Quotes of the Day:

"The capacity of the human mind for swallowing nonsense and spewing it forth in violent and oppressive action has never yet been plumbed."

– Robert A. Heinlein - Revolt in 2100, Postscript (1953)

"Night is always darker before the dawn and life is the same, the hard times will pass, every thing will get better and sun will shine brighter than ever."

– Ernest Hemingway

"Pain and suffering are inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart."

– Fyodor Dostoevsky

1. Left-Wing Terrorism and Political Violence in the United States: What the Data Tells Us

2. Transcript: Finland’s President Alexander Stubb’s Speech at UNGA 2025

3. Hegseth orders rare, urgent meeting of hundreds of generals, admirals

4. The Pentagon’s Missing China Strategy

5. Suspected Russian Drone Incursions Expose Gaps in NATO Defenses

6. More than 60K defense civilians have left under Hegseth—but officials are mum on the effects

7. Agencies should prep for mass layoffs if shutdown occurs, White House says

8. Chinese Premier Signals Desire for Stable U.S. Relations in New York Visit

9. Al-Qaeda’s Growing Shadow in Africa: The Expanding Operational Reach of JNIM and Al-Shabaab

10. China, China, Chi—wait, what? Air Force mulls next steps amid homeland focus

11. The $100,000 H-1B Visa Mistake

12. Senators Want Answers From Big Tech on H-1B Workers, Layoffs

13. Will ‘Iron Lady’ Takaichi Sanae Be Japan’s First Female Prime Minister?

14. It may take a generation for a stable new world order to emerge

15. A respected European statesman has praise for Trump

16. The Cost of the AGI Delusion

17. A new financial impetus for peace in Ukraine

18. Back to Key West: The Army must own air base defense, not chase Air Force missions

19. Billboards aimed at troops ask 'is this what you signed up for?'

20. How First Amendment protects Americans' speech -- and how it doesn't

21. New Pentagon strategy to focus on homeland, Western Hemisphere

22. Alien Oracles: Military Decision-Making with Unexplainable AI

23. Justice Department Lays Groundwork for Probes of Soros-Funded Group

1. Left-Wing Terrorism and Political Violence in the United States: What the Data Tells Us

This will create some controversy but data is data and I trust that Dan Byman has done a thorough and objective analysis.

I suppose this will be used to justify the homeland security focus in the new NDS/NWS.

Please go to the link to read the entire report and view all the graphs and charts. 

https://www.csis.org/analysis/left-wing-terrorism-and-political-violence-united-states-what-data-tells-us

Left-Wing Terrorism and Political Violence in the United States: What the Data Tells Us

csis.org · Brief by Daniel Byman and Riley McCabe Published September 25, 2025

Available Downloads

• Download the Brief 4267kb
• Download the Methodology 523kb

The Issue

In recent years, the United States has seen an increase in the number of left-wing terrorism attacks and plots, although such violence has risen from very low levels and remains much lower than historical levels of violence carried out by right-wing and jihadist attackers. So far, 2025 marks the first time in more than 30 years that left-wing terrorist attacks outnumber those from the violent far right. Despite its decline this year, right-wing terrorism could easily return to previous high levels. It is important to resource counterterrorism efforts against both right- and left-wing terrorism and work with communities to gain their support against extremists. Leaders across the political spectrum must condemn violent extremism of all kinds, denying it legitimacy and reducing its appeal.

Introduction

The tragic killing of political commentator and conservative activist Charlie Kirk has once again put the spotlight on political violence in the United States, with figures on both sides of the political aisle decrying extremism on the other. To understand the danger of political violence today and to find the best solutions for reducing it, it is important to understand the overall threat landscape and how both left- and right-wing violence have evolved and could change in the future.

Our analysis of terrorism trends in the United States shows that, indeed, left-wing violence has risen in the last 10 years, particularly since President Donald Trump’s rise to political prominence in 2016, although it has risen from very low levels and remains much lower than historical levels of violence carried out by right-wing and jihadist attackers. More contentious politics in the United States and the expansion of the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement appear to have reenergized violent left-wing extremists. The left-wing movement as a whole has not returned to its violent heights of the 1960s and 1970s, but the number of terrorist incidents involving left-wing extremists so far this year puts 2025 on pace to be the left’s most violent year in more than three decades. Moreover, 2025 marks the first time in more than 30 years that left-wing attacks outnumber those from the far right.

Indeed, the increase in left-wing attacks is particularly noticeable because attacks from right-wing perpetrators have sharply declined in 2025. This decline is striking, and explanations are speculative. One possibility is that many traditional grievances that violent right-wing extremists have espoused in the past—opposition to abortion, hostility to immigration, and suspicions of government agencies, among others—are now embraced by President Trump and his administration.

Similarly, jihadist attacks have declined in frequency since their peak in the 2010s, owing largely to the destruction of major groups like al Qaeda and the Islamic State and the subsequent decline in the power of the jihadist ideology to inspire attackers.

Left-wing attacks are remarkably less lethal overall than jihadist or right-wing attacks. However, even incidents that do not result in mass casualties can still have significant impact. Fortunately, many left-wing attackers (though not all) have demonstrated limited skill in carrying out violence, and the movement is disorganized, with little formal coordination.

The rise in left-wing attacks merits increased attention, but the fall in right-wing attacks is probably temporary, and it too requires a government response. In any case, many of the prescriptions for fighting terrorism effectively apply to violence from both the left and right. These include ensuring proper counterterrorism resourcing, avoiding overreactions, and having leadership unequivocally condemn such attacks.

The remainder of this brief is divided into six sections. First, terms such as “left-wing” and “terrorism” are defined. Second, trends in left-wing terrorism in the United States are analyzed, with an emphasis on the increase in the number of incidents since 2016. Third, the causes of the rise of left-wing incidents are assessed. Fourth, weaknesses that limit the impact of left-wing terrorism are examined. Fifth, possible reasons for the decline in right-wing and jihadist terrorism are discussed. The sixth and final section discusses several policy implications that can help combat violence from perpetrators across the political spectrum.

csis.org · Brief by Daniel Byman and Riley McCabe Published September 25, 2025

2. Transcript: Finland’s President Alexander Stubb’s Speech at UNGA 2025

A brilliant "lecture" that should be heard in all international relations classes.

You can watch his 20 minute speech at this link. It is well worth the time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLzUhjf7XQU

The transcript is below.

Transcript: Finland’s President Alexander Stubb’s Speech at UNGA 2025

• September 25, 2025 4:36 amby Pangambam SPolitics

Read the full transcript of Finland’s President Alexander Stubb’s speech at UN General Assembly (UNGA 80), September 24, 2025.

Listen to the audio version here:

The Foundation of Foreign Policy: Values, Interests, and Power

ALEXANDER STUBB: Mr. President, Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, in its simplest form, foreign policy is really about three things: about values, interests and power. I come from a relatively small country, Finland, and our toolkit is mainly about two of those three things. It’s about values and interests. Power, hard or soft, is usually the luxury of bigger players.

The power of a smaller country arises from its capacity to cooperate with others. Smart diplomacy gives a smaller player at least relative influence. The UN is of course case in point. Big players have power through their permanent membership in the UN Security Council. But we, the smaller players, can influence the ebb and flow of international relations by being active in the corridors of diplomacy.

The End of the Post-Cold War Order

Now, most of the speeches that we’ve heard here today have highlighted the fact that the world order, balance and dynamics are changing, much like they did after World War II when the UN was founded. I actually think that the post-Cold War order is over, but we don’t know what the new order is going to look like. It will take at least five to ten years for things to settle.

And my message to this assembly today is that regardless of the size, each and every member state of the United Nations has agency, a say in how the new world order will look like. It is important that we all use this power wisely and responsibly.

Now, I fully appreciate that our interests differ depending on our geographical location, history, state of development or culture.

But fundamental values are something we should all share. We have commonly defined some of the most essential of them in the UN Charter.Today, I want to do two things. First, analyze where we are, and second, give my proposals on what we might want to do together.

Multilateralism Versus Multipolarity

To understand what’s currently happening in the world, I’d like to raise three different but yet related developments. First, it seems to me that there’s a growing tension between multilateralism, in other words, an order based on the rule of law, and those that speak the language of multipolarity or transactionalism. So, a difference between multilateralism and multipolarity.

Now, I can understand the temptation and the rationale of the proponents of multipolarity and transactionalism. But can they solve the world’s biggest challenges such as climate change or sustainable development?

Today, I see many states, both big and small, pursuing transactional or multi-vectorial foreign policies. In essence, their aim is to diversify their relations with multiple actors rather than aligning with any one particular block. Now, this can be opportunistic, but it may also be justified and reasonable. This depends on political choices.

