era, “It was expected that the Americans would abandon a Europe fallen into chaos, while Britain and France would be paralyzed by their colonial problems.” This, Soviet leaders thought, created an opening. Only on learning that the United States was close to building the atom bomb were the plans abandoned—even if Moscow’s appetite for expansion was not.

World War II, of course, was also the dawn of the nuclear age. Many regarded the invention of the atom bomb with horror and considered the U.S. bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to be a war crime. And yet the targeting of those two Japanese cities in August 1945 involved a weighty moral choice. Before the bombings accelerated the end of the war, Japanese generals wanted to fight on rather than accept the terms of surrender issued by the Allied powers in the July 1945 Potsdam Declaration. They were prepared to sacrifice millions of Japanese civilians by forcing them to resist an Allied invasion with only bamboo spears and explosives strapped to their bodies. By 1944, some 400,000 civilians a month were dying from famine in areas of East Asia, the Pacific, and Southeast Asia that were occupied by Japanese forces. The Allies also wanted to save the American, Australian, and British prisoners of war who were starving to death in Japanese camps—or being slaughtered by their captors on Tokyo’s orders. Thus, although the atomic bomb took more than 200,000 Japanese lives, that terrible weapon may have saved many more in an unsettling moral paradox.

THE WORLD WAR MADE

For better or worse, World War II reset the trajectory of global politics. The defeat of Japan eventually paved the way for the rise of modern China. The collapse of the British, Dutch, and French empires in 1941–42 marked the end of imperial Europe, and the experience of the war spurred the movement toward European integration. Both the United States and the Soviet Union, meanwhile, were elevated to superpower status. World War II also produced the United Nations, whose key objectives were to safeguard the sovereignty of countries and to prohibit armed aggression and territorial conquest. The UN was very much U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt’s dream, and he was prepared to let Stalin have complete control over Poland to achieve it. Yet in February of this year, the United States turned its back on the UN’s founding principles, voting alongside Russia and refusing to condemn Russian aggression against Ukraine.

World War II also led into the Cold War. Some historians say that this new conflict started in 1947 with the Clay-Robertson agreement, in which British and U.S. authorities decided to industrialize western Germany, provoking Stalin’s paranoia. That year certainly saw tensions intensify, with Stalin issuing an order in September for European communist parties to dig up their weapons in preparation for future war and setting the groundwork for the Soviet blockade of Berlin the next year. But the origins lay much further back, in June 1941. Stalin had been traumatized by Operation Barbarossa, the Nazi-led invasion of the Soviet Union, which began that month. He became determined to surround himself with satellite states across central and southern Europe so that no invader could take the Soviet Union by surprise again.

It is difficult to truly absorb the reality of tens of millions of deaths.

For centuries, Russia had been obsessed with dominating its neighbors to prevent encirclement. Stalin’s fixation was Poland. Putin has preserved this basic mentality—only for him, the country’s most vulnerable frontier is Ukraine, which he argues belongs to Russia. When Putin acted on that claim with the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, he brought back a characteristic of the World War II era that has largely been absent in global politics since. Leaders, several of them empowered by the totalitarian systems they controlled, shaped the course of that vast conflict. From Churchill to Roosevelt to Stalin, their machinations reactivated the idea in the popular imagination of the “great man” driving the course of history. In recent years, political leaders have had comparatively less influence. The globalized economic system, for one thing, greatly restricts their freedom of action, and constant consideration of how a decision will play in the media makes many of them more cautious than bold. For decades, it seemed as though the characters of leaders would never again determine the course of events the way they did in World War II. Putin’s invasion has changed that, and Trump, taking Putin as a role model, has, too.

