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Quotes of the Day:
“Revolutionaries do not make revolutions. The revolutionaries are those who know when power is lying in the street and then they can pick it up.”
– Hannah Arendt
“If he were allowed contact with foreigners, he would discover that they are creatures similar to himself, and that most of what he has been told about them is lies. The shield world in which he lives could be broken, and their fear, hatred, and self righteousness on which his morale depends might evaporate.”
– George Orwell, 1984.
“Those who don’t know the truth are fools, but those who know the truth and call it a lie are criminals.”
– Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956)
Apologies for consolidation of two days again but the 24 travel time from Mongolia did not give me a chance to get this done on the 26th. I will try to catch up over the weekend.
1. General ‘Razin’ Caine Vaults Into the Top Tier of Trump Advisers
2. Inside ‘Operation Narnia,’ the Daring Attack Israel Feared It Couldn’t Pull Off
3. Did the Attacks on Iran Succeed?
4. China Confirms Breakthrough on Rare-Earth Exports to U.S.
5. Fate of Iran’s Enriched Uranium Is a Mystery
6. Iran’s Foreign Minister Says Nuclear Facilities ‘Seriously Damaged’
7. Israel’s Defense Minister Vows ‘Policy of Enforcement’ Against Iran
8. Classified briefing on impact of Iran strikes leaves senators split
9. After attacks on Iran, new questions about its leader – and a successor
10. Refrain From Rebuilding Iran
11. Army seeks $197 billion FY26 budget with transformation plan at center
12. Pentagon to request $848 billion in delayed base budget release
13. Navy budget seeks to boost modernization of fleet, shipyards
14. Army merging key units in move to reshape ground warfare
15. Billions for new uncrewed systems and drone-killing tech included in Pentagon’s 2026 budget plan
16. Facing manpower shortage, Ukrainian brigade turns to women in first-ever female recruitment drive
17. US Army leader in Europe wants industry to test equipment with Ukrainians
18. Rising Lion, Midnight Hammer, and the Global Response
19. US state department told to terminate nearly all its overseas pro-democracy programs
20. US soldiers drop live grenades from drone in Germany, say tactic will soon be part of normal training
21. How China Wins: Beijing’s Advantages in a Revisionist Order
22. Closing the GAP: Strategic Presence Through Embedded U.S. Military Advisors
23. Army Blocks Air Force’s AI Program Over Data Security Concerns
24. Axis of Opportunists: The cracks in the Sino-Russian Partnership
25. America’s Forgotten War in China: Psychological Warfare Against Imperial Japan’s Chinese Puppet Army
26. The Utility of Military Deception and Information Operations in Modern Warfare
27. Mosquito-sized drone is designed for Chinese spy missions — military robotics lab reveals incredibly tiny bionic flying robots
28. The Spiderweb and the Lion: Subversive Infiltration and U.S. National Security
29. Surprise, Surprise: Misperception, Hubris, and Deception in Today’s Strategic Environment
30. Study shows TikTok may deepen political rifts
31. A Military-Ethics Professor Resigns in Protest
1. General ‘Razin’ Caine Vaults Into the Top Tier of Trump Advisers
General ‘Razin’ Caine Vaults Into the Top Tier of Trump Advisers
The new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has won over Trump following Iran strikes
https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/dan-caine-trump-chairman-joint-chiefs-3a847c49
By Lara Seligman
Follow, Josh Dawsey
Follow, Alexander Ward
Follow and Natalie Andrews
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June 26, 2025 5:19 pm ET
In his short stint as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Dan Caine has emerged as one of the president’s closest advisers. Photo: Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
Key Points
What's This?
- Gen. Dan Caine gained influence with President Trump through the planning and execution of the Iran strike.
- Trump values Caine’s directness, relying on him for facts, unlike some previous military advisers.
- Caine, a former Air Force pilot, faces the challenge of remaining apolitical while advising Trump, who values loyalty.
WASHINGTON—As President Trump and his top aides weighed a military operation against Iran in early June, Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio wanted to ensure that American troops wouldn’t end up entangled indefinitely in another Middle East war.
Gen. Dan Caine, the newly confirmed chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, shared the concern of others in the room about putting Americans in harm’s way. He pulled out a map in the Situation Room and explained how, if ordered to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities, the Pentagon could protect the pilots involved in the mission and defend U.S. troops in the Middle East from any Iranian retaliation.
Caine’s confidence resonated with Trump. When the June 21 attack unfolded largely in line with the options Caine outlined, it magnified his influence with a president whose previous handpicked military advisers had often proved to be obstacles to his goals. In less than a week following the operation, Caine has addressed the public twice and enjoyed lavish praise from the president.
“I have to say, General ‘Razin’ Caine was incredible,” Trump told reporters Wednesday, using Caine’s Air Force nickname and describing his role in the Iran operation. Instead of calling Caine “general” or “Dan,” Trump sometimes calls him “Razin.”
This article is based on interviews with nine U.S. officials, a campaign official and two people close to Vance.
The US military carried out
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As the U.S. deployed decoy B-2 bombers west over the Pacific, military officials quietly sent a “strike package” east over the Atlantic to hit nuclear facilities in Iran. WSJ breaks down Operation Midnight Hammer. Photo: Annie Zhao/The Wall Street Journal
In his short stint in the new job, Caine has emerged as one of Trump’s closest advisers. In the week before and immediately following the strike, the general was in the White House nearly every day. During Saturday night’s operation in the Situation Room, Trump repeatedly turned to Caine for answers to his questions. Caine narrated the attack as it played out, displaying maps and explaining what was going on in real time. He told White House officials that he believed the Iranians never saw them coming, and answered the most questions of any official in the room.
Trump looks to Caine for the straight facts about what is going on, said one senior U.S. official.
“General Caine is detail-oriented and ruthlessly focused on carrying out President Trump’s military objectives,” Vance said in a statement to The Wall Street Journal. “After about two months on the job, General Caine helped oversee a series of incredibly precise airstrikes that resulted in zero American casualties and the obliteration of Iran’s nuclear capabilities. I think the best way to judge his job performance is by its results, and America is safer and stronger thanks to the successful operation he oversaw last weekend.”
The question for Caine now is whether he can navigate the difficult line between being a member of Trump’s inner circle and being an apolitical senior military adviser, the chairman’s usual role. Trump has soured spectacularly on retired Gen. Mark Milley, who served in Caine’s role during the president’s first term. In fact, Trump suggested on social media that Milley should be executed, and President Joe Biden pardoned Milley as one of his final acts in office out of a fear that Trump might try to prosecute the retired general one day.
On Thursday, during a press briefing with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Caine avoided getting pulled into politics or offering much in the way of opinions. Hegseth spent much of his opening statement praising Trump and lambasting the news media for publishing the leak of a preliminary intelligence report’s assessment that the strike didn’t destroy the core components of Iran’s nuclear program.
An image provided by the White House shows President Trump, Caine and senior administration officials in the Situation Room during the strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites. Photo: Daniel Torok/White HouseH/Getty Images
When his turn came to speak, Caine stuck to the technical details. He gave a lengthy account of how the 30,000-pound bunker buster bomb was developed and explained how the Pentagon assessed the damage at the three sites. He veered into more Trumpian rhetoric only a few times, saying the personnel who defended Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar from a retaliatory Iranian missile attack on Monday “crushed it.”
At one point, he was asked whether he had been pressured to massage his assessment to fit a political agenda. He quickly answered “no, I have not, and no, I would not.”
Trump often extolled other generals tapped for senior posts during his first term, but almost all of them eventually fell out of favor, often over Trump’s tendency to trample on long-accepted guard rails for keeping the military out of politics.
Caine “has to help his civilian bosses be the best wartime leaders they can be,” said Peter Feaver, a professor of political science and public policy at Duke University. “Once they have made a decision, he must make sure the military faithfully executes all lawful orders. There is a risk that this will be misperceived as becoming politicized.”
His rise from a largely unknown military officer to Trump’s team began at an air base in western Iraq in 2018. Caine, then the deputy commander of the special operations component of Operation Inherent Resolve, the campaign to defeat ISIS, helped brief Trump, who had flown in for a progress report on the war.
“He was impressed with Gen. Caine,” said one former senior military officer with knowledge of the meeting. “He was clearly impressed with how he communicated with the president, his straightforward approach to answering questions.”
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Caine updated reporters Thursday on the three Iranian nuclear facilities targeted by the U.S. Photo: Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
At a 2024 fundraiser for top donors, Trump recalled meeting Caine. Other military leaders had told him during his first term that he couldn’t defeat ISIS quickly, according to audio of his remarks from last year reviewed by the Journal. According to Trump, Caine said he “could knock the hell out of them,” Trump said.
“I tell you this story because we have a great military, but they’re not allowed to perform because we have idiots that talk. We have stupid people running it,” Trump said.
Caine had spent much of his military career as an F-16 fighter pilot in the Air National Guard, deploying several times to the Middle East. He was assigned to Andrews Air Force Base on Sept. 11, 2001, when his unit was scrambled to protect the skies over Washington. Later, he worked on special operations tactics for stealth aircraft, as well as on highly classified programs at the Pentagon, Joint Special Operations Command and the Central Intelligence Agency.
After returning from his deployment to Iraq, he retired from the Air Force in 2024 as a three-star general, only months before Trump took office for his second term. After Trump returned to office, chief of staff Susie Wiles brought Caine to the White House for meetings for potential military jobs, and he was eventually brought back into the military and then nominated as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In an overnight April vote, the Senate confirmed Caine to his role in a 60-25 vote.
Caine became the first retired officer and the first non-four-star general to serve as the Pentagon’s senior military officer.
Even before he took up the job, he had to fend off accusations that he was too close to Trump.
During his Senate confirmation hearing, he disputed a story Trump likes to tell about their 2018 meeting. According to Trump, Caine wore a MAGA hat and said “I would kill for you, sir.” Caine testified that he thought the president might have been talking about someone else.
“I’ve never worn any political merchandise or said anything to that effect,” he said.
Caine facing the Senate Armed Services Committee during a confirmation hearing in April. Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images
John Bolton, Trump’s national security adviser from 2018 to 2019, said he never saw Caine wear a MAGA hat or say anything political during the 2018 trip to Iraq. “My impression of Caine was he would be a typical nonpolitical general that we would always strive to get [in the Joint Chiefs of Staff role],” Bolton said.
As Trump and his team debated the Iran strike in the White House Situation Room in the days before the strike, Caine outlined multiple military options rather than advocating for a course of action. During the week leading up to the attack Caine was at the White House daily, helping the administration plan its operational security procedures and how to keep the attack from becoming public. He visited the White House again on Monday for a postattack debriefing.
Until then, several aides said, he wasn’t a regular presence, and White House aides said they knew little about his background or life outside the government.
Trump has come to like the general because he is “succinct” and answers his questions quickly without any frills, said one White House official, adding “He doesn’t drone on and on. He gets to the point.”
At a Pentagon press conference hours after the Iran strikes, Hegseth lavished praise on Trump for his “bold and brilliant operation” and declaring Iran’s nuclear ambitions “obliterated.”
Caine, in his blue Air Force uniform, offered a meticulous recounting of the operation and a measured assessment of its success. The Iranian nuclear facilities hit by U.S. bombers “sustained extremely severe damage and destruction,” he said, but noted that a final assessment of the damage would take time.
He didn’t mention Trump once.
Write to Lara Seligman at lara.seligman@wsj.com, Josh Dawsey at Joshua.Dawsey@WSJ.com, Alexander Ward at alex.ward@wsj.com and Natalie Andrews at natalie.andrews@wsj.com
2. Inside ‘Operation Narnia,’ the Daring Attack Israel Feared It Couldn’t Pull Off
Fascinating story. Incredible planning and effort by the Israeis. This will be studied for some time to come. This was presence, patience, and persistence. To get the right people in the right place (networks = presence), the long term training and planning despite the naysayers who voted down operation multiple times (persistence), and waiting for the right time to strike to achieve the best effects (patience). And all warfare is based on deception.
Excerpts:
Still, even some Israeli officials were surprised by how their plans, some of which dated back more than a decade, were able to come together. “When we started to plan this thing in detail, it was very difficult to know that this would work,” said Maj. Gen. Oded Basiuk, head of the Israeli military Operations Directorate and a key architect of the operation.
This account is based on interviews with 18 current and former Israeli and U.S. security officials.
Israel took a huge risk in launching the attack. Either Israel would hit the human targets all at once, or they would scatter. If they did, Iran’s retaliation would’ve been far more severe, and its nuclear ambitions intact. And had President Trump not been inspired by Israel’s early success to bomb Iranian nuclear sites, it isn’t clear how Israel would have achieved its chief aim of the operation. Even now, Iran has been hurt but could rebound more determined than ever to build a nuclear weapon.
...
Over the next several years, Israel came close to launching an air attack several times. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was repeatedly voted down by his ministers and security chiefs who feared starting a war with Iran or angering Washington, which at the time favored a diplomatic approach.
...
Israeli officials also told reporters an attack was imminent, but they would wait to see the final result of a sixth round of nuclear talks between Washington and Tehran scheduled for Sunday.
In reality, generals were already making last minute preparations for the attack.
The key to the deception, said a security official familiar with the planning of the operation, was the idea implanted in the minds of the Iranians that Israel wouldn’t strike without U.S. authorization and participation. As long as the U.S. wasn’t mobilizing its forces and was engaged in negotiations, Israel could threaten to attack and even mobilize its troops in plain sight of Iran without giving away the element of surprise.
In fact, as Israeli aircraft were getting in the air, Trump posted on Truth Social: “We remain committed to a Diplomatic Resolution to the Iran Nuclear Issue!”
Inside ‘Operation Narnia,’ the Daring Attack Israel Feared It Couldn’t Pull Off
Pilots trained for years and intelligence forces built up networks for the multipart offensive in Iran, which included a gambit called ‘Red Wedding’
https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/israel-iran-attack-operation-narnia-a2c38ace?st=EuEdaU&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
By Dov Lieber
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June 26, 2025 9:00 pm ET
At midnight on June 13, Israel’s generals gathered in a bunker beneath Israeli air force headquarters and watched as jets descended on Tehran in an operation they called “Red Wedding.”
Hours later and 1,000 miles away, Iran’s top military commanders were dead—a mass killing much like the famous wedding scene from the show “Game of Thrones.”
The combination of intelligence information and military precision that enabled the attack surprised people around the world. But it wasn’t the only improbable success at the outset of Israel’s 12-day campaign.
Another key part of the initial attack—considered so fantastical by even its planners that it was called “Operation Narnia,” after the fictional C.S. Lewis series—successfully killed nine top Iranian nuclear scientists almost simultaneously at their homes in Tehran.
Pulling off the attacks required elaborate ruses to ensure surprise. At the last moment, they nearly fell apart.
The operations have helped cement Israel as the dominant military power in the region, setting the stage for what Israelis hope will be a dramatic realignment of countries away from Iranian influence and toward friendlier relations with Israel. Top Israeli and U.S. officials say they expect Israel to sign new peace accords following the battle.
Questions remain over whether Israel, which was later aided by a massive bombing strike on Iran’s nuclear sites by the U.S., has really achieved its war aims. There are conflicting reports about the damage done to the nuclear sites, and the jury is out on whether Israel and the U.S. can prevent Iran from rebuilding what has been destroyed.
Still, even some Israeli officials were surprised by how their plans, some of which dated back more than a decade, were able to come together. “When we started to plan this thing in detail, it was very difficult to know that this would work,” said Maj. Gen. Oded Basiuk, head of the Israeli military Operations Directorate and a key architect of the operation.
This account is based on interviews with 18 current and former Israeli and U.S. security officials.
Israel took a huge risk in launching the attack. Either Israel would hit the human targets all at once, or they would scatter. If they did, Iran’s retaliation would’ve been far more severe, and its nuclear ambitions intact. And had President Trump not been inspired by Israel’s early success to bomb Iranian nuclear sites, it isn’t clear how Israel would have achieved its chief aim of the operation. Even now, Iran has been hurt but could rebound more determined than ever to build a nuclear weapon.
A photo from Iranian official media showing smoke from a site targeted by Israel in Tehran. Photo: IRGC/SEPAH NEWS/AFP/Getty Images
Damage from Israeli strikes in Tehran. Photo: Majid Saeedi/Getty Images
Long road
The operation’s origins stretch back to the mid-1990s, when Israeli intelligence first identified what it saw as nascent Iranian attempts to build a nuclear weapons program.
Israeli intelligence began building an extensive network of agents inside Iran to facilitate a sabotage campaign, which included causing explosions twice at one of Iran’s main enrichment sites and assassinating some scientists. But Israeli officials ultimately determined those activities weren’t enough, and that they would eventually need to destroy Iran’s nuclear program, and the Iranian nuclear brain trust, from the air.
Doing so would be enormously difficult. The sites Israel would need to hit were more than 1,000 miles from home.
Pilots would have to learn how to fly in formations of six to 10 aircraft around a single tanker plane, taking turns to refuel—multiple times—during the journey. They’d also have to learn how to position their planes perfectly so that their missiles, when dropped, would land within 15 to 20 seconds of each other for maximum effectiveness.
Such training wasn’t possible in a country as small as Israel, running just 290 miles north-to-south.
In 2008, in what was called Operation Glorious Spartan, more than 100 Israeli F-15s and F-16s flew more than 1,000 miles to Greece, testing their ability to fly far enough to hit Iran’s nuclear facilities. Such exercises would become more frequent.
Over the next several years, Israel came close to launching an air attack several times. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was repeatedly voted down by his ministers and security chiefs who feared starting a war with Iran or angering Washington, which at the time favored a diplomatic approach.
Israeli military planners kept gaming out an attack, including a multifront war with Iranian proxies Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon. There was also the puzzle of flying over Syria, then an enemy state under Iranian influence.
After Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attacks, Israel has spent the past nearly two years decimating Hamas. It has also severely weakened Hezbollah, whose support had helped prop up Syria’s regime. Opposition forces then toppled Syria’s government, putting in place an anti-Iran government, which cleared the way for Israeli planes to cross the country’s airspace unimpeded.
By that time, Israeli spy networks inside Iran were extensive enough to track the movement of its military leaders and set up drone bases inside the country that could play a crucial role in knocking out Iran’s air defense systems during the attack.
Israel was able to further test its long-range fighter jet capability when it targeted Houthi rebels in Yemen over the past year. It also took out Tehran’s most advanced air defense systems, Russian S-300s, in attacks in April and October 2024.
Those attacks by Israel came in response to large missile barrages from Iran, which were largely repelled by Israeli air defense along with help from the U.S. and other allies. The tit-for-tats with Iran gave Israel the confidence it could go head-to-head with its fellow regional superpower.
With so many pieces in place, plans for an attack intensified.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke to Congress in 1996 about the dangers of Iran gaining a nuclear weapon. Photo: Travis HEYING/AFP/Getty Images
Operation Narnia
Adding to the urgency was a sense in Israel that Iran had begun to enrich uranium to such levels that it would be mere months away from building a bomb if it wanted to.
Fearing it had already lost the battle to suppress Iran’s uranium enrichment, Israel launched an operation to kill the Iranian scientists who could help their country use that material to build a nuclear weapon, even if Israeli attacks damaged or destroyed its nuclear sites—the far-fetched mission Operation Narnia.
In November 2024, the military gathered 120 intelligence and air force officials together to decide who and what would be in their crosshairs when fighting began.
In the end, the conference drew up a list of over 250 targets, including the scientists the Israelis wanted to kill, nuclear sites, Iranian missile launchers and military officials.
Another priority was figuring out how to gain air superiority over Iran from the get-go. This would pave the way for Israeli jets to continue pounding the long list of targets for the next 12 days. Israeli officials cross-referenced thousands of intelligence sources to map out Iran’s air defense systems.
The Mossad was brought in to aid that effort. Its agents spent months smuggling in parts for hundreds of quadcopter drones rigged with explosives—in suitcases, trucks and shipping containers—as well as munitions that could be fired remotely from unmanned platforms. Small teams armed with the equipment set up near Iran’s air-defense emplacements and missile launch sites, ready to take out the defense systems once Israel launched its attack.
Israel also launched larger drones from its own territory in the attack. The long-distance capabilities of some of the drones were tested for the first time the night before the attack, according to a person familiar with the matter.
An Iranian memorial to those killed in Israeli strikes. Photo: AFP/Getty Images
A satellite image showed damage at Iran’s Ghadir site. Photo: Maxar/AFP/Getty Images
Israeli ruses
Netanyahu and his military advisers made the final decision on June 9 to attack four days later, according to an Israeli security official.
Netanyahu’s team knew they would have to disguise their plans to make sure the Iranians didn’t take precautionary actions, such as dispersing their scientists and military leaders.
Netanyahu’s office announced he would be taking off work soon for a holiday weekend, followed by the wedding of his eldest son, Avner, on Monday, June 16.
None of the attendees—including Avner or Netanyahu’s wife, Sarah—knew the prime minister was planning to delay the wedding, the prime minister later said. He carried on as normal, so as to not tip off the Iranians.
Meanwhile, Israeli officials were leaking reports to the media suggesting a split between Netanyahu and President Trump over whether to launch an attack. The leaks included details of a phone call between Netanyahu and Trump four days before the operation began, in which Trump told the Israeli leader he wanted diplomacy to run its course before turning to military options.
The day of the attacks, Trump told reporters that the U.S. and Iran were “fairly close to an agreement” and that he didn’t want the Israelis “going in.”
Israeli officials also told reporters an attack was imminent, but they would wait to see the final result of a sixth round of nuclear talks between Washington and Tehran scheduled for Sunday.
In reality, generals were already making last minute preparations for the attack.
The key to the deception, said a security official familiar with the planning of the operation, was the idea implanted in the minds of the Iranians that Israel wouldn’t strike without U.S. authorization and participation. As long as the U.S. wasn’t mobilizing its forces and was engaged in negotiations, Israel could threaten to attack and even mobilize its troops in plain sight of Iran without giving away the element of surprise.
In fact, as Israeli aircraft were getting in the air, Trump posted on Truth Social: “We remain committed to a Diplomatic Resolution to the Iran Nuclear Issue!”
Netanyahu met with President Trump in the Oval Office in April. Photo: saul loeb/AFP/Getty images
Doomed gathering
A key part of the final plan was to take out the leadership of Iran’s armed forces all at once—the effort known as Red Wedding. The move would cut off any immediate retaliation, while buying time for Israeli fighter jets and drones to take out Iranian missile launchers, thereby diminishing Iran’s inevitable response.
As the Israeli aircraft approached, however, a problem surfaced. The leadership of the Iranian air force was suddenly on the move.
Israeli officials in their bunker began to sweat. It was possible the whole plan was unraveling and that the Iranians were onto them.
But to the amazement of the Israeli high command, rather than scattering, the Iranian air force leaders gathered together in one place—sealing their fate. Israeli missiles started to fly.
Explosions also shattered the scientists’ homes, killing nine in near-simultaneous attacks to prevent them from going into hiding. Despite its long odds, Operation Narnia was succeeding.
The missiles then also hit radar stations, antiaircraft batteries and Iranian surface-to-surface missiles. Soon Israeli intelligence was able to confirm that the human targets whose names it had collected back in November had nearly all been killed.
In around four hours, the opening operation was over.
In the following days, Israeli aircraft pounded Iranian nuclear and ballistic missile production sites and launchers, while also hunting down Iranian military leaders and nuclear scientists. A cease-fire was declared on Tuesday.
Write to Dov Lieber at dov.lieber@wsj.com
3. Did the Attacks on Iran Succeed?
Per the first excerpted paragraph below on reliance on intelligence: Did these operations by Israel and the US compromise some of much of the intelligence capabilities that are required to detect and track Iran's nuclear program? Everything is a trade off.
Excerpts:
To counter such risks, Israel and the United States will be even more reliant on their intelligence apparatus to detect and track Iran’s work. Their spy agencies may be up to the task; Israel, in particular, has demonstrated that it has deeply penetrated the Iranian nuclear enterprise. But after this conflict, with a heightened sense of insecurity, Iran’s counterintelligence operatives will be on particularly high alert.
Military action may have ultimately been necessary to deal with Iran’s nuclear program. But it always carried risks and complications. Having used force, the United States must now be committed to making sure that it matches the risks it accepted with a commitment to denying Iran a nuclear weapon.
Trump, however, may choose to disregard any warnings of an Iranian weapon. His administration has spent the last few days casting aspersions on any suggestion that Iran’s nuclear program suffered less than total devastation, and he may thus not want to acknowledge, publicly or privately, any warnings to the contrary. Whatever comes next, the world is entering a very uncertain and dangerous phase when it comes to Iran’s nuclear program.
Did the Attacks on Iran Succeed?
Foreign Affairs · by More by Richard Nephew · June 26, 2025
Israel and America Bought Themselves Time, but Will Pay in Other Ways
June 26, 2025
Airstrike craters on the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Facility near Qom, Iran, June 2025 Maxar Technologies / Handout / Reuters
RICHARD NEPHEW is Senior Research Scholar at Columbia University at the Center on Global Energy Policy and a Bernstein Adjunct Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He served as Deputy Special Envoy for Iran during the Biden administration and on the National Security Council and in the State Department during the Obama administration.
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On June 24, Iran, Israel, and the United States agreed to a cease-fire, putting a halt to nearly two weeks of war. During the conflict, Israel hit dozens of confirmed or suspected Iranian nuclear targets. When the United States joined in, it dropped bunker-busting bombs on Fordow, a nuclear site that was hard for the Israelis to reach, and attacked two other facilities. Now, as the dust settles, analysts must begin determining what the strikes accomplished—and whether they were worth the consequences.
It is still too soon to say exactly how much Operations Rising Lion and Midnight Hammer, as the Israelis and Americans named their respective campaigns, set back Iran’s nuclear program. A leaked preliminary U.S. intelligence report estimates the strikes added just a few months to Iran’s breakout time. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and U.S. President Donald Trump, meanwhile, say the damage was more sweeping. The official assessments released thus far from Israel and the United States generally support the idea that the strikes set back Iran significantly, but they focus on general damage and offer little specificity about the effect on Iran’s breakout time. In truth, even Iran probably does not understand the full scale of the damage to its enterprise, and its leaders are still be deciding what to do next.
But experts can start to catalogue the tangible results. They know that the attacks dealt serious damage to Iran’s enrichment facilities and killed many top scientists. They know that important equipment was blown apart and buried. But Iran may still have much of what it needs to make a weapon, including highly enriched uranium, either because it is safely in storage or because it can be salvaged from the rubble. The Iranian government will also now make its efforts more opaque than ever, even if it engages in diplomacy. Iran’s new timeline may therefore vary wildly. The country may never produce a weapon. Or it could produce one very quickly.
WHAT IRAN LOST
Whatever the effect on Tehran’s breakout time, this much is clear: Iran’s nuclear program was badly mauled. The Esfahan nuclear research center, the Natanz Fuel Enrichment Plant and its associated buildings, and the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant—Iran’s three main nuclear sites—were all seriously damaged. Entire parts of Esfahan and Natanz were outright destroyed. Iran’s Arak reactor was destroyed and, with it, any near-term chance that Iran could produce weapons-grade plutonium. The Israelis also attacked several other research and development sites throughout Iran, including parts of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran and of the Iranian military’s Organization of Defensive Innovation, which analysts suspect is responsible for nuclear weapons-related research and development. The deaths of at least a dozen Iranian scientists in the Israeli strikes have cost Iran decades of practical knowledge useful to building nuclear weapons. Israeli attacks targeting Iran’s missile program may hinder the country’s ability to develop a nuclear weapon that could fit on a warhead.
Such damage, however, is to be expected. When Israel and the United States contemplated military action in the past, they never doubted they could hit every site they tried to reach. By ensuring the existence of munitions that could hit Iran’s most important nuclear sites and conducting an enormous amount of practice and planning, the countries entered the conflict with a high degree of confidence. The ultimate attacks were still operationally impressive and technically complex, a credit to the professionalism of the armed services. But such tactical success does not answer open questions about what the bombings achieved, and thus how long it could take for Iran to go nuclear.
The biggest issue is whether Iran’s stockpile of 60 percent highly enriched uranium still exists and is accessible. Current reports seem to suggest that the material is buried at Fordow and Esfahan, beneath the rubble created by U.S. and Israeli strikes. But the Iranians placed much of their uranium deep underground precisely to protect it from an American attack, and there are reports that Iran itself sealed some of the tunnel entrances at Esfahan to shield it from bombings. If part of this stockpile remains intact, Iran need only dig it out for it to be available as feedstock. The country possesses both shovels and bulldozers.
Iran’s nuclear program was badly mauled.
Analysts also do not know whether Iran still has centrifuges that can enrich uranium to weapons grade. Similarly, experts are not certain that Iran retains the equipment necessary to turn enriched uranium into a weapon. Tehran, after all, has worked to obscure how much such equipment it has. After the United States exited the 2015 nuclear deal, or the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, Iran began producing advanced centrifuge components. In 2021, Tehran moved the production of these components underground, at Natanz, and stopped providing public information about just how many of them it was making. On June 13, the day the Israeli attacks began, Iran had been poised to announce the inauguration of a new enrichment site that the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi, said would be at Esfahan. Grossi, however, has yet to provide more precise information, and may not know more.
This site could be in the tunnels where Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile was largely being stored. But even then, experts do not know whether these tunnels have been destroyed or what is in them has been rendered useless. The attacks on other parts of Esfahan almost certainly destroyed equipment that could convert weapons-grade uranium into arms components. But Iran may have additional such gear stored elsewhere. The country’s failure to answer questions about its past weapons-related uranium work was one of the reasons why the IAEA formally found Iran to be in breach of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) on June 12.
Iran, then, could still have short-term breakout options. It might still have enough uranium and weapons-making equipment. The same is true when it comes to expertise: there are still Iranian nuclear scientists who—so far as anyone knows—are alive, well, and working. If Iran’s bomb project is a marathon carried out largely by top experts, the program may be seriously hindered by the deaths of the last two weeks. But if, instead, it is a relay, with scientists working closely together and sharing information, knowledge, and practical skills, the lost expertise may be far less significant. The people who are left could have or quickly acquire all the knowledge they need.
COLLATERAL DAMAGE
Even in the best-case scenario, where Washington and Israel have set Tehran back by many years, the military campaign could prove costly to U.S. efforts with Iran in other ways. Iran’s parliament, for example, just passed legislation that will greatly reduce its cooperation with the IAEA. That body’s inspectors may not be perfect, and their access to Iran’s program has been incomplete: the Fordow facility, for example, was constructed in Iran for many years before it was disclosed to the agency and subject to inspections. But the IAEA has been of great value nonetheless. The organization alerted the world when Iran’s uranium conversion facility restarted in August 2005 and when Iran began operating its first centrifuges underground at Natanz. Now, the IAEA may lose its access to the country.
The fallout would be serious. In addition to detecting important breakthroughs, IAEA inspectors provided a transparent and trusted check on foreign intelligence findings about Iran’s nuclear program. When the agency provided information on Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile, for instance, independent experts were able to calculate how much nuclear weapons material Tehran had, showing the world that Washington’s claims were not conspiracy theories. Intelligence services also used the IAEA’s public reporting to check their own assessments, giving them greater confidence that they understood Iran’s nuclear program. Perhaps most importantly, the body’s inspectors were able to provide some confidence to other countries that Iran had not produced nuclear weapons. In other words, the IAEA served its core function: providing the transparency necessary to allow for civil nuclear energy programs to proceed.
Iran may also stop adhering to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which, among other things, commits signatories to not pursuing nuclear weapons and subjects them to IAEA verification in exchange for access to nuclear technology. Although some analysts argue that the NPT was already irrelevant to Iran, given Tehran’s extensive nuclear projects over the years, the country’s violations of the treaty provided the legal justification necessary for the UN Security Council’s Iran sanctions. The NPT also provides a basis for demanding that Iran be transparent about its nuclear program and the requirement that it forswear nuclear weapons. But Tehran can withdraw from the treaty, and it now might. If so, it can make a compelling argument for why it did so. Without the NPT, Iran’s only legal barrier to developing a bomb will be Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s fatwa against it.
Iran might still have enough uranium and weapons-making equipment.