A transactional or multi-vectorial foreign policy is dominated by interests. Interests drive practical choices of states, and this is entirely legitimate. This kind of foreign policy is based on a realistic understanding of power. Power defines the limits of what is possible for each state.

However, values should actually underpin everything we do. Even transactional or multi-vectorial foreign policy should rest on a core of fundamental values. Without them, foreign policy will ultimately run into a war. If you set aside values for unhindered pursuit of power and interests, you will eventually find before you the very same problems you wanted to overlook.

The Rise of the Global South

Second, the balance of power in the New World Order is shifting towards the South and the East. Many countries, especially in Africa, Asia, Latin America, are becoming or have become key players in determining the direction of the New World Order. To put it simply, they have both agency and power.

They are not only an expanding economic force, but their demographic growth is inexorable. This will also turn them into a political and cultural force. It will yield them both hard power and soft power, and they will use it to promote their interests as they should.

Upholding Fundamental Values

The 193 members of the United Nations do not have to agree on every minute detail of values, but we have to have a common understanding of fundamentals. They include the sovereignty and territorial integrity of states. They include the prohibition of the use of force and the respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. These values are the building blocks of who we are and what we stand for as the United Nations. The broad international community has overwhelmingly an interest to uphold them.

Let me be clear. Russia has no right to continue its aggression on Ukraine. Israel has no right to violate international law in Palestine. States have no right to use Sudanese or Congolese territories to fight proxy wars for their economic or strategic self-interests. I urge us all to heed this message of the international community and act accordingly.

War is always a failure of humanity. It is a collective failure of our fundamental values. It is a failure of us as human beings.

The State of the United Nations

Thirdly, I would like to say a few words about the state of the United Nations, the institution where we are. The UN was created to maintain and promote peace, stability, development, and friendly relations among nations. In order to achieve this, the balance between the three elements was required. The power at the highest level was represented by the UN Security Council. The interests of the wider membership were reconciled here in the General Assembly, and the values were enshrined in the Charter and consolidated as rules of international law.

Now, unfortunately, today the UN is struggling to fulfill its central promise of delivering peace and stability. We can always blame each other, but at the end of the day it’s a collective decision. Countries have increasingly taken the liberty to break the rules of international law and to use force against other people’s territories and suppress other nations. The United Nations of today does not sufficiently reflect the realities of the balance of power. All too often it fails to serve as a forum for the coordination of interests, and the values at its core are too often not respected in good faith.

We all want to have the freedom to make choices and a possibility to influence the world around us. Today, many countries are seeking answers in multipolarity or transactionalism. If the UN fails to deliver, this trend will accelerate.

So, let me sum up in the terms of the three pillars: values, interests and power. Our values can divide us. Fundamentally, however, they should unite us around the basic principles of humanity, the rule of law and the prohibition of aggression. Our interests differ, and it’s only right that we promote them. However, our choices have consequences. Opportunism will eventually be forced to confront the problems it tried to ignore. Power will constantly seek a new balance. We must adapt to change. Nevertheless, we should not allow the rise of hard power to blind us. The power of legitimacy, integrity and rules will remain strong.

From Problems to Solutions

So, let me get to my second part, from the situation to possible solutions or things that we could do together. Never before in history has humankind had such means of innovations at its disposal to solve the world’s most pressing problems. However, the current direction is wrong in so many ways. There are more wars than at any time since World War II. The world is becoming increasingly divided. And so are our societies, and the measures to deal with climate change and sustainable development are lagging behind. In different parts of the world, we’re witnessing immense civilian suffering and blatant disrespect for humanitarian principles.

For me as a Finn, Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine not only reminds me of our past, but is directly linked to the security of the part of the world where I live. On the other hand, there is aggression and total disregard for civilian life, and an attempt to undermine the fundamental principles on which the international order is based. On the other hand, there’s a bastion of freedom that is defending its right to exist and to make its own choices.

The battle for what consequences we will draw from this aggression is not yet over. Recently, there’s been serious attempts at diplomatic solutions of the war on the initiative of the United States. There are no perfect solutions to wars. At the same time, we know that any decision made in these matters will have far-reaching consequences in Ukraine and beyond. There can hardly be a stronger unifying interest among the UN’s broad membership than our opposition to the wars of conquest. Aggression must not be rewarded. Accountability for the most serious international crimes must be pursued.

The Crisis in the Middle East

In the Middle East, civilians in Gaza are experiencing immense suffering. The deepening humanitarian crisis has reached unbearable levels and represents a failure of the international system. At the same time, Hamas continues to hold the hostages it has taken and many have already lost their lives. An immediate ceasefire is needed in Gaza. That has been reiterated from this podium many times today and yesterday. Humanitarian aid must be granted, safe and unhindered access. The hostages must be released.

I commend the efforts led by France and Saudi Arabia to advance the two-state solution. The negotiations must meet the Israeli and Palestinian security needs and Palestinian right to self-determination, its legitimate aspiration for statehood and sovereignty. The occupation that began in 1967 must end and all permanent status issues must be resolved. Correspondingly, the countries that have not recognized Israel must do so.

Supporting Palestinian Authority and Addressing Global Conflicts

At the same time, the international community must support and strengthen the Palestinian Authority for it to govern the entire Palestinian territory effectively. This is the only viable option for achieving a two-state solution. A stable Palestine will also significantly benefit the security of Israel.

In many parts of the world, conflicts are raging, causing immense suffering locally, instability regionally and reverberations globally. We’ve witnessed particularly brutal violence in Sudan, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, in Haiti, Myanmar and Mali, among others. Civilian populations continue to face famine and displacement at a large scale.

Sometimes I feel that we end up looking at conflicts only that are near to us, but I think the job of the UN is to look at all of them with equal determination. I praise all those who in good faith continue to work for peace despite the daunting task.

In June, a peace agreement was reached for the conflict in the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. The true test, like with all peace agreements, lies in its implementation. Does it stick? There is a humanitarian crisis of alarming proportions that compels us, all of us, to respond.

Peace processes should not be transactional. They must be guided by international law. All countries and stakeholders in the region must be engaged and committed to achieve sustainable peace. The presence and involvement of the UN is essential.

Media Freedom and Democracy

I would also like to stress the crucial work carried out by journalists amid conflicts and in other difficult circumstances. Attacks on members of the media are unacceptable. Media freedom is the basis for democracy. It is the prerequisite for an open society. The ability of the press to carry out its work is important for all of us.

UN Security Council Reform

Ladies and gentlemen, the composition of the UN still largely reflects the world of 1945. As the world has changed drastically, so should the decision-making at the UN. Last year, in this very hall, I argued for a reformed Security Council, a council where currently underrepresented regions would have a stronger voice through permanent seats at the table.

The number of permanent members should be increased in the UN Security Council. At least there should be two new seats for Asia, two for Africa. I think I’m going to say this every year because that’s the only place where I get applause. No single state should have a veto power. And if a member of the Security Council violates the UN Charter, its voting rights should be suspended.

I believe that these changes at the top of the UN are necessary in order to maintain the UN’s central role in international relations. At the same time, a more comprehensive reform of the UN is needed. I commend the Secretary General for his UNAT initiative and I encourage him to take bold and ambitious action.

Finland’s Support for UN Reform

So Finland strongly supports the UN and wants it to succeed. Therefore, we stress the need for true reform to enhance the organization’s credibility, relevance and efficiency. This will ensure that the UN can act. The UN needs to focus its efforts on its most important goals: ending and preventing wars, protecting human rights and acting as a catalyst for sustainable development.

And also, we need to get the UN back into peace mediation. I would argue that one of the reasons that we have so many wars right now is that the UN is absent from peace mediation. No other organization can offer the legitimacy comparable to that of the UN. If the UN is absent, conflicts are not resolved without it, which is not in our common interests. The UN is needed as a mediator and the member states should support it at this endeavor.

Finland’s UN Security Council Bid

Finally, Finland is strongly engaged in the work of the UN and will remain so. Therefore, we are also standing for election to the Security Council for the term of 2029 to 2030. Should we be elected, Finland pledges to be a principled and pragmatic partner for peace. We are principled in our commitment to international law with the Charter at its core. We are pragmatic in seeking solutions that truly advance international peace and security, recognizing that progress is often incremental.

At the outset of my speech, I said that each and every one of us has agency. I say how the new world order will look like. We want to be able to make our own choices and have an impact on the world around us. Nelson Mandela saw truth and reconciliation as the only hope for nations that are bitterly divided. The same applies to relations between states. We should learn from history, but always look to the future, bearing in mind that our decisions will shape it.

Thank you very much. Thank you very much.