Today, as Russia prepares to celebrate Victory Day on May 9, Putin is determined to milk the story of his country’s “Great Patriotic War” for all it’s worth. He may well revert the name of the city of Volgograd to Stalingrad—it was changed in 1961 as part of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev’s de-Stalinization campaign—to highlight the Red Army’s eventual victory over the Axis invaders in the Battle of Stalingrad in 1943, the great psychological turning point of the war. He may also sharpen the worst of his historical distortions, attempting to justify his continued war in Ukraine by claiming that the Ukrainians are “Nazis,” contradicting his own insistence before the invasion that Ukrainians were no different from Russians.

In truth, there is no one set of conclusions to draw from World War II. The war defies generalization and does not fit into easy categories. It contains countless stories of tragedy, corruption, hypocrisy, egomania, betrayal, impossible choices, and unbelievable sadism. But it also contains stories of self-sacrifice and compassion, in which people clung to a fundamental belief in humanity despite appalling conditions and overwhelming oppression. Their example will always be worth remembering and emulating, no matter how dark today’s conflicts become.

ANTONY BEEVOR is the author of Berlin: The Downfall 1945 and Russia: Revolution and Civil War 1917–1921.

Foreign Affairs · by More by Antony Beevor · May 7, 2025

26. Trump’s tariffs: ASEAN+3 reaffirms free trade stance

Trump’s tariffs: ASEAN+3 reaffirms free trade stance

https://www.techinasia.com/news/trumps-tariffs-asean3-reaffirms-free-trade-stance

Finance leaders and central bank governors from the ASEAN+3 group, which includes Japan, China, South Korea, and the 10 ASEAN member states, reaffirmed their commitment to free multilateral trade during a meeting in Italy on May 4, 2025.

These remarks come amid growing concern that recent US tariff measures could further strain the region’s economy, adding to the risks already posed by global protectionist trends.

In a joint statement, the officials expressed concerns about the region’s economic outlook, citing “heightened uncertainties.”

They warned that rising trade protectionism could disrupt global trade, and could lead to economic fragmentation in the region.

The group emphasized the importance of a “rules-based, non-discriminatory, free, fair, open, inclusive, equitable, and transparent multilateral trading system.”

They highlighted the role of the World Trade Organization and pledged to enhance intra-regional trade and investment.

Source: NHK World-Japan

Food for thought

ASEAN’s extraordinary trade vulnerability drives regional unity

ASEAN’s united stance against protectionism stems from its significant economic exposure to trade disruptions.

The region maintains a high trade-to-GDP ratio of approximately 3:1, making it more trade-dependent than most global economies 1.

This vulnerability has become especially acute as recent US tariffs range from 10% to 49% on ASEAN exports, with Cambodia and Vietnam facing the highest rates at 49% and 48% respectively 2 3.

The impact is magnified because approximately 75% of ASEAN’s trade occurs with non-member countries, creating substantial exposure to external protectionist policies 1.

This trade dependency explains why ASEAN Economic Ministers have prioritized unified diplomatic responses rather than potentially damaging retaliatory measures, focusing instead on strengthening regional economic integration.

The approach contrasts with the European Union’s more confrontational stance, which includes preparing countermeasures against US tariffs 4.

Regional integration emerges as ASEAN’s shield against protectionism

ASEAN’s development trajectory demonstrates how regional integration serves as a strategic buffer against external economic threats.

The ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) has driven regional GDP growth from approximately $500 billion in 1995 to $2.7 trillion by 2017, creating substantial economic resilience 5.

This integration is now accelerating with renewed focus on the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), which includes ASEAN plus Australia, China, Japan, New Zealand, and South Korea 1.

Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong has emphasized RCEP’s urgency in response to rising trade tensions, highlighting it as a mechanism to enhance intra-regional commerce 1.

The strategy is particularly critical for protecting the region’s small and medium enterprises (SMEs), which comprise over 90% of ASEAN businesses and are most vulnerable to trade disruptions 6.

By deepening internal economic connections while maintaining diplomatic engagement externally, ASEAN is attempting to preserve its economic growth while navigating increasingly protectionist global currents.

27.

India Launches Military Strikes Against Pakistan

Excerpts:

“We are living up to the commitment that those responsible for this attack will be held accountable,” India’s Defense Ministry said.