The risks from Israel’s and Washington’s strikes aren’t merely political. If Iran reconstitutes its nuclear program, it will probably do so in more hardened spaces. After all, every time aspects of its nuclear program have been discovered or attacked in the past, Tehran took steps to protect them. It moved its centrifuge component workshops underground in 2021 after they were attacked by drones. (The New York Times and other media outlets reported that Israel was behind this strike; the Israeli government neither confirmed nor denied responsibility.) As the country’s enriched uranium stock came under threat, it placed it inside tunnels. The U.S. Air Force’s Massive Ordnance Penetrator bomb can destroy deeply buried bunkers, but Iran still benefits from keeping its program beneath the earth, especially because Washington may only have a few such bombs left after the attack on Fordow. And open-source reporting suggests Tehran may have moved material out of Fordow before the United States launched its bombings. Moreover, if U.S. and Israeli strikes did not completely destroy all of Iran’s nuclear material and equipment, Iran will now have an opportunity during recovery operations to divert some of the equipment and material that was once under IAEA monitoring while claiming it was destroyed in the attacks. This should worry anyone concerned about a potential Iranian nuclear rebuild.
Finally, the United States may have lost the opportunity to deal with the nuclear program diplomatically. Tehran may still decide to hold talks and even enter into a new deal, but it probably would not trust it: the United States was in the middle of negotiating a new nuclear agreement when Israel, its ally, began its strikes. In fact, analysts do not even understand the full terms of the cease-fire Iran and Israel have reached, including what kind of activities would constitute a breach. It is possible, for example, that Iranian recovery operations—like sending a bulldozer to reopen Fordow—would be a violation. If so, the United States and Israel might attack Fordow again and reignite the conflict. Trump has signaled that there will be no such need because the Iranian program is, in his words, “totally obliterated.” But it probably isn’t.
BRACE FOR IMPACT
The Israeli-U.S. attacks dealt a blow to Iran’s nuclear ambitions, at least in the near term. But they are clearly not the end of the story. As a result, American policymakers must be prepared for a situation in which Iran can and does make a dash for a weapon.
One plausible near-term scenario is that Iran gathers together the remains of its uranium and further enriches it to weapons-usable levels in a new, hardened location in tunnels at Esfahan or Natanz. If Iran possesses the operational equipment needed to do so—of which it does not need much—the country could produce weapons-usable uranium metal in very short order. It could shape that material into the components necessary for a nuclear device. Iran could then package that material with high explosives, giving it a rudimentary bomb for testing purposes at the least.
With a cease-fire in place, Iran could do all this quietly and slowly, especially if it pays no price for reconstruction or recovery. Tehran might take its time building a bomb until it has the process down perfectly. If the cease-fire appeared shaky, it could opt to move more quickly. Even if Iran decides not to move toward nuclear weapons right now, it will almost certainly reconstruct its program in more protected spaces, away from the prying eyes of the IAEA.
Trump may choose to disregard any warnings of an Iranian weapon.
To counter such risks, Israel and the United States will be even more reliant on their intelligence apparatus to detect and track Iran’s work. Their spy agencies may be up to the task; Israel, in particular, has demonstrated that it has deeply penetrated the Iranian nuclear enterprise. But after this conflict, with a heightened sense of insecurity, Iran’s counterintelligence operatives will be on particularly high alert.
Military action may have ultimately been necessary to deal with Iran’s nuclear program. But it always carried risks and complications. Having used force, the United States must now be committed to making sure that it matches the risks it accepted with a commitment to denying Iran a nuclear weapon.
Trump, however, may choose to disregard any warnings of an Iranian weapon. His administration has spent the last few days casting aspersions on any suggestion that Iran’s nuclear program suffered less than total devastation, and he may thus not want to acknowledge, publicly or privately, any warnings to the contrary. Whatever comes next, the world is entering a very uncertain and dangerous phase when it comes to Iran’s nuclear program.
RICHARD NEPHEW is Senior Research Scholar at Columbia University at the Center on Global Energy Policy and a Bernstein Adjunct Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He served as Deputy Special Envoy for Iran during the Biden administration and on the National Security Council and in the State Department during the Obama administration.
Foreign Affairs · by More by Richard Nephew · June 26, 2025
4. China Confirms Breakthrough on Rare-Earth Exports to U.S.
Excerpts:
China’s Commerce Ministry, in a written statement carried by state media, appeared to confirm details of a deal alluded to by President Trump hours earlier, with Beijing promising to “review and approve eligible export applications for controlled items in accordance with the law.”
The Chinese statement was presented as a response to an unnamed reporter’s question that specifically asked about Chinese exports of rare earths, and also referenced a truce agreed to between the two sides in Geneva in May, at which the issue of rare-earths was a focal point.
As part of a follow-up meeting in London to reaffirm the terms of the Geneva meeting, China also said the U.S. would lift a series of measures imposed against it, without providing details.
During an event at the White House on Thursday, Trump said the U.S. had “just signed” a deal with China, though he didn’t mention rare earths. U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick later said in a television interview on Thursday that the agreement had been signed two days earlier.
China Confirms Breakthrough on Rare-Earth Exports to U.S.
Announcement offers hope of a reprieve on shortages that have hit American industry, and comes after Trump said he signed a deal with China
https://www.wsj.com/world/asia/china-to-approve-exports-of-controlled-items-to-u-s-b2f37389
By Brian Spegele
Follow
Updated June 27, 2025 6:17 am ET
Progress on the issue of rare earths would likely pave the way for deeper U.S.-China economic negotiations. Photo: china stringer network/Reuters
Key Points
What's This?
- China pledged to approve applications for rare-earth exports to the U.S., potentially easing trade-negotiation tensions.
- The agreement follows a truce in Geneva, where rare earths were a focal point, and a follow-up meeting in London.
- Significant progress on the issue of rare earths would likely pave the way for deeper economic negotiations.
BEIJING—China on Friday pledged to approve export applications for rare earths to the U.S., potentially easing a major irritant in the countries’ trade negotiations that has also become a source of deepening concern for American manufacturers.
China’s Commerce Ministry, in a written statement carried by state media, appeared to confirm details of a deal alluded to by President Trump hours earlier, with Beijing promising to “review and approve eligible export applications for controlled items in accordance with the law.”
The Chinese statement was presented as a response to an unnamed reporter’s question that specifically asked about Chinese exports of rare earths, and also referenced a truce agreed to between the two sides in Geneva in May, at which the issue of rare-earths was a focal point.
As part of a follow-up meeting in London to reaffirm the terms of the Geneva meeting, China also said the U.S. would lift a series of measures imposed against it, without providing details.
During an event at the White House on Thursday, Trump said the U.S. had “just signed” a deal with China, though he didn’t mention rare earths. U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick later said in a television interview on Thursday that the agreement had been signed two days earlier.
Significant progress on the issue of rare earths would likely pave the way for deeper economic negotiations between the U.S. and China, after they had agreed in May to temporarily lower tit-for-tat tariffs imposed on each other.
As of only a few weeks ago, largely as a result of the U.S. accusing China of slow-walking rare-earth export approvals, the Geneva truce in mid-May appeared to be at risk of falling apart, a prospect that could roil markets and the global economy.
For now, that agreement remains in place, though whether the U.S. and China can reach a broader deal over trade imbalances and other issues in their economic relationship remains to be seen. A lack of political trust between the countries has increasingly clouded their interactions, with each side at times complaining the other has been negotiating in bad faith.
Much will depend on how China implements its latest pledge, and whether export approvals come quickly enough for U.S. companies desperate to source rare-earth magnets that are used in everything from cars to jet fighters. China controls 90% of the world’s most powerful rare-earth magnets, making them a potent tool for Beijing as it negotiates against the U.S.
A Ford Motor executive told reporters this week that the carmaker was still struggling to get rare-earth metals essential for its production of electric vehicles. Ford in May stopped production at a vehicle factory in the Chicago area because of a magnet shortage.
Beyond getting the U.S. to lower tariffs on Chinese goods, a priority for Beijing is to convince the U.S. to ease restrictions on U.S. sales to Chinese companies of key technologies such as advanced semiconductors used in the development of artificial intelligence.
China’s Commerce Ministry had said this week that it had been accelerating the review of rare-earth export license applications and had approved “a certain number,” without providing more detail. It is unclear whether Friday’s statement reflected any further loosening of Beijing’s rare earth restrictions.
In recent weeks, China has been asking companies in its rare-earth industry to supply lists of employees with technical expertise and moved to restrict their overseas travel, in a sign of growing concern about protecting a key source of leverage over the U.S.-led West.
The U.S., meanwhile, says it is determined to use negotiations with China to stop the flow of chemicals for making fentanyl from China to Mexican cartels.
On that front, the U.S. has seen incremental progress from China recently, with Beijing announcing that it would begin to regulate two additional fentanyl precursors from late next month. China’s announcement followed a meeting last week between U.S. Ambassador David Perdue and China’s minister of public security, Wang Xiaohong, who said China was willing to work with the U.S. to strengthen cooperation in areas including drug control.
Grace Zhu contributed to this article.
Write to Brian Spegele at Brian.Spegele@wsj.com
5. Fate of Iran’s Enriched Uranium Is a Mystery
Intelligence is not evidence. And it is not an exact science. And there are no "slam dunks" as we have learned.
That said, in a competitive geopolitical strategic environment (where adversaries do everything they can to hide information) we must depend on it.
Fate of Iran’s Enriched Uranium Is a Mystery
U.S. intelligence agencies had long assessed that, faced with the possibility of an attack on its nuclear facilities, Iran would try to move its stockpile.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/26/us/politics/iran-nuclear-program-uranium.html
Some of the uranium was believed to be held at the Natanz enrichment facility, seen here in 2007.Credit...Hasan Sarbakhshian/Associated Press
By Julian E. Barnes and David E. Sanger
Julian E. Barnes reported from Washington, and David E. Sanger from The Hague.
June 26, 2025
Leer en español
After days of debate over how severely U.S. strikes had damaged three nuclear facilities in Iran, the fate of the country’s stockpile of enriched uranium remains a bigger mystery.
Over the years, as Iran built up its underground nuclear facilities and centrifuges, it amassed a large, 880-pound stockpile of uranium enriched to 60 percent, near bomb grade.
While U.S. intelligence agencies had assessed that Iran had not decided whether to make a bomb, they noted that Iran was only a few steps away from being able to turn its uranium into a weapon given the size of that stockpile.
There is little doubt that Iran’s entire nuclear program was substantially diminished by U.S. and Israeli strikes, and that it would struggle to quickly produce additional nuclear fuel.
But U.S. intelligence agencies had long assessed that, faced with the possibility of an attack on its nuclear facilities, Iran would try to move its stockpile of enriched uranium, either to keep as leverage in diplomatic negotiations or to use in a race to build a bomb.
In an interview on Sunday, Vice President JD Vance said U.S. officials wanted to talk to Iran about the stockpile. But on Thursday, the Trump administration pushed back on the idea that Iran had been able to move its enriched uranium before the U.S. strike.
President Trump suggested that the stockpile was destroyed or buried by the bombing of the site at Fordo. “Nothing was taken out of facility,” Mr. Trump posted on his social media site. “Would take too long, too dangerous, and very heavy and hard to move!”
And Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said that American intelligence agencies were watching the Iranian nuclear sites closely, “and there was no indication to the United States that any of that enriched uranium was moved prior to the strike.”
American officials say the intelligence collected so far on the stockpile is contradictory.
U.S. intelligence collected on Iranian officials shows they have different understandings of the stockpile’s fate, American officials said.
And parts of the nuclear facility at Natanz where some of the uranium was believed to be held were damaged, but not destroyed, by either the U.S. or Israeli attacks, officials said.
As a result, the intelligence community has not yet made a firm conclusion on how much the Iranians have retained, according to people briefed on the findings.
After a classified Senate briefing on Thursday, Republican lawmakers emphasized that destroying or seizing the stockpile was not part of the U.S. military mission. Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said the sites were severely damaged but that he “didn’t want people to think the problem is over, because it’s not.”
“I don’t know where the 900 pounds of enriched uranium exists, but it wasn't part of the target set for several years,” Mr. Graham told reporters. “They are obliterated today but they can reconstitute.”
There is confusion also about where the stockpile was originally. Mr. Trump has suggested it was at Fordo. Others have said some was at Natanz. The International Atomic Energy Agency has said the majority of the stockpile was at Isfahan, where Iran had reactors and other nuclear facilities that used the uranium. And some experts have suggested Iran has dispersed the stockpile.
The director general of the I.A.E.A said the Iranians told his inspectors that they planned to move the material if they thought it was under threat. It was stored in containers small enough, he said, to fit into “the trunk of an ordinary car.”
And in the days before the U.S. cruise missile attack on Isfahan, there was evidence of vehicles moving something into or out of those labs. I.A.E.A. officials say that since that stockpile of 60 percent enriched uranium was Iran’s most prized national possession, it would have been a breach of common sense to leave it all in one place.
Rafael Mariano Grossi, the I.A.E.A. director general, has held fast to his view that a good deal of that near-bomb-grade fuel remains in Iranian control. “I don’t know if they moved all of it,” he said this week. “But the evidence points to their moving out a lot of it.”
European officials said on Thursday that their preliminary assessments were also that Iran had moved the stockpile, though officials cautioned that those were early conclusions and that the exact location of the uranium was uncertain.
Other Western officials confirmed the assessment of top American intelligence officials on Wednesday that it could be years before those facilities are fully usable again. Crucially, the centrifuges at Fordo are unlikely to be operable, making it more difficult to purify its stockpile further, according to current and former officials.
In addition to damage to the centrifuges, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, speaking at the NATO summit in The Hague on Wednesday, said the destruction of the “conversion facility” in Isfahan had damaged Iran’s ability to move to a weapon. The facility converts enriched uranium gas into solid materials, and ultimately a metal that can be used to fabricate a nuclear bomb or a warhead.
But while Iran’s overall nuclear program, and ability to produce new fuel, has probably been set back significantly, how quickly the country could produce a bomb is another question.
In nearly two weeks of fighting, Israel killed a number of Iranian nuclear scientists. But if enough have survived, Iran could use a hidden stockpile to race toward a weapon. That would mean Iran’s ability to make a crude bomb was set back only months, even if its larger program suffered graver damage.
Representative Jim Himes of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said the question of the stockpile was critical.
“Obliterating the sites means nothing if the Iranians moved enough 60% uranium, centrifuges and other weaponization tools to build a bomb at some possibly unknown location,” he wrote on social media. “The regime may be vile, but they are not stupid, and this stuff can be relatively easily relocated.
Jonathan Swan contributed reporting from Washington.
Julian E. Barnes covers the U.S. intelligence agencies and international security matters for The Times. He has written about security issues for more than two decades.
David E. Sanger covers the Trump administration and a range of national security issues. He has been a Times journalist for more than four decades and has written four books on foreign policy and national security challenges.
6. Iran’s Foreign Minister Says Nuclear Facilities ‘Seriously Damaged’
Iran’s Foreign Minister Says Nuclear Facilities ‘Seriously Damaged’
The assessment came hours after the country’s supreme leader had downplayed the damage the U.S. strikes had caused.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/26/world/middleeast/iran-foreign-minister-nuclear-facilities-seriously-damaged.html
Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, speaking to the media after an Iran-European Union nuclear meeting in Geneva last week.Credit...Martial Trezzini/Keystone, via Associated Press
By Farnaz Fassihi
June 26, 2025
Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said on Thursday that the country’s nuclear facilities had sustained “significant and serious damages,” the first official acknowledgment of the extent of the damages caused by U.S. strikes on three nuclear sites.
The Atomic Energy Organization of Iran was still “surveilling the damages and losses,” Mr. Araghchi said in an interview with Iran’s state television. But, he added, “I have to say, the losses have not been small, and our facilities have been seriously damaged.”
That assessment painted a much grimmer picture than that laid out earlier on Thursday by Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in his first public statement since the U.S. attack.
In a prerecorded video, Mr. Khamenei said that the attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities “were unable to do anything important,” adding that President Trump’s claims that the strikes “obliterated” the nuclear sites were “exaggerated.”
Mr. Araghchi also suggested Iran might stop cooperating with the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, and threw into question whether inspectors from the agency would be allowed to access the country’s nuclear sites. He said Iran would not welcome a visit by the agency’s director, Rafael Grossi, at this time.
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On Thursday, Iran’s Guardian Council, which has veto power over legislation in the country, approved a bill passed by hard-liners in Parliament that would effectively ban all cooperation with the I.A.E.A. in retaliation for the bombing by the United States of the Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan nuclear facilities over the weekend.
While President Masoud Pezeshkian, a moderate, must still decide whether to enact the law, Mr. Araghchi, his foreign minister, said the government would fully cooperate with the law. “Without a doubt, we are obliged to enforce this law,” Mr. Araghchi said in the hourlong televised interview. From now on, he added, Iran’s “relationship with the agency will take a different shape.”
Days after the strikes, several key questions about Iran’s nuclear program remain: What happened to the country’s 400 kilograms, or about 880 pounds, of enriched uranium, which would provide enough nuclear fuel for 10 bombs should Iran decide to weaponize it? Also unanswered: Whether any of Iran’s advanced centrifuges survived the strikes.
These are questions that U.N. inspectors could more definitively answer if they were allowed into the sites. They would also be able to confirm whether Iran was repairing its facilities and reviving its nuclear program, as its officials have said they intend to do.
Analysts say that Iran has little leverage left in any nuclear negotiations with the West, given the setbacks wrought by the U.S. strikes and the days of Israeli attacks on Iranian nuclear infrastructure and assassination of several top nuclear scientists. So Tehran may be trying to use cooperation with the I.A.E.A. as a negotiating card. It also serves Iran, experts say, to keep everyone guessing on its nuclear capabilities in the aftermath of the attacks.
“Iran wants to keep everything in the dark, to make sure they can play the diplomatic game of poker about the extent of the damages to the sites and the fate of the pile of enriched uranium,” said Sina Azodi, an expert on Iran’s nuclear program and an assistant professor of Middle East Politics at George Washington University. “Nobody knows exactly what is going on, there are many conflicting reports, and Iran is using the confusion to its benefit.”
Mr. Trump and Steve Witkoff, his special envoy to the Middle East who was leading talks with Iran, have said that Tehran and Washington would soon return to the negotiating table. But Mr. Araghchi said on Thursday that no such plans had been confirmed.
“Whether or not we return to diplomacy with the United States is now under consideration and will depend on our national interests,” Mr. Araghchi said, adding that no agreement had yet been reached with the United States to resume them.
“Going through a war changes many realities,” Mr. Araghchi said. “The situation before and after the war is very different, and diplomacy must adjust itself to this new reality.”
Farnaz Fassihi is the United Nations bureau chief for The Times, leading coverage of the organization. She also covers Iran and has written about conflict in the Middle East for 15 years.
7. Israel’s Defense Minister Vows ‘Policy of Enforcement’ Against Iran
Sounds like Israel means that it will never again allow Iran's nuclear program to proges as far as it did.
Should this deter Iran? Israel has demonstrated it has exquisite capabilities and the will to employ them.
Israel’s Defense Minister Vows ‘Policy of Enforcement’ Against Iran
The minister, Israel Katz, said Israel would strike if Iran seeks to develop long-range missiles or advance its nuclear program, despite a truce.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/27/world/europe/israel-iran-enforcement-policy.html
A woman in Tehran crying near her home, which was hit by an Israeli airstrike this week.Credit...Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times
By Erika Solomon and Johnatan Reiss
June 27, 2025,
8:14 a.m. ET
Israel’s defense minister said he would pursue a “policy of enforcement” against Iran despite a cease-fire, aiming to prevent Tehran from rebuilding its air power, advancing nuclear projects or developing “threatening long-range missiles.”
The comments by Defense Minister Israel Katz to local news channels on Thursday evening suggested that Israel was contemplating more strikes on Iran even after President Trump announced a truce between the two countries on Tuesday.
Iran’s foreign minister warned on Thursday night that his country would respond to anything it considered a breach of the cease-fire.
Mr. Katz, speaking to Israel’s Channel 12, said the Israeli military was still finalizing what he called an “enforcement policy” with Iran.
“We have the determination to implement it: preserving aerial superiority, preventing the advancement of nuclear projects and preventing the advancement of threatening long-range missiles,” he said.
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Such a wide-ranging Israeli interpretation of threats from Iran could imperil the truce, which ended a 12-day war that the United States briefly joined when its war planes bombed three Iranian nuclear sites.
The war did significant damage to Iranian nuclear sites and air defenses, and Iran may seek to rebuild its strategic infrastructure.
Mr. Katz’s comments may have been directed at his local audience, particularly the hawkish government’s base of supporters. But the remarks could also lay the groundwork for a confrontation with Washington.
It is unclear whether Mr. Trump would push back against the policy that Mr. Katz outlined. Israel may also choose to wait and see the results of any future diplomacy between Tehran and Washington.
Mr. Trump was outraged when the cease-fire got off to a shaky start, and both sides appeared to violate the truce with rocket fire in the early hours.
He directed his strongest criticisms at Israel, even at one point posting messages on social media when he was concerned it might strike Iran again. He warned it would be a “MAJOR VIOLATION” if Israel were to bomb Iran and demanded that the country “BRING YOUR PILOTS HOME, NOW!”
Mr. Katz told Channel 12 that Israel does not need U.S. approval to attack Iran in the future.
“We are saying unequivocally, once the Iranians violate, we will strike.”
He said Israel’s policy would be similar to what it has done in the aftermath of its war against the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah in Lebanon. The United States brokered a truce to end that war as well after Israel killed most of the group’s leadership.
Since then, Israel has bombed targets in Lebanon frequently, even though Hezbollah has refrained from attacks on Israeli territory.
Israel has justified some of those strikes by saying that they were aimed at preventing Hezbollah’s efforts to rearm. Mr. Katz told another network, Channel 13, that Israel’s policy on Iran would be “like in Lebanon — just times 100.”
Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Aragchi, warned that “Iran is not Lebanon,” in an interview with state television on Friday.
“We do not accept any cease-fire or halt in operations that implies an agreed-upon arrangement,” he said, adding that he had “serious doubts” about Israel’s commitment to the deal.
He pointed to Israel’s frequent airstrikes in Lebanon and Mr. Netanyahu’s decision to break a cease-fire with Hamas in March to restart military operations in the Gaza war.
“They declare a truce, but assume that the other side is weak, then proceed to violate it themselves and attempt to prevent any response,” he said.
Iran still has ballistic missiles and launchers, despite the damage it has sustained from Israeli and U.S. strikes. It could still inflict blows that Israel would likely need to take into account should it choose to strike again.
Mr. Araghchi vowed that Iran would “decisively respond to any breach by the Zionist regime.”
Euan Ward contributed reporting from Beirut, Lebanon
8. Classified briefing on impact of Iran strikes leaves senators split
Intelligence: an imperfect "science."
Classified briefing on impact of Iran strikes leaves senators split
On Thursday, four Trump administration officials briefed senators on the U.S. bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities. Lawmakers emerged divided.
UpdatedJune 26, 2025 at 6:53 p.m. EDTyesterday at 6:53 p.m. EDT
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/06/26/iran-nuclear-intel-congress/
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has dismissed a leaked Defense Intelligence Agency assessment on the strikes as “low-confidence.” (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)
By Theodoric Meyer and Ellen Nakashima
Senators left a classified briefing about the impact of U.S. strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities split along party lines, with Republicans saying it reinforced their belief that the strikes were effective and some Democrats complaining that it did not fully answer their questions.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, briefed senators after days of complaints from Democrats that the administration had not filled them in on how badly strikes last weekend damaged Iran’s nuclear program.
Several Republican senators emerged from the Thursday briefing saying it backed up Ratcliffe’s public assessment Wednesday that the program had been severely damaged. But Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-New York) said the briefing raised more questions than it answered and that he would push for more details.
“What was clear from today’s briefing is that there is no coherent strategy, no endgame, no plan,” Schumer said on the Senate floor after the briefing. “What are we doing?”
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Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Connecticut), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said after the briefing that it appeared to him that Iran’s nuclear program had been set back only a handful of months. His conclusion echoed a preliminary Defense Intelligence Agency assessment that leaked this week, undercutting President Donald Trump’s claims that the strikes had obliterated Iran’s nuclear program.
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“The president was deliberately misleading the public when he said the program was obliterated,” Murphy told reporters. “It is certain that there is still significant capability and significant equipment that remain.”
Other Democratic senators were less critical. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said it was impossible to determine how badly Iran’s nuclear ambitions had been damaged without more intelligence.
“Certainly this mission was successful insofar as it extensively destroyed and perhaps severely damaged and set back the Iranian nuclear arms program,” Blumenthal told reporters. “But how long and how much really remains to be determined by the intelligence community itself.”
Some Republicans spoke as though they had attended a different briefing.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina), a longtime advocate of striking Iran, said he thought “obliterated” was an appropriate word to use. And Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas), the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the strikes had caused “catastrophic damage.”
“If you look at the whole span of what happened over 12 days — the targeting of Iran’s nuclear scientists, the underground bunkers, the centrifuges, the centrifuge manufacturing sites, the gas and metal conversion sites — that’s why we’re confident, since all of those are single points of failure in an effort to get a nuclear weapon, that we have had an extraordinary success,” Cotton told reporters, referring to the duration of Israel’s war with Iran.
Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-North Dakota) suggested after the briefing that the conflicting interpretations of the same intelligence were at least partly about semantics.
“Everybody’s got their own word: set back, obliterated, destroyed, greatly diminished,” Cramer told reporters. “I would say that it’s severely set back.”
The administration has pushed back aggressively against the leaked assessment’s conclusion that the strikes had set back Iran’s nuclear program by months instead of years.
Ratcliffe said Wednesday that several Iranian nuclear facilities had been “destroyed and would have to be rebuilt over the course of years.” And Hegseth dismissed the leaked assessment in a Thursday morning news conference as “low-confidence” and cited the Israel Atomic Energy Commission’s determination that the strikes set back Iran’s nuclear program by years.
The White House also plans to limit how much classified intelligence it shares with Congress in response to the leak.
“This administration wants to ensure that classified intelligence is not ending up in irresponsible hands and that people who have the privilege of viewing this top-secret classified information are being responsible with it,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Thursday.
Schumer called on the White House on Wednesday to “immediately undo” its plans to limit intelligence sharing with Congress. But Ratcliffe told senators in the briefing that he had heard nothing about those plans, according to Cramer.
Sen. Mark R. Warner (Virginia), the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, asked the administration officials who briefed senators whether they had been instructed to restrict information to Congress. They said no, Warner said.
“I am not concerned at this point that the administration is going to cut off the sharing of intelligence with the [Senate Intelligence] Committee or with me,” Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Arizona), a member of the committee, said after the briefing.
The briefing came as Democrats have clashed with the administration over war powers. Many Democrats have fumed that the administration did not seek authorization from Congress before bombing Iran and did not move faster to fill in lawmakers on the strikes once they happened — but congressional Democrats have split on how to push back.
Most House Democrats voted to dismiss an effort by Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) to impeach Trump for striking Iran without consulting Congress — but 79 Democrats voted to advance it.
“Yes, it’s probably wrong for the president not to come to Congress,” Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-California), the former House speaker, told reporters this week when asked about the impeachment effort. But “we can’t ignore what is at stake, which is our national security to make sure Iran does not have a nuclear weapon and our friendship with Israel.”
The Senate is set to vote this week on a resolution from Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Virginia) to block Trump from using military force against Iran without congressional authorization, but its prospects are uncertain after Trump helped broker a fragile ceasefire this week between Iran and Israel, ending the conflict at least temporarily.
No Republicans have committed publicly to voting for it. Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-Louisiana), who voted for a similar resolution in 2020, said Thursday that he would vote against this one. And Kaine has said he expects one Democrat — Sen. John Fetterman (Pennsylvania), an outspoken supporter of Israel — to oppose it.
Fetterman defended the effectiveness of the strikes ahead of the briefing. “To those who were ‘unimpressed’ or borderline gloating on a leak: Operation Midnight Hammer worked,” Fetterman wrote Thursday, citing comments from Rafael Mariano Grossi of the International Atomic Energy Agency on French radio that the centrifuges at Iran’s Fordow uranium enrichment facility were no longer operational. “I’ve been calling for and fully supported those strikes, and it made the world safer. It should transcend partisan politics.”
Marianna Sotomayor contributed to this report.
9. After attacks on Iran, new questions about its leader – and a successor
We must always consider what comes next with every operation.
After attacks on Iran, new questions about its leader – and a successor
Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei is in a tenuous position, with detractors faulting him for setbacks and even supporters signaling concerns over his leadership.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/06/27/iran-attack-supreme-leader-ayatollah-khamenei/
June 27, 2025 at 3:00 a.m. EDTToday at 3:00 a.m. EDT
7 min
Summary
37
An image of Iran's supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, is reflected in a shop window in Tehran on Tuesday. (Majid Asgaripour/Reuters)
By Yeganeh Torbati
Over the 36 years of his rule, Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has outmaneuvered his rivals, set a confrontational course for Iran’s foreign policy and ensured his firm grip over Iran’s military forces. Throughout it all, he has maintained ultimate power despite persistent opposition in some quarters to his rule and no shortage of domestic and foreign crises.
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But as the dust settles on Israeli and American strikes on Iran that killed his closest military advisers and badly damaged much of the country’s missile and nuclear programs, Khamenei finds himself in his most tenuous position yet.
His location is undisclosed as he avoids being potentially targeted by Israeli strikes. He has addressed the country just three times since the Israeli bombardment began June 13, speaking via video messages lacking the polish of his usually sophisticated media apparatus. Though his words have been defiant, he has appeared exhausted and hesitant while speaking.
After remaining silent for days after the U.S. struck three Iranian nuclear facilities Sunday, Khamenei finally released a video message Thursday declaring victory over Israel and the United States. “They could not do anything, they could not achieve their goal, and they exaggerate to cover up the truth and keep it secret,” Khamenei said of the U.S. attack, adding, “The Islamic republic won.”
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Khamenei is being blamed by many Iranians for pursuing a nuclear program that left Iran internationally isolated and its economy straining under sanctions, and for misreading the willingness of Israel and the U.S. to attack. Practically overnight, the missile and nuclear facilities developed over years at a cost of billions of dollars have sustained heavy losses, and the regional network of allied militant groups he has fostered, such as Hamas and Hezbollah, has been eviscerated.
These perceived failures have provided his detractors with new grounds to criticize him, while even some supporters are signaling concerns that he is weakened and failing to forcefully lead.
The years-long parlor game in political circles inside and outside Iran over who will eventually replace him atop Iran’s theocratic system has now reached a fevered pitch.
“It seems clear to me that Khamenei has never been weaker, that his supporters within the regime have never been weaker,” said Afshon Ostovar, a professor and Middle East expert at the Naval Postgraduate School in California. “There’s got to be some sense that everything they’ve put their energy into for the last two generations really has not panned out.”
Struggles between his critics and loyalists could shape the next few years of Iran’s politics and even determine whether it will ultimately try to obtain a nuclear weapon. A major fault line may emerge, Ostovar said, between pragmatists, who want to pursue Iran’s goals primarily through diplomacy, and the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps closely allied with Khamenei, which may want to double down on defiance. The battle between the two sides, Ostovar said, “will absolutely play out in terms of succession if succession happens in the next year or two or three.”
Khamenei is still by far the most powerful person in Iran’s political system, said Saeid Golkar, a scholar at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and an expert on Iran’s security apparatus. Khamenei created a “personalistic” system after taking power in 1989, Golkar said, which means that he is still the ultimate decision-maker, and no political or military actors dare criticize him openly.
“There are a lot of institutions, a lot of groups that are helping him to make the decisions and implement them, but this is a guy who is the center of gravity of the system,” Golkar said.
Indeed, open talk of who will eventually replace Khamenei, much less explicit criticism of his failures, is still taboo within Iran, where the government maintains firm control over the media. But in news reports and social media commentary, there have been signs of discontent.
In Tehran on Thursday, a man works to clear rubble from a building damaged during recent Israeli airstrikes. (Majid Saeedi/Getty Images)
A week into Israel’s bombardment, the Tasnim news agency, affiliated with the Revolutionary Guard, published a report that seemed to acknowledge the emergence within the regime itself of opponents to Khamenei. The report said “suspicious elements with a bad track record” were organizing a group of clerics to demand “surrender and compromise” with Israel, and looking to advance an unnamed former government official as their leader. The report was eventually deleted from Tasnim’s website.