3. Hegseth orders rare, urgent meeting of hundreds of generals, admirals

So what I'm hearing from chatter in the Asia-Indo-Pacific is that there is going to be a wholesale reduction in the rank structure of GOFO positions.  

I wonder if the briefing will be thus: If your position is being downgraded you can either continue to serve in that position at the lower rank or you can retire and be replaced. And if 3 or 4 stars choose retirement, will they be allowed to retire at the O-9 or O-10 grade or be downgraded in retirement to O-8? Retirement at 3 and 4 star is not automatic. Even if you have the time in service to warrant retirement at that rank, it has to be requested and approved by the SECWAR.

Hegseth orders rare, urgent meeting of hundreds of generals, admirals

The Pentagon has summoned military officials from around the world for a gathering in Virginia. Even top generals and their staffs don’t know the reason for the meeting.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/09/25/hegseth-generals-quantico-meeting/

UpdatedSeptember 25, 2025 at 7:14 p.m. EDTtoday at 7:14 p.m. EDT

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, at Selfridge Air National Guard Base in Michigan. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)

By Tara Copp, Dan Lamothe, Alex Horton, Ellen Nakashima and Noah Robertson

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered hundreds of the U.S. military’s generals and admirals to gather on short notice — and without a stated reason — at a Marine Corps base in Virginia next week, sowing confusion and alarm after the Trump administration’s firing of numerous senior leaders this year.

The highly unusual directive was sent to virtually all of the military’s top commanders worldwide, according to more than a dozen people familiar with the matter. It was issued earlier this week, against the backdrop of a potential government shutdown, and as Hegseth’s overtly political moves have deepened a sense of distress among his opponents who fear that he is erasing the Defense Department’s status as a nonpartisan institution.

In a statement Thursday, Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell affirmed that Hegseth “will be addressing his senior military leaders early next week,” but he offered no additional details. Parnell, a senior adviser to the defense secretary, voiced no security concerns about The Washington Post reporting on the meeting, scheduled for Tuesday in Quantico, Virginia.

It was not clear whether President Donald Trump will attend the meeting or if Hegseth had given the president advance notice of his plans. He told reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday afternoon that he will go “if they want me.”

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Despite the meeting’s size and secrecy, both Trump and Vice President JD Vance downplayed its significance, with Trump asking, “Why is that such a big deal?” Vance, appearing alongside Trump, said it is “not particularly unusual” that generals are speaking with Hegseth. “I think it’s odd that you guys have made it into such a big story,” he said.

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There are about 800 generals and admirals spread across the United States and dozens of other countries and time zones. Hegseth’s order, people familiar with the matter said, applies to all senior officers with the rank of brigadier general or above, or their Navy equivalent, serving in command positions and their top enlisted advisers. Typically, each of these officers oversees hundreds or thousands of rank-and-file troops.

Top commanders in conflict zones and senior military leaders stationed throughout Europe, the Middle East and the Asia-Pacific region are among those expected to attend Hegseth’s meeting, said people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to publicly discuss the issue. The order does not apply to top military officers who hold staff positions.

“All general officers in command in grade O-7 through O-10 and their general officer senior enlisted advisers are directed to attend within operational constraints,” the order states, according to one person who saw a copy. O-7 through O-10 refers to the military’s classification for all generals and admirals.

Each commander typically travels with his senior enlisted adviser and a few lower-ranking military aides, meaning the total group of people traveling for the summit could seemingly exceed 1,000. It’s unclear how the military will house them or transport them.

None of the people who spoke with The Post could recall a defense secretary ever ordering so many of the military’s generals and admirals to assemble like this. Several said it raised security concerns.

“People are very concerned,” one person said. “They have no idea what it means.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, at the Las Garzas presidential palace in Panama City in April. (Franco Brana/AFP/Getty Images)

Others expressed frustration that even many commanders stationed overseas will be required to attend Hegseth’s impromptu summit, with some questioning the wisdom in doing so.

“It will make the commands just diminished if something pops up,” a defense official said.

The Defense Department possesses and often uses highly secure videoconferencing technology that enables military officials, regardless of their location, to discuss sensitive matters with the White House, the Pentagon or both. Another person said ordering hundreds of military leaders to appear in the same location is “not how this is done.”

“You don’t call GOFOs leading their people and the global force into an auditorium outside D.C. and not tell them why/what the topic or agenda is,” this person added, using an abbreviation for general officer or flag officer.

“Are we taking every general and flag officer out of the Pacific right now?” one U.S. official said. “All of it is weird.”

On Capitol Hill, where Hegseth’s unorthodox stewardship of the Defense Department has rankled members of both political parties, lawmakers also appeared caught off guard. Republican and Democratic leaders of the Senate and House Armed Services committees did not immediately comment on the development.

The orders come as Hegseth has unilaterally directed massive recent changes at the Pentagon — including directing that the number of general officers be reduced by 20 percent through a sweeping consolidation of top military commands, firing senior leaders without cause and a high-profile order to rebrand the Defense Department as the Department of War.

News of the order drove considerable confusion in the Pentagon on Thursday. By midday, military officials were reaching out to one another seeking a clearer consensus on who needs to be at Hegseth’s Quantico meeting and whether anyone knew why they had been ordered to Virginia. There was growing concern, too, that firings could occur.

Another official familiar with the matter said it did not seem possible that Hegseth would have called such a meeting to unveil a new defense strategy, examine the consolidation of commands or lecture commanders on military standards.

“You’re not pulling out everyone in the room to bring them over to say, ‘Stop painting your nails because we’re a war-fighting organization,’” this official said, adding that some had expressed worry that Hegseth’s meeting will collide with a government shutdown and potentially leave commanders, or at least some of their staff members, stranded without transportation back to their jobs.

The unusual travel order coincides with efforts by Hegseth to exert greater influence over who gets promoted to be a senior military officer, multiple officials told The Post. Even at the one- and two-star level, the secretary’s team is scrutinizing old relationships and what officials have said or posted on social media, as they determine whom to send forward for a higher rank or assignment.

The effort has had a chilling effect on rising officers, people familiar with the matter said, as multiple officials have expressed unease about the initiative and questioned whether it will erode the military’s ability to stay insulated from the nation’s toxic politics. Others have said such pressure would drive some rising officers to leave, resulting in enormous losses to the Pentagon in terms of the time and money spent training those leaders.

Top administration officials also have been preparing a new national defense strategy that is expected to make homeland defense the nation’s top concern, after several years of China being identified as the top national security risk to the United States. Some officials familiar with the order to travel said they thought that may come up.

Hegseth’s directive in May to slash about 100 generals and admirals also has generated concern among top military leaders. He called then for a “minimum” 20 percent cut to the number of four-star officers — the military’s top rank — on active duty and a corresponding number of generals in the National Guard. There will also be another 10 percent reduction, at least, to the total number of generals and admirals across the force.

Last month, Hegseth fired Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency; Vice Adm. Nancy Lacore, the chief of the Navy Reserve; and Rear Adm. Milton Sands, a Navy SEAL officer who oversaw Naval Special Warfare Command. No specific reasons were given in those cases.

The firings were the latest in a wider purge of national security agencies’ top ranks. Since entering office, the Trump administration has also fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr.; the chief of naval operations, Adm. Lisa Franchetti; the commandant of the Coast Guard, Adm. Linda Fagan; and the Air Force vice chief of staff, Gen. James Slife, among others. The list includes a disproportionate number of women.

Gen. David Allvin, the chief of staff of the Air Force, said last month he will step down in November, after he was asked to retire. His replacement has not yet been nominated.

Michael Birnbaum contributed to this report.

4. The Pentagon’s Missing China Strategy

A very important essay from Seth Jones.

But, I still cannot find any definitive analysis on what actually deters China, the CCP, and Xi.

We talk so much about deterrence but no one seems to articulate what it is that actually may deter China.

And to the finer point: do we have sufficient understanding of the nature, objectives, and strategy of China, the CCP, and Xi?

Excerpts:

Technology is important, but it has never been sufficient to win wars. As Andrew Marshall, the longtime head of the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment, argued, “Technology makes possible the revolution, but the revolution itself takes place only when new concepts of operation develop.” The United States, in other words, needs to develop a joint concept of operation—a plan to use forces to conduct specific military operations—and it needs to follow through by making the necessary investments and acquisitions to offset Beijing’s numerical and industrial advantages. If it does not, the United States risks losing a war with China.

...