“Justice is served,” India’s army said on social-media platform X.

India’s action came despite diplomatic efforts, including phone calls by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio to Pakistan’s prime minister and India’s foreign minister last week, aimed at persuading both sides to lessen tensions that have reached their highest point in years.

“I echo @POTUS’s comments earlier today that this hopefully ends quickly and will continue to engage both Indian and Pakistani leadership towards a peaceful resolution,” Rubio said Tuesday evening on X.

India Launches Military Strikes Against Pakistan

Pakistan says 26 people were killed in the strikes

https://www.wsj.com/world/asia/india-retaliates-for-attack-in-kashmir-it-blames-on-pakistan-3aea5ac4

By Shan Li

and Waqar Gillani

Updated May 7, 2025 1:53 am ET

A building was damaged by a suspected Indian missile attack near Muzaffarabad in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir. Photo: M.D. Mughal/Associated Press

Key Points

What's This?

India struck nine sites in Pakistan, responding to a militant attack on tourists in Kashmir.
The Indian Defense Ministry stated the strikes targeted terrorist camps used to attack India.
India’s Defense Ministry affirmed its commitment to holding those responsible for the attack accountable.

India said it conducted military strikes on nine sites in Pakistan in retaliation for a deadly militant attack on tourists in Kashmir, intensifying a confrontation between the nuclear-armed neighbors.

Pakistan’s army spokesman, Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry, said 26 people were killed and 46 injured.

Pakistan’s defense minister told a local news channel that Pakistan shot down five Indian aircraft. The Indian Foreign Ministry didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The Indian Defense Ministry said its forces carried out strikes on camps terrorists have used to stage attacks against India, according to a statement released Wednesday.

“We are living up to the commitment that those responsible for this attack will be held accountable,” India’s Defense Ministry said.

“Justice is served,” India’s army said on social-media platform X.

India’s action came despite diplomatic efforts, including phone calls by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio to Pakistan’s prime minister and India’s foreign minister last week, aimed at persuading both sides to lessen tensions that have reached their highest point in years.

“I echo @POTUS’s comments earlier today that this hopefully ends quickly and will continue to engage both Indian and Pakistani leadership towards a peaceful resolution,” Rubio said Tuesday evening on X.

Soldiers guarded a mosque damaged by a suspected Indian missile attack, near Muzaffarabad on Wednesday. Photo: M.D. Mughal/Associated Press

Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said that India attacked five places. “We will not let the enemy succeed in its condemnable objectives,” Sharif said in a statement Wednesday.

The rivals have inched closer to conflict since gunmen burst into a scenic meadow April 22 in Indian-administered Kashmir and killed 26 people, mostly Indian tourists.

Indian and Pakistani forces subsequently exchanged small-arms fire across the Kashmir border for several consecutive days, jeopardizing a fragile 2021 cease-fire agreement between the neighbors.

India accused Pakistan of having links to the attack. Kashmir police identified three gunmen and released sketches of them along with a bounty of about $24,000 each. They identified one as a local militant and two as Pakistani militants. India hasn’t provided any evidence publicly.

Pakistan has denied involvement in last month’s attack and has accused India of sponsoring a terror network inside Pakistan. India has dismissed that allegation.

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi has promised to hunt the attackers “to the ends of the earth,” a message he has repeated in recent days. Pakistan warned last week that Indian action was imminent.

“Pakistan will not be the first to resort to any escalatory move,” Pakistani Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar said. “However, in case of any escalatory move by the Indian side, we will respond very strongly.”

The specter of fresh conflict between the countries, which have fought three wars largely over the disputed Muslim-majority region of Kashmir, follows years of frosty peace. Pakistan has been focused on economic crisis and political instability, while India turned to cultivating deeper ties with Western countries including the U.S.

Overt confrontation now would invite a Pakistani response, said Ashley Tellis, an expert on Asian geopolitics at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “You open Pandora’s box,” Tellis said.