Some supporters of Khamenei are displeased with the ceasefire that Iran and Israel are now observing, suggesting that he had been cornered by Western-friendly forces in the government.
On a large Telegram channel of Khamenei supporters, one member said this week that the ceasefire had been imposed on Khamenei by “suit-wearing” men within the government — neither clerics nor miliary officers — and warned that the ceasefire would allow Israel to regroup and resume bombing Iran.
Ali Akbar Raefipour, a prolific hard-line political commentator with a youthful fan base, argued in an audio statement published on his institute’s YouTube channel on Tuesday that the ceasefire was likely to divide Iranian society, lead Iranian officials to let down their guard, and allow Israel to repair its air defenses.
“God forbid that some pro-Western individuals have gotten ahead of our commander and leader of our society,” he said.
Speculation inside and outside Iran of who might eventually replace Khamenei has for years focused on a handful of names. One of them is Khamenei’s son Mojtaba, also a cleric. He is known to wield immense influence from behind the scenes, including over military promotions within the ranks of the Revolutionary Guard, Golkar said.
But Mojtaba is an unknown quantity, having given no known public speeches, and if he were to be chosen, the Islamic republic could face criticism, even from its supporters, that it was replicating the monarchy that it overthrew in 1979.
A political banner in Tehran on Thursday, near a residential building that was damaged in an Israeli strike. (Majid Saeedi/Getty Images)
Still, regime supporters have commented publicly that if Mojtaba were chosen by the clerical body that is charged with selecting the supreme leader, it would not be a hereditary succession, Golkar said.
“This is a very likely scenario,” he said of Mojtaba’s elevation.
The elevation of his son would address what are probably two of Khamenei’s core concerns, Golkar said: that the Islamic republic continue on the ideological path he has paved, and that the safety of his family be ensured. The 1995 death of Ahmad Khomeini, the powerful son of the founder of the Islamic republic, attributed to cardiac arrest, prompted widespread speculation that he was killed by political rivals.
Another option would be the selection of an elderly cleric without a power base of his own, who would probably die soon, clearing the way for Mojtaba’s ultimate selection as supreme leader, Golkar said.
Some ultraconservatives within Iran’s system support the elevation of Mohammad Mahdi Mirbagheri, a cleric in his 60s with hard-line views, and wanted him to run for president last year.
The body that chooses the supreme leader, called the Assembly of Experts, is dominated by clerics who are loyal to Khamenei. Mirbagheri, for one, sits in the assembly. Last year, former president Hassan Rouhani, a relative moderate within Iran’s system who diverged at times from Khamenei’s preferences while in office, was barred from running to join the assembly.
But some commentators online have boosted Rouhani as a potential Khamenei successor. As a cleric, he would qualify under Iran’s constitution, though he would probably face harsh opposition from hard-line forces who opposed his diplomacy with the West. It was on his watch that Iran negotiated the 2015 nuclear deal with the U.S. and other world powers, abandoned by President Donald Trump three years later.
Amid Khamenei’s silence, Rouhani put out a widely read statement this week in reaction to the ceasefire, praising the Iranian people, Khamenei and the armed forces. But in careful language, Rouhani also signaled that Iran needed a new path.
“A resilient economy, wise diplomacy, and mutual trust between the people and the state are the complementary aspects of national security,” he said. “This crisis must create an agenda for correcting our course and rebuilding the foundations of governance.”
By Yeganeh Torbati
Yeganeh Torbati joined The Washington Post in 2020 as a reporter writing about the tax, budget, trade and regulatory decisions made by Washington’s power brokers. follow on X@yjtorbati
10. Refrain From Rebuilding Iran
"Catch and release?"
Excerpts:
It makes sense that the Iranian government would want to erase, as quickly as possible, the physical evidence of the American and Israeli victory. The rubble is a monument to the regime’s humiliation. It’s less readily understandable why the American government would back a rapid reconstruction. Perhaps Mr. Trump imagines that his magnanimity in victory will decrease the chances that Iran and its remaining proxies will launch more missiles, drones, or terrorist attacks at American targets or at those of our allies.
That’s delusional. Iran’s offenses — backing a Hamas terror attack on Israel, trying to assassinate American officials, pursuing nuclear weapons, attacking international shipping via proxies, shooting missiles at Israel and at American bases — were severe. If the visible damage that Israel and America inflicted as a consequence is so quickly restored, it’d erode the deterrent effect.
It’s the foreign-policy equivalent of a catch-and-release approach to immigration enforcement — a punishment so mild and temporary that it doesn’t prevent the problem. None of this is to minimize the real Israeli and American successes of the 12-Day War. The Iranian nuclear program has been destroyed, and the many Iranian generals, nuclear scientists, and Revolutionary Guard commanders who were killed are not being brought back to life.
Refrain From Rebuilding Iran
Remember, though, Lincoln and the Marshall Plan.
A strike on Iran is displayed during a news conference at the Pentagon on June 22, 2025. Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
IRA STOLL
Published: Jun. 27, 2025 03:53 AM ETUpdated: Jun. 27, 2025 05:46 AM ET
nysun.com
The American long-range bombers had barely returned to their bases before President Trump was talking about rebuilding Iran. “They are going to need money to put that country back into shape. We want to see that happen,” Mr. Trump said Wednesday during his press conference at the NATO summit in the Netherlands. He was responding to a question about his encouraging resumed Iranian oil sales to China.
“They got a lot of oil, they should be fine, they should be able to rebuild and do a great job,” Mr. Trump had said on the plane on the way over to the summit. The instinct is in line with the best of bipartisan American tradition. President Lincoln’s second inaugural address pointed toward a post-Civil War Reconstruction “with malice toward none with charity for all.” President Truman’s post-World War II Marshall Plan included aid to Italy, which had been part of the Axis.
In the Civil War case, though, before the South was reconstructed, General Lee surrendered at Appomattox. In World War II, the Italian fascist dictator Mussolini had been captured and executed by partisans. With Iran, the enemy leader — Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — remains in power. Many of the targets destroyed by Israel and America in the campaign against Iran were military facilities.
The targets included nuclear weapons sites, ballistic missile production factories, and air defense systems. Their reconstruction would restore Iran as a threat to American national security and to that of our allies. The Bible offers some wisdom that may be relevant. Deuteronomy 13:16 describes the scenario of Israel conquering an idolatrous city, with God commanding, “It shall remain a perpetual ruin, never to be rebuilt.”
Yet a thorough inquiry is required before imposing such a punishment. Later Jewish sages made clear it was hardly ever to be imposed. Yet there’s underlying logic to the idea of leaving at least some war damage on display. It serves as an ongoing reminder of the consequences of sin, the costs of defeat, and the risks of war. It shows the superior power of the victors — in this case, of Israel and America.
It makes sense that the Iranian government would want to erase, as quickly as possible, the physical evidence of the American and Israeli victory. The rubble is a monument to the regime’s humiliation. It’s less readily understandable why the American government would back a rapid reconstruction. Perhaps Mr. Trump imagines that his magnanimity in victory will decrease the chances that Iran and its remaining proxies will launch more missiles, drones, or terrorist attacks at American targets or at those of our allies.
That’s delusional. Iran’s offenses — backing a Hamas terror attack on Israel, trying to assassinate American officials, pursuing nuclear weapons, attacking international shipping via proxies, shooting missiles at Israel and at American bases — were severe. If the visible damage that Israel and America inflicted as a consequence is so quickly restored, it’d erode the deterrent effect.
It’s the foreign-policy equivalent of a catch-and-release approach to immigration enforcement — a punishment so mild and temporary that it doesn’t prevent the problem. None of this is to minimize the real Israeli and American successes of the 12-Day War. The Iranian nuclear program has been destroyed, and the many Iranian generals, nuclear scientists, and Revolutionary Guard commanders who were killed are not being brought back to life.
Yet before enthusiastically backing reconstruction of Iran, America might consider imposing some additional conditions. Putting Iran “back into shape” for real would involve not just spending money on repairing buildings and runways, but transitioning to a government that no longer threatens its neighbors or brutally oppresses the Iranian people. Only after that would it make sense to repair the ruins.
nysun.com
11. Army seeks $197 billion FY26 budget with transformation plan at center
From what I have observed, the Army Transformation Initiative (ATI) is going to be as much as if not more transformative than Airland Battle, Division 86, and the Big 5 of defense in the 1980s (starting in the 1970s). This is very necessary,
Army seeks $197 billion FY26 budget with transformation plan at center
Defense News · by Jen Judson · June 27, 2025
As the U.S. Army attempts one of the biggest reorganizations in recent decades, it will have to do it within the confines of a minimal budget increase in fiscal 2026 amid unrelenting inflation and as demands for the force grow at home and abroad.
The Army is requesting $192 billion for its fiscal 2026 base budget and is also banking on an additional $5.4 billion in funding included in a separate $113 billion party-line spending bill now under debate in Congress, according to a service-issued budget overview document released Thursday.
Factoring both the base request and the one-time bill, the Army is planning on working with a budget of $197.4 billion, which marks a nearly 7% increase over last year’s enacted amount of $184.6 billion.
The Army announced at the start of last month that it would undertake a massive transformation to include consolidating major commands, making drastic force structure changes and canceling a wide variety of programs where billions have already been spent to make way for priority efforts perceived to increase overall lethality.
To jump start the Army Transformation Initiative, the service has to make major muscle movements in its fiscal 2026 budget, and an Army official Thursday emphasized an effort to “divest” old or ineffective equipment in order to “invest” in enhancing combat formations.
The Army is requesting to divest $4.9 billion in old equipment and requirements. These include divesting Paladin Integrated Management howitzers, legacy anti-tank missiles, Gray Eagle Unmanned Aircraft Systems and Humvees, according to the budget overview document.
The service has listed the M10 Booker, the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle, the Improved Turbine Engine Program and Future Tactical UAS as programs that will be reduced in the budget.
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Army aviation leaders are working on options to transform the force within budget constraints and in line with recent Army and Pentagon directives.
The Army is also budgeting to restructure units and headquarters, including consolidating Army Futures Command and Training and Doctrine Command and merging Army Forces Command, U.S. Army North and U.S. Army South into what it is calling the Western Hemisphere Command.
On the flip side, the service plans to invest in closing the gap in being able to effectively counter enemy drones. As part of that, the Army is requesting $729 million to accelerate Maneuver Short Range Air Defense vehicle procurement and is also investing in deeper integration of counter-UAS capabilities in maneuver platoons.
For another layer of air defense capability, the Army is requesting a funding boost for the Lower-Tier Air and Missile Defense Sensor that will replace the Patriot air and missile defense radar, asking for $1.3 billion to fund accelerated procurement.
The Army plans to buy loitering munitions to outfit five Brigade Combat Teams and is accelerating the Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft program with a $1.2 billion boost to fast-track its fielding.
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Defense officials argued the spending request should also include another spending bill in Congress, which would bring the total closer to $961 billion.
The Army wants $723.5 million to build at least four M1E3 Abrams tank variants, which is still in the early phases of design. The service has recently committed to drastically accelerating the timeline to developing and fielding the new version of the tank.
To inject new unmanned aircraft capability into formations rapidly, the Army plans to buy 10 BCTs of commercial, off-the-shelf drones using a new agile funding mechanism it put into place in the fiscal 2026 request for the first time.
Overall, the Army is proposing $1.7 billion in agile funding across three areas: UAS, C-UAS and Electronic Warfare. The service is asking for $79 million in flexible funding to buy ready-to-field EW capability, $693 million for counter-UAS systems and $959 million for a variety of drones.
The request would also fund long-range UAS for one Multidomain Task Force and two BCTs.
The Army plans to invest $616 million to convert five Infantry Brigade Combat Teams to Mobile BCTs, procure Infantry Squad Vehicles for seven MBCTs, buy loitering munitions and off-the-shelf drones for those units and grow to new High Mobility Artillery Rocket System Battalions and three Batteries.
Another $2.9 billion would be devoted to pursuing one of the Army’s top modernization priorities: designing and rapidly fielding a Next-Generation Command and Control capability to replace a multitude of stove-piped systems tied crudely into a cumbersome network.
Building on what the Army has already done to grow and improve its organic industrial base, the service is requesting $1.1 billion to modernize seven facilities to help increase magazine depth.
The request includes $476 million for improvements at Lake City Army Ammunition Plant in Missouri and $385 million for munition production and sustainment at Holston Army Ammunition plant in Tennessee.
About Jen Judson
Jen Judson is an award-winning journalist covering land warfare for Defense News. She has also worked for Politico and Inside Defense. She holds a Master of Science degree in journalism from Boston University and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Kenyon College.
12. Pentagon to request $848 billion in delayed base budget release
Pentagon to request $848 billion in delayed base budget release
militarytimes.com · by Noah Robertson · June 26, 2025
The Pentagon is requesting $848.3 billion for its fiscal year 2026 budget, a cut to core military spending when accounting for inflation.
But while releasing many of the military’s detailed budget materials Thursday, senior military and defense officials argued that their request should factor in a separate party-line spending bill now under debate in Congress.
This one-time bill includes $113 billion in mandatory military spending and would bring the Pentagon’s total to $961 billion — close to the trillion-dollar defense budget President Donald Trump has pledged.
Such supplemental defense bills are normally not counted toward the Pentagon’s base budget, the same way a bonus doesn’t normally figure into an annual salary. This year, though, the Defense Department has chosen to split its spending request into two bills, shifting core weapons programs such as shipbuilding and missile defense into the one-time spending package.
Lawmakers from both parties in Congress criticized Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for the delayed and unusual budget during multiple days of testimony earlier in June. The secretary has argued that the request shouldn’t be an issue — saying they have “two bills and one budget.”
Members of Congress have said this process has created unnecessary confusion and puts many of the military’s most important weapons programs at risk. The companies that make these systems now won’t know if their funding will continue beyond the coming fiscal year and may be more hesitant to invest their own money.
The senior defense official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, disputed this concern Thursday.
“Reconciliation is actually a stronger demand signal for those companies,” the official said, referring to the spending process, which may arrive earlier than the Pentagon’s core defense budget.
The official wouldn’t project what the Pentagon would request the following year — the $961 billion including the one-time spending package or the $848 billion without. The official also didn’t specify how the Pentagon was preparing for the chance that the one-time bill doesn’t pass, jeopardizing many of the priorities included within.
“We have not yet discussed what that will look like for [fiscal year 2027], but unless the President’s tone changes, I imagine we’ll stick with a trillion dollars for national defense spending,” the official said.
In a highly unusual release, the Pentagon published a tranche of its budget documents without notice Wednesday evening. Given the amount of taxpayer money involved, the process typically involves a public briefing announced in advance.
As of Thursday morning, the Pentagon still hadn’t published the broad overview of its budget and many of the other documents detailing what is going toward the military services.
Hegseth entered office promising to disrupt the military’s bureaucracy, including its spending plans. He’s since launched an effort to redirect $50 billion of the budget each year to higher-priority programs. The officials speaking Thursday said that money was largely found through large cuts to the Pentagon workforce.
Those priorities include Golden Dome — a planned homeland missile defense system — with $25 billion planned for FY26 and the military’s expanding role at the southwest border, with $5 billion also pledged for the operation. Much of the administration’s effort to revitalize America’s lagging shipbuilding industry will also rely on the one-year defense supplemental bill.
The Defense Department also chose to cut major aircraft programs, such as the E-7 Wedgetail, a surveillance plane. Funding for the Navy’s new fighter jet is also majorly reduced, including only $74 million to the program to finish its design.
“We’re waiting for a decision from the secretary of the Navy, secretary of defense and the President. That’s an active conversation right now,” the official said of whether to maintain the program.
About Noah Robertson
Noah Robertson is the Pentagon reporter at Defense News. He previously covered national security for the Christian Science Monitor. He holds a bachelor’s degree in English and government from the College of William & Mary in his hometown of Williamsburg, Virginia.
13. Navy budget seeks to boost modernization of fleet, shipyards
Navy budget seeks to boost modernization of fleet, shipyards
militarytimes.com · by Zita Fletcher · June 26, 2025
The U.S. Navy put forward a budget request of $292.2 billion, some of which it intends to use to increase its fleet of warships and modernize century-old shipyards.
As proposed, the fiscal 2026 defense budget would require two congressional bills to be passed — a base budget and an upcoming reconciliation bill. The Navy is seeking $248.9 billion in the base budget and $43.3 billion in reconciliation funds, according to budget materials released Thursday.
In total, the Pentagon is requesting $848.3 billion for fiscal 2026, a cut to core military spending when accounting for inflation.
The requirement of two separate bills is a matter which has recently drawn criticism from lawmakers, since critical Navy goals would seemingly rely on reconciliation funding.
Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, recommended during a hearing Tuesday an increase in the base budget, saying, “Reconciliation was always meant to be just a one-time funding surge.”
The Navy’s portion of the budget requests a shipbuilding fund of $47.4 billion, with $26.5 from reconciliation funding. That amount would go toward procuring 19 battle-force ships in fiscal 2026, with funding for the vessels split between the base budget and reconciliation funding.
Three ships, including one Columbia-class submarine, one Virginia-class submarine, and one T-AGOS ocean surveillance ship, have funding allocated from the base budget, with the remaining 16 budgeted from mandatory, or reconciliation, funding.
The request comes as government officials and experts have expressed concern at the state of the American shipbuilding industry, which has fallen well behind production levels of its rivals from the People’s Republic of China.
The Navy remains years behind in projected ship deliveries and cannot provide firm timelines for improvement, military officials told the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense this week.
Part of the Navy’s proposed budget would go toward modernizing its drydock facilities, which on average are over 107 years old. Those include the Navy’s four public shipyards at Norfolk, Virginia; Pearl Harbor, Hawaii; Portsmouth, Maine; and Puget Sound, Washington.
The budget notes that the shipyards themselves are “facing a critical age crisis.” As part of the Shipyard Infrastructure Optimization Plan (SIOP), $989 million is being sought toward modernizing outdated shipyard facilities. Additionally, $2.2. billion is requested for modernizing Marine Corps installations.
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The Navy remains years behind in projected ship deliveries and cannot provide firm timelines for improvement, military officials told lawmakers Tuesday.
By Zita Ballinger Fletcher
The base budget allocates $16.2 billion toward ship maintenance, with funding for other maintenance and modernization projects split between the base budget and reconciliation funding. For ship operations, $7.3 billion is requested, with $5.4 from base funding and $1.9 billion in reconciliation.
The budget also seeks to procure 43 aircraft for fiscal 2026, including unmanned aircraft as well as fixed-wing and rotary aircraft.
In addition, the Navy is seeking $2.7 billion — with $39.4 million in mandatory funding — for science and technology programs, which cover research and development.
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Defense officials argued the spending request should also include another spending bill in Congress, which would bring the total closer to $961 billion.
That fund would include $312 million for design and development of the Columbia-class submarine, including development of nuclear propulsion systems. A further $623 million would be invested in the development of the Future Attack Submarine to counter emerging threats by adversaries.
Robotic autonomous systems feature largely in the budget, with $203 million requested for surface vessels, $715 million for air systems and $668 million for underwater systems.
About Zita Ballinger Fletcher
Zita Ballinger Fletcher previously served as editor of Military History Quarterly and Vietnam magazines and as the historian of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. She holds an M.A. with distinction in military history.
14. Army merging key units in move to reshape ground warfare
Army merging key units in move to reshape ground warfare
Stars and Stripes · by John Vandiver · June 26, 2025
Army Sgt. 1st Class Matthew Pope of the 2nd Multi-Domain Task Force hand-launches a homemade, 3D-printed fixed-wing drone at the Joint Multinational Readiness Center in Hohenfels, Germany, April 11, 2025. The task force and the 56th Artillery Command are being combined, Gen. Christopher Donahue, commander of U.S. Army Europe and Africa, said June 25, 2025. (Lydia Gordon/Stars and Stripes)
STUTTGART, Germany — The U.S. Army is merging two of its newest strategic units in Europe into one headquarters as part of a broader transformation that could serve as a template for the whole service, a four-star commander said this week.
The 56th Artillery Command and 2nd Multi-Domain Task Force, both under U.S. Army Europe and Africa, are being combined, Gen. Christopher Donahue said Wednesday.
“We’re the test bed,” Donahue, who leads the Army in Europe and oversees NATO Land Command, said during a presentation at the Association of the U.S. Army in Washington.
Going forward, multidomain task forces and artillery units “are probably going to morph into something a little bit different,” Donahue said.
Gen. Christopher Donahue is seen outside his headquarters in Wiesbaden, Germany, April 9, 2025. The commander of U.S. Army Europe and Africa said June 25 that the 56th Artillery Command and the 2nd Multi-Domain Task Force are being combined. (Michael Abrams/Stars and Stripes)
Donahue laid out a series of initiatives underway aimed at transforming how U.S. and allied ground forces fight together, drawing heavily from recent global conflicts and ongoing experimentation.
Among the areas being reexamined is how the Army manages artillery firing and air defense, he said.
“Why are we the only service that has two branches for offensive-defensive fires? An airplane doesn’t have that. A ship doesn’t have that,” Donahue said. “I think we have to dramatically … rethink how we do that. It’s offensive, defensive fires. It’s not air defense.”
Donahue’s comments come as units are drawing lessons from the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war and the Middle East.
“We just had people in Israel,” he said. “We send people throughout the world to watch and see what’s going on.”
Much of the Army’s work in Europe centers on drones, electronic warfare, and building up a next-generation command and control network to handle it all.
That focus requires contractors to develop weapons and other systems quickly and inexpensively, Donahue said.
“The standard for industry is that anything we shoot, it has to be cheaper than what we’re shooting down,” he said.
Donahue also said one of the first questions he asks when developers pitch new systems is whether they’ve approached the Ukrainians to test it out first.
An M109A7 Paladin from the 1st Battalion, 9th Field Artillery Regiment fires an artillery round during exercise Dynamic Front at Polatli Training Area in Turkey in 2024. The exercise was led by the Germany-based 56th Artillery Command, which is being combined with the 2nd Multi-Domain Task Force, commander of U.S. Army Europe and Africa Gen. Christopher Donahue said June 25, 2025. (Catalina Carrasco/U.S. Army)
“And if the answer is no, I’ll say, ‘Why?,’” Donahue said. “Because that’s where you get into an environment where we actually know, does it work?”
For U.S. and NATO ground forces, the heart of deterrence efforts centers around the Baltics, he said. Donahue said allies face “arguably the best A2-AD bubble in the world” there, referring to Russian anti-access and area denial capabilities in its exclave of Kaliningrad.
“They (the Russians) have mass and momentum on you,” Donahue said. “You have a very limited space to maneuver, and they have this giant umbrella over top. So how do you destroy that? How do you get to deterrence?”
A strategy to address that scenario has already been designed and presented to senior U.S. and NATO leaders, Donahue said. The challenge now is implementation.
“We built that plan, we designed it, we modeled it. In fact, we just talked to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs about it,” Donahue said.
Stars and Stripes · by John Vandiver · June 26, 2025
15. Billions for new uncrewed systems and drone-killing tech included in Pentagon’s 2026 budget plan
Billions for new uncrewed systems and drone-killing tech included in Pentagon’s 2026 budget plan
The Defense Department rolled out information to reporters Thursday on its FY26 budget request.
By
Brandi Vincent
June 26, 2025
defensescoop.com · by Brandi Vincent · June 26, 2025
The Pentagon’s budget request for fiscal 2026 prioritizes major near-term investments in a wide variety of uncrewed systems and counter-drone capabilities, senior defense and military officials told reporters.
Detailed budget materials are being released on a rolling basis this week, but the officials provided insights into the nearly $1 trillion spending plan in an off-camera press briefing Thursday morning.
“This budget is the first year that we are calling out — specifically — our autonomy line in its own section. So, it will be $13.4 billion for autonomy and autonomous systems,” a senior defense official told DefenseScoop.
“For counter [unmanned aerial systems], the total request is $3.1 billion across the services,” they also confirmed.
The new requests for additional drone and counter-drone funding come as the U.S. military confronts serious challenges integrating and defending against the rapidly evolving weapons, which often cost much less to produce than the multimilllion-dollar missiles that have been deployed to take them down.
The senior defense official supplied a high-level breakdown on the robotics and autonomy-enabling budget lines.
“For unmanned and remotely-operated aerial vehicles, it’s $9.4 billion; autonomous ground vehicles, $210 million; on the water autonomous systems, $1.7 billion; underwater capabilities, $734 million; and enabling capabilities — that’s the autonomy software, the things that underlie all these systems, working and operating together as a central brain — it’s $1.2 billion to work across all those platforms on autonomy,” they said.
A senior Navy official at the briefing also pointed to what they consider to be a “big increase” associated with autonomy investments for the sea service.
“[It’s] $5.3 billion across all systems. And that’s $2.2 billion above FY 2025. That includes procuring three MQ-25s, which we’ll have our first flight in 2026 — and then additional unmanned air [assets], new efforts in unmanned undersea and in unmanned surface, to include procuring our medium unmanned surface vessel. So, we have a lot of efforts across all domains,” the senior Navy official told DefenseScoop.
Two aircraft carrier strike groups operating in the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility are “engaged in combat every day” against enemy-launched drones, they noted.
“We have the [USS Gerald R. Ford] that is just now deploying. Ford will deploy with some additional counter-UAS capabilities, and then we’ll continue to look and learn and develop those kits that we sent before, and [applying] part of what we’re learning,” the senior Navy official said.
Representatives from the other military services did not share information about their departments’ autonomy toplines during the briefing.
Written by Brandi Vincent
Brandi Vincent is DefenseScoop’s Pentagon correspondent. She reports on emerging and disruptive technologies, and associated policies, impacting the Defense Department and its personnel. Prior to joining Scoop News Group, Brandi produced a long-form documentary and worked as a journalist at Nextgov, Snapchat and NBC Network. She grew up in Louisiana and received a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Maryland.
defensescoop.com · by Brandi Vincent · June 26, 2025
16. Facing manpower shortage, Ukrainian brigade turns to women in first-ever female recruitment drive
You have to admire and respect the Ukrainians.
Facing manpower shortage, Ukrainian brigade turns to women in first-ever female recruitment drive
https://kyivindependent.com/facing-manpower-shortage-ukrainian-brigade-turns-to-women-in-first-ever-female-recruitment-drive/
by Natalia Yermak
June 26, 2025 5:23 PM
6 min read
Ukrainian soldiers from the Khartiia Brigade pose for a photo in an unspecified location, Ukraine, on an unspecified date. (X/Khartiia Brigade)
Editor’s note: This article originated as a winning story idea in a vote by members of the Kyiv Independent’s community. Join our community today and join our exclusive members-only Discord channel, where you can discuss and suggest stories, ask our journalists questions, and more.
"Her strength is her mind. Her choice is Khartiia." That was the message — written in sleek neon green script — shared across all social media accounts of Ukraine’s 13th National Guard Khartiia Brigade this May.
The short tagline headed Ukraine's first-ever military recruiting campaign targeting women, launched by the brigade to attract them to tech roles in the army.
Around 70,000 women are serving in Ukraine's nearly million-strong military as of 2025, according to the Defense Ministry. But military service largely remains an unwelcoming environment for female soldiers, who face Soviet-rooted prejudice, limitations on education, career growth, and access to combat positions.
Some progressive units like Khartiia are working to change the situation, in particular by updating internal practices to better integrate women into units. With the new campaign, Khartiia says its hope is to show women they are welcome and can thrive in different positions.
As Ukraine continues to face critical shortages in manpower to fight Russia, the military needs all the help it can get in attracting new recruits.
Motivated and skilled recruits
After nearly 3.5 years of full-scale war, Ukraine's military increasingly relies on mobilized, rather than volunteer, recruits, leading to units often receiving less motivated soldiers.
Since Ukraine doesn’t conscript women, female volunteers represent a highly motivated yet severely under-utilized category in the army, according to soldiers and activists.
"Motivated women are better at any job than unmotivated men," said Alina Andreieva, a drone operator in a Khartiia’s reconnaissance unit and the key driver of the campaign.
Andreieva told the Kyiv Independent that she was “obsessed” with the idea of recruiting women since she joined the army about a year and a half ago while working as a photographer.
When in 2025, Khartiia collaborated with two non-profits, Dignitas Fund and the Dutch organization "Protect Ukraine," to create the campaign, Andreieva and other female soldiers from Khartiia were closely involved in its development.
Another female soldier in Khartia, a 21 year old nurse by training who requested to be identified only by her callsign "Jess," quickly became a pioneering operator of ground robotic systems within months of joining the brigade.
"I quickly learned basic things like soldering and assembling communication kits for our drones and figured out how the drones worked (and was then able to) propose new ideas — different flight controllers and what we could connect to them to make it informative," she told the Kyiv Independent in a video interview.
'Jess', an operator of Khartiia’s Unmanned Ground Vehicle, prepares for a mission in unspecified location, Ukraine on an unspecified date. (X/Khartiia Brigade)
The tech jobs that Khartiia invites women to fill include drone and ground robotic systems operators, electronic warfare and intelligence specialists, and ISTAR (Intelligence, Surveillance, Target Acquisition, and Reconnaissance) dispatchers, involved in a NATO approach towards planning combat operations.
“We really need women in STEM,” said Sofiia Pryduvalova, 30, who does public relations for Khartiia and who co-developed the campaign. “There are many of them (in Ukraine), and they could make the brigade so much stronger.”
Progressive culture
Khartiia, well-known for its incorporation of technology and NATO standards into its workflow, became a flagship of the military corps reform together with the 12th Special Forces Azov Brigade in 2025.
Since its formation in 2022, Khartia has stood out in Ukraine's post-Soviet military, with its progressive management style cultivating a more welcoming atmosphere for women.
Pryduvalova shared her and her friends' disheartening recruitment experiences, saying that some of them abandoned their plans to join certain units as a result.
"There are brigades that consciously discourage women from joining them, explicitly saying so," Pryduvalova said.
"The time is ripe for women who want to take matters into their own hands."
All the women from Khartiia interviewed for this story said they feel safe in the brigade, citing its top-down efforts to modernize and treat every soldier fairly, regardless of gender. Women of the brigade say they also frequently collaborate to advocate for further changes.
"I saw that an unbiased attitude towards women was fostered in recruits even during training," "Jess" said about one of her training courses with the brigade.
"Khartiia was the only brigade at the time (when I was enlisting in 2023) that considered women for a combat role," Andreieva said. As of 2025, around 5,500 women are serving in the Ukrainian army in front-line combat roles, compared to under 5,000 in 2023, according to official data.
"The commanders always treated women equally. The priority was not gender, but how you handled the job," Andreieva added.
Campaign results
The results of the campaign, launched in May, aren't expected until this fall, according to Khartiia’s press officer, Volodymyr Dehtiarov.
Accounting for the initial interviews, medical commission, and at least two basic training courses provided by the National Guard and additionally by Khartiia, it can take at least three months for a non-specialized recruit to join their unit’s daily tasks.
"The results so far are not in quantity, but quality," Dehtiarov told the Kyiv Independent. Before, women who applied rarely listed specific positions they were interested in, while now, more apply for “communications” or “UAV," thanks to the campaign videos where women of Khartiia talk about their respective jobs, he said.
Dehtiarov explained that Dignitas Fund, the non-profit sponsoring the campaign, also found donors to cover the training for dozens of female recruits.
"But we need to fill hundreds of positions (in the Khartiia Brigade), and thousands in the corps (led by the Khartiia brigade commander)," he added, referencing both male and female recruits.
L:
Khartiia serviceman Volodymyr Skoryk next to the Khartiia stand at Kurazh Bazar in Kyiv, Ukraine, on June 14, 2025. (Elena Kalinichenko/The Kyiv Independent)
R:
A woman stands near the Khartiia stand at Kurazh Bazar in Kyiv, Ukraine, on June 14, 2025. (Elena Kalinichenko/The Kyiv Independent)
The future of women in Ukraine's army
As female soldiers become more visible in the media, some people are concerned that it’s a step towards compulsory mobilization for women, said Kateryna Pryimak, a leader of the Ukrainian NGO Veteranka Movement which advocates for women in the army.
"It's untrue — our country is hardly ready to mobilize women forcibly," Pryimak added.