There is also a lot the United States will not need for a potential conflict with China, such as large numbers of surface ships and aircraft carriers, which are vulnerable and highly exposed in a war. The United States is also still investing in land systems, such as tanks, that will not be necessary for this fight. An offset that focuses on China, of course, does not exclude preparing for contingencies elsewhere, such as against Russia in eastern Europe, Iran in the Middle East, or North Korea on the Korean Peninsula. But it does mean that the United States needs to prioritize defeating and deterring China, much as the United States focused on the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

The Pentagon’s Missing China Strategy

Foreign Affairs · More by Seth G. Jones · September 26, 2025

Washington Still Lacks a Credible Military Plan for Deterring Beijing

Seth G. Jones

September 26, 2025

Chinese soldiers rehearsing ahead of a military parade in Beijing, September 2025 Maxim Shemetov / Reuters

SETH G. JONES is President of the Defense and Security Department at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and author of The American Edge: The Military Tech Nexus and the Sources of Great Power Dominance.

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In the mid-2010s, Pentagon officials in the United States were alarmed by the military progress China and Russia were making. Both countries were investing in cyber, space, and electronic warfare capabilities as well as precision-guided munitions and long-range, ground-based weapons. U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work was particularly concerned about China, which he determined was trying to achieve parity with the United States in military technology. China had developed the DF-21D, an antiship ballistic missile with a range of nearly 1,000 miles dubbed the “carrier killer,” which posed a threat to U.S. ships—including aircraft carriers—in the Pacific. It was time, Work and others in the Pentagon concluded, to imagine what a war in the Pacific might look like and consider how the United States would win it.

Inspired by the so-called offset strategies that the United States developed to counter the Soviets during the Cold War, Work proposed a “third offset” to counter China’s advantages in the Pacific. The U.S. military started drafting new warfighting concepts, such as the navy’s Distributed Maritime Operations, which involved spreading out forces over a large area and developing long-range weapons. The Pentagon also started identifying what weapons, systems, and equipment it would need to buy, prompting new investments in space capabilities, advanced sensors, and a variety of promising technologies, such as advanced sea mines. The third offset, as Work described it, was a “combination of technology, operational concepts, and organizational constructs—different ways of organizing our forces—to maintain our ability to project combat power into any area at the time and place of our own choosing.”

But in many ways, Work’s third offset was a decade ahead of its time. At the time, the United States was still the preeminent superpower. Neither China nor Russia possessed a significant military advantage over the United States—there was not much, in other words, for the U.S. military to offset. Although Work’s call to action inspired various initiatives, it never fully took shape with coherence or urgency.

Today, the situation is gravely different. China’s defense industrial base is on a wartime footing, producing hardware and software at what Admiral Samuel Paparo, the head of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, calls “an alarming pace.” Its military and commercial shipbuilding capacity is roughly 230 times larger than that of the United States, and its long-range missile capabilities have mushroomed over the past two decades. This means that China poses a serious threat to the U.S. military in the two concentric island chains on Beijing’s maritime flank, the second of which extends south from Japan to Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, and Palau. If, for example, the current tensions over Taiwan were to break out into a full-scale war, U.S. forces from Japan to Guam would be vulnerable to Chinese strikes before they even got to the fight.

Like the Soviet Union throughout the Cold War, however, China has vulnerabilities that can be exploited. It is time for the United States to develop, in earnest, a new offset strategy. Although Beijing has dominated Washington’s agenda in recent years, the Pentagon has not yet developed a modern-day equivalent of the so-called AirLand Battle concept that U.S. leaders established in the 1970s to defeat the Soviet Union in central Europe. Thus far, much of the focus has been on emerging technologies, such as autonomous systems and artificial intelligence.

Technology is important, but it has never been sufficient to win wars. As Andrew Marshall, the longtime head of the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment, argued, “Technology makes possible the revolution, but the revolution itself takes place only when new concepts of operation develop.” The United States, in other words, needs to develop a joint concept of operation—a plan to use forces to conduct specific military operations—and it needs to follow through by making the necessary investments and acquisitions to offset Beijing’s numerical and industrial advantages. If it does not, the United States risks losing a war with China.

NEW LOOK

The United States has done this before. During the Cold War, the United States succeeded in several major efforts to offset Soviet advantages. The first was the Eisenhower administration’s New Look, which involved countering the Red Army’s significant numerical advantage in central Europe. In the 1950s, the Soviets had nearly three times the number of ground forces in Europe as the United States and its allies did, and it was building a formidable industrial base.

But instead of deploying and sustaining a large standing army in Europe, which might have crippled the U.S. economy, President Dwight D. Eisenhower and his administration developed New Look: the plan to build an overwhelming nuclear advantage and plan, in the event of a war, to use tactical nuclear weapons against Red Army troops, including inside West Germany. As described in the administration’s policy paper NSC 162/2, which Eisenhower approved in October 1953, the United States would develop the capability to inflict “massive retaliatory damage by offensive striking power.” The goal was to strengthen deterrence and persuade the Soviet Union not to start a war, but for the United States to nevertheless be prepared in case of a conflict.

New Look was backed up by new acquisitions in nuclear weapons and long-range bombers. In 1956, for example, Eisenhower pushed through Congress a request to ramp up B-52 production from 17 to 20 aircraft per month, along with additional funding for missile research and expansion of B-52 facilities. The result was overwhelmingly successful: the Soviets were deterred in central Europe, and by the 1960s, the United States held a commanding lead over the Soviet Union in missiles—including nuclear missiles.

China’s defense industrial base is on a wartime footing.

A decade later, however, the United States was in danger of losing that edge in deterrence thanks to U.S. defense cuts and Soviet advancements. The Soviets had reached nuclear parity with the United States and had a three-to-one advantage in conventional capabilities in central Europe. To respond, U.S. President Jimmy Carter’s secretary of defense, Harold Brown, and Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering William Perry led a second offset.

Brown and Perry realized that they could defeat Soviet forces attempting to invade Western Europe if they could effectively strike the rear-echelon forces, or those feeding the frontlines, with precision. The so-called second offset, which included the concept of AirLand Battle, thus led to a focus on acquiring stealth and precision weapons, such as the F-117 Nighthawk aircraft, the laser-guided Copperhead antitank projectile, and various precision-guided bombs and missiles.

The Reagan administration continued these efforts into the 1980s as Moscow watched with alarm. In 1981, Soviet General Nikolai Ogarkov and other Soviet leaders conducted a massive exercise, called Zapad-81, to see how Soviet forces would fare against the new U.S. strategy. Afterward, Minister of Defense Dmitri Ustinov said the military balance between NATO and the Warsaw Pact was “at the moment not in our favor.”

THE THIRD OFFSET

Developing a successful offset strategy has two distinct phases: first, identifying an operational concept, or specific plan, to defeat the adversary; second, identifying, developing, and deploying the weapons, systems, and equipment that the operational concept calls for. Doing these steps in order sends a clear message and strengthens deterrence.

If the United States’ goal is to prevent a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, it is useful to imagine how that would play out. A war so close to the Chinese mainland would be a major challenge for the U.S. military because of China’s ability to deploy a large number of missiles, aircraft, ships, and other capabilities to the fight. It would also be difficult for China’s military, the People’s Liberation Army, which would have to move massive amounts of troops, weapons, and materiel through an amphibious landing, air assault, airborne landings, or a combination of these means. The first troops to land would have to seize a foothold in Taiwanese territory before allowing follow-on PLA forces to flow into Taiwan. The United States would need to act within hours or days to prevent a territorial fait accompli, and it would need to be able to rapidly strike at the heart of the PLA’s invasion force, dislodging it from any territory it had gained.

Consequently, the United States needs to strengthen and expand its force posture in the region to respond immediately to a Chinese invasion. The United States can, for example, deploy additional bombers to bases in Australia, harden shelters for aircraft at such locations as Kadena Air Base in Japan, establish active defenses for missiles in Guam, and stockpile fuel, spare parts, munitions, and other materiel across the Indo-Pacific that can be used for a fight.

There is a lot the United States will not need for a potential conflict with China.

For the United States to carry out rapid strikes on Chinese forces, it will have to be able to see all high-value PLA targets on the battlefield at any time, hit targets with mass and precision, and destroy any target that can be hit. Such targets include PLA amphibious assault ships, landing craft, air assault helicopters, and planes carrying PLA soldiers, weapons systems, and air defenses, as well as the operational command-and-control centers supporting the invasion force. The United States would need to generate combat power that can operate both inside and outside the reach of China’s strike systems. As Admiral Paparo has remarked, “I want to turn the Taiwan Strait into an unmanned hellscape using a number of classified capabilities so I can make their lives utterly miserable for a month, which buys me the time for the rest of everything.”