Pakistan will likely feel compelled to respond by launching its own strikes on India, said Husain Haqqani, senior fellow at Hudson Institute and a former Pakistan ambassador to the U.S. Depending on what Pakistan targets and any damage and casualties, India could then decide to escalate or allow tensions to cool down, he said.

“Do we get into a cycle of retaliation for retaliation?” Haqqani said. If that happens, “then we are in for huge trouble.”

People gathered around a piece of debris in Pampore on the outskirts of Srinagar, India, on Wednesday. Photo: farooq khan/Shutterstock

Both India and Pakistan claim all of Kashmir, although each controls only portions of the territory. They last clashed over the region in 2019 after a suicide bomber killed 40 Indian paramilitary police officers in Kashmir. The attacker claimed in a video released afterward to be a member of Jaish-e-Mohammed, a Pakistani militant group.

India retaliated with airstrikes against Pakistan. Pakistani forces shot down a warplane and captured an Indian pilot. Tensions eased after the countries negotiated his release.

Months later, India revoked the longstanding special status that gave Indian Kashmir, which had been India’s only Muslim-majority state, more autonomy than other parts of the country and detained thousands of people in a clampdown. India said the special status contributed to militancy there.

Since the April attack, security forces in Kashmir have demolished the homes of alleged militants and their families and detained hundreds for questioning.

India has also implemented a slew of economic and diplomatic measures against Pakistan, including suspension of a crucial water-sharing agreement.

Brokered by the World Bank in 1960, the treaty to manage shared rivers has withstood two wars and a major land skirmish between the countries. Though it would take India years to build dams to choke off water to Pakistan, its move signaled that even minimal cooperation has broken down, said Haqqani.

“Short of war, this is the worst stage for two countries,” he said.

Pakistan has closed its airspace to Indian airlines, a move India matched. Pakistani forces detained an Indian border guard who accidentally strayed across the border. India has ordered Pakistan nationals in India to leave, and reduced staff allowed at Pakistan’s diplomatic mission.

India’s military is stretched because many soldiers are deployed at the disputed border with China following a 2020 clash, analysts said. China is a close ally of Pakistan and its top weapons provider.

“That Pakistan-China nexus must be on the minds of Indian decision makers as well,” said Asfandyar Mir, senior fellow at the Stimson Center.

Write to Shan Li at shan.li@wsj.com

Appeared in the May 7, 2025, print edition as 'India Strikes Pakistan Over Kashmir Attack'.

28.Truth to Power – Civics lesson for the SECDEF

I have been wrestling with how to respond to the SECDEF's remarks. I did not want to take anything away from all the great remarks he provided about SOF. But I have to correct his statement.

He made the following comments at SOF week in his keynote speech.

Quote: You must know what we need, and we must know what you can build. And together, we can broaden the boundaries of what is possible. Because as we rebuild the military, we have to unlock the creativity of our companies for our arsenal of democracy. Even though we're not a democracy, we're a republic and we need to start teaching that in our schools again, [laughter] [applause].

You know it's the basic stuff they slip by us, the small lies they tell us, those are the ones that grow in the minds of young people who then turn around and don't love their country. A huge part of ensuring we have a room like this full in the future is ensuring our kids and grandkids know why America is such a special place. End Quote. https://www.defense.gov/News/Transcripts/Transcript/Article/4176603/secretary-of-defense-pete-hegseth-delivers-keynote-address-at-special-operation/#:~:text=You must know,a special place.

So here is what I learned in civics. I specifically recall one of my college political philosophy professors describing our nation as a federal democratic republic. So let me break it down.

The United States is correctly described as both a democracy and a republic, and these terms are not mutually exclusive. Specifically, the U.S. is a representative democracy, where citizens elect officials to make decisions on their behalf (e.g., our Senators and Representatives), rather than voting directly on most laws and policies. The government is also a constitutional federal republic, meaning it operates under a constitution, divides power between national and state governments, and is governed by elected representatives.