And Khartiia’s officers expect the percentage of women in the army to grow even without female conscription.
"There will be a lot of girls in the UAV (unmanned aerial vehicles) segment because (rather than physical strength,) it favors intellect, intuition, and tech skills," said Ihor Raikov, a UAV platoon commander in Khartiia’s anti-tank guided missile company, adding that he expects the number of female volunteers to increase.
Vitalina, a soldier of Khartiia Brigade, restores communications inside a tank in an unspecified location, Ukraine, on an unspecified date. (X/Khartiia Brigade)
Future female instructors, highly experienced with modern warfare, might also revolutionize military universities, where women face barriers in military education that directly affect career advancement, according to Pryimak.
"The time is ripe for women who want to take matters into their own hands," Andreieva told the Kyiv Independent in a written comment she sent from her front-line position in Kharkiv Oblast.
"Their husbands are either at war or dead; their homes have been destroyed, their loved ones killed or captured; they have seen too much to sit back idly," Andreieva said.
Note from the author:
Hello, this is Natalia Yermak. I wrote this story for you, which was selected by our members through voting on Discord. All the Kyiv Independent members are welcome to join our Discord community and help choose between several options for the story from Ukraine that you are most interested in.
If you’d like to vote on what we should cover in the future and support our work, please consider becoming our member.
Women account for 21% of applicants at Ukraine’s army recruitment centers
Natalia Yermak
Reporter
Natalia Yermak is a staff writer for the Kyiv Independent. She previously worked as a fixer-producer and contributing reporter for the New York Times since the start of the full-scale Russian invasion. Previously, she worked in film production and documentary.Read more
17. US Army leader in Europe wants industry to test equipment with Ukrainians
Does this achieve two effects? Obviously proven in modern combat. But if it is to be tested in Ukraine does it mean it is to be provided to the Ukrainian military (at what cost?). Is this an indirect way to get military aid to Ukraine?
US Army leader in Europe wants industry to test equipment with Ukrainians
“The other very first question I ask you is, have you asked the Ukrainians to test this yet? If the answer is no, I'll say, why? Because that's where you get into an environment where we actually know does it work or does it not,” Gen. Christopher Donahue said.
https://defensescoop.com/2025/06/25/us-army-europe-gen-donahue-wants-industry-test-equipment-ukraine/?hss_channel=lcp-80356765
By
Mark Pomerleau
June 25, 2025Listen to this article
2:54
Learn more.
defensescoop.com · by Mark Pomerleau · June 25, 2025
A top Army general in Europe told companies that if they want to get on contract, they need to be testing their gear with Ukraine.
“The other very first question I ask you is, have you asked the Ukrainians to test this yet? If the answer is no, I’ll say, why? Because that’s where you get into an environment where we actually know does it work or does it not,” Gen. Christopher Donahue, commander of U.S. Army Europe and Africa, said Wednesday at an AUSA event. “It has to be able to adapt and integrate. It has to be cheap. The scale and the scope of this stuff, it has to be cheaper … In combat, as you all know, it changes every 60 or 90 days. Air, ground, water — we don’t care. It’s going to change the whole time. So how can you modify your platforms?”
The full-scale Ukraine-Russia war, which kicked off in 2022, has proved to be a global lesson for how future wars could be fought, with the U.S. and other nations — to include China, which reportedly hacked into Russian systems to gain insights — taking valuable observations.
Army Secretary Dan Driscoll has called Ukraine the Silicon Valley of warfare.
The Army, maybe more so than any other service, has sought to transform based on observations in Ukraine to include large investments in commercial systems such as drones and counter-drone technology. The organization is trying to go commercial as much as possible, based largely on insights from the battlefield where technology and countermeasures change almost daily.
The antiquated acquisition system of the past, geared more toward large platforms that take years to develop and field, is now considered by leadership as unsuitable.
“We’ve seen this over the last couple of years that everybody talks about [Program Objective Memorandum] cycles and everybody talks about program of record. I think that’s just old thinking,” Gen. Randy George, chief of staff of the Army, said earlier this month.
As such, Donahue said the Army also needs to change its contracting approach.
“On our side, we have to be able to write contracts differently. This is one of Gen. George and Secretary Driscoll’s big efforts — is not only all the obvious stuff that I’m talking about, it’s also contracting. How do you … do all that?” he said. “You have to be able to change your contracts, turn on, turn them off, go to a different vendor, based off of which what you have to hang off the whatever the robot is, air, ground or sea.”
Donahue has extensive experience aiding Ukraine. Prior to his current role, he was the commander of XVIII Airborne Corps and was instrumental in the early days of the conflict helping Kyiv’s military with tactics and strategy.
Written by Mark Pomerleau
Mark Pomerleau is a senior reporter for DefenseScoop, covering information warfare, cyber, electronic warfare, information operations, intelligence, influence, battlefield networks and data.
defensescoop.com · by Mark Pomerleau · June 25, 2025
18. Rising Lion, Midnight Hammer, and the Global Response
Are there "cracks in the CRInK?" No one is going to rescue Iran (at least no one has done so in any significant way other than rhetoric). Is this because the CRInK relationship is based on fear, weakness, desperation, adn envy?
Rising Lion, Midnight Hammer, and the Global Response
https://warontherocks.com/2025/06/rising-lion-midnight-hammer-and-the-global-response/
June 26, 2025
WOTR Staff
Welcome to The Adversarial. Every other week, we’ll provide you with expert analysis on America’s greatest challengers: China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and jihadists. Read more below.
***
Iran
On June 13, Israel launched a major offensive against Iran using a combination of airpower and ground-based operatives. Operation Rising Lion struck a range of nuclear and military facilities, as well as the upper echelons of Iran’s military command and top nuclear experts. The United States joined in an offensive capacity just over a week later, hitting nuclear facilities at Natanz, Isfahan, and Fordo as part of Operation Midnight Hammer. Iran responded to Israel with drone and missile attacks — largely but not entirely repelled — and targeted a U.S. airbase in Qatar in response to the American attack, causing no damage or injuries in a telegraphed retaliation.
Emerging assessments in the United States and Israel concur that the attacks set back Iran’s nuclear program, but there is debate over whether its recovery might take months or years. It is uncertain whether the lull in hostilities since a ceasefire took effect on June 24 will prove merely a pause or a pivot to renewed negotiations between Washington and Tehran. President Trump maintains that Iran must cease all uranium enrichment on its own soil, but whether a battered Iranian government will now compromise on its own enrichment red line remains to be seen.
Protests in Iran after Israeli attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities. Image: Tasnim News Agency via Wikimedia Commons.
Jihadists
On Sunday, June 22, a suicide bomber attacked the Greek Orthodox Mar St. Elias Church in the Damascus neighborhood of Dweila, killing at least 25 people and injuring 63 others. It is the largest violent incident against the Christian community in Syria since the 1860 massacre. The next day, Syria’s Ministry of Interior and General Intelligence carried out an operation in Harasta and Kafr Batna that targeted an alleged Islamic State cell linked to the church attack.
The attack highlighted ongoing security risks — particularly for minority groups — and the evolving nature of terrorist threats in Syria. A government spokesperson said that the Islamic State was behind it and that security forces also disrupted a planned attack on the Shiite shrine, Sayyida Zaynab. However, a recently established group called Saraya Ansar al-Sunnah claimed responsibility for the church attack. On June 24, the Ministry of Interior disclosed more details on the cell, claiming that Saraya Ansar al-Sunnah was fictitious or part of the Islamic State. There are rumors that Saraya Ansar al-Sunnah is a radical splinter of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which had been led by Syria’s new president — a potential embarrassment for the new government.
Mariamite Cathedral of Damascus, the headquarters of the Greek Orthodox Church of Antioch. Image: Dan Palraz via Wikimedia Commons.
Russia
Russia’s summer offensive against Ukraine continues, with advances over the last two weeks on several fronts. Russian forces continue to slowly press forward in the vicinity of Chasyv Yar and Pokrovsk in Donetsk Oblast, while making little progress elsewhere in that region or in their efforts to draw within artillery range of Kharkiv. At the same time, having fully retaken Ukrainian-controlled territory in Kursk Oblast, they have expanded their offensive near Sumy, ostensibly to create a buffer zone to protect Russian territory. The Russian military has also continued to expand its missile and drone offensive against civilian targets throughout Ukraine, with casualties increasing in recent weeks as apartment buildings have been targeted and hit with greater frequency. Speaking at the St. Petersburg Economic Forum, President Vladimir Putin again claimed that Russians and Ukrainians are one people and “in that sense the whole of Ukraine is ours.” Statements of this type suggest that Russian leadership is far from ready for any kind of ceasefire or negotiated settlement.
At the same time, Russia’s limited international power was on display in its muted reaction to Israeli and U.S. airstrikes on Iran. Despite signing a partnership treaty with Iran in January 2025, Russian leaders provided nothing more than rhetorical support to Iran in the face of a concerted Israeli and U.S. campaign to eliminate its nuclear capabilities.
Kyiv apartment building after a June 17 missile and drone attack on the city. Image: State Emergency Service of Ukraine via Wikimedia Commons.
China
Between June 16 and 18, Chinese leader Xi Jinping visited Kazakhstan to attend the second China-Central Asia Summit. He signed the Treaty of Permanent Good-Neighborliness, Friendship, and Cooperation with China’s five neighboring countries — Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. The treaty commits signatories to economic and development cooperation as well as joint efforts to counter terrorism, separatism, extremism, arms trafficking, and drug trafficking.
China strongly condemned the Israeli and U.S. strikes on Iran. Beijing defined the “preemptive” strikes as “a grave violation of international law and Iranian sovereignty,” and said that the attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities that are under “the safeguards of the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency]” are a “bad precedent” that threatens the international nuclear nonproliferation regime. However, it is notable that — other than diplomatic and rhetorical support — China did not provide material support to Iran during the conflict. Its outreach to the Gulf countries and coordination with Russia did not render substantive assistance to Iran either. Now that a ceasefire is in place and Iran appears weakened, China’s Foreign Ministry on June 25 committed to maintaining its friendly cooperation with Iran.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping at the China-Central Asia Summit in 2023. Image: China News Service via Wikimedia Commons.
North Korea
Russian Security Council Secretary Sergei Shoigu visited Pyongyang on June 17 for the second time in two weeks. During the previous visit, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un vowed “unconditional” support to Russia in its war efforts. The second round of talks appears to have worked out more specifics, including North Korean provision of 1,000 sappers to clear mines in the Kursk region and a military construction brigade of 5,000 to help rebuild infrastructure there.
Kim and Shoigu reportedly also discussed the Israeli-Iranian war. Two days later, North Korea issued a Foreign Ministry spokesperson’s “press statement” condemning Israel’s attacks on Iran. It is rare for Pyongyang to comment on Middle East matters. Another pronouncement was made on June 23, after the U.S. bombing of Iranian uranium enrichment facilities. While both statements were critical of the situation, they fell short of offering support to Iran. The timing and tone of the messages seem to suggest some coordination with Moscow’s position on the matter. Regardless of the public messaging, these developments are likely to reinforce Pyongyang’s resolve to maintain its nuclear weapons program.
North Korea convened a party plenary meeting June 21–23 to assess progress on state policies for the first half of the year and set priorities for the second half.
Russian security chief Sergei Shoigu and North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un meet in Pyongyang. Image: KCNA Watch.
Image: U.S. Air Force
19. US state department told to terminate nearly all its overseas pro-democracy programs
Political move? Do we not understand how "pro-democracy" programs support US national security and foreign policy? Or is "pro-democracy" just a politically radioactive term?
This undermines the ability to pressure regimes, support unconventional warfare and resistance, and reduces access and placement of professionals who can ensure situational understanding to support US foreign policy objectives. This is short sighted and ill-informed.
Hopefully State will reform and reincarnate these programs in more effective ways (yes there were certainly problems and challenges with many of these programs - but all can be solved through effective leadership).
Excerpts:
In a separate incident this week, a new senior adviser to DRL recommended that the bureau’s leadership use funds earmarked by Congress for foreign assistance to cover pet projects for the administration including the resettlement of Afrikaaners to the United States and to support the legal defense of the right-wing French politician Marine Le Pen.
According to the state department officials, Samuel Samson, a recent college graduate appointed as senior adviser to the bureau under the new administration, made the recommendations on a DRL white paper being drafted to program hundreds of millions of dollars in congressional funding before they expire later this year.
Samson, one of a number of young conservatives to rise under the Trump administration, reflects the White House’s changing priorities for foreign assistance. He recently wrote a controversial post on the state department’s Substack page titled “The Need for Civilizational Allies in Europe” in which he also criticised the labeling of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland party as an “extremist” organisation, saying that this “environment also restricts Europe’s elections”.
US state department told to terminate nearly all its overseas pro-democracy programs
The Guardian · by Andrew Roth · June 26, 2025
The US state department has been advised to terminate grants to nearly all remaining programs awarded under the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL), which would effectively end the department’s role in funding pro-democracy programming in some of the world’s most hostile totalitarian nations.
The review could affect nearly $1.3bn in grants, three state department officials told the Guardian, citing briefings on the results of a Foreign Assistance Review produced by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).
Of 391 active grants, only two were not recommended to be cut, the officials said. They concerned one program in China and one in Yemen.
The recommendations would “terminate about 80% of all US government foreign assistance at the state department”, said a state department official briefed on the findings of the review.
State department ramps up Trump anti-immigration agenda with new ‘remigration’ office
Read more
In a separate incident this week, a new senior adviser to DRL recommended that the bureau’s leadership use funds earmarked by Congress for foreign assistance to cover pet projects for the administration including the resettlement of Afrikaaners to the United States and to support the legal defense of the right-wing French politician Marine Le Pen.
According to the state department officials, Samuel Samson, a recent college graduate appointed as senior adviser to the bureau under the new administration, made the recommendations on a DRL white paper being drafted to program hundreds of millions of dollars in congressional funding before they expire later this year.
Samson, one of a number of young conservatives to rise under the Trump administration, reflects the White House’s changing priorities for foreign assistance. He recently wrote a controversial post on the state department’s Substack page titled “The Need for Civilizational Allies in Europe” in which he also criticised the labeling of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland party as an “extremist” organisation, saying that this “environment also restricts Europe’s elections”.
It is not clear whether his recommendations were adopted by DRL’s leadership in the white paper.
Most of DRL programs facing termination are not listed publicly because they support vulnerable individuals or minorities in nations with authoritarian governments that could retaliate against recipients of US aid. But the secretary of state, Marco Rubio – along with staffers from the so-called “department of government efficiency” – named some programs cut in previous reviews of foreign assistance, an act that state department officials have said could put the recipients of that aid at risk.
Some of the programs targeted under the OMB review would include a rapid response team meant to support pro-democracy activists abroad who may require urgent relocation or other protection if their lives are deemed to be in danger.
The programs “provide a lifeline to organizers and civil society doing the work to try to bring democratic values to these countries”, one source said, adding that they referred to places like Cuba and Venezuela.
Other programs focus on internet censorship, media literacy, human rights and atrocity prevention programs, election assistance programs, and efforts to combat transnational repression by countries such as China.
Termination orders for the grants recommended to be cut by the OMB could be sent imminently, but may be delayed if contested by Rubio. Rubio in the past was a passionate defender of foreign assistance but has helped cut the bureau’s programming since joining the Trump administration.
The sources said that DRL’s leadership and the state department’s office of foreign assistance, informally called “F”, were in “shock” over the results of the OMB review. The fight reflects the divisions within the Trump administration between foreign policy hawks like Rubio who have tailored their views on foreign assistance to the new administration, and hardline conservatives like OMB director Russell Vought who have sought to use the “power of the purse” to rein in and slash government spending.
“It’s a fight between Rubio and Vought,” one person said.
The results of the review were delivered to DRL only after Vought gave testimony before a Senate subcommittee on Wednesday, during which he claimed that the state department grants for foreign assistance remained active.
The results of the OMB foreign assistance review arrived just days before the state department is set to lay off as many as 3,400 employees and eliminate or consolidate about 300 offices under a major reorganisation ordered by Rubio that he said would bring the department into line with Donald Trump’s “America First” agenda.
Under the reorganisation, DRL is expected to be gutted. The sources said that eliminating the aid programs could make it easier to process layoffs (called reductions in force, or RIFs) for DRL employees by relieving them of budgets for the programs that they administer.
“If you cut all the programs in DRL, then, then why would you need to keep the staff if they’re not doing any work,” one person said.
It would also make it difficult for the bureau to appeal terminated awards because the employees responsible for that would have been laid off and no longer have access to their state department emails.
Ten Democratic senators earlier this month called on Rubio to preserve the state department’s human rights bureau.
In it, they criticised Rubio for proposing the reorganisation that would shutter most offices in DRL and for abandoning his past support for pro-democracy programming around the world.
“The proposed reorganization would result in a structural and substantive demotion of human rights promotion that runs counter to the spirit of the law and your personal legacy working on these issues,” they wrote.
“As you stated in the subcommittee hearing previously mentioned, ‘millions of people around the world who live in societies dominated by fear and oppression look to the United States of America to champion their cause to fully exercise their God-given rights,’” they wrote. “There are no greater champions more capable of advancing this noble cause than the dedicated staff in DRL.”
The Guardian · by Andrew Roth · June 26, 2025
20. US soldiers drop live grenades from drone in Germany, say tactic will soon be part of normal training
The Army is transforming in contact. In the old days it would take 5 or 10 years to incorporate these lessons into concepts, doctrine, and training.
While every Marine is a rifleman, in the future every soldier is going to have to be a counter-drone fighter - this includes everyone from the front lines to the logistics trains, the C2 HQ, and all rear areas.
US soldiers drop live grenades from drone in Germany, say tactic will soon be part of normal training
Stars and Stripes · by Matthew M. Burke · June 26, 2025
Spc. Michael Fish, an unmanned aerial systems operator with 1st Squadron, 91st Cavalry Regiment, attaches a 3D-printed munitions dropper to a Skydio X10D drone at Grafenwoehr Training Area in Germany on June 25, 2025, during a test in which soldiers dropped live M67 grenades from the drone. (Lydia Gordon/Stars and Stripes)
GRAFENWOEHR, Germany — The U.S. Army took a step toward integrating killer drones into its battlefield tactics after it dropped live grenades from the air at a training area in Germany this week.
Members of the 278th Armored Cavalry Regiment of the Tennessee Army National Guard on Wednesday became the first conventional soldiers to detonate an M67 fragmentation grenade from a drone-borne dropper, Army officials on site said.
The plastic device, known as Audible, was attached to the undercarriage of a Skydio X10D drone that attacked a simulated vehicle convoy at the Grafenwoehr Training Area.
On Wednesday, 1st Lt. David Baker checked Audible’s dropper device. He then attached a hand grenade, making sure the pin was in the correct position to be pulled. He removed the safety clip and the drone was airborne.
U.S. soldiers watch a Skydio X10D drone take flight at Grafenwoehr Training Area, Germany, on June 25, 2025, during an inaugural test of the drone's ability to drop M67 grenades. (Lydia Gordon/Stars and Stripes)
A Skydio X10D drone is launched at Grafenwoehr Training Area in Germany on June 25, 2025, during U.S. soldiers' test drop of M67 grenades from the drone using a device called Audible. (Lydia Gordon/Stars and Stripes)
U.S. soldiers prepare to launch a Skydio X10D drone fixed with a dummy M67 grenade at Grafenwoehr Training Area in Germany on June 25, 2025. (Lydia Gordon/Stars and Stripes)
A Skydio X10D drone takes flight with a dummy M67 grenade round during an inaugural test at Grafenwoehr Training Area, Germany, on June 25, 2025. (Lydia Gordon/Stars and Stripes)
Maj. Phillip Draper watched from a television screen in a nearby control tower as the drone flew toward three simulated stationary vehicles. The falling grenade struck right next to the lead vehicle’s passenger side.
“It was a successful test,” Draper said. “Hopefully we can build on this and make it better and then get those results to the warfighter.”
After that test, though, the Audible cracked in a hard landing and a 3D-printed version made by soldiers from the 173rd Airborne Brigade filled in with inert rounds for additional drone test flights.
The successes and failures each provide valuable data. Within a couple of hours of the test and crash-landing, the Combat Capabilities Development Command at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md., had been notified and seven more devices were on the way.
“We’re dropping a regular ordnance that every soldier would carry in combat,” said civilian David Oeschger, deputy of operations for the 7th Army Training Command, which hosted the test. “We’ve learned well from the Ukrainians and the Russians on how we are going to use this system in the next fight.”
A U.S. soldier prepares to launch a Skydio X10D drone fixed with a dummy M67 munition during testing June 25, 2025, at Grafenwoehr Training Area in Germany. (Lydia Gordon/Stars and Stripes)
A U.S. soldier catches a Skydio X10D drone after a test launch of a dummy grenade at Grafenwoehr Training Area on June 25, 2025. (Lydia Gordon/Stars and Stripes)
Spc. Michael Fish, an unmanned aerial systems operator with 1st Squadron, 91st Cavalry Regiment, controls a Skydio X10D drone outfitted with an M67 dummy grenade at Grafenwoehr Training Area, Germany, on June 25, 2025. Soldiers including Fish were testing the drone's ability to drop grenades on targets. (Lydia Gordon/Stars and Stripes)
Dropping grenades with drone-mounted devices like Audible will become a part of normal Army training within months, Oeschger said.
The U.S. Army, which trains Ukrainian soldiers at locations including Grafenwoehr, updated its fighting doctrine last year due to lessons learned in Ukraine. The service now seeks to constantly evolve and leverage mobility, speed, deception and technology.
The ability of small, off-the-shelf drones to carry munitions to strike personnel, armor and command posts has dramatically changed military strategy and tactics.
More tests are planned for the Audible, which was developed by the Maryland-based command.
This “really expands the arsenal, being able to go out and reach targets beyond the front line of troops and putting that at the lowest level,” Baker said.
Stars and Stripes · by Matthew M. Burke · June 26, 2025
21. How China Wins: Beijing’s Advantages in a Revisionist Order
How China Wins
Foreign Affairs · by More by Julian Gewirtz · June 24, 2025
Review Essay
Beijing’s Advantages in a Revisionist Order
July/August 2025 Published on June 24, 2025
Ellie Foreman-Peck
JULIAN GEWIRTZ served as Senior Director for China and Taiwan Affairs at the National Security Council and Deputy China Coordinator at the State Department during the Biden administration. He is the author of Never Turn Back: China and the Forbidden History of the 1980s.
In This Review
- Upstart: How China Became a Great Power
- By Oriana Skylar Mastro
- Tertulia
- Bookshop
- Amazon
- Should the World Fear China?
- By Zhou Bo
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The United States and China see eye to eye on very little these days, but there is one surprising point on which their top officials agree: the world is becoming multipolar. In one of his first interviews in office, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio insisted that the unipolar dominance the United States had enjoyed in recent decades was “an anomaly” and “a product of the end of the Cold War.” The United States, in his view, was no longer the unrivaled global hegemon but one of a handful of “great powers in different parts of the planet.” Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi agrees. At the Munich Security Conference in February 2025, Wang declared, “A multipolar world is not only a historical inevitability; it is also becoming a reality.”
To be sure, Beijing’s and Washington’s understandings of multipolarity are different. Trump administration officials picture a world in which the United States has been freed from many of its overseas obligations and can act unilaterally, focusing mainly on the Western Hemisphere and “America first” policies while tolerating spheres of influence elsewhere. “The Chinese will do what’s in the best interests of China, the Russians will do what’s in the best interest of Russia,” and the United States will do “what’s in the best interest of the United States,” as Rubio put it in January. For their part, Chinese leaders see multipolarity not merely as an opportunity to dominate Asia but also as heralding the emergence of a transactional global system in which the reach of U.S. power is curtailed, key U.S. partners are less aligned with Washington, autocracy faces less pushback, and China—along with its strategic partner Russia—has far greater freedom of action and global influence.
Both of these visions are reshaping the world. U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping are ushering in an era of what can be called “mercenary multipolarity”—a transformed international order centered on self-interested great powers that generally disdain using their influence to benefit or cooperate with others and are primarily concerned with maximizing their own security, prosperity, and power.
How did a multipolar world emerge in the first place? Two new and very different books help answer that question. In Upstart: How China Became a Great Power, the Stanford University political scientist Oriana Skylar Mastro, who also serves in the U.S. Air Force Reserve, provides a systematic and creative examination of how far China has come in pursuing its goals “to close the gap in relative diplomatic, economic, and military power.” By contrast, the Chinese analyst and former People’s Liberation Army (PLA) senior colonel Zhou Bo insists that China’s rise should not be cause for concern. In Should the World Fear China?, a loosely curated collection of his essays, Zhou emerges as a resolute polemicist for China’s cause whose perspective reflects mainstream currents in Chinese strategic thinking.
In recent years, many analysts have hotly debated the scope and scale of the challenge that Beijing poses to the international order. This debate now finds itself in a peculiar moment, as Trump has made the United States appear as the more explicitly revisionist power, openly upending the international order it once championed. By withdrawing from UN bodies; placing tariffs on the entire world, including on U.S. allies; threatening to seize Canada and Greenland; and undermining collective principles of law and pluralism, the second Trump administration has given China unprecedented space to present itself as both a defender and a reformer of the existing order. That is allowing China to gain greater influence in existing institutions, exploit fear and uncertainty to pull long-standing U.S. partners closer to Beijing, and build its own alternative institutions and relationships even as it continues to flout international rules and norms. Trump and Xi are turning U.S.-Chinese competition into a story of two self-interested, domineering superpowers looking to squeeze countries around the world—and each other—for whatever they can get. This dramatic shift plays into China’s hands and undermines core U.S. strengths in the long-term competition over the future international order.
WATCH AND LEARN
The growth of China’s global influence, which has shaped the emerging multipolarity, was the result of a careful strategy pursued over decades and tied closely to Beijing’s analysis of U.S. power, as Mastro demonstrates in Upstart. She provides a fresh framework for understanding China’s rise by drawing from an unlikely source: the extensive scholarship on industry disruption in the business sector. Mastro applies the concept of industry “upstarts,” which push out established firms, to power shifts in international relations and, specifically, to the case of China. She shows that Beijing has risen to great-power status over the past 40 years mainly by exploiting gaps in U.S. power and the international order while selectively innovating new approaches and occasionally emulating U.S. actions. She writes that the United States, like an industry-leading firm, has been the “primary reference for Chinese decision-makers” and that China’s strategies of exploitation, entrepreneurship, and emulation are constantly evolving.
Upstart’s most important contribution is to explain how China was able to grow powerful without triggering, until relatively recently, a major response from the United States. One of Mastro’s core insights is that China, during its rise, often chose not to emulate the United States when it assessed that emulation would have been either too costly or likely to trigger a backlash from Washington. (In these pages in 2019, Mastro described China’s rise as that of a “stealth superpower.”) Although China’s growing power was plain to see, its intentions and ambitions were not. Great powers such as the United States often measure their rivals’ growing power by comparing it with their own, looking for signs of similar strategies that helped them rise. But Mastro shows how Beijing limited the kind of emulation that would have made clear to U.S. policymakers that China had ambitions to challenge the United States’ position on the global stage. Chinese leaders knew, Mastro argues, that if Washington felt threatened, the United States could thwart their country’s ambitions.
Trump and Xi are ushering in an era of “mercenary multipolarity.”
To head off such an outcome, they deployed a strategy to obfuscate threats to U.S. interests and thereby delay a response from Washington, even as they engaged in a dramatic military buildup. Examples of this strategy that Mastro cites include Beijing’s focus on building commercial ports instead of more overseas military bases and training foreign local law enforcement instead of foreign militaries. Such policies allowed Chinese officials to characterize their country’s actions as benign and to insist that they were committed to a “peaceful rise.” As Beijing developed a powerful military, advanced technology, and a dominant role in international trade, Mastro observes, China was able to transform in just a few decades “from diplomatic isolation to having as much diplomatic and political power on the world stage as the United States.”
The emergence of a multipolar world has depended on the interaction between the United States and China that Mastro illuminates in Upstart. For the United States to maintain an edge in this competition, she argues that Washington should pursue “its own version of an upstart strategy,” which would entail closing the gaps that China exploits, outmaneuvering China when the United States and its allies have competitive advantages, using entrepreneurial approaches of its own, and even emulating some Chinese successes. One such U.S. advantage, Mastro writes, is immigration: “In innovation, for example, a more open immigration policy that encourages skilled labor to settle in the country is an option Beijing does not have.” The overall goal of such a strategy would be “to move competition into areas where the United States has an advantage and reduce the impact of Chinese strategies where China enjoys advantages.”
Mastro’s proposal for a U.S. “upstart strategy” is not the approach the Trump administration is taking. Instead, under Trump, the United States is creating new gaps for China to exploit by withdrawing from international institutions and undermining U.S. competitive advantages, such as its global network of alliances and partnerships and its robust domestic research and innovation base. In April, Xi traveled to Vietnam, Malaysia, and Cambodia to sign agreements on trade, technology, and other fields in a region that had, in recent years, developed deeper partnerships with the United States but was hit hard by Trump’s tariffs earlier that month. Beijing is also working to draw Europe closer as the continent faces intense pressure from Washington; for example, China has lifted sanctions on members of the European Parliament and dangled other concessions ahead of an EU-Chinese summit scheduled for July 2025. Chinese leaders are trying to take advantage of an opportunity that Washington’s actions have handed them.
LAND OF OPPORTUNITY
As Beijing recalibrates its international strategy in response to the second Trump term, some Chinese foreign policy thinkers are speaking openly about opportunities for China to advance its vision of a multipolar world favorable to its interests. “By the end of Trump’s second term, America’s global standing and credibility image will have gone down,” Zhou, the former PLA colonel and author of Should the World Fear China?, bluntly told CNN in March 2025. He continued, “And as American strength declines, China, of course, will look more important.”
In his new book, Zhou offers paeans to China as a responsible and stabilizing player in a chaotic world, and his essays can best be understood as a theme and variations on the official party line, sometimes stepping beyond it but never wandering far. He argues that China does not “really want to reshape the international order,” as the United States claims, because “there is no liberal international order.” Such a phrase is simplistic and carries “an apparent air of western triumphalism,” Zhou writes, because it overlooks seven decades of postwar history that included Cold War rivalry, postcolonial independence, and the Non-Aligned Movement, as well as the institutions that have emerged since the Cold War, such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), the G-20, and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.
Zhou argues that the changes wrought by China “shouldn’t be taken as an erosion of the international order” but as steps that “could change the world for the better.” Given the often coercive nature of Chinese behavior, seen, for example, in Beijing’s aggressive actions in the South China Sea, many readers will reject such an argument made by a former PLA officer. Zhou’s efforts to cast China in a benign light are often implausible, such as his claim that it was “not exactly use of force” when “the Chinese coast guard used water cannons against Filipino ships in 2024.”
Zhou cheers an emerging multipolar world. Alternative power centers—such as the BRICS, the group whose original members were Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa and has grown to include Indonesia, Iran, and others; and the SCO, which focuses on security and economic issues across Eurasia—are “thriving with expansion.” He triumphantly notes that the BRICS’ economies are larger in size than the G-7’s, although one might question whether the BRICS, even if it has scale, will ever be able to muster the unity of purpose that the G-7 has demonstrated in recent years. (Zhou himself offers a derisive assessment of India as a competitor to China, despite the two countries’ membership in the BRICS.)
At a bilateral meeting between China and the United States in Geneva, May 2025 Martial Trezzini / Reuters
Russia, China’s closest partner in the BRICS and the SCO, is of particular interest to Zhou. Perhaps the most noteworthy piece in his collection of essays is an op-ed he originally wrote for the Financial Times in October 2022, when Russian President Vladimir Putin was engaging in dangerous nuclear saber rattling. At the time, Zhou argued, “Given Beijing’s huge influence on Moscow, it is uniquely positioned to do more to prevent a nuclear conflict”—an argument also made by prominent voices in the United States and Europe but that stood out coming from a Chinese commentator. A few weeks later, after a meeting in Beijing between Xi and then German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, the Chinese government stated that the two leaders “jointly oppose the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons”—the most pointed public statement that Beijing had made since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February of that year. But Beijing and Moscow remain firmly aligned on major strategic questions, Xi’s comments on nuclear weapons notwithstanding.