This would require a major increase in the U.S. inventory of precision-guided long-range missiles that can strike PLA vessels and aircraft. Long-range antiship missiles are effective against PLA targets, but they are expensive at over $3 million per missile, and the United States does not have enough of them. The United States needs to ramp up the research, development, and production of long-range missiles—especially antiship missiles to strike PLA surface vessels—that are cheaper. The United States will also need a lot more relatively cheap unmanned aircraft systems, or drones, particularly drones that do not need runways to launch.

Manned aircraft, however, are still important, especially bombers and stealthy fifth- and sixth-generation fighters. The range and strike capabilities of stealth bombers such as the B-21 Raider presents China with a particularly daunting challenge. They can be based beyond the range of Chinese ballistic missiles, and they can carry substantial conventional and nuclear bombs to thin Chinese forces. Some fifth- and sixth-generation stealth aircraft such as the F-35 are also helpful because their speed, sensor packages, and strike capabilities allow them to operate inside the first and second island chains for air-to-air and air-to-ground missions, as well as to collect and share battlefield data across ground, air, and maritime forces.

Finally, the United States needs a mix of large nuclear-powered attack submarines and cheap underwater drones. The PLA is relatively weak in the undersea domain and struggles to detect, identify, and track U.S. submarines. In multiple iterations of war games by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, for example, U.S. submarines wreak havoc on Chinese ships, including large amphibious vessels, escorts, and logistics vessels. The United States must lean into this undersea advantage and prioritize maintaining it.

FOCUS THE FIGHT

Other capabilities are also important, such as software that leverages next-generation artificial intelligence, which allows the U.S. military to share massive amounts of data quickly between forces. But the future of warfare is not just about unmanned systems, artificial intelligence, and other technologies. U.S. military capabilities need to be grounded in a viable operational strategy. Inventing technologies or being the first country to use a technology has never guaranteed an advantage on the battlefield. British engineers at William Foster & Co. developed and produced the tank. But it was German military officers, such as Heinz Guderian, that used the tank to devastating effect during blitzkrieg operations in World War II.

There is also a lot the United States will not need for a potential conflict with China, such as large numbers of surface ships and aircraft carriers, which are vulnerable and highly exposed in a war. The United States is also still investing in land systems, such as tanks, that will not be necessary for this fight. An offset that focuses on China, of course, does not exclude preparing for contingencies elsewhere, such as against Russia in eastern Europe, Iran in the Middle East, or North Korea on the Korean Peninsula. But it does mean that the United States needs to prioritize defeating and deterring China, much as the United States focused on the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

Foreign Affairs · More by Seth G. Jones · September 26, 2025

5. Suspected Russian Drone Incursions Expose Gaps in NATO Defenses

I wonder how long it will be before we start seeing "drone incursions" affecting Asian countries? How will the US and countries in the Asia-Indo-Pacific region respond to such threats?

Suspected Russian Drone Incursions Expose Gaps in NATO Defenses

The alliance is rethinking how it responds to nontraditional threats after drones appeared in the skies over Poland and Denmark

https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/suspected-russian-drone-incursions-expose-gaps-in-nato-defenses-e77ececd

By Thomas Grove

Follow and Daniel Michaels

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Sept. 26, 2025 5:30 am ET

A house in Poland that was destroyed after NATO warplanes shot down Russian drones earlier this month. Photo: Maciek Nabrdalik for WSJ

Quick Summary

• NATO faces new threats from drones and cyberattacks, prompting accelerated efforts to enhance defenses and adopt new technologies.View more

WARSAW—Drones darting across NATO airspace have exposed holes in the defenses of an alliance built for more traditional military conflicts.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, created to counter Soviet tanks and warheads, is increasingly confronting new and different threats—nontraditional ones that include sabotage, cyberattacks and drones.

NATO and its member countries are accelerating efforts to respond to such threats after drones appeared in the skies over Poland and Denmark. In Poland, NATO warplanes shot down several Russian drones earlier this month.

Then, days later, drones appeared again—not near the combat zone in Ukraine but above Danish airports, disrupting flights. The aircraft disappeared before authorities could intercept them. Danish authorities said they didn’t know who was behind the drones but that they appeared to be the work of a professional actor.

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As Russian drones are shot down deep inside Poland WSJ’s Daniel Michaels explains what is at stake for the NATO alliance. Photo: Kacper Pempel/Reuters

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said Thursday on X that she had spoken to NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte about the incidents and they would examine “what we can do together to ensure safety and security.”

The incidents have brought fresh focus to how the alliance responds to drones and other nontraditional threats. NATO is now racing to adopt new technologies that can spot UAVs from afar and provide inexpensive defenses for use by both militaries and police forces. The alliance is also grappling with touchy issues, including rules of engagement for automated weapons and how to handle airspace incursions when intentions can’t be determined.

Polish officials say they expect more incursions from Russia. Drones that were recovered earlier this month had been modified with additional fuel tanks to help them fly farther, indicating Moscow deliberately sent them through Ukraine, into Poland, officials there said.

After that drone incursion, NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe, U.S. Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, mobilized alliance forces under the banner Eastern Sentry to prepare for further spillover from Russia’s war in Ukraine or in other locations.

Addressing the new threat presents a conundrum for NATO, which defends its 32 members but doesn’t have the authority to take action everywhere. Airport disruptions, for example, generally fall under the jurisdiction of interior ministries or homeland security authorities, not militaries.

As the war in Ukraine has shown, defending against drone attacks is difficult and expensive. Uncrewed aerial vehicles are generally too small, slow and low-flying to be detected by existing military radar systems. Weapons that defenders might use to shoot down UAVs, such as Patriot missile-interceptors, cost far more per shot than drones do, and projectile supplies are limited.

NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe Gen. Alexus Grynkewich and NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte. Photo: Simon Wohlfahrt/AFP/Getty Images

When Russia sent the wave of drones into Poland, NATO planes scrambled to intercept them but stopped short of using pricey rockets to shoot down all of the styrofoam-and-plywood UAVs. NATO officials say they assume Moscow wants to force them into making difficult choices and waste resources.

Emerging threats were on the agenda when NATO members this summer agreed to more than double their military spending, including a portion potentially devoted to homeland security.

Rutte said on Tuesday that Grynkewich “has the tools and authorities he needs to ensure our defense.” Rutte said that Eastern Sentry “adds further strength and flexibility to our posture along our eastern flank—and anywhere else we might need it.”

Still, the war in Ukraine has given Russia more than three years of experience in multidimensional war that combines hybrid activities meant to disrupt civilian life with a military approach that employs mass barrages of cheap and expendable artillery and drones to overwhelm enemy defenses.

NATO, meanwhile, has largely continued preparing to deal with the type of threats for which the alliance was created: large conflicts decided by big weapons and massed forces. Drone warfare has only recently become a priority for alliance members.

“The biggest problem right now is that Europeans are so focused on the high end of the conflict that they don’t do enough on the low end of the war,” said Konrad Muzyka, director of Rochan Consulting, based in Gdansk, Poland, which analyzes the Russian military. “The Russians have been learning and a big chunk of what the Russians will be doing in the next war will come from the low end.”

French Air Force pilots prepare for a mission at an air base in Poland. Photo: Thibaud Moritz/AFP/Getty Images

A French Rafale jet fighter taking off in Poland. Photo: Thibaud Moritz/AFP/Getty Images

U.S. and other NATO forces are now testing counterdrone technologies for battlefield use, but efforts are just beginning. Protecting civilian infrastructure from drones will take longer and cost far more. Alliance and European Union officials plan Friday to discuss ideas for a “drone wall” along some EU borders, potentially including electronic sensors and inexpensive interceptors. 

Early this year, after European governments suspected Russian-piloted ships damaged cables under the Baltic Sea, the alliance established Baltic Sentry, which combined new naval patrols of the busy waterway with increased use of subsea drones and sensors to detect activity. Grynkewich said in announcing Eastern Sentry that since Baltic Sentry began, no new attacks on local undersea infrastructure had been detected.

The new Eastern Sentry aims to follow a similar model. NATO was able to stand it up very quickly because, like Baltic Sentry, it is deemed an “enhanced vigilance activity” under the Supreme Allied Commander’s existing remit, and not a new operation, which would require unanimous assent of all members.

Member countries are also working to prepare. Germany’s armed forces this week are conducting a three-day exercise in the center of Hamburg, including a hypothetical drone attack on NATO troops moving through the northern port city on their way east. The maneuvers include practice intercepting drones using jammers and nets, according to Germany’s military.

Unauthorized drone flights over Hamburg’s barracks and port are common, but none have been intercepted, an official told German media.

Germany’s military is only allowed to shoot down drones over its facilities, while the police are entitled to do so everywhere else. Civilians aren’t allowed to interfere with drones in any way, including by jamming their signals. Germany’s northern states, whose sea ports are crucial for trade and energy supplies, are working to develop an antidrone strategy.