The U.S. is not a direct democracy, where citizens vote on every issue themselves. Instead, it uses a system of representative democracy, sometimes called a "democratic republic" or "constitutional republic," reflecting the founders' intent to combine elements of both democracy and republicanism for stability and protection against the "tyranny of the majority" and to protect individual liberty.

To summarize: The United States is a democracy (specifically, a representative democracy) and also a republic. Both terms are accurate and commonly used to describe its system of government. The SECDEF would have been correct if he had said the US is not a "direct democracy." Though I still take strong exception to his second statement. It is unfortunate because the statement that we are not a democracy is a statement of division that is meant to denigrate anyone who calls our nation a democracy because those who believe that are somehow "woke." The irony is that because we are a republic the executive branch's powers are by definition limited and what we learn in civic classes is that there are three EQUAL branches of government designed to have separate powers so there can be checks and balances on each branch, but especially the executive. I am not sure that those who want to say we are not a democracy but a republic, really understand the nature of a republic and why it was established.

29. From the Shadows to the Summit: Elevating Special Operations to the Joint Chiefs

I thought I would be provocative since it is SOF Week here in Tampa.

From the Shadows to the Summit: Elevating Special Operations to the Joint Chiefs

US Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) has evolved from a niche counterterrorism force into a foundational element of national defense, crucial for strategic competition, irregular warfare, and global operations.

https://www.19fortyfive.com/2025/05/from-the-shadows-to-the-summit-elevating-special-operations-to-the-joint-chiefs/

David Maxwell

Published

8 seconds ago

U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Jacob Wilson, 37th Helicopter Squadron special missions aviator, watches the tail rotor of a UH-1 Iroquois through night vision goggles as it lands at F.E Warren Air Force Base, Wyo., on Feb. 10, 2021. The 37th Helicopter Squadron’s mission is to provide helicopter security response for the 90th Missile Wing by transporting tactical response force teams in support of launch facility denial, recapture and convoy operations. (U.S. Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Cole Yardley)

The evolution of US Special Operations Forces (SOF) has always been a response to emerging and unconventional threats. From the bold ingenuity of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during World War II to the strategic foresight that created the US Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) in 1987, the path of American special operations has mirrored the shifting nature of global conflict. Yet, despite its growing and demonstrable contributions to national defense, SOF remains institutionally underrepresented at the highest levels of defense policymaking.

Recognizing the SOF

It is time to take the next logical step in the maturation of SOF: make the Commander of USSOCOM a permanent Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) member as the Chief of Special Operations (CSO).

This position is not a call to make SOF a separate military service. USSOCOM would continue its existing relationships with the services for recruitment, manpower, service-common logistics, and training. However, making the USSOCOM Commander a statutory JCS member—alongside the Chiefs of the traditional services, the Chief of the National Guard Bureau, and the Commander of US Space Command—would institutionalize special operations’ central role in and contributions to homeland defense, deterring China, irregular warfare, and 21st-century conflict to include SOF support to the Geographic Combatant Commanders to win wars of large scale combat operations. It would provide SOF with the voice it has earned through decades of operational impact and enhance the Chairman’s charge to provide the President with the best military advice, which must include special operations.

The Roots: OSS, Nunn-Cohen, and Goldwater-Nichols

America’s modern special operations enterprise is born from the legacy of the OSS, a pioneering World War II organization charged with sabotage, subversion, espionage, and support to resistance to aid US and allied forces in winning the war. Its innovative ethos became the cultural bedrock of modern SOF (and the intelligence community). Yet after the war, the nation allowed those capabilities to atrophy, only to rebuild them after repeated failures in irregular warfare and counterterrorism.

The 1986 Goldwater-Nichols Act restructured the US military for joint operations. It set the stage for the following year’s Nunn-Cohen Amendment, which created USSOCOM as a functional unified combatant command with unique responsibilities. Importantly, Nunn-Cohen also established the position of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict (ASD SO/LIC) to oversee the command, reflecting Congress’s intent to centralize responsibility for oversight of all US special operations and “low-intensity conflict” or what we now call irregular warfare.