Zhou sees a subtle difference in Russia’s and China’s worldviews, even if both countries talk about a multipolar world order. “China is the largest beneficiary of globalization, which relies on the existing international order,” he points out, whereas “Russia resents that order and considers itself a victim of it.” Whatever one thinks of this attempted distinction, it is particularly ironic that assertions from Trump administration officials—such as Rubio’s statement in his confirmation hearing that the postwar global order is “a weapon being used against us”—reflect a similar sense of victimization that Zhou here ascribes to Russia.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Zhou’s book is one that lurks in the background: that the Chinese Communist Party allowed a former military officer to publish an essay in an overseas paper, such as Zhou’s in the Financial Times, at such a sensitive moment. At a time when the CCP’s control over the information environment is tighter than ever—including, for instance, threatening economists who spread “inappropriate” views—the fact of Zhou’s prolific international publishing is itself revealing. Beijing is eager to cultivate voices that, as Xi put it in 2013, “tell China’s story well” and strengthen its “international discourse power,” or its influence over global public opinion, which Xi believes is an important element of national power. But China has struggled to strengthen its discourse power in recent years. This, too, is an area in which Beijing sees opportunity in the second Trump term.
VISIONS OF ORDER
Mastro’s and Zhou’s books could hardly be more different, but both authors’ perspectives shed light on the still protean multipolar world that is being shaped by the competition between Washington and Beijing. In the United States, prior optimistic assumptions that China would join existing institutions as a “responsible stakeholder” were long ago replaced by a more coldly realistic understanding that as China became more powerful, it sought to fundamentally change aspects of the international order to favor its authoritarian system of government, state-dominated political economy, and geopolitical objectives. And the Trump administration has framed its unilateralism as a necessary response to China’s actions. As Rubio put it in his confirmation hearing, “We welcomed the Chinese Communist Party into the global order and they took advantage of all of its benefits, and they ignored all of its obligations and responsibilities.” Because China rose to power by taking advantage of the rules and institutions that have undergirded the postwar global order, that order must be destroyed, the logic goes, and the United States must look out for its own interests as ruthlessly as China has. Deferring to Russia and disregarding Europe fit into this perspective because Trump sees Russia, not Europe, as another great power.
Chinese officials, of course, have a different version of events. As Mastro notes, they see U.S. leadership of the international order and U.S. alliances and partnerships as crucial advantages that the United States enjoys over China—and they are jubilant at the Trump administration’s rejection of what they see as sources of U.S. strength. They speak less openly than the Trump administration about their own pursuit of narrow self-interest and their intent to revise the international order, often shrouding their transactional diplomacy in the language of multilateralism. At the Munich Security Conference earlier this year, Wang reflected that although some critics had, over the years, accused China of wanting to change the international order, they were falling silent “because now there is a country that is withdrawing from international treaties and organizations.” China, by contrast, was, in Wang’s words, “growing within the existing order,” and it would therefore “move the order in a more just and reasonable direction.”
Mastro and Zhou shed light on a still protean multipolar world.
Zhou would no doubt agree with Wang’s claims here, which some in the audience described as more plausible because U.S. Vice President JD Vance’s speech at the conference—perceived by many as a harsh attack on U.S. allies in Europe—immediately preceded Wang’s. But what is most troubling for U.S. interests is that despite Chinese support for Russia in its war against Ukraine, the threat that Chinese manufacturing overcapacity poses to European industry, and the many other European interests that would in theory cut against strengthening ties with China, American pressure and Chinese incentives may very well lead European leaders to explore closer partnerships with Beijing.
The erratic nature of the Trump administration makes it impossible to predict exactly how its views on China and the international order will evolve in the coming years. But it is already apparent that the world has entered an era of mercenary multipolarity that will be much more chaotic and dangerous than what has come before. A multipolar world could take more or less cooperative forms and feature more or less great-power acceptance of continued interdependence. But it now seems highly unlikely that cooperation will be a major feature of the emerging international order over the next several years. Instead, the world appears fated to witness the decline or even the collapse of international institutions, which may then be replaced by less influential multinational institutions and intensified fragmentation, competition, and transactionalism.
If more countries come to believe that they are simply facing a choice among big, selfish superpowers, they will make token concessions and then likely implement long-term foreign policy strategies that align with neither Washington nor Beijing. Many countries may even persuade themselves that they can get a better or more durable deal with China than with a unilateralist United States. They may be less willing to take risks to join the United States in upholding peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait or limiting advanced technology exports that can be used by the PLA. And they will be less interested in looking to Washington to lead the future international order—unless they can be persuaded once again that the United States is looking out for them and not only for itself.
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In This Review
- Upstart: How China Became a Great Power
- By Oriana Skylar Mastro
- Tertulia
- Bookshop
- Amazon
- Should the World Fear China?
- By Zhou Bo
JULIAN GEWIRTZ served as Senior Director for China and Taiwan Affairs at the National Security Council and Deputy China Coordinator at the State Department during the Biden administration. He is the author of Never Turn Back: China and the Forbidden History of the 1980s.
Foreign Affairs · by More by Julian Gewirtz · June 24, 2025
22. Closing the GAP: Strategic Presence Through Embedded U.S. Military Advisors
What is old is new again. Lawrence and Volckman still have much to teach us.
(Though some of my friends and mentors will take issue with the use of the word "presence." IYKYK)
“If you want a new idea, read an old book." - attributed to Ivan Pavlov (among others)/
Excerpts:
Strategic leaders across the defense community must champion GAP immediately through their professional networks, planning processes, and resource allocation decisions. Share the proposal through service colleges, war colleges, and professional associations while advocating for its consideration within strategic planning and program development processes.
For centuries, great powers have deployed trusted emissaries to forge coalitions before conflict erupted. Medieval kingdoms exchanged princes as hostages to guarantee treaty compliance. Renaissance city-states embedded ambassadors within foreign courts to shape policy from within. Modern strategic competition demands similar embedded presence, but adapted for democratic values and professional military relationships rather than dynastic politics.
Where there exists a GAP in American strategic presence, GAP fills it. Where there exists a GAP in trusted partnerships, GAP builds them. Where there exists a GAP in competitive advantage, GAP closes it.
The Volckmann legacy awaits modern implementation through systematic institutionalization rather than individual heroism. Strategic competition demands a persistent presence rather than episodic intervention. The Global Advisor Program provides a mechanism to transform American engagement from crisis response to crisis prevention through embedded partnerships that shape outcomes before competitors recognize opportunities.
GAP: Embedding influence today, securing victory tomorrow.
Closing the GAP: Strategic Presence Through Embedded U.S. Military Advisors
https://www.strategycentral.io/post/closing-the-gap-strategic-presence-through-embedded-u-s-military-advisors
strategycentral.io · June 26, 2025
Special Operations In An Isolationist Era
STRATEGY CENTRAL
For and By Practitioners
By CW5 Maurice "Duc" DuClos - June 26, 2025
The Global Advisor Program: Forward Presence at Fractional Cost, Strategic Influence Through Embedded Advisors
“Victory is not won by arms alone, but by the slow weaving of trust with those who fight beside you.”
— Seven Pillars of Wisdom, T.E. Lawrence
“Partnership is our greatest weapon, turning allies into brothers and chaos into order.”
— Operations Against Guerrilla Forces, Russell Volckmann
Abstract
Strategic competition between great powers creates critical presence gaps that undermine long-term American influence and early warning capabilities. While adversaries deploy networks of advisors to build persistent relationships and shape the development of partner nations, American engagement remains largely episodic and crisis-driven. The Global Advisor Program (GAP) provides a revolutionary approach to strategic presence by institutionalizing embedded U.S. military advisors, designated as Volckmann Advisors, within partner nation defense establishments.
Drawing from Russell Volckmann's successful World War II guerrilla campaign in the Philippines and building upon Lieutenant General Eric Wendt's 2011 strategic vision, the Global Advisor Program addresses the institutional failures that prevented the original Volckmann Program from achieving lasting impact. By establishing a unified training and education pipeline at the Naval Postgraduate School that integrates Foreign Area Officer methodologies, Military Personnel Exchange Program infrastructure, and Special Operations Forces partnership expertise, GAP creates a scalable framework for persistent competition and crisis prevention.
The program's dual-use architecture enables Volckmann Advisors to shape outcomes during peacetime competition while providing critical force multiplication during potential conflicts. Through systematic cultural training, education, language proficiency development, and deliberate career management, GAP transforms sporadic advisory efforts into enduring strategic assets. Initial deployment of twenty Volckmann Advisors to Indo-Pacific and European theaters by 2027 would demonstrate proof of concept while establishing the foundation for global expansion.
Strategic competition demands presence that determines influence and relationships that shape outcomes. GAP provides America's asymmetric advantage: the ability to embed trust before crises emerge, multiply partner capabilities during conflicts, and maintain influence through principled partnership rather than coercive presence. Where strategic gaps exist, GAP fills them.
Introduction: The Strategic Imperative
Strategic competition unfolds through persistent competition for influence, access, and narrative control rather than episodic kinetic exchanges. Nations that maintain trusted relationships during peacetime possess decisive advantages when crises erupt. Yet America's approach to global engagement remains fundamentally episodic, arriving for exercises, departing after missions, and allowing relationships to atrophy between rotational deployments. This pattern creates strategic presence gaps that competitors exploit through their own embedded networks of advisors, economic integration, and persistent influence operations.
China's Belt and Road Initiative demonstrates the power of persistent presence. Through thousands of advisors, engineers, and officials integrated into partner nations’ infrastructure and governance systems, Beijing influences decision-making processes from within. Russia employs similar strategies through Wagner Group/Africa Corps operatives and military advisors across Africa and Eastern Europe, building influence through sustained engagement rather than episodic intervention. Meanwhile, American influence often relies on either U.S. unilateral basing or distant relationships managed through embassy channels and periodic training events, which lack the depth and resilience necessary for effective competition.
The Global Advisor Program closes this strategic gap through embedded Volckmann Advisors who live, work, and build trust within partner defense institutions. Named in honor of Colonel Russell Volckmann's World War II campaign in the Philippines, these advisors embody a proven principle: influence is earned through shared hardship and sustained presence, not imposed through superior firepower or transactional assistance. GAP transforms this historical insight into a modern strategic capability, providing America with the persistent presence necessary to compete effectively in today's complex and contested environment.
Where strategic presence gaps threaten American influence, GAP fills them. Where relationship-building requires sustained commitment, GAP provides it. Where competitors seek uncontested access to partner nations, GAP ensures American advisors are already embedded, trusted, and influential. In strategic competition defined by presence rather than force projection, GAP offers America's path to enduring advantage.
Historical Foundation: The Volckmann Legacy
The strategic logic underlying GAP derives from one of World War II's most successful advisory campaigns. When conventional defenses collapsed in the Philippines during 1942, U.S. Army Captain Russell Volckmann refused surrender orders and disappeared into the mountains of northern Luzon with local Filipino fighters. Over three years of occupation, he organized, trained, and led a guerrilla force exceeding 22,000 fighters, maintaining effective resistance against numerically superior Japanese forces without continuous American support or permanent infrastructure.
Volckmann's enduring success stemmed not from technological superiority or overwhelming firepower, but from embedded trust earned through shared hardship. He learned local languages, respected cultural traditions, and demonstrated American commitment through presence rather than promises. When liberation forces arrived in 1945, they found not scattered resistance cells but a disciplined, effective organization capable of providing intelligence, logistics support, and coordinated military action. The relationships Volckmann built under extreme conditions proved more durable than formal alliances negotiated in distant capitals.
This model of embedded influence caught the attention of contemporary strategic thinkers. Writing in 1951, Volckmann himself argued that "partnership is our greatest weapon, turning allies into brothers and chaos into order." His insights influenced counterinsurgency doctrine and special operations theory, but remained largely theoretical until Lieutenant General Eric Wendt's 2011 proposal to institutionalize embedded advisors through the "Volckmann Program."
The Modern Volckmann Vision
Writing in Special Warfare, General Wendt proposed embedding Special Operations Forces with partner militaries before crises erupted, arguing that future Green Berets should prevent wars rather than merely fight them. His vision was strategically sound: small teams of culturally fluent advisors could achieve disproportionate effects by shaping partner capabilities, building institutional relationships, and providing early warning of emerging threats.
Initial deployments between 2011 and 2014 to Korea, Italy, Uganda, and Colombia demonstrated proof of concept, with embedded advisors facilitating strategic coordination and expanding American influence at minimal cost. In Korea, a Volckmann Operator embedded within the Republic of Korea Special Warfare Command proved instrumental in strengthening operational coordination and strategic influence. Over two years, his presence deepened relationships across ROK Special Forces brigades and expanded the U.S.-ROK SOF network in ways that continue to yield strategic access. His impact came not from any single operation, but from an enduring presence that built trust through daily interaction and shared professional challenges.
The program achieved formal recognition through the development of an Additional Skill Identifier (ASI) 2S for qualified operators, providing institutional acknowledgment of specialized expertise. Geographic Combatant Commands and interagency partners provided positive feedback, noting how small, culturally fluent teams delivered strategic effects disproportionate to their size while shaping partner capabilities and building trust in ways that large rotational forces could not achieve.
However, the original Volckmann Program failed to achieve institutional permanence despite these tactical successes. The post-9/11 strategic environment remained fundamentally oriented toward kinetic solutions and immediate crisis response rather than patient, persistent engagement. Even during the height of counterinsurgency efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, institutional priorities emphasized rapid deployment cycles, time-sensitive targeting, and measurable short-term outputs over the slow relationship-building that characterizes effective advisory work. This hyper-focus on kinetic raids and direct action missions overshadowed investment in preventive efforts that might have mitigated future conflicts through sustained partnership development.
The program also lacked dedicated funding, clear career pathways, and organizational champions capable of defending it through budget cycles and leadership transitions. Participants faced uncertain promotion prospects, limited recognition in evaluations, and unclear guidance on how advisory assignments contributed to long-term advancement. Without institutional architecture to sustain it, even effective embedded advisors remained isolated within their branches, unable to build the repeatable expertise necessary for program expansion. The absence of talent tracking or specialized identifiers beyond the initial ASI left high-performing advisors professionally isolated, discouraging the best candidates from volunteering and making it impossible to build a systematic bench of experienced practitioners.
The strategic environment that constrained the original Volckmann Program has fundamentally shifted. Contemporary defense doctrine embraces integrated deterrence and persistent engagement, concepts that align directly with embedded advisory methodology. Strategic competition has replaced crisis response as the primary organizing principle for military planning, creating demand for exactly the kind of persistent presence that Volckmann Advisors provide. Most importantly, senior leadership now recognizes that influence in strategic competition is earned through relationships rather than demonstrations of force, a reality that makes embedded advisors essential rather than auxiliary.
GAP learns from the original program's institutional failures while preserving its strategic insights. By establishing a permanent organizational structure, dedicated career pathways, systematic training and education standards, GAP transforms episodic success into an enduring capability.
Strategic Framework: Competing Through Embedded Persistent Presence
Contemporary strategic competition unfolds across multiple domains simultaneously, requiring American responses that operate below the threshold of open conflict while maintaining readiness for potential escalation. Embedded Volckmann Advisors provide unique dual-use capabilities that maximize strategic return on investment while minimizing political and operational risks.
Competition Phase Advantages
During peacetime competition, Volckmann Advisors serve as strategic early warning systems embedded within partner nation defense establishments. Unlike intelligence collection that relies on technical means or human sources with divided loyalties, embedded advisors develop a comprehensive understanding of partner capabilities, leadership dynamics, and threat perceptions through daily interaction and shared professional experience. This access enables them to identify emerging instabilities, assess the reliability of partner nations, and recommend policy adjustments before crises escalate beyond diplomatic resolution.
Beyond early warning, embedded advisors serve as direct influence mechanisms, capable of shaping partner force development, strategic planning, and operational decision-making in real-time. Through persistent presence and trusted relationships, Volckmann Advisors can guide partner capability investments, recommend tactical adjustments, and influence institutional priorities in ways that align with American strategic interests while respecting partner sovereignty.
Equally critical is their role in human domain mapping, providing a detailed understanding of the complex social networks, personal relationships, and institutional dynamics that determine how partner forces actually function beyond formal organizational charts. Future conflicts will be won or lost based on understanding these human connections, as will current strategic competition for influence within partner societies. Volckmann Advisors map these relationships through sustained engagement, identifying key influencers, institutional friction points, and leverage opportunities that external observers cannot access.
Academic research demonstrates that military training relationships significantly influence the behavior of recipient nations, particularly when training emphasizes professional norms and institutional development. However, traditional training programs operate through episodic engagement, which limits the depth and durability of relationships. Volckmann Advisors transcends these limitations by maintaining a continuous presence that enables real-time influence over partner nation military development, strategic planning, and crisis response capabilities.
The trust multiplier effect represents GAP's most significant competitive advantage. Unlike transactional relationships built on equipment transfers or training events, embedded advisors create relational capital that appreciates over time and survives leadership transitions. A Volckmann Advisor embedded with a battalion today builds relationships with officers who become brigade commanders tomorrow and generals within a decade. These relationships endure through political changes, regime transitions, and crisis periods, creating strategic assets that deliver influence across multiple contexts and timeframes.
Recent research on the effectiveness of foreign military training indicates that programs emphasizing relationship-building rather than simply transferring skills achieve more durable outcomes. Volckmann Advisors embody this principle by focusing on institutional integration rather than episodic instruction. Through sustained presence, they become trusted members of partner organizations rather than external consultants, enabling them to shape organizational culture, planning processes, and strategic decision-making in ways that temporary trainers cannot achieve.
Conflict Phase Force Multiplication
Should deterrence fail and strategic competition escalate toward open conflict, embedded Volckmann Advisors provide critical operational advantages that justify their peacetime investment. Their established relationships enable rapid coordination between American and partner forces, eliminating the relationship-building phase that typically delays coalition warfare effectiveness. Their deep understanding of partner capabilities, limitations, and operating procedures enables realistic operational planning that leverages actual rather than assumed partner contributions.
Historical analysis of coalition warfare demonstrates that effective multinational operations require extensive preparation, shared understanding, and established trust between partner forces. Traditional approaches to coalition building often operate through formal diplomatic channels and military-to-military exchanges, which frequently fail to foster the personal relationships necessary for effective coordination under stress. Volckmann Advisors build these relationships continuously, ensuring that coalition partnerships exist functionally rather than merely formally when conflicts begin.
The intelligence advantages provided by embedded advisors extend beyond traditional collection activities toward operational preparation of the environment. Through sustained presence, Volckmann Advisors develop a comprehensive understanding of local terrain, infrastructure, population dynamics, and logistical networks that proves invaluable during crisis response or conflict operations. This knowledge cannot be acquired through satellite imagery, signals intelligence, or brief reconnaissance missions, it requires the sustained observation and relationship-building that only embedded presence provides.
Cultural Fluency as Strategic Advantage
Modern strategic competition increasingly centers on narrative warfare, the contest for how local populations perceive competing powers and their respective partnerships. Traditional American engagement often appears transactional to foreign audiences: Americans arrive with equipment, conduct training, and depart according to predetermined schedules. Competitors exploit this pattern by portraying American partnerships as conditional assistance rather than genuine alliance.
Volckmann Advisors counters these narratives through demonstrated commitment. By sharing hardship, learning languages, and integrating into partner communities, they demonstrate that American partnership extends beyond immediate transactional interests. This cultural fluency becomes a decisive advantage in regions where personal relationships determine institutional trust and where authenticity of commitment influences strategic alignment.
The importance of cultural competence in military advisory relationships has been extensively documented through analyses of Vietnam-era programs, contemporary experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the broader foreign military training literature. Successful advisors consistently demonstrate language proficiency, cultural sensitivity, and genuine respect for partner nation institutions. GAP systematizes these individual attributes into institutional capabilities, ensuring that cultural fluency becomes a program standard rather than a fortunate accident.
Institutional Architecture: Building Enduring Capability
GAP's institutional design addresses the organizational failures that prevented the original Volckmann Program from achieving permanent establishment. Rather than operating as an informal initiative dependent on individual champions, GAP creates a systematic architecture for selecting, training, and managing embedded advisors across their entire careers.
Leveraging Existing Capabilities: Integration Rather Than Innovation
The strength of GAP lies not in creating new capabilities from scratch, but in unifying and optimizing existing investments that currently operate in organizational isolation. The U.S. military already fields substantial advisory and partnership capabilities through multiple programs, representing significant financial investment and proven operational value. GAP proposes to serve as the institutional umbrella that coordinates these efforts while establishing common standards, shared training, education, and strategic coherence.
Current Advisory Infrastructure:
The Military Personnel Exchange Program (MPEP) represents America's most extensive embedded advisory network, with over 450 active positions globally. The Army maintains 156 exchange positions across 15 countries, the Air Force operates 87 billets in 14 countries, and the Navy sustains 208 international exchanges with 20 countries as well as 40 interservice billets. These exchanges embed American personnel directly within foreign military command structures, providing exactly the kind of sustained presence that GAP seeks to systematize.
The Foreign Area Officer (FAO) community represents the Department's most robust investment in regional expertise, with approximately 1,200 Army officers trained or qualifying in functional area specialization. FAOs possess advanced language proficiency, cultural competence, and regional knowledge acquired through extensive training, education and multiple overseas assignments. However, most FAO positions remain embassy-based or headquarters-focused, which limits their tactical integration with partner combat formations.
Special Operations Forces maintain globally distributed singleton advisors, liaisons, and resident trainers who provide persistent relationship-building and quiet influence across key regions. These operators frequently serve as the first indicators of changing partner behavior, leadership dynamics, or threat development. However, their effectiveness depends heavily on individual initiative rather than systematic preparation or institutional support.
GAP as Organizational Integrator:
Rather than displacing these proven capabilities, GAP would function as the strategic integrator that transforms fragmented efforts into a coherent capability. Current programs suffer from inconsistent selection criteria, disparate training standards, disconnected career management, and limited strategic coordination. GAP addresses these institutional gaps by providing unified standards while preserving program-specific strengths.
Immediate Implementation Advantages:
This integration approach offers significant advantages for the rapid implementation of GAP. Existing personnel already possess operational experience, established relationships, and proven effectiveness that would serve as the foundation for program expansion. Current funding streams, basing arrangements, and diplomatic agreements provide the infrastructure necessary for immediate scaling rather than lengthy development timelines.
Partner nations already familiar with American exchange officers, FAOs, and SOF liaisons would understand GAP's purpose and value, reducing diplomatic friction that might accompany entirely new initiatives. The integration model also provides political advantages by demonstrating fiscal responsibility through optimization of existing investments rather than requesting additional resources during constrained budget environments.
Enhanced Effectiveness Through Coordination:
GAP's coordinating function would dramatically enhance current program effectiveness through systematic lesson sharing, standardized training, education, and strategic alignment. Exchange officers would benefit from FAO cultural preparation, FAOs would gain tactical integration experience from SOF methodologies, and SOF advisors would receive systematic language training and cultural education. This cross-pollination would create more capable advisors while building institutional knowledge that currently dissipates with personnel rotations.
Strategic coordination would ensure that embedded advisors complement each other rather than compete, eliminating duplicated efforts while maximizing coverage of critical partner relationships. Theater campaign plans would incorporate advisor activities as integral rather than auxiliary capabilities, ensuring that embedded presence supports broader strategic objectives rather than operating in isolation.
Organizational Structure and Location
GAP would operate as a joint capability colocated at the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) in Monterey, California, with dedicated command authority and independent funding streams. This positioning provides multiple strategic advantages that existing military education institutions cannot replicate. NPS already maintains the Global Center for Security Cooperation, which coordinates international education providers and facilitates security cooperation activities across consortium institutions. GAP would leverage this existing infrastructure while maintaining operational independence necessary for specialized advisory training and education.
The co-location in the Monterey area with the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center (DLIFLC) enables integrated language training that represents GAP's most critical capability requirement. Unlike traditional military education, which treats language as an additional skill, GAP embeds language proficiency within every aspect of advisor preparation. This integration reflects the reality that embedded advisors cannot achieve influence without linguistic competence and that cultural understanding emerges through language mastery rather than academic instruction alone.
NPS's academic resources provide access to regional studies expertise, strategic research capabilities, and policy analysis that traditional training centers and educational institutions lack. The Departments of National Security Affairs and Defense Analysis offer graduate-level instruction in strategic competition, regional affairs, and civil-military relations, directly supporting advisor preparation. However, GAP would maintain its own curriculum and standards, rather than merely adding advisory components to existing academic programs.
The institutional independence required for GAP's success necessitates a dedicated command structurethat prevents subordination to competing organizational priorities. While housed at NPS, GAP would operate with its own funding lines, personnel management authorities, and mission-specific standards. This structure ensures that advisor training remains focused on operational requirements rather than academic objectives, and that career management reflects advisory specialization rather than traditional branch advancement patterns.
Selection and Development Pipeline
GAP's selection process targets mid-career officers, warrant officers, and senior non-commissioned officers who demonstrate a strong aptitude for cross-cultural engagement and have proven leadership skills in complex and ambiguous environments. Unlike traditional military education, which emphasizes academic credentials, GAP prioritizes cultural intelligence, relationship-building capabilities, and personal resilience necessary for extended overseas assignments in potentially isolated conditions.
The selection methodology draws from Foreign Area Officer assessment techniques while incorporating Special Operations Forces evaluation standards adapted for advisory roles. Candidates undergo psychological evaluation designed to identify individuals capable of maintaining effectiveness during extended cultural immersion, linguistic assessment to determine language learning aptitude, and scenario-based exercises that evaluate decision-making under cultural ambiguity.
Phase One: Foundation Training and Education (Six Months)
Initial training emphasizes language immersion through a partnership with DLIFLC, necessitating candidates to achieve professional proficiency in target region languages before advancing to specialized instruction. This standard reflects the reality that embedded advisors must communicate technical concepts, grasp cultural nuances, and foster personal relationships, which require advanced linguistic capabilities rather than simply basic conversational skills.
Regional studies instruction offers a comprehensive understanding of the target area’s history, politics, economics, and security dynamics through intensive seminar-based learning that emphasizes analytical thinking over information memorization. This instruction integrates perspectives from multiple disciplines, anthropology, political science, economics, and military history, to develop a holistic understanding of regional complexity.
Advisory methodology education introduces systematic approaches to influence, negotiation, and relationship building derived from diplomatic practice, business consulting, and military leadership doctrine. This instruction emphasizes practical techniques for building trust with foreign counterparts, managing cross-cultural misunderstandings, and maintaining effectiveness during extended isolation from American support networks.
Phase Two: Practical Application (Three Months)
Advanced education employs scenario-based exercises using partner nation military officers as role-playing counterparts, enabling candidates to practice advisory techniques in realistic cultural contexts while building actual relationships that may prove valuable during deployment. These exercises emphasize problem-solving under cultural constraints, communication through interpreters, and decision-making when American and partner priorities diverge.
Mentorship programs pair candidates with experienced GAP alumni who provide practical guidance on managing advisory relationships, maintaining personal resilience during cultural immersion, and integrating with American embassy and military command structures. This mentorship continues throughout deployment, ensuring that new advisors maintain connection with institutional expertise and lessons learned from previous assignments.
Pre-deployment preparation includes country-specific briefings, relationship mapping with key partner nation personnel, and coordination with Geographic Combatant Command staffs to ensure that advisor activities align with theater campaign plans and diplomatic objectives. This preparation phase prevents the isolation that often undermines individual advisor effectiveness and ensures that embedded presence contributes to broader strategic objectives.
Career Development and Institutional Permanence
GAP's long-term viability requires institutional career support that makes advisory assignments attractive to high-potential personnel rather than career-limiting detours from traditional advancement pathways. This necessitates formal recognition through Additional Skill Identifiers (ASIs), functional area designations similar to the Foreign Area Officer community, and promotion tracking that demonstrates advisory experience enhances rather than impedes advancement opportunities.
Professional Recognition and Advancement
The Army's Foreign Area Officer program provides the model for GAP career management, with a formal functional area designation (similar to FA48), structured promotion pathways, and senior-level positions reserved for qualified specialists. GAP would establish comparable recognition across all services, ensuring that Volckmann Advisors receive credit for specialized expertise while maintaining eligibility for conventional leadership positions.
Rotational assignments balance operational advisory tours with strategic-level positions that utilize embedded experience for broader organizational benefits. Typical career progression includes two- to three-year advisory deployments followed by strategic assignments at Theater Special Operations Commands, Geographic Combatant Commands, or policy positions within the Office of the Secretary of Defense. This rotation ensures that embedded experience informs strategic planning while offering advisors career development opportunities akin to traditional military specialties.
Senior leadership pathways include command positions within GAP structure, senior fellowship programs at civilian academic institutions, and flag or general officer advancement that demonstrates organizational commitment to advisory expertise. Without visible senior leader representation, GAP risks being perceived as a specialized capability rather than a pathway to institutional influence.
Institutional Memory and Continuous Improvement
GAP's effectiveness depends on systematic capture and application of lessons learned from advisor experiences across multiple deployments and partner nations. Unlike ad hoc advisory efforts that lose institutional memory with each personnel rotation, GAP creates persistent organizational learning through structured after-action processes, alumni networks, and research partnerships with academic institutions.
Annual conferences bring together current and former advisors to share experiences, identify best practices, and recommend program improvements based on operational experience. These gatherings serve multiple functions: maintaining esprit de corps among geographically dispersed personnel, facilitating cross-regional learning that enhances advisor effectiveness, and providing institutional leadership with feedback necessary for continuous program refinement.
Research partnerships with NPS faculty and external academic institutions enable systematic analysis of advisor effectiveness, partner nation feedback, and comparative assessment of GAP outcomes versus traditional engagement mechanisms. This research capability ensures that program evolution reflects empirical evidence rather than anecdotal impressions, while contributing to broader understanding of advisory relationships and strategic competition dynamics.
Implementation Strategy: From Concept to Capability
GAP implementation requires systematic approach that addresses organizational resistance, resource constraints, and operational risks while demonstrating early success that builds institutional momentum for program expansion. The phased implementation strategy balances ambitious strategic objectives with realistic timelines and resource requirements.
Phase One: Foundation Building (Months 1-12)
Institutional Assessment and Stakeholder Engagement
Implementation begins with comprehensive DOTMLPF-P (Doctrine, Organization, Training, Materiel, Leadership and Education, Personnel, Facilities, and Policy) analysis that catalogs existing advisory capabilities across services and identifies gaps that GAP would address. This assessment provides baseline understanding of current programs while establishing metrics for measuring GAP's additive value.
Stakeholder engagement targets Geographic Combatant Commands, service headquarters, and interagency partners to build coalition supporting GAP establishment. This outreach emphasizes GAP's complementary rather than competitive relationship with existing programs, demonstrating how embedded advisors enhance rather than replace current engagement mechanisms.
Congressional engagement focuses on the defense authorization and appropriations committees, emphasizing the cost-effectiveness of GAP compared to traditional forward presence methods and its alignment with strategic competition priorities established in recent National Defense Strategy guidance. This engagement establishes the political foundation necessary for sustained funding and institutional support.
Curriculum Development and Initial Recruitment
Curriculum development leverages existing NPS and DLIFLC capabilities while establishing GAP-specific standards for advisor preparation. Initial course design emphasizes proven methodologies from Foreign Area Officer training, Special Operations Forces qualification courses, and diplomatic preparation programs adapted for military advisory requirements.
Recruitment targets high-performing mid-career personnel across services, emphasizing voluntary selection rather than directed assignment to ensure participant motivation and program quality. Initial cohort size (approximately twenty candidates) enables intensive instruction and individual attention while providing sufficient numbers for meaningful operational deployment.
Partner nation coordination identifies willing hosts for pilot advisory deployments, focusing on allies and partners with established security cooperation relationships and demonstrated interest in expanded American engagement. Initial deployments concentrate on Indo-Pacific and European theaters where strategic competition is most intense and where early success would demonstrate GAP's strategic value.
Phase Two: Proof of Concept (Months 13-24)
Initial Training, Education and Deployment
The first GAP cohort undergoes a complete training and education pipeline, serving as proof of concept for curriculum effectiveness and institutional processes. Intensive monitoring and evaluation during this phase provide lessons learned necessary for program refinement and expansion planning.