Write to Thomas Grove at thomas.grove@wsj.com and Daniel Michaels at Dan.Michaels@wsj.com

6. More than 60K defense civilians have left under Hegseth—but officials are mum on the effects

Has the institution been gutted?

Excerpts:

It’s difficult to quantify the results of DOD’s civilian purge. Despite Hegseth’s frequent pledges of transparency, department officials declined to provide key figures—starting with the current number of civilian employees. Instead, the Pentagon official provided the count as of Jan. 1, before any of the downsizing efforts, which at the time came in at 799,000.

By the Pentagon’s numbers, the workforce as of the beginning of this year, minus those who voluntarily moved on, comes to 737,900. That is 9,480 short of the ceiling in the FY ‘26 budget request. Valdez declined to say whether the department would work toward filling those openings by hiring freeze-exempt workers, like shipyard technicians or childcare teachers.

The Pentagon also declined to answer whether or when the hiring freeze might lift. As it continues, there are not only jobs staying open, but existing civilians are largely not able to transfer into them.

“Although the SecDef uses language implying the importance of the civilian workforce, it sounds nice and briefs well,” the civilian said. “These words are hollow and have no meaning.”

More than 60K defense civilians have left under Hegseth—but officials are mum on the effects

Months into a hastily ordered overhaul, officials declined to disclose metrics, discuss problems.

By Meghann Myers

Staff Reporter

September 25, 2025 12:24 PM ET

defenseone.com · Meghann Myers

Nine months into the second Trump administration, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s effort to shrink and reshape the Pentagon’s civilian workforce has netted a reduction of more than 60,000 employees, or about 7.6 percent, comfortably reaching the 5- to 8-percent goal he set in March.

But while the Pentagon provided those numbers to Defense One, they provided few other details, leaving it hard to judge how the effort to cut payroll and redirect resources is going. Multiple officials declined to talk about various problems caused by the sweeping cuts and policy changes Hegseth ordered just weeks into his job. They also declined to comment on criticism by current and former employees who say the changes were ill-planned and have hurt productivity and morale among the country’s largest national-security workforce.

“The consensus among the rank-and-file DOD employees is that the SecDef has essentially declared war on his civilian workforce, creating an atmosphere of mutual distrust and an implication that all DOD civilians are untrustworthy parasites until proven otherwise,” one department civilian, who asked not to be identified to prevent retaliation, told Defense One.

To shrink his workforce, Hegseth fired probationary employees, froze hiring, offered buyouts, reopened early retirement, and ordered department organizations to submit ideas for eliminating “redundant or non-essential functions.”

Pentagon leaders have called these moves responsible and thoughtful.

“As Secretary Hegseth made clear, it is simply not in the public interest to retain individuals whose contributions are not mission-critical,” John Ullyot, then a Pentagon spokesperson, told Defense One in March. “Taxpayers deserve to have us take a thorough look at our workforce top-to-bottom to see where we can eliminate redundancies. That said, as we take these important steps to reshape the workforce to meet the President's priorities, the Department will treat our workers with dignity and respect as it always does.”

But department leaders have often fallen short of that pledge. Probationary employees were illegally fired. Current and former employees have said that murky or nonexistent guidance about the new policies have caused confusion. Multiple sources cited the ongoing hiring freeze that kept employees in hotels waiting for exemptions so they could move to their new DOD jobs overseas, and is now trapping other employees who are trying to complete transfers back to the United States.

All this, combined with an exodus of civilian employees from an organization long accustomed to “doing more with less,” has made the massive workload even harder to tackle.

Some commands are “close to a breaking point of simply not being able to accomplish key requirements—and I know that is true across the globe as well,” the DOD civilian said.

Buyouts and early-outs

The biggest chunk of the 60,000-plus workers shed came from buyouts and early retirements.

DOD approved 55,000 applications for the Deferred Resignation Program and another 6,100 for the Voluntary Early Retirement Authority program, a Pentagon official told Defense One, asking for anonymity without giving a reason.

Hegseth did not limit how many people could take the offers, and allowed the services only rare rejections of applicants deemed vital to national security.

This had larger effects on some organizations than on others. In May, the Space Force reported that it had already lost 14 percent of its civilians to buyouts.

“Because our numbers are so much smaller, I feel like the efforts to reduce the overall federal workforce had a little bit of an outsized impact on the Space Force,” Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman said Tuesday at the Air, Space and Cyber Conference outside Washington, D.C. “In an attempt to get the entire workforce down 5 percent, certainly the civilians at [Space Systems Command] were above 10 percent, for sure, in some of those losses.”

“The corporate knowledge—the expertise that our civilian workforce brings—is vital to acquisitions, and so the Deferred Resignation Program certainly took some of those out of play,” Saltzman said.

Firing ‘probies’

Another way Pentagon leaders sought to trim headcount was by firing probationary employees—generally, workers new to the department, recently promoted, or recently transferred from other DOD jobs—whose civil-service protections had yet to kick in.

Prompted by the White House, Pentagon officials announced in February that they would fire 5,400 probationary employees. They removed 364 before a judge ordered them to stop and to rehire the ones who had left. The Supreme Court eventually knocked down the injunction, allowing such firings to resume, but the Pentagon is still required to send letters to the fired employees stating they were not dismissed for cause.

The department’s personnel office declined to provide a current status of the firing, or rehiring, of probationary employees while litigation is pending, according to the Pentagon official.

Hiring freeze, still on

On Feb. 28, Hegseth ordered a hiring freeze across his department, just eight days after announcing one was on the way.

The short-notice order forced managers to rescind job offers to thousands of people. The Army alone told 2,000 people that their new jobs had disappeared, spokesman Lt. Col. Orlandon Howard told Defense One.

The freeze also prevented thousands of current employees from moving to new jobs within the department.

Some employees found themselves trapped overseas, unable to return to the United States to take up their new jobs. Many were housed in hotels at government expense for more than a month, having given up their residences and dispatched their possessions to their new places of employment.

In the Army, 150 employees were eventually allowed to move on after exemptions were secured, Howard said. The Space Force’s Saltzman said he had been able to secure enough exemptions to keep his service’s growth plans on track.

But the freeze is still gumming up civilians who are finishing up overseas assignments and are unable to move into new roles in the United States.

“Currently, those that reach the end of their tour cannot leave because there are no jobs to apply to, and cannot leave on [the Priority Placement Program] because empty positions can’t be filled unless it is mission-critical, health- or safety-related,” the civilian said. “Basically, trapped overseas indefinitely.”

The exemption process is bottlenecked by Hegseth, who initially insisted on personally reviewing every request. He widened the path slightly in a March 18 memo that delegated the task to the defense undersecretary for personnel and readiness and the secretaries of the Army, Navy, and Air Force, but added, “This authority may not be further delegated.”

Asked about the hiring freeze and its effects, Pentagon spokesman Joel Valdez declined to answer.

The first Pentagon official declined to provide numbers, including total number of job offers rescinded at the beginning of the freeze and total number of employees who have requested exemptions to be able to complete permanent change-of-station moves to new roles.

The official referred such questions to the military departments, and declined to provide figures for defense agencies that aren’t part of a service branch, such as the Defense Intelligence Agency and Defense Health Agency.

The Air Force did not respond to Defense One’s request for information as of publication. A spokeswoman for the Navy declined to comment entirely.

The military departments were required to send such figures to Hegseth’s personnel undersecretary, but the spokesperson said the figures were not tracked.

The Pentagon has no estimate of how much money it spent on hotel costs and other incidentals for employees who had moved out of their homes and were forced to cancel and rebook flights, because each of those cases were approved at a command level, the spokesperson said.

How many employees?

In late March, Hegseth ordered Pentagon leaders to come up with ways to shrink and reorganize their commands, agencies, and departments—and to submit their proposals within two weeks. A March 29 press release touted the order, and an April 7 memo from the deputy defense secretary ordered more detailed submissions by late May.

In June, a Pentagon official said the suggestions came in on time, but declined to say what they were or what came of them.

“Certain near-term changes in workforce structure, composition, and workforce will be reflected in the department’s forthcoming President’s Budget request for FY26,” said the defense official, who was not authorized to speak on the record.

The budget proposal, released later that month, asks for a 5.4-percent drop in civilian headcount, from 789,775 in fiscal 2025 to 747,380 next year.

Pentagon officials declined to explain how that 42,395-person reduction was decided upon and which job titles were merged or eliminated to get there.