USSOCOM: “Service-Like” Is Not Enough

Congress clearly envisioned USSOCOM as more than a niche force. The command was given “service-like” authority over budget, doctrine, research and development, procurement, and training. But that term—“service-like”—has become one of the most anemic phrases in the defense lexicon. It implies equivalence without parity, autonomy without authority, and responsibility without the influence necessary to fulfill it.

In the FY2017 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), Section 922 sought to correct this by enhancing the authority of ASD SO/LIC, attempting to provide SOF with service-level civilian oversight. Yet the Department of Defense has not adequately empowered ASD SO/LIC and institutional barriers remain. Unlike the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps chiefs, the USSOCOM Commander lacks a statutory seat on the JCS—a body critical in shaping force development, strategic priorities, and resource allocation.

The Strategic Imperative

USSOCOM has long since outgrown its origins as a niche counterterrorism force and is now a foundational element of US national defense. Today, SOF contributes across the full spectrum of conflict—from strategic competition with China and Russia to deterrence to countering transnational terrorism and enabling partner nation forces. Its persistent forward presence, deep relationships with allies, and adaptability to low-visibility missions make it essential to defending the homeland by fighting “away games.”

USSOCOM supports every Geographic Combatant Command (GCC) and often serves as the connective tissue of coalition and interagency operations. Yet without a JCS vote or permanent seat at the table, SOF is disadvantaged in inter-service debates over priorities, funding, and strategic concept development. It cannot fully advocate for the capabilities and force structure necessary to fulfill the nation’s increasingly demanding missions.

Aligning with the Evolution of Defense Leadership

In 2012, the Chief of the National Guard Bureau was made a permanent JCS member, recognizing the Guard’s growing operational contributions. More recently, the Commander of US Space Command gained permanent representation – acknowledging the domain-centric nature of modern conflict. By any metric – budget, global reach, operational tempo, and strategic value – USSOCOM stands alongside them. It is illogical and outdated to exclude the SOF enterprise from the nation’s highest military advisory body.

With the return of strategic competition and the proliferation of gray zone conflict, irregular warfare is no longer a peripheral mission but a core competency for national survival. Whether deterring China, contesting malign influence, or reinforcing partner capacity, SOF leads. Its global network of relationships enables not just burden sharing but burden owning, allowing allies to take more responsibility for regional defense within an integrated framework.

At the same time, the ASD SO/LIC’s role would become that of a service secretary, making the position the Secretary of Special Operations (SSO). Together, the Chef of Special Operations and the Secretary of Special Operations would enhance our national defense capabilities by bringing SOF into the 21st Century,

A Moment for Change

The current national leadership is demonstrating boldness in defense reform. The Trump Administration and its Department of Defense have emphasized innovation, force modernization, and revitalizing deterrence. This is an ideal moment to correct an institutional imbalance and ensure SOF has the voice and authority it needs to shape the future of warfare.

Making the USSOCOM Commander a permanent member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff would recognize the command’s strategic contributions and align the military’s advisory structure with the operational realities of modern conflict. The Chief of Special Operations would not replace existing service chiefs but complement them—ensuring that special operations, irregular warfare, and strategic competition receive the full weight of joint attention.

This is not just a symbolic gesture. It is the next logical step in a historic journey—from OSS to USSOCOM, from Nunn-Cohen to Section 922. It is time for special operations to take their rightful seat at the table.

David Maxwell is a retired US Army Special Forces Colonel who has spent more than 30 years in the Asia Pacific region. He specializes in Northeast Asian Security Affairs and unconventional and political warfare. He is Vice President of the Center for Asia Pacific Strategy and a Senior Fellow at the Global Peace Foundation. He was Associate Director of the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University after retirement. He is on the board of directors of the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea and the OSS Society and is the editor at large for the Small Wars Journal.

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

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