Initial deployments focus on strategic-level advisory roles that maximize visibility and influence while minimizing operational risks. Early assignments emphasize relationship building and institutional integration rather than crisis response, enabling advisors to establish credibility and trust before facing operational challenges.
Baseline assessment establishes metrics for measuring advisor effectiveness, partner satisfaction, and strategic outcomes that GAP contributes to broader theater objectives. These metrics provide empirical foundation for program evaluation and expansion justification.
Organizational Learning and Refinement
Systematic collection of lessons learned from initial deployments enables rapid program refinement based on operational experience rather than theoretical assumptions. Regular feedback sessions with deployed advisors, partner nation officials, and Geographic Combatant Command staffs identify necessary adjustments to training and education curriculum, selection criteria, and operational employment guidelines.
Preliminary assessment of strategic outcomes begins evaluation of GAP's contribution to strategic competition objectives, relationship building with key partners, and early warning capability development. While definitive assessment requires longer timelines, initial indicators provide a foundation for program expansion decisions.
Phase Three: Expansion and Integration (Months 25-36)
Program Scaling and Service Integration
Successful proof of concept enables expansion to 40-60 advisors annually across all Geographic Combatant Commands, with service integration that embeds GAP within formal military education and career development pipelines. This expansion requires formal service agreements, dedicated funding streams, and personnel management integration.
Institutional integration includes GAP representation at senior military education institutions, advisor expertise input into strategic planning processes, and formal recognition of embedded advisory capability within joint doctrine and service-specific strategy documents.
Strategic Assessment and Future Planning
Comprehensive program evaluation after three years of operation provides definitive assessment of GAP's strategic value, operational effectiveness, and institutional integration success. This evaluation considers advisor effectiveness measurements, partner nation feedback, strategic competition outcomes, and cost-benefit analysis compared to alternative engagement mechanisms.
Future planning addresses program expansion to full operational capability, integration with allied and partner nation advisory programs, and adaptation to emerging strategic competition requirements in space, cyber, and other non-traditional domains.
Expected Outcomes and Strategic Benefits
GAP's strategic value manifests through measurable improvements in American competitive position that compound over time and across multiple operational contexts. Unlike traditional engagement mechanisms that produce episodic effects, embedded advisors generate cumulative strategic advantages requiring systematic assessment methodologies.
Assessment Framework and Success Indicators
Institutional Integration Metrics
Success measurement begins with quantifying advisor integration depth within partner defense establishments. Key indicators include advisor participation in partner strategic planning sessions, inclusion in sensitive operational briefings, and consultation frequency during crisis decision-making. Assessment tracks progression from external consultant status to trusted internal advisor positions, measuring integration through partner-initiated contact frequency and scope of responsibilities assigned.
Partnership Resilience During Transitions
GAP effectiveness requires measurement of relationship continuity through partner nation leadership changes, government transitions, and policy shifts. Traditional engagement mechanisms often reset with each personnel change, requiring extensive relationship rebuilding. Assessment methodology tracks advisor relationship maintenance through political transitions, measuring cooperation consistency across multiple leadership cycles and institutional memory preservation.
Operational Coordination Efficiency
Crisis response effectiveness measurement compares coordination timelines between GAP-supported partnerships and traditional relationships. Metrics include initial contact establishment speed, information sharing accuracy, and decision-making synchronization during regional emergencies. Assessment evaluates advisor-facilitated coordination against baseline requirements for establishing operational partnerships without pre-existing relationships.
Competitive Position Analysis
Regional Influence Assessment
Systematic evaluation tracks American influence trends in GAP-supported regions compared to areas relying on episodic engagement. Metrics include partner nation policy alignment during international disputes, cooperation levels in multilateral forums, and resistance to competitor influence operations. Assessment methodology measures influence durability during periods of reduced American attention or competing priorities.
Cost-Effectiveness Evaluation
Comparative analysis measures GAP investment efficiency against alternative engagement mechanisms. Assessment includes cost-per-advisor versus large unit deployments, relationship maintenance expenses, and strategic access costs. Evaluation framework tracks return on investment through prevented crises, enhanced cooperation agreements, and competitor access denial.
Innovation and Adaptation Measurement
Program effectiveness requires continuous assessment of institutional learning and adaptation capacity. Metrics evaluate the integration of lessons learned, the evolution of training and education curricula, and the refinement of operational methodologies based on field experience. Assessment tracks program responsiveness to changing strategic competition requirements and the incorporation of partner nation feedback.
Risk Management and Strategic Mitigation
GAP implementation requires comprehensive risk management that addresses operational security, political sensitivities, and institutional challenges while maintaining program effectiveness and strategic credibility. Successful risk mitigation enables program expansion while preventing incidents that could undermine political support or partner nation cooperation.
Operational Security and Personnel Safety
Threat Assessment and Mitigation Protocols
Embedded advisor safety requires continuous threat assessment that evaluates political stability, criminal activity, terrorist presence, and conventional conflict risks within deployment areas. Unlike traditional military deployments with organic security capabilities, individual advisors depend on host nation protection and diplomatic security resources that may prove inadequate during crisis periods.
Risk mitigation protocols include comprehensive threat briefings before deployment, regular security assessments throughout assignment periods, and predetermined evacuation procedures for various threat scenarios. Communication security measures ensure that advisors maintain contact with American authorities while protecting sensitive information from hostile intelligence services.
Emergency response procedures address medical emergencies, natural disasters, political instability, and direct threats to advisor safety through coordination with embassy personnel, Geographic Combatant Command staffs, and special operations forces capable of emergency extraction if required.
Information Security and Counterintelligence
Embedded advisors represent attractive targets for hostile intelligence services seeking access to American military capabilities, strategic planning, and technological information. Comprehensive counterintelligence training prepares advisors to recognize recruitment attempts, resist interrogation if captured, and protect sensitive information through operational security practices.
Communication security assumes that all advisor communications may be intercepted by hostile intelligence services or partner nation security agencies. Secure communication protocols enable necessary coordination with American authorities while minimizing exposure of sensitive information that could compromise operational security or strategic planning.
Digital security training addresses cyber threats to advisor personal and professional devices, recognizing that embedded advisors may face sophisticated technical exploitation attempts designed to access American networks through advisor credentials and access.
Political and Diplomatic Risk Management
Host Nation Sensitivity and Cultural Competence
Partner nation sovereignty concerns require careful balance between advisor effectiveness and respect for host nation autonomy. Advisors must influence partner behavior while avoiding appearance of American control or conditional assistance that could trigger nationalist resistance or political exploitation by anti-American elements.
Cultural preparation addresses local customs, political sensitivities, and social expectations that affect advisor credibility and effectiveness. Comprehensive cultural education reduces risks of inadvertent offense while enabling advisors to navigate complex social and political environments successfully.
Government coordination ensures that advisor activities align with host nation political priorities and legal requirements while maintaining American strategic objectives. Formal agreements establish advisor roles, limitations, and expectations that prevent misunderstandings and political conflicts.
American Domestic and Congressional Concerns
Congressional oversight requires regular reporting on advisor activities, safety measures, and strategic outcomes that demonstrate program effectiveness while addressing legitimate concerns about overseas commitments and personnel risks. Transparent reporting builds political support while protecting operational security requirements.
Public affairs strategy proactively addresses potential criticism of advisor programs through emphasis on partnership rather than unilateral action, cost-effectiveness compared to traditional forward presence, and alignment with strategic competition requirements established through bipartisan congressional action.
Interagency coordination prevents conflicts between military advisor activities and diplomatic or intelligence community operations through regular consultation and shared understanding of respective roles and limitations.
Institutional Risk Mitigation
Career Development and Personnel Retention
Advisor career viability requires demonstration that embedded assignments enhance rather than limit advancement opportunities within traditional military career patterns. Statistical tracking of advisor promotion rates, command opportunities, and senior leadership advancement provides empirical evidence of career benefits while identifying necessary adjustments to personnel management policies.
Family support programs address unique challenges of extended overseas assignments, including education opportunities for military children, spousal employment assistance, and community support networks that reduce family stress and enhance retention.
Professional development during advisor assignments maintains advisor currency in conventional military capabilities while building specialized expertise that enhances rather than replaces traditional military competence.
Program Sustainability and Institutional Support
Bipartisan political support requires demonstrated strategic value that transcends partisan political cycles and addresses enduring American strategic interests rather than temporary policy preferences. Regular strategic assessments provide empirical evidence of program contributions to strategic competition objectives while identifying necessary adaptations to changing strategic environments.
Allied coordination explores potential integration with partner nation advisory programs, burden-sharing arrangements, and multilateral advisory training and education that reduce American resource requirements while enhancing program effectiveness through international cooperation.
Budget diversification reduces dependence on single funding sources by integrating advisor costs within broader security cooperation budgets, Geographic Combatant Command operation and maintenance accounts, and joint training and education funding streams.
Conclusion: Strategic Presence Through Partnership
The Global Advisor Program represents more than military education reform or organizational restructuring; it embodies a strategic philosophy that recognizes relationship building as America's asymmetric advantage in global competition. While competitors may match American military technology, economic resources, or diplomatic influence, they cannot replicate the trust that emerges from sustained, respectful partnership demonstrated through shared hardship and mutual commitment.
GAP advisors succeed not by occupying foreign territory but by earning access to foreign trust. They achieve influence not by imposing American solutions but by amplifying partner capabilities. Most importantly, they provide security not by arriving during crises but by preventing crises through persistent presence that enables early intervention before instabilities escalate beyond diplomatic resolution.
The Strategic Imperative for Immediate Action
Contemporary strategic competition demands immediate implementation of persistent presence capabilities that enable American influence during peacetime rather than reaction during crises. China's Belt and Road Initiative, Russia's gray zone activities, and Iran's proxy networks all demonstrate the strategic value of embedded influence that shapes partner nation development from within rather than external pressure applied from distant capitals.
America possesses unique advantages in this competition that GAP would systematically exploit. Democratic values inspire partnership rather than demanding submission, creating foundation for genuine cooperation rather than coercive compliance. Military professionalism earns respect rather than fear, enabling advisors to build institutional relationships based on mutual benefit rather than intimidation. Cultural adaptability facilitates authentic relationship building rather than surface-level engagement that competitors exploit as evidence of American insincerity.
However, these advantages remain latent until activated through systematic implementation. Individual advisor success stories provide anecdotal evidence of embedded effectiveness, but strategic competition requires institutional capability that operates across multiple theaters simultaneously while maintaining consistent standards and strategic coordination.
Implementation Timeline: Closing the GAP
The Department of Defense should initiate comprehensive DOTMLPF-P assessment immediately, enabling prototype training and education pipeline deployment of the first Volckmann Advisor cohort to Indo-Pacific and European theaters by early 2027. This aggressive timeline reflects strategic competition urgency while allowing sufficient preparation for sustainable program establishment.
Immediate Actions Required (Next 90 Days):
· Formal DOTMLPF-P assessment initiation through appropriate service and joint staff channels
· Stakeholder engagement with Geographic Combatant Commands, service headquarters, and interagency partners
· Initial coordination with Naval Postgraduate School and Defense Language Institute leadership
· Congressional notification and preliminary resource identification
Near-Term Objectives (Months 4-12):
· Curriculum development and instructor recruitment
· Initial candidate selection and recruitment
· Partner nation coordination for pilot deployments
· Formal program establishment and command structure implementation
Operational Timeline (Months 13-24):
· First cohort training, education and certification
· Initial deployments to priority theater locations
· Baseline assessment and lessons learned collection
· Program refinement based on operational experience
This timeline enables rapid capability development while ensuring thorough preparation that maximizes success probability and minimizes operational risks. Delayed implementation provides competitors additional time to consolidate influence while denying America the persistent presence necessary for effective strategic competition.
Call to Strategic Action
Strategic leaders across the defense community must champion GAP immediately through their professional networks, planning processes, and resource allocation decisions. Share the proposal through service colleges, war colleges, and professional associations while advocating for its consideration within strategic planning and program development processes.
For centuries, great powers have deployed trusted emissaries to forge coalitions before conflict erupted. Medieval kingdoms exchanged princes as hostages to guarantee treaty compliance. Renaissance city-states embedded ambassadors within foreign courts to shape policy from within. Modern strategic competition demands similar embedded presence, but adapted for democratic values and professional military relationships rather than dynastic politics.
Where there exists a GAP in American strategic presence, GAP fills it. Where there exists a GAP in trusted partnerships, GAP builds them. Where there exists a GAP in competitive advantage, GAP closes it.
The Volckmann legacy awaits modern implementation through systematic institutionalization rather than individual heroism. Strategic competition demands a persistent presence rather than episodic intervention. The Global Advisor Program provides a mechanism to transform American engagement from crisis response to crisis prevention through embedded partnerships that shape outcomes before competitors recognize opportunities.
GAP: Embedding influence today, securing victory tomorrow.
References
1. Mike Anderson, "Military Advisors, Service Strategies, and Great Power Competition," Journal of Strategic Security 16, no. 1 (2023): 19-34.
2. U.S. Department of Defense, Military and Security Developments Involving the People's Republic of China 2024 (Washington, DC: Department of Defense, 2024).
3. Russell W. Volckmann, Operations Against Guerrilla Forces, U.S. Army Field Manual 31-20 (Washington, DC: Department of the Army, 1951).
4. Russell W. Volckmann, We Remained: Three Years Behind Enemy Lines in the Philippines (New York: W.W. Norton, 1954); Mike Guardia, American Guerrilla: The Forgotten Heroics of Russell W. Volckmann(Havertown, PA: Casemate, 2010).
5. Eric Wendt, "The Green Beret Volckmann Program: Maximizing the Prevent Strategy," Special Warfare24, no. 3 (July-September 2011): 10-16.
6. Theodore McLauchlin, Lee JM Seymour, and Simon Pierre Boulanger Martel, "Tracking the rise of United States foreign military training: IMTAD-USA, a new dataset and research agenda," Journal of Peace Research 59, no. 2 (2022): 271-285.
7. Jessica Stanton, "Soldiers' Dilemma: Foreign Military Training and Liberal Norm Conflict," International Security 46, no. 4 (Spring 2022): 48-94.
8. Gerald Cannon Hickey, The American Military Advisor and His Foreign Counterpart: The Case of Vietnam, RAND Corporation Research Memorandum RM-4482-ARPA (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 1965).
9. Naval Postgraduate School, "Global Center for Security Cooperation, DLI Sign Historic Collaboration," January 30, 2019.
10. Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center, "About Us," accessed March 2025, https://www.dliflc.edu/about/.
11. Naval Postgraduate School, Department of National Security Affairs, "Welcome," accessed March 2025, https://nps.edu/web/nsa.
12. U.S. Army Human Resources Command, "Functional Area 48 (FAO) Program," https://www.hrc.army.mil/content/Functional Area 48 (FAO).
13. U.S. Department of Defense, Summary of the 2022 National Defense Strategy of the United States of America (Washington, DC: Department of Defense, 2022).
About the Author
CW5 Maurice "Duc" DuClos currently serves as a Guest Lecturer at the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) in Monterey, California. His professional background includes various positions at the United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) Joint Special Operations University (JSOU), the U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School (USAJFKSWCS), 1st Special Forces Group (Airborne), and 2/75th Ranger Battalion.
His research interests focus on irregular and unconventional warfare, resistance to occupation, strategic competition, the effectiveness of security cooperation, and military advisory relationships in contested and denied environments.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the United States Special Operations Command, Joint Special Operations University, the Naval Postgraduate School, or the Department of Defense.
strategycentral.io · June 26, 2025
23. Army Blocks Air Force’s AI Program Over Data Security Concerns
Do we have an interservice issue here?
Army Blocks Air Force’s AI Program Over Data Security Concerns
https://www.airandspaceforces.com/fearing-data-leaks-army-blocks-air-force-ai-program-from-its-networks/
June 25, 2025 | By Shaun Waterman
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The Army has blocked the Air Force generative AI chatbot, NIPRGPT, from its networks, citing cybersecurity and data governance and highlighting the challenges the U.S. military faces in assessing risk when adopting cutting-edge technologies like artificial intelligence.
NIPRGPT, developed as an experimental project of by the Air Force Research Laboratory, aims to give military personnel a generative AI Large Language Model (LLM) comparable to OpenAI’s ChatGPT, but free of the security, data protection and privacy concerns posed by consumer AI products.
But the Army flagged the program as risky and on April 17 pulled the plug on it for anyone using Army networks, an unusual decision that exposed a rift between the two military services.
“NIPRGPT was shot dead,” said one Army user who wasn’t authorized to speak to the media.
IT security for the U.S. military is a patchwork—each network or system commander has the power to make their own decisions about what risks to accept. So when one commander makes a risk calculation, others are under no obligation to accept it, meaning tools like NIPRGPT can be allowed in some commands but not others.
The result can impact user trust, tool consistency, and the sharing of capabilities across joint operations—and is also a major stumbling block to the swift adoption of cutting-edge technologies.
‘It Was My Call’
Chief Technology Officer Gabriel Chiulli of the Army’s Enterprise Cloud Management Agency told Air & Space Forces Magazine that the NIPRGPT block was part of a wider move by the Army to transition from experimentation with AI LLMs and launch into full implementation using real Army data.
“The block was focused on getting us to a governance framework for AI used in a production state,” he said. “We were trying to make sure we had the guardrails in place for how we’re doing AI for real.”
So NIPRGPT might have been fine for experimenting, but not for mission requirements.
“It was my decision to make the call,” Chiulli said.
Air Force officials declined to comment.
Weeks after the block was implemented, the Army deployed its Army Enterprise LLM Workspace, a platform that allows users to access locally hosted secure LLMs. It’s powered by Ask Sage, which bills itself as “a LLM agnostic, secure and extensible Generative AI platform,” and was founded by Nick Chaillan, a controversial former Air Force Chief Software Officer.
“I built the entire architecture to be able to run anywhere from a backpack to a cloud, to run air-gapped, to run on classified systems,” Chaillan told Air & Space Forces Magazine. Ask Sage provides a secure interface, or virtual wrapper, around multiple commercial generative AI models, so that data can be loaded once and then used with multiple models without any additional charge, Chaillan said.
“The platform provides a layer between the user and the model which enables data to be identified, tagged and associated with its user … on a very granular basis,” he said. The system tracks access permissions, so that only those entitled to access certain data can get to it.
“We’re the only product that has that kind of zero trust, data centric security stack,” Chaillan said.
Ask Sage has FedRAMP high clearance and is authorized for both Controlled Unclassified Information and Secret and Top Secret classification levels, achievements that Chaillan called “A very heavy lift” including penetration testing and red teaming.
The company announced a $10M deal to expand its military user base last week, extending the Army Enterprise LLM Workspace to the Joint Staff, the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD), and all Combatant Commands.
Risk and Reciprocity
Banning NIPRGPT on Army networks highlights a challenge long recognized by software providers: the lack of reciprocity among government users when it comes to the Authorization to Operate (ATO) in government IT systems. An ATO is a prerequisite for any software program or service to run on a government network.
Defense Department policy encourages reciprocity among its myriad agencies and commands, but it doesn’t require system owners to recognize ATOs issued elsewhere in the department, a former technical advisor to the Air Force told Air & Space Forces Magazine. The former advisor asked for anonymity because their current employer had not authorized them to speak to the media about Air Force issues.
“You can, by policy, choose to reject somebody else’s ATO and forbid stuff from your system,” the former technical advisor said.
Within the Air Force, some authorizing officials were “known to be more strict or less strict, or more forward thinking, or more traditional” than others. Still, banning something with an ATO from another service was “a big lever to pull,” the former technical advisor said: Though “not unheard of, it is a little bit out of the ordinary.”
But John Weiler, a long-time advocate for IT modernization and procurement reform in the Pentagon found the block surprising: “I’ve been in this business 35 years and I’ve never heard of anything like this ban,” he said. “It’s unprecedented.”
Data driven decision
Chiulli said a key driver behind his decision was the discovery that Soldiers were using experimental LLM chatbots in ways that created risks to army data.
The Army surveyed personnel about their daily use of NIPRGPT, CamoGPT and other generative AI models in a research study called Project Athena.
Survey respondents “gave us use cases that made me just want to make sure that—if they’re doing those type of things with Army production data … then I want to make sure that I can give them that capability as an Army system provider,” he said.
Guidance given to NIPRGPT users was not clear, Chiulli added. “There’s a lot of different disclaimers on the homepage for NIPRGPT,” he said, “a lot of different Do’s and Don’ts,” which might leave Army personnel confused about “whether they actually are allowed to do that stuff.”
The login page of NIPRGPT is considered “Controlled Unclassified Information” and not accessible to the public. Air & Space Forces Magazine was unable to independently verify this statement.
The Army wanted to ensure there was clarity and consistency in rules about how to use AI, Chiulli said.
“We were worried about duplicative [and divergent] guidance,” he said. “I might give guidance out from an Army perspective, about Army data, and it may be in conflict with Air Force [guidance], right?”
The Army was also concerned “to ensure we have some policies out there for records management,” he said, so that generative AI chatbots could be responsive to FOIA requests and other records retention mandates. “When someone calls up and says, ‘I need to know what someone did [on this issue],’ We need to have all [those records] ready to go.”
Issuing guidance would not have been a sufficient response, Chiulli said, noting “Soldiers will soldier: They’ll go and use stuff that’s useful whether or not they’re supposed to use it, as long as they can get to the website.”
Turning Off the Spigot
Other than security, the biggest factor in the move away from NIPRGPT was cost, Chiulli said.
NIPRGPT was free to the users from every service, but there were doubts that the funding model was sustainable, and concerns about what would happen if and when NIPRGPT had to transition from R&D dollars to sustainment dollars.
The Army feared that the Air Force might pull the rug out from the program.
“I don’t know when that spigot was going to turn off,” he said of the free access to NIPRGPT, “There’s always a bill. We need to be very cognizant of the cost model. Whether it’s free for one year or six months or seven years, at some point, you have to pay.”
More importantly, said Chiulli, Army users needed to understand that—even if they weren’t paying—the service did cost money. “I think there needed to be a general understanding across our users that AI is not free.”
A new cost model
Chiulli said that one of the cost advantages of the Army Enterprise LLM Workspace is the flexible way Ask Sage is billed.
Most Software-as-a-Service offerings, like Ask Sage, are billed by the “seat.” The military service or agency buys a certain number of user licenses—each representing the right of one person to use the service.
But Ask Sage bills by the token—the units that Generative AI puts together to form the sentences it produces. The tokens can be assigned to anyone and reassigned if necessary, Chaillan said. They can also be used at any classification level, so if a customer has bought tokens for an unclassified system and then finds they need classified access, they can use the same tokens. Either way, the costs are born by individual users based on their volume of use.
24. Axis of Opportunists: The cracks in the Sino-Russian Partnership
Excerpt:
Russia, throughout history, has been an expansionist nation (and let’s be honest, so has the United States…and most nations at some point) – seeking territory at the expense of neighbors, while likewise fending off existential invasions nearly every generation. They have their reasoning for their paranoia. However, today’s Germans, French, Poles, or Finns show no desire to march on Moscow and conquer the Motherland. The West wants peace, stability, trade, and to end the needless bloodshed in Ukraine. If, however, a recalcitrant Russia continues to panic Europe, the blame lies at the feet of Putin for the expansion of NATO and the rearmament of the continent. If this dubious trend continues, the West must endeavor to sow seeds of discontent between the opportunistic alignment of Russia and China. The West needs to seek policies to foment disagreement between Russia and China, not drive them together. The “no limits” partnership is a loveless marriage of convenience, with each side likely to sell each other out if given a better deal. Therefore, strategic leaders must look at this seemingly monolithic partnership and recognize the fracture points, with eyes on expanding the tensions and eroding trust between the Russian and Chinese duo.
Axis of Opportunists: The cracks in the Sino-Russian Partnership
https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/06/27/axis-of-opportunists-the-cracks-in-the-sino-russian-partnership/
by David Zesinger
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06.27.2025 at 06:00am
Red Square triumphantly greeted President Xi Jinping in May 2025 to celebrate the Soviet victory in the Great Patriotic War, where he reaffirmed a “no limits” partnership with modern-day Russia. This loathsome collaboration seems an intimidating challenge for the United States and the West. After all, Russian and Chinese landmasses dominate Eurasia, and ostensibly these two autocratic states serve in a mutualistic relationship, where Russian resources stoke a massive Chinese economy, and Sino financial and diplomatic support enable a revisionist Russian Empire. Likewise, both nations find themselves isolated from the world community in the aftermath of COVID’s origins in Wuhan and Putin’s assault on Ukraine, leaving them little choice but to align. This marriage of convenience seems an obvious match on the surface, but there are multiple reasons to doubt and avenues for third parties to scuttle this relationship.
A parallel failed arranged marriage can be found in the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, where Russia once allied with the Third Reich in the run-up to World War II, similarly exchanging vital Soviet natural resources for German machinery and expertise. While China is not Nazi Germany, and this does not forecast conflict between the two Asiatic giants, it rather demonstrates that the framework for a “no limits” Sino-Russian partnership is of temporary convenience and a move to strengthen a weak façade, which in turn is a proactive gesture to the West. Both nations have significantly different cultures, and according to the ancient wisdom of Indian theorist Kautilya, Russia and China’s proximity deems them unnatural allies. While wedging them apart is easier said than done, American strategic leadership must understand the pressure points and potential fault lines in the Sino-Russian relationship. A brief examination of the historical tensions and resource and demographic imbalances will illuminate that any Sino-Russian cooperation is tepid, temporary, and masking underlying and mutual animosity.
Historic Rifts
A chief gripe of President Xi is rectifying the Century of Humiliation, and having China ascend to its rightful prominence in the world. As an enduring and commanding culture, China was a land of immense wealth and prestige prior to the Age of Discovery. But by the 19th century, European powers gained the advantage over the Middle Kingdom, and the century of Humiliation was inaugurated by the Opium Wars and continued with pressured cession of lands via “unequal treaties.” In the ensuing chaos of conflict between the British Empire and Qing China, Russia absconded with Chinese Outer Manchuria and portions of Western China in four distinct giveaways (1858, 1860, 1864, and 1881). These chunks of resource-rich land are collectively over 40 times the size of Taiwan. This also butted Russia right next to Korea and Japan, setting up the embarrassing defeat in the Russo-Japanese War in 1905. Additionally, it cemented Moscow’s meddling in East Asian affairs for a century to come. In contrast, the United Kingdom gained Hong Kong in 1841, a small backwater island, transformed it into a global financial center, and cordially returned it to China nearly three decades ago. Russia exacerbated the Century of Humiliation, was unapologetically the greatest exploiter of a downtrodden China, and still possesses former Chinese territory on the scale of three and a half Californians.
These former Qing territories later served as a battlefield for a deadly skirmish between the Soviets and Red China. In 1969, underlying Sino-Soviet tensions boiled over, resulting in combat casualties along the Ussuri River dividing the nuclear states. Dozens lost their lives, no resolutions made, and for the remainder of the Cold War, it is believed that nuclear missiles from both sides were targeted at each other, in addition to the West. The United States was able to further exploit these fissures, with President Nixon’s visit to China in 1972 (and Forrest Gump too), and played the communist juggernauts against each other’s disparate interests, aiding to the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union. Sino-Russian mistrust and irritable relations are currently only supplanted by a contemporary, perceived threat from the West, forcing historical rivals to make an unenthusiastic stand together.
Coveted Resources
Siberia connects Russia and China, and includes the former Qing territories, and is an underpopulated hinterland of resources. It abounds in energy, minerals, timber, and water – all of which China scours the globe for. Additionally, potential climate change brings the opportunity of melting permafrost, making access to these resources more economical and viable. Even more tantalizing, near the Chinese border, Lake Baikal rests beyond the parched Gobi Desert. Barely inhabited (by Chinese standards), Baikal is the deepest lake on the face of the globe, larger than Belgium, and holds over 20% of the world’s freshwater. A tantalizing prize just beyond the reach of the bustling population centers of Northern China. Planned Chinese pipelines to tap into Baikal have met considerable Russian and environmental pushback, evaporating plans to alleviate China’s water shortage. This area, adjoining former Chinese lands, was subjugated by the Russians a mere 400 years ago, a footnote to the neighboring Chinese civilization, who have claims to East Asia dating back 5,000 years. Indeed, hundreds of thousands of Asian people populate the Russian Far East, mixed with descendants of Russian pioneers and Soviet-forced transplants.
Tepid Partnership
Sino-Russian cooperation may seem like a great wall of collaboration when viewing staged military parades, but China has trotted a fine line in regards to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Not wanting to over-antagonize the West (yet), China has willingly purchased cheap Russian energy, but stops well short of combined military support. Russia, on the other hand, has resorted to courting North Korea for cannon fodder and ammunition. A far cry from the days when the Soviet Union was the salvation of revolutionaries and despots worldwide. This budding cooperation with North Korea may be another reason for China’s dyspepsia with Russia. The 38th parallel serves as a buffer to China from the West, but an emboldened North Korea, buttressed by Russian tech, may prove more problematic to a China that prefers the status quo on the Korean peninsula. China likewise has been meddling in Russia’s traditional sphere of influence, with President Xi’s trips to Central Asia, where he has peddled the Belt and Road initiative, hoping to supplant Russian influence in the region. Most critically, the transition to junior partner to China is a sore spot for Putin and the Russian people, which is a point of contention ripe for exacerbation.
A Zimmerman Telegram Moment?
The German Empire attempted a similar realignment for a powerful adversary an ocean away. In 1917, Kaiser Wilhelm suggested that Mexico regain the American Southwest, lost 70 years prior, offering legitimacy and military support (as documented in the movie Three Amigos). The proposal backfired, as the secret communique was revealed by British diplomats in the infamous Zimmerman Telegram, resulting in further erosion of German support within the United States and eventual war against the Central Powers. The difference in this analogy is that the China of today is not the Mexico of 1917. On the contrary, China is increasing its military strength stupendously and doubling its nuclear weapons every few years. While Russia has burned through decades worth of Cold War stockpiles, it is reliant on starving foreign mercenaries and stalled out in a 4-year conflict with a neighbor it geographically outsizes by a factor of 28. China is on the rise, and Russia is on the back foot.
A potential China-Russia conflict is perhaps wishful thinking for Westerners, and itself is a scary prospect, as both nations have nuclear weapons. However, that does not mean that the West should ignore the natural and long-standing animosity between these ignominious neighbors. It would be inappropriate, provocative, and counterproductive at this juncture to offer to help China regain the lost Qing territories from an overstretched Russia. However, globally showcasing and highlighting the hypocrisy of adversarial land grabs in Ukraine or the South China Sea, while there is a legitimate argument on the Sino-Russia border, could prove an embarrassment to the autocratic pair. As Xi and Putin superficially hold hands, more effort and focus must be made to make that embrace as uncomfortable and awkward as possible, breeding suspicion rather than cooperation.
Conclusion
Russia, throughout history, has been an expansionist nation (and let’s be honest, so has the United States…and most nations at some point) – seeking territory at the expense of neighbors, while likewise fending off existential invasions nearly every generation. They have their reasoning for their paranoia. However, today’s Germans, French, Poles, or Finns show no desire to march on Moscow and conquer the Motherland. The West wants peace, stability, trade, and to end the needless bloodshed in Ukraine. If, however, a recalcitrant Russia continues to panic Europe, the blame lies at the feet of Putin for the expansion of NATO and the rearmament of the continent. If this dubious trend continues, the West must endeavor to sow seeds of discontent between the opportunistic alignment of Russia and China. The West needs to seek policies to foment disagreement between Russia and China, not drive them together. The “no limits” partnership is a loveless marriage of convenience, with each side likely to sell each other out if given a better deal. Therefore, strategic leaders must look at this seemingly monolithic partnership and recognize the fracture points, with eyes on expanding the tensions and eroding trust between the Russian and Chinese duo.
(The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the U.S. Army War College, U.S. Army, U.S. Space Force, or Department of Defense).
Tags: NATO Expansion, Russia-Ukraine War, Sino-Russian Partnership, World War II
About The Author
- David Zesinger
- David Zesinger is an active-duty U.S. Space Force space operations officer. Formerly commander of the 23rd Space Operations Squadron, which provides command and control for over 200 satellites, he currently serves on the U.S. Army War College faculty in the Department of Military Strategy, Planning, and Operations.