Meanwhile, the Air Force is cutting 5,000 civilian jobs in the current fiscal year, which ends on Sept. 30, according to a leaked internal email sent to personnel at the Air Force Academy. The message, sent by the school’s superintendent in July, said the academy would be shedding 140 civilians.

Rather than wait for a layoff, Brian Johns quit his job as a USAFA assistant professor of mechanical engineering and took a new position at Colorado State University.

He’d already had one scare on Feb. 27, Johns told Defense One, when the colonel in charge of his department sat him down and told him he’d likely be laid off the following day as part of the purge of probationary employees—despite the fact that he’d been in his position for longer than a year and was no longer in a probationary status.

“So a couple weeks later they mentioned via email that my name was on the firing list mistakenly,” Johns said. “Was it a mistake or was it intentional? Nonetheless, it didn’t alleviate any of the stress.”

Johns had taken the AFA position in 2023 after leaving a tenured professorship at Cornell College in Iowa. The lawsuits to undo the probationary employee layoffs protected his job for the moment, but the writing was already on the wall.

“If I knew that my job would be in jeopardy in a couple of years, I probably wouldn’t have done it,” he said. “I wouldn’t wish that kind of uncertainty and anxiety on anybody during that six-month period.”

What comes next

It’s difficult to quantify the results of DOD’s civilian purge. Despite Hegseth’s frequent pledges of transparency, department officials declined to provide key figures—starting with the current number of civilian employees. Instead, the Pentagon official provided the count as of Jan. 1, before any of the downsizing efforts, which at the time came in at 799,000.

By the Pentagon’s numbers, the workforce as of the beginning of this year, minus those who voluntarily moved on, comes to 737,900. That is 9,480 short of the ceiling in the FY ‘26 budget request. Valdez declined to say whether the department would work toward filling those openings by hiring freeze-exempt workers, like shipyard technicians or childcare teachers.

The Pentagon also declined to answer whether or when the hiring freeze might lift. As it continues, there are not only jobs staying open, but existing civilians are largely not able to transfer into them.

“Although the SecDef uses language implying the importance of the civilian workforce, it sounds nice and briefs well,” the civilian said. “These words are hollow and have no meaning.”

Tom Novelly contributed to this report.

defenseone.com · Meghann Myers

7. Agencies should prep for mass layoffs if shutdown occurs, White House says

Telegraphing another RIF?

Excerpts:

While OMB said the RIF plans would “not be necessary” if a shutdown is averted, it suggested agencies should continue to plan for RIFs even after fiscal 2026 appropriations are enacted. Agencies should revise their RIF plans to “retain the minimal number of employees necessary to carry out statutory functions” and send their proposals to OMB. That language mirrors that the Trump administration used earlier this year, when it called for all agencies to deliver layoff plans focused on the “maximum elimination” of functions not required by law.

A federal court previously found that guidance unlawful, with a judge saying OMB and the Office of Personnel Management have no authority to order layoffs at other agencies, but the Supreme Court has since overturned that ruling.

Some agencies have since walked back their plans for mass layoffs, while others, such as the Interior Department, are expected to finalize significant RIFs in the coming weeks.

Agencies should prep for mass layoffs if shutdown occurs, White House says

OMB is requesting updated reduction-in-force plans even if a shutdown is averted.

By Eric Katz

Senior Correspondent

September 25, 2025 10:36 AM ET

defenseone.com · Eric Katz

Federal agencies should implement mass layoffs of their workforces if the government shuts down next week, the White House told agencies on Wednesday, dramatically escalating the stakes of a potential funding lapse.

Agencies should prepare the reduction-in-force notices for all employees whose work is not funded through means other than annual appropriations and does not align with President Trump’s priorities, the Office of Management and Budget said in its memorandum. Agencies will also prepare the standard furlough notices that go out to employees not otherwise exempted to work during a shutdown, OMB said, and those actions will have no bearing on who is subject to layoffs.

While there is no direct connection between RIFs and a shutdown—and agencies generally have the authority to proceed with layoffs regardless of the status of appropriations—OMB directed agencies to drop their plans should a shutdown be avoided. The House has, in a largely party-line vote, passed a stopgap funding bill to keep agencies open through Nov. 21, but Democrats have so far blocked that measure from proceeding in the Senate. Democratic leaders have said they will block the spending bill unless Congress addresses health-care premiums set to increase at the end of the year and meets other demands.

In the memo, which was first reported by Politico, OMB told agencies not to repurpose or transfer funds to minimize the shutdown impact. That marks an about-face from the approach the first Trump administration took during an extended shutdown that began in 2018.

Agencies typically post details of who will get furloughed and who will work without immediate pay during a shutdown, but OMB removed those plans from its website earlier this year. In its new memo, the budget office noted that agencies were supposed to submit their furlough plans by Aug. 1, adding that some had not done so and asking them to send the documents as soon as possible.

A Government Executive analysis of the most recently available data shows that if a shutdown had occurred in 2023, the Biden administration had planned to furlough about 737,000 employees, or about one-third of the workforce.

Earlier this week, OMB held its first shutdown-planning call with agencies. The office noted many programs that received a funding boost in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act would be exempt from the effects of a funding lapse.

While OMB said the RIF plans would “not be necessary” if a shutdown is averted, it suggested agencies should continue to plan for RIFs even after fiscal 2026 appropriations are enacted. Agencies should revise their RIF plans to “retain the minimal number of employees necessary to carry out statutory functions” and send their proposals to OMB. That language mirrors that the Trump administration used earlier this year, when it called for all agencies to deliver layoff plans focused on the “maximum elimination” of functions not required by law.

A federal court previously found that guidance unlawful, with a judge saying OMB and the Office of Personnel Management have no authority to order layoffs at other agencies, but the Supreme Court has since overturned that ruling.

Some agencies have since walked back their plans for mass layoffs, while others, such as the Interior Department, are expected to finalize significant RIFs in the coming weeks.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said he would not be deterred by the Trump administration’s threats. He predicted the layoffs would be overturned in court or subsequently walked back, as the administration has done in limited circumstances throughout government.

“This is an attempt at intimidation,” Schumer said. “Donald Trump has been firing federal workers since day one—not to govern, but to scare. This is nothing new and has nothing to do with funding the government.”

Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., likened the layoffs to “mafia-style blackmail,” said they would likely be illegal and vowed that Democrats will be “fighting back with every tool we have.”

“These dedicated workers have nothing to do with the ongoing political and policy disputes that have brought us to the brink of a shutdown,” Van Hollen said.

defenseone.com · Eric Katz

8. Chinese Premier Signals Desire for Stable U.S. Relations in New York Visit

Only 2 words: unrestricted warfare.

Is the premier telling us what so many of us desperately want to hear?

And then I am reminded that all warfare is based on deception.

Chinese Premier Signals Desire for Stable U.S. Relations in New York Visit

Li Qiang urged U.S. executives to help maintain a fragile detente between Beijing and Washington

https://www.wsj.com/world/china/chinese-premier-signals-desire-for-stable-u-s-relations-in-new-york-visit-08d6a913

By Lingling Wei

Follow

Sept. 25, 2025 5:42 pm ET

Chinese Premier Li Qiang, in Beijing in July. Photo: Andres Martinez Casares/Press Pool

Quick Summary

• Chinese Premier Li Qiang used a “married couple” metaphor to describe U.S.-China relations, emphasizing their interdependence despite disagreements.View more

Chinese Premier Li Qiang met American executives and academics on Thursday with a metaphor for U.S.-China relations: They are a married couple who bicker but ultimately need each other, said people who heard his speech.

“He said there are disagreements between husbands and wives, but they still stay close,” said Stephen Orlins, president of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, which co-hosted the event with the U.S.-China Business Council. Previous Chinese leaders used the married-couple metaphor to describe the bilateral relations, but it sort of faded as relations have worsened in recent years.

In the first U.S. trip by a Chinese premier in almost a decade, Li used a closed-door meeting to signal that Beijing wants stable relations with Washington amid a thaw brokered by a call last week between President Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping. The leaders are expected to hold summits over the next year that could break geopolitical logjams over trade, national security and technology.

Trump and Xi are expected to meet first at a coming gathering of Asia-Pacific leaders in South Korea, followed by a potential visit by Trump to China in early 2026 and a trip by Xi to the U.S. for the Group of 20 leaders’ summit that December.

In a sign of the fragile engagement, however, people close to the White House say that Trump hasn’t committed to going to Beijing, and that a firm date for the visit is contingent on China’s continued cooperation on issues ranging from trade to the U.S. request for Beijing to crack down on the flow of the chemicals used to make fentanyl.

Li met on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York on Thursday with various organizations. Photo: Ding Haitao/Xinhua/Zuma Press

Xi has been angling for a Trump visit to Beijing to show his people his ability to manage the crucial U.S. relationship.