25. America’s Forgotten War in China: Psychological Warfare Against Imperial Japan’s Chinese Puppet Army
Excerpt:
Over the past century, the US has often succeeded against China not through brute force but by breaking enemy morale. In the Boxer Rebellion, advanced weaponry shattered the myth of spiritual invincibility. In Korea, psychological operations persuaded 14,000 Chinese Communist POWs to defect to Taiwan. During World War II, American psychological warfare collapsed the puppet army without firing a shot. The Japanese occupation policy was fundamentally hindered by a lack of trust toward its allies, making it impossible to implement a comprehensive “train and equip” program like what the US conducted with Nationalist forces. Coupled with atrocities committed against Chinese civilians in the early stages of the war, this mistrust ensured that puppet troops never completely followed the Japanese command.
America’s Forgotten War in China: Psychological Warfare Against Imperial Japan’s Chinese Puppet Army
by Samuel Hui
|
06.26.2025 at 06:00am
A leaflet targeting Chinese collaborationists accused the Japanese forces of failing to provide the puppet army officers and soldiers with sufficient clothing, food, and weapons. It demanded that the Japanese address these issues and questioned, “How can we fight a war under such conditions?” (Source: National Archives and Records Administration)
Abstract: This article explores the little-known U.S. psychological warfare campaign against the Chinese Reorganized National Government under Wang Jingwei during World War II. Drawing on declassified Office of Strategic Services (OSS) documents, U.S. Air Force records, and interviews with former puppet soldiers, this piece examines how American psychological operations targeted Chinese collaborationist forces—not to destroy them, but to win them over at a crucial moment at the dawn of the Cold War.
Most scholars consider the Boxer Rebellion of 1900 or the Korean War (1950–1953) as the opening shots of 20th century military conflict between the United States and China. Yet beyond these two well-known confrontations, there was another overlooked episode: the World War II shadow war between the United States and China’s Reorganized National Government under Wang Jingwei—an Imperial Japanese puppet government comprised of Chinese collaborationists. In the final stages of the war, the U.S. Office of War Information (OWI) and the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) executed psychological operations targeting the Wang Jingwei regime in China.
The OWI primarily employed so-called “white propaganda” using platforms such as the Voice of America and air-dropped leaflets to urge both Chinese military personnel and civilians in Japanese-occupied territories not to collaborate with the invading forces. In contrast, the OSS focused on “black propaganda” aimed at driving a wedge between the Wang Jingwei regime and the Japanese military. Such psychological operations involved disseminating false information and fabricating rumors to exploit internal divisions within the enemy camp to encourage the defection of Chinese puppet troops.
Examining the psychological dimensions of the conflict between Wang’s regime and the United States offers valuable insight for today’s U.S.–China rivalry. The physical landscape may have shifted from Imperial Japan to the PRC, but the lessons of OWI and OSS-style “morale operations” remain highly relevant for strategic competition into the future.
Photo 1. Propaganda posters aimed at sowing discord between the puppet army and the Japanese forces were created by the Sino-American Cooperative Organization (SACO) and distributed in the capital of the Wang Jingwei regime under the name of the Nanjing Army Improvement Committee. The content of the posters demanded that the Japanese provide the puppet army officers and soldiers with ample food and clothing, equal supplies as the Japanese troops, and accept command from Chinese officers. They also fully exposed the unequal treatment the Japanese gave to the puppet army (source: National Archives and Records Administration).
Historical Context
A pro-Japanese collaborationist faction that split from the ruling Kuomintang established the Wang Jingwei regime on March 30, 1940. It adopted the exact same national symbols as the Nationalist government in Chongqing, which was resisting Japanese aggression. Likewise, it claimed to be the true heir to Sun Yat-sen’s legacy. A key distinction between the two rival Nationalist governments was ideological: the Wang Jingwei regime opposed Western democratic values, aligning itself with Japan’s vision of Pan-Asianism and the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere to eliminate Anglo-American presence in the region.
Wang Jingwei held seniority over Chiang Kai-shek within the Kuomintang. Still, unlike Chiang, who commanded the military as president of the Whampoa Military Academy, Wang lacked direct control over the armed forces. He established his own Military Academy in Nanjing and formed a personal Guard Corps but continued to suffer severe manpower shortages. As a result, Wang’s Peace and National Construction Army, or the “Peace Army,” was composed mainly of former Nationalist units that surrendered after being defeated by either Japanese or Communist forces. Most of these troops came from regional or second-rate formations, with some units even consisting of local bandits or pirates who previously disrupted public order. Their combat effectiveness was poor, and they were widely seen as opportunists who might defect again at any moment.
Although Wang Jingwei’s Peace Army was large in number, it was poorly trained and lacked combat effectiveness, earning little trust from Japan’s China Expeditionary Army. The United States did not consider Wang’s regime a political entity, but rather recognized Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist government in Chongqing as the sole legitimate authority in China. On January 9, 1943, Wang Jingwei’s government declared war on the United States—a move that Washington ignored, much as Japan had earlier dismissed Chiang’s declaration of war on December 9, 1941. (See Note 1).
As 2025 marks the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II, familiar debates between the PRC and the Republic of China over Taiwan are likely to re-emerge over who led the resistance against Japan.
While the PRC emphasizes the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) role, Taiwan asserts that Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists, with American support, bore the brunt of fighting Japanese aggression. Lost in both narratives is the story of the Wang Jingwei regime—another expression of Chinese nationalism, albeit one that collaborated with the enemy.
China’s Peace Army
Although many scholars have studied China’s puppet armies, few have examined the Peace Army using records from the U.S. National Archives. This oversight stems mainly from the Army’s lack of real military strength. American narratives of war in the Pacific theater have traditionally emphasized naval and aerial campaigns. Even within China, the spotlight falls on the Flying Tigers or the campaigns in Burma and Yunnan. The Peace Army, by contrast, played little to no role in these operations.
When Wang’s government declared war on the United States, U.S. forces in China likely reacted with bemusement. Except three capital guard divisions, the Wang regime lacked any centralized or ideologically committed troops. Most units were cobbled together from defeated militias or guerrillas reconstituted for survival rather than conviction. These troops routinely avoided executing Japanese orders, were penetrated by both Nationalist and Communist agents, and showed little interest in fighting U.S. forces.
Japan’s industrial limitations further constrained its ability to support its Chinese allies. Most puppet troops retained their original weapons, such as obsolete Mauser rifles, and only a few units received leftover German helmets or Czech machine guns from abandoned Nationalist arsenals. The Japanese never entrusted Wang’s forces with tanks or aircraft according to books written by miliary historian, Philip Jowett.
Yet politically, these forces remained significant. As General Albert Wedemeyer and Colonel Robert McClure prepared to launch a counteroffensive with 39 Chinese Nationalist “Alpha Divisions,” Japan’s potential deployment of puppet troops posed a real political and operational challenge. A 1945 OSS report estimated that the Wang regime controlled 520,000 regular troops, with total strength—including auxiliary forces—exceeding one million. Japanese planners may have considered deploying these forces against a prospective U.S. landing on the Chinese coast. (See Note 2).
Political Obstacles and Psychological Solutions
American planners understood that a direct military assault on puppet troops, most of whom were Chinese, embedded in occupied territory, could provoke a backlash. The Peace Army’s sheer size, local roots, and lack of ideological commitment made it a delicate issue. Moreover, these forces sometimes aided in rescuing downed American pilots.
The solution, therefore, was psychological warfare to exploit existing Chinese-Japanese frictions.
Photo 2. A leaflet dropped by the 14th Air Force featured a Chinese-language message on the cover, urging puppet army officers and soldiers to surrender to the anti-Japanese forces as soon as possible (Source: National Archives and Records Administration).
The Sino-American Cooperative Organization (SACO), a joint initiative led by U.S. Navy Commodore Milton Miles, directed early U.S. intelligence activities in China. With the arrival of General Wedemeyer as the Commander of U.S. forces in China in late 1944, the American intelligence structure in China was reorganized. The OSS gradually integrated SACO operations, establishing Detachment 202 in Kunming and Detachment 203 in Chongqing. These detachments were responsible for coordinating a range of sensitive missions, including Secret Intelligence (SI), Special Operations (SO), Morale Operations (MO), and activities of Operational Groups (OG), aimed at both Japanese occupation forces and collaborationist Chinese units under the Wang Jingwei regime. Colonel Richard Heppner, a close associate of William J. Donovan, chief of the OSS, was appointed by General Wedemeyer to oversee all clandestine operations in China, including the Morale Operations.
A declassified May 1945 OSS policy draft titled “Draft Statement for U.S. China Theater Policy on Propaganda to Chinese Puppets” defined the target audience broadly: any Chinese national residing in pre-1931 Republic of China territory who knowingly collaborated with the Japanese. While the US would hold puppet collaborators accountable for actions against U.S. personnel or civilians, the policy emphasized leaving open a path to redemption for those willing to defect. (See Note 3).
Morale Operations in Action
The task of undermining puppet morale fell largely to General Claire Chennault’s 14th Air Force. In addition to bombing missions, long-range P-51 Mustangs from the 23rd, 51st, and 311th Fighter Groups, and the Chinese-American Composite Wing dropped leaflets deep into Japanese-occupied territory. These leaflets warned puppet soldiers not to assist in capturing Allied airmen and reminded them that aiding the enemy could result in the death penalty under Chinese Nationalist law.
The leaflets also advised puppet soldiers to steer clear of Japanese military targets, for their safety, and called on them to prepare for defection when Allied forces advanced. Those who rose would be forgiven and welcomed as contributors to the Allied cause. That was part of the OWI’s White Propaganda Operations.
Photo 3. “An Open Letter to Puppet Troops” can be seen in the back of the leaflet. It said: “No matter day or night, you are being bombed. To shrink their defensive lines, Japanese troops are retreating from all areas except a few strongholds. Chiang Kai-shek’s forces have already launched a counteroffensive in eastern Henan in May. The Japanese will soon dispatch troops from eastern China to reinforce the central front. Their forces are being stretched thin and their defeat is inevitable. The puppet regime, without hope of victory and already abandoned by the Japanese, will soon collapse. Sensible comrades among you have already chosen to defect to the national forces. The righteous people welcome you with open arms. The time for decision is now—if you remain with the puppet forces, you will perish along with the Japanese. The Chinese and American forces will wipe you out. If you wish to survive, defect quickly and join the resistance. Otherwise, you will be destroyed along with the Japanese” (Source: United States Forces in China, CA-178).
Beyond the skies, the SACO and Chiang’s Bureau of Investigation and Statistics (BIS)—the Republic of China’s military intelligence agency before 1946, engaged in psychological operations on the ground. Agents infiltrated major cities like Shanghai and Nanjing from advanced bases in Anhui, Zhejiang, or Fujian provinces, spreading slogans, rumors, and radio broadcasts designed to sow distrust and encourage passivity among puppet forces. That was part of the OSS’s Black Propaganda Operations to cause distrust between the Chinese puppets and the Japanese. Some of the Fujianese operatives trained by SACO even used their linguistic advantage to infiltrate Japanese-occupied Taiwan, then a colony for nearly half a century known as Formosa, to promote U.S. policy.
Evidence of Success
The OSS and SACO propaganda efforts, combined with the Japanese’s pervasive distrust of the puppet forces, led to a wave of defections among collaborationist troops in the final phase of the war.
According to declassified OSS documents housed at the U.S. National Archives, a group of personnel from the puppet air force defected to the Nationalist government in Chongqing on January 7, 1945. These individuals, who flew their aircraft directly into Nationalist-held territory, had been persuaded to defect through underground efforts coordinated by Kuomintang operatives based in Shanghai. (See Note 4). While the Japanese Army Air Force refused to provide fighter aircraft to the puppet air force, the United States had already supplied advanced combat fighters such as P-51 Mustangs to the Republic of China Air Force pilots of the Chinese American Composite Wing under the command of Claire Chennault. The US successfully won the hearts and minds of the Chinese airmen.
Even if many soldiers did not openly defect, they often engaged in subversive actions that benefited the Allies and undermined Japanese efforts.
Interviews with former puppet soldiers suggest these efforts paid off. Thomas Ha, a member of the Nanjing Garrison Command who later emigrated to California, recalled receiving a lone anti-aircraft gun from the Japanese during U.S. bombing raids. Rather than use it to defend Japanese positions, his unit pointed it at Japanese fighters, prompting the weapon’s confiscation. (See Note 5). Another veteran, Wang Ting-hsien recalled watching American B-25 bombers strike Japanese-held rail stations at Xinhiang, Henan province, while puppet troops applauded. Far from resenting the Americans, many collaborationist soldiers welcomed the attacks. (See Note 6).
Another OSS report to the China Theater Command indicated that not only puppet soldiers but also civilian officials from the collaborationist regime were in contact with Allied agents. Mr. Jerry Hsu, the chief of Asiatic Affairs in the Nanjing regime’s Foreign Ministry, had also declared his loyalty to Chongqing. The report further noted that Chen Kun-po, who succeeded Wang Jingwei as head of the puppet regime following Wang’s death in late 1944, had also expressed a desire to defect to the Allies. (See Note 7). Colonel Richard Heppner, the chief of OSS in China, even received a report in early summer of 1945 indicating that Madame Wang Jingwei wished to bring the entire puppet government to the side of Chongqing through one of her close friends, Leong Yew Koh, a British Malayan-born Chinese. (See Note 8).
The aim of the OSS and the China Theater Command was not to kill the puppets, but to give them a chance to redeem themselves. A report from Colonel John Whitker to Richard Heppner pointed out that, “On the one hand, we want to bring Chinese puppets out of occupied territory, we can consider that this is for the purposes of interrogation and exploration and therefore it is a routine intelligence operation which does not require theater approval. On the other hand, we could consider that in bringing out such a man, we risk his interception and possible execution by Chinese Nationalist with the possibility resulting political incidents.” (See Note 9).
Photo 4. SACO also attempted to stir up tensions between the Wang Jingwei regime and another Japanese puppet state, Manchukuo. For example, they produced posters emphasizing that Manchukuo had previously sent troops to southern China to assist the Japanese in driving out American forces. Therefore, when a crisis arose in Manchukuo, the Wang regime was likewise expected to dispatch southern Chinese to the north to join the fighting (Source. National Archives and Records Administration).
Chang Yee-chow, a collaborator militia commander operating in Xiamen, Fujian, supplied convoy intelligence to SACO’s Coast Watcher network. His assistance directly contributed to the USS Barb’s successful attack on January 23, 1945, during which three Japanese ships were sunk. This was the most significant damage inflicted on Japanese forces with the assistance of puppet troops.
In June 1945, an American officer newly transferred from Europe even proposed using 105mm howitzers to fire propaganda shells, citing their successful use in encouraging Eastern European defectors from the German Army. (See Note 10). But the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended the war before this plan could be implemented. The Peace Army quickly dissolved, and the Nationalist and Communist factions immediately absorbed its members into their ranks.
Strategic Significance for the New Cold War
Over the past century, the US has often succeeded against China not through brute force but by breaking enemy morale. In the Boxer Rebellion, advanced weaponry shattered the myth of spiritual invincibility. In Korea, psychological operations persuaded 14,000 Chinese Communist POWs to defect to Taiwan. During World War II, American psychological warfare collapsed the puppet army without firing a shot. The Japanese occupation policy was fundamentally hindered by a lack of trust toward its allies, making it impossible to implement a comprehensive “train and equip” program like what the US conducted with Nationalist forces. Coupled with atrocities committed against Chinese civilians in the early stages of the war, this mistrust ensured that puppet troops never completely followed the Japanese command.
Photo 5. SACO propaganda posters warned Chinese civilians to avoid military targets that were likely to be struck by Allied forces. The posters further declared that those who chose to die alongside the Japanese should be left to perish (Source: National Archives and Records Administration).
Though militarily insignificant, the Peace Army played a politically sensitive role in occupied China. The US never recognized Wang Jingwei’s regime, but it treated his troops as a key target in the psychological dimension of the war. The OSS campaign offered these men not annihilation, but a path to reject their overseers for the broader goal of defeating Imperial Japan. In the context of today’s U.S.–China rivalry, the likelihood of militarily defeating the PRC in a war over Taiwan without incurring immense costs remains extremely limited, particularly given Beijing’s status as a nuclear-armed major power. It will be a cold war rivalry focusing more on technology, influence, and ideology rather than arms.
The adversarial battlefield may have shifted from Imperial Japan to the PRC, but the lessons of OSS-style morale operations remain highly relevant for strategic competition today.
The CCP continues to face significant challenges in its governance of China, creating fissures between the party and Chinese society ripe for influence like the Japanese-Chinese frictions in WW II. Young Chinese who believe in democratic values—including a segment of younger officials—will increasingly become a constituency the United States can and must engage.
Notes:
(1) Wang Jingwei cabled Xu Liang, stating that on the night of January 7th, Japanese Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu conveyed that the Tokyo directive regarding the declaration of war against Britain and the United States appeared to have already become known to the British, Americans, and the Chungking government. Therefore, it should be promptly announced, and the declaration was thus rescheduled to be issued today. January 9, 1943. Academia Historica, Taipei, Taiwan, ROC, Archive Number: 118-010100-0051-053.
(2) Puppet Reorganization, Policy-Puppets, July 9th, 1945, Box 54, RG 493, US Forces in the China Burma India Theater of Operations, National Archives and Records Administration.
(3) Draft Statement for US China Theater Policy on Propaganda to Chinese Puppets, May 28th, 1945, PW Directives & PWB Minutes, Folder 183, Box 9, Entry 148, RG 226, OSS Field Reports, National Archives and Records Administration.
(4) Puppet Air Force Personnel, Puppets, June 2nd, 1945, US Forces in the China Burma India Theater of Operations, Folder 148, Box 54, Entry 148, RG 226, OSS Field Reports, National Archives and Records Administration.
(5) Interview of Thomas Ha, Alhambra, California, August 30th, 2014.
(6) Interview of Wang Ting-hsien, Hsinchu, Taiwan, March 12th, 2017.
(7) Approval of Prospective Contacts with puppets, Puppets, June 2nd, 1945, US Forces in the China Burma India Theater of Operations, Folder 148, Box 54, Entry 148, RG 226, OSS Field Reports, National Archives and Records Administration.
(8) Defections of Nanking puppets, Puppets, May 4th, 1945, US Forces in the China Burma India Theater of Operations, Folder 148, Box 54, Entry 148, RG 226, OSS Field Reports, National Archives and Records Administration.
(9) Relations with puppets, Puppets, June 5th, 1945, US Forces in the China Burma India Theater of Operations, Folder 148, Box 54, Entry 148, RG 226, OSS Field Reports, National Archives and Records Administration.
(10) Propaganda Shell, Leaflet Distribution Records March – July 1945, June 20th, 1945, Box 51, RG 493, US Forces in the China Burma India Theater of Operations, National Archives and Records Administration.
Tags: China, Japan, Office of Strategic Services, OSS, propaganda, Psychological Warfare, PSYOP, resistance, Taiwan, World War II
About The Author
- Samuel Hui
- Samuel Hui is an American military historian who holds a Master’s degree from the Graduate Institute of International Affairs and Strategic Studies at Tamkang University in Taiwan. He specializes in U.S.-China wartime relations and psychological operations during World War II. He is also a research fellow of the Institute for Taiwan-American Studies based in Washington.
26. The Utility of Military Deception and Information Operations in Modern Warfare
Excerpts:
Technology continues to change how humans interact, govern, organize, and fight. The Second Nagorno-Karabakh War and the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian War have made clear that future battlefields will be layered with sensors, information systems, and computers. In operations centers, Commanders seeking rapid decision-making look to data for solutions. In this data-centric environment, information operations and military deception shoulder new importance in misdirecting, confusing, and altering adversarial behavior. Azerbaijan and Ukraine both demonstrated that traditional staff functions—preparation, strategic use of deception, and deliberate task organizations—remain key to achieving desired effects on the battlefield. Modern military technologies will likely increasingly rely on information and deception operations to create convergence windows for modern offensive weapons. Nagorno-Karabakh and Ukraine show the conflict observer that psychological and information warfare provide a cost-effective method to leverage data against itself and create opportunities without expensive deep fire weapons.
There are several potential lessons that practitioners and policymakers can take from an analysis of these conflicts. The US Army’s information warfare capabilities, for example, will take on increasing importance in supporting division, corps, and theater commanders throughout the continuum of conflict. The US Army may consider expediting the creation of theater information warfare detachments and better integrating unmanned systems, public affairs, civil affairs, cyber, and psychological operations capabilities across Army formations. Military deception may not be an afterthought, but a necessary phase of decisive operations. The US Military may also benefit from creating a better standard for IO professionals. Between Air Force Information Operations (IO), US Marine Corps Influence Activities (IA), US Navy Information Warfare, and US Army Information Operations (IO) and Psychological Operations (PO), the US military’s information professionals are fragmented. Some, such as Active-Duty Army PO, are considered special operations forces. Others, including Army IO, reserve PO, and Air Force IO, are considered conventional forces or special operations enabling functions. Standardizing information-related military career fields may strengthen the Services’ ability to field capable forces and enhance interoperability for the joint force.
The Utility of Military Deception and Information Operations in Modern Warfare
https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/06/26/the-utility-of-military-deception/
by John Wirges
|
06.26.2025 at 06:00am
Antonov AN-2 by common, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Introduction
Sun Tzu believed in the importance of the information environment and recognized that the quickest way to achieve military victory was to attack only when the adversary was confused, disoriented, and weakened. While the revolution in military affairs offered promises of a transparent battlefield, modern conflicts such as the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War and the ongoing Russo-Ukraine War prove that Sun Tzu’s work remains as relevant today as it was in ancient China. Advances in technology over the last twenty years have led to unforeseen changes in the modern battlespace. Urbanization trends and social media have changed the relationship between combatants and non-combatants. Modern electronic warfare, long-range missiles, and unmanned systems have been integrated into cohesive sensor-to-shooter systems known as kill webs. While practitioners have seen kill webs and drones leveraged in Nagorno-Karabakh and Ukraine, these modern conflicts also indicate an increased importance for information warfare. Modern technologies have made skills such as military deception, public affairs, civil-military engagement, and cyber activities necessary to outpace enemy decision-making cycles, protect friendly forces, and achieve political goals of conflict within a civil component.
Understanding the Information Environment
The information environment (IE) is a key component of the military’s operational environment (OE). An OE is best described as the aggregate of all conditions bearing on a military commander. The IE comprises all aspects of human attitudes, behaviors, and perceptions, and is a critical component of conflict. Successful operations in the information environment can neutralize an enemy’s will and capabilities to fight, provide offramps for conflict resolution, deceive enemy decision-makers to create surprise, and deny an enemy freedom of maneuver in cyberspace and across the electromagnetic spectrum (EMS)—the spectrum of radio activity encompassing radio, x-ray, and gamma wavelengths. The Russo-Ukrainian War and Second Nagorno-Karabakh War have provided key insights into how modern technologies and human behaviors have changed the IE’s relationship with war.
These two modern conflicts have varied in intensity, duration, and impact on civilian populations; however, both have leveraged military deception and non-traditional media to engage with civil populations, target enemy forces, and control narratives to varying degrees of success. One of the major takeaways from the Nagorno-Karabakh and Russo-Ukrainian Wars is that psychological warfare and information operations have become key to influencing foreign audiences and creating convergence windows for modern offensive weapons. In modern conflict, echelons above brigade are increasingly relying on creating windows of time to employ multiple systems across land, sea, air, space, and cyber domains to exploit enemy weaknesses. Many of these convergence capabilities rely on “deep fires,” which are long-range kinetic and non-kinetic effects delivered into an environment that can enable movement and maneuver. Both conflicts have also shown that operations in the information environment offer creative options enabling commanders to converge multidomain effects.
Military Deception and Psychological Warfare
Modern technologies have rendered military deception a vital characteristic of war. Long-range artillery, loitering munitions, and unmanned aerial systems have rendered large defensive positions more vulnerable than in previous eras of warfare. After the First Nagorno-Karabakh War, Armenia established defensive lines known as the Bagramyan and Ohanyan Lines. Armenian military officials felt confident in the lines’ protective characteristics and did not seek to camouflage or engage in deception to protect the defensive positions or capabilities around Nagorno-Karabakh. Azerbaijan identified Armenian overconfidence and spent years before the 2020 war crafting detailed plans to overcome a linear, well-fortified defense. These plans were informed by real-time intelligence due to the proliferation of modern unmanned vehicles and satellites. Azerbaijan, assisted by Turkish planners, recognized the need to create an unfair fight during pre-conflict military planning. Modern technologies, such as integrated air defense systems, render linear defenses like Armenia’s costly to assault. Long-range fires and drones make operations in depth more lethal than traditional linear maneuvers. During the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War, Azerbaijan assessed that military deception provided the most feasible option to disrupt Armenia’s defense in depth. Azerbaijan remotely launched a fleet of WWII-era planes, loaded with explosives, at radar altitude into Armenian airspace. When Armenia mistook those aircraft for Azerbaijan warplanes, their air defense network engaged the decoys. The Azerbaijani military, now aware of Armenian air defense locations, destroyed Armenian integrated systems. This tactical victory, however, had operational-level effects. Due to destroyed Armenian air defense, Azerbaijan had a window of opportunity to employ modern, deep fires to target critical computer, signal, and communications systems. Azerbaijani armored infantry exploited defensive gaps while deep-fire munitions degraded Armenian command, control, and intelligence systems.
Azerbaijan’s deception exploited Armenia’s trust in modern integrated air defense networks and the speed of battle. Integrated command, control, computing, communications, cyber, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, and targeting (C5ISRT) systems—a defense concept for vertically integrated sensor-to-shooter systems—have increased situational awareness. Hypersonic weapons, UAV swarms, and deep fire munitions have increased the depth of the battlefield, as commanders now must observe and affect larger swaths of land in the same amount of time. These characteristics have rapidly increased battlefield tempo. Commanders rely on the data provided by modern C5ISRT to make quick decisions over increasingly large areas; this provides opportunities for deception operations. Deception planners can leverage tempo and data overload against adversary commanders, deceiving enemy staffs through ruses hidden in data. Azerbaijan’s ruse was effective because it exploited the fast-paced decision-making cycle required in modern conflict, forcing commanders to make decisions based on false information.
In 2022, Ukrainian forces engaged in an operational-level deception to retake the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv. Ukrainian forces began to overtly mass combat power in southern Ukraine through July and August 2022, seeking to reinforce a Russian perception that Ukraine would pursue a spring attack in Kherson. Believability is a critical part of deception and information operations; Ukrainian military planners assessed that Russian Forces would likely believe the Ukrainian posturing for an offensive into the region due to Kherson’s value to both sides. Ukrainian President Zelensky aided this deception by engaging in targeted strategic communications. In August 2022, Zelensky issued statements regarding an upcoming southern offensive beginning in late August. Ukrainian leaders discussed attacks or activities in the Kherson area no fewer than eight times in the preceding weeks, which were combined with overt troop movements and missile attacks on infrastructure around Kherson. Ukraine recognized that Russian satellites and unmanned reconnaissance systems would easily identify these movements, reinforcing the deception objective in Russian decision-making processes. Russian leaders were saturated with data points regarding a Kherson offensive from consistent reconnaissance and open-source research, and in late August, relocated forces from the northern front to strengthen Kherson defenses. In September 2022, Ukraine launched the decisive offensive across the front, concentrating forces on Kharkiv. Ukrainian forces exploited light Russian defenses in Kharkiv to quickly capture the city, routing the Russian defenders. Additionally, Ukrainians successfully took advantage of Russian defensive chaos to capture Kherson. This deception operation boosted Ukrainian morale at a critical juncture in the conflict and resulted in significant territorial gains.
Both deception operations were successful at a tactical level due to three major components. First, the deceiving force exploited an adversary’s reliance on modern technology. Armenia revealed its integrated air defense network due to their trust in the radar systems’ conclusions. Ukraine executed routine troop movements and missile attacks during its ruse offensive, knowing that Russia would identify those activities through drone imagery, satellites, and electronic warfare activities. Azerbaijan and Ukraine recognized the utility and vulnerabilities of modern surveillance and cyber systems in deceiving an adversary. Ukraine and Azerbaijan leveraged enemy targeting and reconnaissance systems in their deceptions, as Russian and Armenian decision makers developed faulty conclusions from “data-driven” sources. Decoys and electronic deception will be highly successful in this environment; however, military planners must integrate deception planning early into operations cycles.
Second, modern media penetration remains a critical aspect of deception. Ukrainian leaders leveraged various media sources to reinforce the Russian belief in a Kherson offensive. Media changes have also aided deception planners. Social media provides opportunities for individual targeting and may be best used in conjunction with traditional televised media, which is generally viewed as a more trustworthy source of information. In Ukraine, press statements and articles were organized alongside real materiel movements, highlighting the clear relationship between public affairs, social media, and physical deception.
The third component is the relationship between deception and modern offensive technologies. The modern battlefield has more “depth” than ever before. Due to technologies such as cyber, UAVs, and long-range weapons, the battlefield has become non-linear. Commanders can synchronize missile launches with cyber operations to affect hundreds of kilometers of battlespace. Russians and Ukrainians have leveraged long-range fires to penetrate enemy territory, making rear and security areas seem more like the close combat zones of a corps fight. Azerbaijan and Ukraine both displayed that deception has value in creating convergence windows for the deep fires provided through modern warfighting technology.
Information Operations and Strategic Communications
Humans, both combatants and noncombatants, have greater access to information than ever before. Cell phones, social media, and satellite-based internet services such as Starlink promise an endless supply of cameras, receivers, and microphones. Content creation and dissemination play a major role in shaping narratives and achieving the conflict’s political goals. The US learned this lesson during the Vietnam conflict, where combat reporting led to unfavorable domestic views of the conflict. Social media and media penetration have amplified this phenomenon in modern conflict. In Ukraine, citizens utilize social media to receive news, report battlefield movements, and provide real-time updates on combat activities, all to varying degrees of accuracy. The speed of social media has forced traditional media outlets to compete for viewership; the rush to break news has led some media outlets to publish stories with limited vetting. The interaction between social media and traditional media is proving to be a dangerous area for spreading disinformation. Russia is adept at disinformation campaigns on social media, which poses a risk to Ukrainian warfighting efforts as media forums compete for readership and interact with one another with varying degrees of trust. Additionally, this open society complicates the Ukrainian Government’s ability to control narratives, affecting everything from domestic confidence in government to the armed forces’ regeneration capacities.
In Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijan organized units of drone pilots dedicated to filming the battlespace. Drones provided high-quality, real-time video for Azerbaijani media production teams. More importantly, Azerbaijani information operations teams developed strong and clear narratives designed to increase support for the war domestically, demoralize Armenian troops, and emphasize Azerbaijani victories to foreign actors. Drone footage was provided to news media outlets, layering modern technologies with more traditional information controls to increase the speed and permeation of information operations. Azerbaijan recognized the utility of modern media for psychological warfare and developed a force structure centered on that function.
In contrast, Armenia struggled to recognize modern media’s opportunities and vulnerabilities. During an Azerbaijani assault on the city of Shusha, Armenian officials denied Azerbaijani gains in Shusha despite clear evidence of increasing Azerbaijani control. These reports were easily refuted and demoralized Armenian defenders, who ultimately fled the city. The victory in Shusha became a strategically decisive point for Azerbaijan; shortly after the fall of Shusha, Armenia sued for peace, ceding Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijan. Russia has also experienced this information failure in Ukraine. Before initiating the war in Ukraine in 2022, US officials released clear intelligence indicating that the Russian Army would engage in a deception operation to enter Ukraine. The clear publicization of Russia’s strategy in the media undercut Russian narrative control. Individuals all over the world came to conclusions about Russian intentions in Ukraine without significant government intervention due to modern media and information saturation. Global consensus on Russia’s aggression led to the country’s isolation from critical banking, trade, and political institutions. The media’s penetration of the human dimension provides opportunities for both deception and public affairs; the US’s experiences in Vietnam will only be magnified in intensity through citizen journalism and social media, creating potentially unforeseen strategic impacts on militaries.
Conclusion
Technology continues to change how humans interact, govern, organize, and fight. The Second Nagorno-Karabakh War and the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian War have made clear that future battlefields will be layered with sensors, information systems, and computers. In operations centers, Commanders seeking rapid decision-making look to data for solutions. In this data-centric environment, information operations and military deception shoulder new importance in misdirecting, confusing, and altering adversarial behavior. Azerbaijan and Ukraine both demonstrated that traditional staff functions—preparation, strategic use of deception, and deliberate task organizations—remain key to achieving desired effects on the battlefield. Modern military technologies will likely increasingly rely on information and deception operations to create convergence windows for modern offensive weapons. Nagorno-Karabakh and Ukraine show the conflict observer that psychological and information warfare provide a cost-effective method to leverage data against itself and create opportunities without expensive deep fire weapons.
There are several potential lessons that practitioners and policymakers can take from an analysis of these conflicts. The US Army’s information warfare capabilities, for example, will take on increasing importance in supporting division, corps, and theater commanders throughout the continuum of conflict. The US Army may consider expediting the creation of theater information warfare detachments and better integrating unmanned systems, public affairs, civil affairs, cyber, and psychological operations capabilities across Army formations. Military deception may not be an afterthought, but a necessary phase of decisive operations. The US Military may also benefit from creating a better standard for IO professionals. Between Air Force Information Operations (IO), US Marine Corps Influence Activities (IA), US Navy Information Warfare, and US Army Information Operations (IO) and Psychological Operations (PO), the US military’s information professionals are fragmented. Some, such as Active-Duty Army PO, are considered special operations forces. Others, including Army IO, reserve PO, and Air Force IO, are considered conventional forces or special operations enabling functions. Standardizing information-related military career fields may strengthen the Services’ ability to field capable forces and enhance interoperability for the joint force.
Tags: drone warfare, drones, influence operations, information warfare, military deception, Military strategy, modern conflict, Nagorno-Karabakh, Psychological Operations, Russo-Ukrainian War
About The Author
- John Wirges
- John Wirges is a U.S. Army Civil Affairs Officer assigned to Fort Bragg, NC. John holds a B.A. in Foreign Affairs from Hampden-Sydney College and is an M.A. candidate in Global Security Studies at Johns Hopkins University.
27. Mosquito-sized drone is designed for Chinese spy missions — military robotics lab reveals incredibly tiny bionic flying robots
So I guess we can put surveillance equipment on a gnat's ass. (apologies for the sarcasm)
Mosquito-sized drone is designed for Chinese spy missions — military robotics lab reveals incredibly tiny bionic flying robots
https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/mosquito-sized-drone-is-designed-for-chinese-spy-missions-military-robotics-lab-reveals-incredibly-tiny-bionic-flying-robots
News
By Ash Hill published 3 days ago
Science fiction becomes reality.
This super tiny drone, put together by a team from China's National Defense University of Science and Technology, is akin to something out of a spy movie. The team, based in Hunan Province, China, recently shared a new drone they have developed, which is small enough to fit between your fingers. It's as small as a mosquito, and it looks like one, too.
This pesky little spy device first buzzed on our radar shortly after its debut on CCTV state TV channel CCTV 7. This was picked up by the South China Morning Post, which highlighted Liang Hexiang, a student, showing off the tiny drone by holding it in between his fingers. This tiny mosquito-sized drone was designed specifically to help with information reconnaissance, essentially making it a spy drone.
There are several iterations of the design, but we get a good look at two in particular. Both have a long body with wings attached. One has just two wings, while the other has four and is controllable using mobile devices, such as a smartphone. It's not clear exactly what hardware is onboard and what sort of data it can collect, but it's safe to say the hardware is incredibly small and likely limited in capacity.
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Remote technology like this isn't just used for spy-related tasks. They can also be resourceful tools for recovering people and equipment from dangerous areas without risking additional bodies. Drones like the ones featured here can be highly flexible and useful in various military applications.
Another key component in using remote devices like these is power. The unit needs to have enough charge to perform its task and bring itself back, or otherwise transmit the data it recorded before it completely dies. So far, there is no confirmation that the Chinese military is actually using these in the field. It appears to be a research project at this time.
If the thought of an extra tiny mosquito drone piques your interest, you should check out this custom 3D-printed winged VTOL drone. Both of these projects demonstrate how a little ingenuity can result in an incredible final design.
Follow Tom's Hardware on Google News to get our up-to-date news, analysis, and reviews in your feeds. Make sure to click the Follow button.
Ash Hill is a contributing writer for Tom's Hardware with a wealth of experience in the hobby electronics, 3D printing and PCs. She manages the Pi projects of the month and much of our daily Raspberry Pi reporting while also finding the best coupons and deals on all tech.
28. The Spiderweb and the Lion: Subversive Infiltration and U.S. National Security
Excerpts;
The United States must act decisively to counter this emerging threat. First, Congress should expand CFIUS authority to review all foreign land purchases in proximity to U.S. military bases. Second, the Department of Homeland Security must enhance port security and increase inspections of Chinese-flagged vessels for hidden weapons systems, as urged by CNAS. Third, the U.S. must elevate counterintelligence operations focused on subversive foreign networks—taking cues from Israel’s proven intelligence tradecraft. Finally, individual states must continue to pass legislation restricting foreign ownership of sensitive land.
Ukraine and Israel have demonstrated that patient, subversive infiltration can paralyze powerful militaries. China, through strategic land acquisitions and global ambitions, is already positioned to exploit America’s vulnerabilities. The question is no longer what if—but when.
The Spiderweb and the Lion: Subversive Infiltration and U.S. National Security
6/25/25
https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2025/06/25/the_spiderweb_and_the_lion_subversive_infiltration_and_us_national_security_1118655.html
Over a decade ago, when I was working on force protection issues for Navy air logistics missions, the threat of drone attacks was just beginning to be seriously discussed. We kicked around contingencies and “what ifs,” but those discussions were largely in the background of mission planning. Over the course of the past ten years however, that threat has exploded to the forefront of the military operational planning world and has presented something altogether new in modern warfare.
In the early hours of June 1, 2025, Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) executed Operation Spiderweb, an audacious drone assault on Russian airfields that destroyed or damaged a number of Russia's most prized aircraft, including possibly two A-50 early-warning planes and as many as a dozen strategic bombers. Drones, smuggled into Russia over 18 months and concealed in remote-controlled containers, were launched from within Russian territory, catching Moscow’s defenses off guard. Just days later, on June 13, 2025, Israel’s Mossad orchestrated a similarly bold strike, dubbed Rising Lion, targeting Iran’s nuclear and missile programs. Mossad agents, operating covertly within Iran, established drone bases near Tehran and smuggled precision weapons to dismantle air defenses and eliminate key figures, including Revolutionary Guards commanders and at least one senior nuclear scientist. Allow me to emphasize, the drone attacks came from within Russia and from within Iran.
These operations quite possibly signal a new era of warfare: patient, subversive infiltration by committed adversaries willing to play the long game. The United States—due to years of lax borders and insufficient oversight of foreign land purchases—is alarmingly vulnerable to such tactics, especially from a strategic rival like China, whose land acquisitions near U.S. military bases pose a clear risk.
Asymmetric Warfare Redefined?
Even for those who pay little attention to such things, it is hard to miss that Ukraine’s Operation Spiderweb and Israel’s Rising Lion represent a paradigm shift in modern conflict. Rather than relying on conventional military power, both operations leveraged covert infiltration, advanced—though not restricted—technology, and strategic patience to strike deep within enemy territory. Ukraine’s drones, assembled and concealed over months, targeted a multi-billion-dollar air fleet with low-cost, commercially adapted unmanned systems. The SBU’s operation—smuggling drones across borders and hiding them in plain sight—demonstrated how irregular tactics can cripple a nation's strategic power.
Similarly, Mossad spent (likely) years infiltrating Iran to set up drone bases and move munitions into position, striking at the heart of Tehran’s nuclear program and eliminating critical personnel. These operations reveal the growing effectiveness of a new asymmetric warfare, where smaller actors, with a little creativity, can exploit the vulnerabilities of larger adversaries, potentially for dimes on the dollar. Drones costing mere thousands, or even less, can now challenge systems worth billions. To complicate things further, drones can be deployed en masse. Online videos of Chinese drone light shows are something to see—single controllers managing 10,000 or more small drones in remarkable displays of precision and agility. It’s not hard to imagine what creative military planners could come up with using such systems.
Besides drones being employed in the two operations, there was a common thread of time. Both Ukraine and Israel invested significant time in planning, exploiting weak internal security, and insider access. Ukraine’s drones were smuggled incrementally and hidden in trucks and shipping crates. Mossad’s operatives reportedly worked under the nose of Iranian intelligence, using civilian vehicles to transport weapons and establish covert launch sites. These examples reveal a chilling truth: a patient adversary embedded on a target’s soil can strike with devastating precision.
Is the U.S. Vulnerable?
The United States, with its liberal immigration policies of recent years, and permissive foreign investment rules is ripe for similar subversion. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) oversees foreign land purchases, but its mandate is limited and often fails to detect national security risks posed by strategic acquisitions.
A 2021 case involving the Chinese Fufeng Group’s purchase of 300 acres near Grand Forks Air Force Base in North Dakota sparked congressional concern. The base plays a key role in U.S. drone operations and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) missions—making it an ideal target for espionage or sabotage. Chinese firms have also purchased or attempted to purchase land near other sensitive sites, including Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada and Fort Bragg in North Carolina. Only within the past few years has this activity started to gain the attention of lawmakers.
Separate from land purchases, as early as 2019, public warnings of Chinese container ships potentially docking in U.S. ports with concealed drone launchers onboard have been raised. Such covert systems could be used to target military installations and sensitive infrastructure. Tom Shugart, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), emphasized this risk recently stating, “We routinely allow ships owned and operated by DoD-designated Chinese military companies to sit in our ports with thousands of containers onboard and under their control.”
China Is a Patient Adversary
China’s strategy mirrors the patience and subversion seen in Ukraine and Israel’s operations. Through the Belt and Road Initiative and a sweeping global investment program, Beijing demonstrates a long-term approach to gaining strategic leverage. The FBI has highlighted the use of shell companies to obscure Chinese ownership behind purchases, which could complicate oversight by CFIUS and state governments. These acquisitions, if unchecked, could provide ground for passive intelligence gathering and even launching attacks.
The threat is not merely theoretical. Security analysts are increasingly concerned about the possibility of PLA-aligned actors using assets on U.S. soil to disrupt logistics during a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan. Drones launched from rural properties could target airfields, fuel depots, or command centers—just as Ukraine’s SBU did to Russia.
Closing the Gap
The United States must act decisively to counter this emerging threat. First, Congress should expand CFIUS authority to review all foreign land purchases in proximity to U.S. military bases. Second, the Department of Homeland Security must enhance port security and increase inspections of Chinese-flagged vessels for hidden weapons systems, as urged by CNAS. Third, the U.S. must elevate counterintelligence operations focused on subversive foreign networks—taking cues from Israel’s proven intelligence tradecraft. Finally, individual states must continue to pass legislation restricting foreign ownership of sensitive land.
Ukraine and Israel have demonstrated that patient, subversive infiltration can paralyze powerful militaries. China, through strategic land acquisitions and global ambitions, is already positioned to exploit America’s vulnerabilities. The question is no longer what if—but when.
Andy Thaxton is a retired Naval intelligence officer with 28 years of active-duty service. He currently works with the FBI.
The opinions expressed in this article are the author's own and not that of the FBI or the U.S. Navy.
29. Surprise, Surprise: Misperception, Hubris, and Deception in Today’s Strategic Environment
A view from the IDF.
Excerpts:
Several lessons for Western national security leaders stand out from this analysis. First, surprises and misperceptions are still relevant and still require dedicated attention.
...
Second, avoiding arrogance and overconfidence is a crucial condition for policy and intelligence, and for escaping the risks of deception
...
Third, our adversaries can also fall victim to deception.
Surprise, Surprise: Misperception, Hubris, and Deception in Today’s Strategic Environment - Modern War Institute
mwi.westpoint.edu · by Itai Shapira · June 26, 2025
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In recent years, strategic surprises are everywhere. Russia and the United States were surprised by Ukrainian resilience in 2022, and Israel was surprised by the Hamas attacks in October 2023. Just recently, Iran was surprised by Israel’s preventive strikes in June 2025, probably also wrongly assessing the US resolve to strike the Iranian nuclear program if negotiations fail. Such surprises reflect not only foundational misperceptions about the environment, but sometimes also flawed self-perceptions. They also highlight the need of scholars and practitioners to study the phenomenon of surprise, take measures to prevent it, avoid hubris, and exercise deception to surprise our adversaries.
Perception and misperception have always been key topics in international relations, leading to strategic surprises. But strategic surprise, and surprise military attacks, are not just the result of intelligence agencies failing to provide early warning. They are not just intelligence failures. Surprises also result from the failure of decision-makers to adequately perceive the interaction of their decisions with the environment and the limitations of their ability to influence the adversary. Surprises create emotional and even traumatic effects, and provide the proactive side—the one that effectively surprises an adversary—with a substantial advantage.
The 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001, for instance, were not merely a failure of US intelligence to provide early warning. They also reflect a US misperception of al-Qaeda’s strategy and capabilities, and a “failure to imagine” the terrorist threat to the homeland. In 2016, when US intelligence failed to provide early warning of the Russian intervention in US presidential elections, this was also considered a “failure of imagination.” The United States misperceived Russia’s strategy and its operational concept of using cyber operations and social media to attack the core of US democracy.
The United States has also misperceived its partners and allies, not just its adversaries. This was the case, for instance, with the collapse of the Iraqi security forces in 2014, the collapse of the Afghan security forces in 2021, and recently, the resilience of Ukraine in the face of the Russian attack in 2022.
Recently, Israel was surprised by the Hamas surprise attacks in October 2023. Among other things, this intelligence failure, which is also a defense and policy failure, was the result of a Hamas deception. In many respects, it resembles the Israeli strategic surprise in the Yom Kippur War of 1973. Both 2023 and 1973 reflect Israeli misperceptions of adversaries’ intentions and capabilities, as well as flawed self-perceptions. In both cases, Israel suffered from hubris and overestimated its superiority. At least in 2023, this was also a failure to imagine that Hamas intended to conduct—and is indeed capable of conducting—a mass invasion into Israel, reflecting a years-long cultural flaw.
But surprises and misperceptions are not only experienced by Western countries. Iran was surprised in 2020 by the US operation to assassinate the commander of Iran’s Quds Force, Qassem Soleimani. Russia was surprised by the resilience of Ukraine and by its own inability to achieve swift decisive victory in the war initiated by Vladimir Putin in 2022. Hezbollah in Lebanon was surprised by the Israeli willingness to conduct precise airstrikes in Beirut and take down the organization’s leadership, including Hassan Nasrallah. It overestimated the accuracy of its understanding of Israel and underestimated Israel’s risk calculation. And recently, Iran was surprised by the Israeli preventive attack against Iranian nuclear and military establishments in June 2025, and apparently also by Israeli tactics of eliminating nuclear and military leadership, with Israel conducting strategic deception to open this campaign on the night of June 12.
What are the reasons for so many fundamental surprises and misperceptions? Some of these might emanate from the overreliance on advanced technologies, or technophilia, often typical of Western democracies. The abundance of data and advanced sensors and collection methods used by intelligence agencies might create the impression that more data equals more knowledge, and that successful operations reflect strategic insights. This, unfortunately, is an illusion of certainty.
Other surprises and misperceptions emanate from arrogance, overconfidence, and hubris. Both Western and non-Western countries sometimes overestimate the influence of their deterrence activities over the adversary’s motivation to change the status quo, as well as their own superiority. Failures of imagination, therefore, often reflect overconfidence in one’s own capabilities, not just a flawed intelligence assessment of the adversary.
Other surprises are the result of deception, a practice that has remained relevant even though the nature of warfare is changing. Strategic deception, like the German one against the Soviet Union in 1941 or the Egyptian one against Israel in 1973, is successful when it reinforces extant perceptions, which in hindsight prove to be flawed analytical paradigms and misperceptions. This is probably what happened to Israel in October 2023 vis-à-vis Hamas, and what happened to Iran in June 2025 vis-à-vis Israel.
Several lessons for Western national security leaders stand out from this analysis. First, surprises and misperceptions are still relevant and still require dedicated attention. Leaders might feel that they know their adversaries and allies, but they often don’t. Intelligence agencies might feel that improved collection leads to better strategic analysis, but it often doesn’t. Scholars might feel that a multidisciplinary study of military surprise is obsolete, but it isn’t.
Second, avoiding arrogance and overconfidence is a crucial condition for policy and intelligence, and for escaping the risks of deception. While learning from success is as important as learning from failure, resting on one’s own laurels after success and developing hubris might lead leaders to fall victim to deception. Moreover, contrarian culture and a skeptical approach are necessary for avoiding “failures of imagination.”
Third, our adversaries can also fall victim to deception. Authoritarian systems sometimes underestimate the resilience of Western nations, and their intelligence systems rarely contradict the foundational conception of the leader. Iran probably did not assess, for instance, that the United States would indeed strike its nuclear facilities after negotiations to reach a nuclear agreement failed. Such conceptions can and should be manipulated to conduct strategic deception and surprise the adversary. By studying adversaries’ and allies’ strategic culture, the probability of successful deception can be increased. And at a time when malign actors are already employing deception and surprise is as relevant as ever, doing so is an imperative.
Dr. Itai Shapira (IDF colonel, reserve) has served for more than twenty-five years in Israel Defense Intelligence as an intelligence analyst and manager. He has published books and articles about Israeli intelligence culture and about Israeli strategic cultures and practices strategic intelligence in the commercial sector.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.
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mwi.westpoint.edu · by Itai Shapira · June 26, 2025
30. Study shows TikTok may deepen political rifts
Voices June 27, 2025 / 6:00 AM
Study shows TikTok may deepen political rifts
https://www.upi.com/Voices/2025/06/27/tiktok-politics-study/1521750946552/
By Zicheng Cheng, University of Arizona
Are you in an echo chamber on TikTok? File Photo by John Angelillo/UPI | License Photo
June 27 (UPI) -- People on TikTok tend to follow accounts that align with their own political beliefs, meaning the platform is creating political echo chambers among its users. These findings, from a study my collaborators, Yanlin Li and Homero Gil de Zúñiga, and I published in the academic journal New Media & Society, show that people mostly hear from voices they already agree with.
We analyzed the structure of different political networks on TikTok and found that right-leaning communities are more isolated from other political groups and from mainstream news outlets. Looking at their internal structures, the right-leaning communities are more tightly connected than their left-leaning counterparts. In other words, conservative TikTok users tend to stick together. They rarely follow accounts with opposing views or mainstream media accounts. Liberal users, on the other hand, are more likely to follow a mix of accounts, including those they might disagree with.
Our study is based on a massive dataset of over 16 million TikTok videos from more than 160,000 public accounts between 2019 and 2023. We saw a spike of political TikTok videos during the 2020 U.S. presidential election. More importantly, people aren't just passively watching political content; they're actively creating political content themselves.
Some people are more outspoken about politics than others. We found that users with stronger political leanings and those who get more likes and comments on their videos are more motivated to keep posting. This shows the power of partisanship, but also the power of TikTok's social rewards system. Engagement signals -- likes, shares, comments -- are like a fuel, encouraging users to create even more.
Related
Why it matters
People are turning to TikTok not just for a good laugh. A recent Pew Research Center survey shows that almost 40% of U.S. adults under 30 regularly get news on TikTok. The question becomes what kind of news are they watching, and what does that mean for how they engage with politics.
The content on TikTok often comes from creators and influencers or digital-native media sources. The quality of this news content remains uncertain. Without access to balanced, fact-based information, people may struggle to make informed political decisions.
Amid the debates over banning TikTok, our study highlights how TikTok can be a double-edged sword in political communication. It's encouraging to see people participate in politics through TikTok when that's their medium of choice. However, if a user's network is closed and homogeneous and their expression serves as in-group validation, it may further solidify the political echo chamber.
When people are exposed to one-sided messages, it can increase hostility toward outgroups. In the long run, relying on TikTok as a source for political information might deepen people's political views and contribute to greater polarization.
What other research is being done
Echo chambers have been widely studied on platforms like Twitter and Facebook, but similar research on TikTok is in its infancy. TikTok is drawing scrutiny, particularly its role in news production, political messaging and social movements.
TikTok has its unique format, algorithmic curation and entertainment-driven design. I believe that its function as a tool for political communication calls for closer examination.
What's next
In 2024, the Biden/Harris and Trump campaigns joined TikTok to reach young voters. My research team is now analyzing how these political communication dynamics may have shifted during the 2024 election. Future research could use experiments to explore whether these campaign videos significantly influence voters' perceptions and behaviors.
The Research Brief is a short take on interesting academic work.
Zicheng Cheng is an assistant professor of mass communications at University of Arizona. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. The views and opinions in this commentary are solely those of the author.
31. A Military-Ethics Professor Resigns in Protest
Excerpt:
Academic freedom is an often-misunderstood term. Many people outside academia encounter the idea only when some professor abuses the concept as a license to be an offensive jerk. (A famous case many years ago involved a Colorado professor who compared the victims of 9/11 to Nazis who deserved what they got.) Like tenure, however, academic freedom serves crucial educational purposes, protecting controversial research and encouraging the free exchange of even the most unpopular ideas without fear of political pressure or interference. It is essential to any serious educational institution, and necessary to a healthy democracy.
A Military-Ethics Professor Resigns in Protest
Over the course of several months, Pauline Shanks Kaurin concluded that she no longer had the academic freedom necessary for doing her job.
By Tom Nichols
The Atlantic · by Tom Nichols · June 25, 2025
Seven years ago, Pauline Shanks Kaurin left a good job as a tenured professor at a university, uprooted her family, and moved across the country to teach military ethics at the Naval War College, in Newport, Rhode Island. She did so, she told me, not only to help educate American military officers, but with a promise from the institution that she would have “the academic freedom to do my job.” But now she’s leaving her position and the institution because orders from President Donald Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, she said, have made staying both morally and practically untenable. Remaining on the faculty, she believes, would mean implicitly lending her approval to policies she cannot support. And she said that the kind of teaching and research the Navy once hired her to do will now be impossible.
The Naval War College is one of many institutions—along with the Army War College, the Air War College, and others—that provide graduate-level instruction in national-security issues and award master’s degrees to the men and women of the U.S. armed forces. The Naval War College is also home to a widely respected civilian academic post, the James B. Stockdale Chair in Professional Military Ethics, named for the famous admiral and American prisoner of war in Vietnam. Pauline has held the Stockdale Chair since 2018. (I taught for many years at the Naval War College, where I knew Pauline as a colleague.) Her last day will be at the end of this month.
In January, Trump issued an executive order, Restoring America’s Fighting Force, that prohibits the Department of Defense and the entire armed forces from “promoting, advancing, or otherwise inculcating the following un-American, divisive, discriminatory, radical, extremist, and irrational theories,” such as “gender ideology,” “race or sex stereotyping,” and, of course, anything to do with DEI. Given the potential breadth of the order, the military quickly engaged in a panicky slash-and-burn approach rather than risk running afoul of the new ideological line. The U.S. Military Academy at West Point, in New York, for example, disbanded several clubs, including the local chapter of the National Society of Black Engineers. Other military installations, apparently anticipating a wider crackdown on anything to do with race or gender, removed important pages of American history about women and minorities from their websites.
All of this was done by bureaucrats and administrators as they tried to comply with Trump’s vague order, banning and erasing anything that the president and Hegseth might construe as even remotely related to DEI or other banned concepts. Some Defense Department workers “deemed to be affiliated with DEI programs or activities” were warned that Trump’s orders “required” their jobs to be eliminated. Many professors at military institutions began to see signs that they might soon be prohibited from researching and publishing in their fields of study.
Phillip Atiba Solomon: Am I still allowed to tell the truth in my class?
At first, Pauline was cautious. She knew that her work in the field of military ethics could be controversial—particularly on the issues of oaths and obedience. In the military, where discipline and the chain of command rule daily life, investigating the meaning of oath-taking and obedience is a necessary but touchy exercise. The military is sworn to obey all legal orders, but when that obedience becomes absolute, the results can be ghastly: Pauline wrote her doctoral dissertation at Temple University on oaths, obedience, and the 1969 My Lai massacre in Vietnam, in which a young U.S. officer and his men believed that their orders allowed them to slay hundreds of unarmed civilians. For more than 20 years, she taught these matters in the philosophy department at Pacific Lutheran University, and once at Newport, she wrote a book on the contrasting notions of obedience in military and civilian life.
When the Trump order came down, Pauline told me that Naval War College administrators gave her “vague assurances” that the college would not interfere with ongoing work by her or other faculty, or with academic freedom in general. But one day, shortly after the executive order in January, she was walking through the main lobby, which proudly features display cases with books by the faculty, and she noticed that a volume on LGBTQ issues in the military had vanished. The disappearance of that book led Pauline to seek more clarity from the college’s administration about nonpartisanship, and especially about academic freedom.
Academic freedom is an often-misunderstood term. Many people outside academia encounter the idea only when some professor abuses the concept as a license to be an offensive jerk. (A famous case many years ago involved a Colorado professor who compared the victims of 9/11 to Nazis who deserved what they got.) Like tenure, however, academic freedom serves crucial educational purposes, protecting controversial research and encouraging the free exchange of even the most unpopular ideas without fear of political pressure or interference. It is essential to any serious educational institution, and necessary to a healthy democracy.
Conor Friedersdorf: In defense of academic freedom
Professors who teach for the military, as I did for many years, do have to abide by some restrictions not found in civilian schools. They have a duty, as sworn federal employees, to protect classified information. They may not use academic freedom to disrupt government operations. (Leading a protest that would prevent other government workers from getting to their duty stations might be one example.) And, of course, they must refrain from violating the Hatch Act: They cannot use government time or resources to engage in partisan political activity. But they otherwise have—or are supposed to have—the same freedoms as their colleagues in civilian institutions.
Soon, however, jumpy military bureaucrats started tossing books and backing out of conferences. Pauline became more concerned. Newport’s senior administrators began to send informal signals that included, as she put it, the warning that “academic freedom as many of us understood it was not a thing anymore.” Based on those messages, Pauline came to believe that her and other faculty members’ freedom to comment publicly on national issues and choose research topics without institutional interference was soon to be restricted.
During an all-hands meeting with senior college leaders in February, Pauline said that she and other Naval War College faculty were told that the college would comply with Hegseth’s directives and that, in Pauline’s words, “if we were thinking we had academic freedom in our scholarship and in the classroom, we were mistaken.” (Other faculty present at the meeting confirmed to me that they interpreted the message from the college’s leadership the same way; one of them later told me that the implication was that the Defense Department could now rule any subject out of bounds for classroom discussion or scholarly research at will.) Pauline said there were audible gasps in the room, and such visible anger that it seemed to her that even the administrators hosting the meeting were taken aback. “I’ve been in academia for 31 years,” she told me, and that gathering “was the most horrifying meeting I’ve ever been a part of.”
I contacted the college’s provost, Stephen Mariano, who told me in an email that these issues were “nuanced” but that the college had not changed its policies on academic freedom. (He also denied any changes relating to tenure, a practice predicated on academic freedom.) At the same time, he added, the college is “complying with all directives issued by the President and Department of Defense and following Department of the Navy policy.” This language leaves Pauline and other civilian faculty at America’s military schools facing a paradox: They are told that academic freedom still exists, but that their institutions are following directives from Hegseth that, at least on their face, seem aimed at ending academic freedom.
In March, Pauline again sought clarity from college leaders. They were clearly anxious to appear compliant with the new political line. (“We don’t want to end up on Fox News,” she said one administrator told her.) She was told her work was valued, but she didn’t believe it. “Talk is cheap,” she said. “Actions matter.” She said she asked the provost point-blank: What if a faculty member has a book or an article coming out on some controversial topic? His answer, according to her: Hypothetically, they might consider pulling the work from publication. (Mariano denies saying this and told me that there is no change in college policy on faculty publication.)
Every government employee knows the bureaucratic importance of putting things on paper. Pauline’s current project is about the concept of honor, which necessarily involves questions regarding masculinity and gender—issues that could turn the DOD’s new McCarthyites toward her and her work. So she now proposed that she and the college administration work up a new contract, laying out more clearly—in writing—what the limits on her work and academic freedom would look like.
She might as well have asked for a pony. Administrators, she said, told her that they hoped she wouldn’t resign, but that no one was going to put anything in writing. “The upshot,” according to her, was a message from the administration that boiled down to: We hope you can just suck it up and not need your integrity for your final year as the ethics chair.
After that, she told me, her choices were clear. “As they say in the military: Salute and execute—or resign.” Until then, she had “hoped maybe people would still come to their senses.” The promises of seven years ago were gone; the institution now apparently expected her and other faculty to self-censor in the classroom and preemptively bowdlerize their own research. “I don’t do DEI work,” she said, “but I do moral philosophy, and now I can’t do it. I’d have to take out discussions of race and gender and not do philosophy as I think it should be done.” In April, she submitted a formal letter of resignation.
Initially, she had no interest in saying anything publicly. Pauline is a native Montanan and single mom of two, and by nature not the type of person to engage in public food fights. (She used to joke with me when we were colleagues that I was the college’s resident lightning rod, and she had no interest in taking over that job.) She’s a philosopher who admires quiet stoicism, and she was resolved to employ it in her final months.
But she also thought about what she owed her chair’s namesake. “Stockdale thought philosophy was important for officers. The Stockdale course was created so that officers would wrestle with moral obligations. He was a personal model of integrity.” Even so, she did not try to invoke him as a patron saint when she decided to resign. “I’m not saying he would agree with the choice that I made,” she told me. “But his model of moral integrity is part of the chair.”
She kept her resignation private until early May, when a professor at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Graham Parsons—another scholar who teaches ethics in a military school, and a friend of Pauline’s—likewise decided to resign in protest and said that he would leave West Point after 13 years. Hegseth’s changes “prevent me from doing my job responsibly,” he wrote in The New York Times. “I am ashamed to be associated with the academy in its current form.” Hegseth responded on X, sounding more like a smug internet troll than a concerned superior: “You will not be missed Professor Parsons.” The episode changed Pauline’s mind. She felt she owed her friends and colleagues whatever public support and solidarity she could offer them.
Nor are she and Parsons alone. Tom McCarthy, a professor at the U.S. Naval Academy, in Annapolis, Maryland, recently resigned as chair of the history department rather than remove a paper from an upcoming symposium. And last month, a senior scholar at the Army War College, in Pennsylvania, Carrie Lee, also handed in her resignation, a decision she announced to her friends and followers on Bluesky.
Jason Dempsey: Hegseth has all the wrong enemies
Lee told me in an email that she’d been thinking of leaving after Trump was elected, because it was apparent to her that the Trump administration was “going to try and politicize the military and use military assets/personnel to suppress democratic rights,” and that academic freedom in military schools was soon to “become untenable.” Like Pauline, Lee felt like she was at a dead end: “To speak from within the institution itself will also do more harm than good. So to dissent, I have little choice but to leave,” she said in a farewell letter to her colleagues in April.
I asked Pauline what she thinks might have happened if she had decided to stay and just tough it out from the inside. She “absolutely” thinks she’d have been fired at some point, and she didn’t want such a firing “to be part of the legacy of the Stockdale Chair.” But then I asked her if by resigning, she was giving people in the Trump administration, such as Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought—who once said that his goal was to make federal workers feel “trauma” to the point where they will quit their jobs—exactly what they want: Americans leaving federal service.
She didn’t care. “When you make a moral decision, there are always costs.” She dismissed what people like Vought want or think. “I’m not accountable to him. I’m accountable to the Lord, to my father, to my legacy, to my children, to my profession, to members of the military-ethics community. So I decided that I needed to resign. Not that it would change anyone’s mind, but to say: This is not okay. That is my message.”
At the end of our discussion, I asked an uncomfortable question I’d been avoiding. Pauline, I know, is only in her mid-50s, in mid-career, and too young simply to retire. She has raised two sons who will soon enter young adulthood. I asked her if she was worried about her future.
“Sure,” she said. “But at the end of the day, as we say in Montana, sometimes you just have to saddle up and ride scared.”
The Atlantic · by Tom Nichols · June 25, 2025
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
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