Li called on business leaders—including Goldman Sachs President John Waldron and Citadel Securities CEO Peng Zhao—to help maintain the thaw.

“He wants the business community to be a ballast for the relationship,” Orlins said.

Other attendees included Harvard scholar Graham Allison, Evan Greenberg, chairman and chief executive of insurer Chubb, and William Ford, CEO of General Atlantic, which holds a sizable stake in Chinese firm ByteDance.

Trump and Xi reached an agreement to facilitate the sale of the social-media app, TikTok, from ByteDance to a group of U.S. investors—a deal that has helped ease Washington-Beijing tensions.

During Thursday’s meeting, Li also sought to shore up confidence in the Chinese economy, which has been weighed down by a collapsing property market, excessive industrial production and weak consumer spending. 

“Li said China’s economy is built for resilience and remains a good place to invest in,” Orlins said.

Li didn’t meet with any administration officials while in New York.

Since the last U.S. visit in 2016 by a Chinese premier, the country’s No. 2-ranking official, the dynamic between Beijing and Washington has shifted from one of broad stability, mixing cooperation and competition, to one dominated by strategic rivalry and deepening mistrust.

Before visiting New York, Li met with a U.S. congressional delegation in Beijing, the first in six years. “We want to open up the lines of communication,” Rep. Adam Smith (D., Wash.), head of the delegation, said in a press briefing Tuesday. Smith said there were still disputes over China’s control of rare-earth minerals, a key irritant in the relationship.

Write to Lingling Wei at Lingling.Wei@wsj.com 

Corrections & Amplifications

Peng Zhao is chief executive of Citadel Securities. An earlier version of this article incorrectly referred to the company as Citadel Security. (Corrected on Sept. 25)

Appeared in the September 26, 2025, print edition as 'During New York Visit, Chinese Premier Aims To Boost U.S. Relations'.

9. Al-Qaeda’s Growing Shadow in Africa: The Expanding Operational Reach of JNIM and Al-Shabaab

Graphics at the link.

Excerpts:

To conclude, al-Qaeda has greatly expanded its operational capacity in Africa through its regional affiliates—Al-Shabaab in the Horn of Africa and JNIM in the Sahel. These developments follow al-Qaeda’s broader ideological and strategic momentum, especially after perceived victories in Afghanistan with the return of the Taliban and in Syria through Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). Al-Shabaab has kept a consistent level of activity in recent years, regularly targeting military and government personnel with IEDs and explosives. Meanwhile, JNIM has rapidly increased its operations, especially since 2021, taking advantage of political instability and weak governance in the Sahel, and increasingly attacking civilians with firearms. Despite ongoing counterterrorism efforts, both groups have shown remarkable resilience, adapting to changing conditions and maintaining their operational capabilities. Given these trends, it is likely that al-Qaeda will continue to sustain—and possibly strengthen—its presence across Africa in the near future.

It is crucial for the U.S. government to pay closer attention to al-Qaeda’s growth in Africa. This expansion is driven by the spread of Salafi-jihadist ideology, worsening political and economic grievances, and the rise of post-coup governments in the Sahel that increasingly align with Russia and the Wagner Group. As al-Qaeda deepens its roots in these regions, Africa could become a more stable base for planning transnational attacks, expanding recruitment, and undermining U.S. interests abroad.

Al-Qaeda’s Growing Shadow in Africa: The Expanding Operational Reach of JNIM and Al-Shabaab

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/09/26/al-qaedas-growing-shadow-in-africa/

by Mahmut Cengiz, by Gorkhan Aksu

|

09.26.2025 at 06:00am

More than twenty years after the start of the Global War on Terror (GWOT), questions persist about how much jihadist organizations have actually been weakened. While the absence of large-scale terrorist attacks on U.S. soil since 9/11 is often viewed as a sign of success, this superficial calm masks the ongoing growth of jihadist networks worldwide. Al-Qaeda and ISIS-affiliated groups have not only survived but, in many regions, have adapted and expanded their operations. For example, Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), linked with Al-Qaeda, remains one of the most active insurgent groups in South Asia. ISIS-Khorasan (ISIS-K) has carried out deadly attacks in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. In Syria, Al-Qaeda-linked Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) has taken control of the country, aiming to present itself as a legitimate and moderate government. Meanwhile, other ISIS branches stay active in Syria, Somalia, Nigeria, and across the Sahel. Notably, Al-Qaeda’s two African affiliates—Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) in the Sahel and Al-Shabaab in East Africa—continue to demonstrate operational resilience, expanding their territorial influence and tactical capabilities despite ongoing counterterrorism efforts by weak or fragmented local governments. This evolving threat landscape has serious implications for global security. As Western focus shifts elsewhere, the continued growth of jihadist groups risks destabilizing key regions and creating new safe havens for terrorism, challenges that could ultimately resurface on a global scale.

Al-Shabaab and JNIM: Origins, Ideology, and Regional Impact

Al-Shabaab, which means “The Youth” in Arabic, appeared in the early 2000s as the militant youth branch of the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), a coalition of Sharia courts that briefly ran southern Somalia in 2006. After Ethiopian forces and the U.S.-backed Transitional Federal Government (TFG) removed the ICU, Al-Shabaab grew into an independent insurgency. It first gained local support by promising stability and enforcing Sharia law during widespread chaos, then quickly expanded its operations and influence. In 2012, Al-Shabaab officially pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda, aligning itself with the global jihadist movement. Despite losing territory and suffering significant leadership kills—most notably the death of leader Ahmed Abdi Godane in 2014—Al-Shabaab has proven to be highly adaptable. Retreating into rural areas, the group has adopted guerrilla tactics, enhanced its propaganda, and continued launching deadly attacks.

Al-Shabaab’s operations are driven by a Salafi-jihadist ideology that advocates a strict interpretation of Sharia law and seeks to eliminate secular and Western influences from Muslim societies. The group depicts its struggle in apocalyptic terms and enforces strict codes of conduct in areas it controls, often through public punishments and religious school indoctrination. These tactics help Al-Shabaab maintain a strong ideological grip on its members and recruits while also spreading narratives that align with global jihadist discourses.

Al-Shabaab’s operational footprint is concentrated in southern and central Somalia, where it exploits weak governance, clan rivalries, and ungoverned spaces to maintain influence. Although it has lost control of key urban centers like Mogadishu, the group continues to thrive in rural regions such as Jubaland, Bay, and Lower Shabelle by establishing shadow administrations, collecting taxes, and administering a parallel justice system. Beyond Somalia, Al-Shabaab has established a presence in northeastern Kenya and has carried out attacks in Uganda, demonstrating its ability to project power regionally. Its primary objective remains the establishment of an Islamic state in Somalia governed by its interpretation of Sharia law, coupled with the expulsion of foreign military forces such as those under the African Union Transition Mission in Somalia (ATMIS). Al-Shabaab also seeks to expand jihadist ideology across East Africa and align its regional struggle with the broader objectives of global jihadist networks, thereby justifying attacks beyond Somalia’s borders and enhancing its recruitment strategies across the region.

JNIM was established in 2017 as a coalition formed through the merger of four Islamic extremist groups: Ansar al-Din, al-Murabitun, the Macina Liberation Front (MLF), and the Sahara Emirate, a subsidiary of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). Led by its founder and emir, Iyad ag Ghali, JNIM pledged allegiance to AQIM, positioning itself as the second largest al-Qaeda affiliate in Africa, after al-Shabaab in Somalia. The coalition is notable for its ethnic and geographic diversity, including militants from Tuareg, Fulani, Arab, and other groups. Since its formation, JNIM has carried out a sustained campaign of violence targeting regional governments, foreign military forces, and rival jihadist factions, consolidating its influence within the Sahel region.

JNIM’s operational reach primarily covers the central Sahel and West Africa, with early strongholds in northern and central Mali. However, its influence now extends across several countries, including Burkina Faso, Benin, Niger, Côte d’Ivoire, and Togo, demonstrating how it has evolved from a local group into a widespread terrorist network with objectives across littoral West Africa. Ideologically, JNIM adheres to Salafi-jihadism aligned with al-Qaeda’s global goal of establishing Islamic Sharia law. The organization perceives Western presence and Sahelian governments allied with foreign powers as illegitimate and oppressive, opposing them as tools of neo-colonialism and moral decline. Its ideological stance also pits it against the Islamic State in the Sahel, highlighting intra-jihadist rivalry based on differing theological views.

JNIM’s main goal is to unite terrorist groups across the Sahel and create an Islamic state centered in Mali by removing Western military forces and destabilizing regional governments. This goal is achieved through both ideological unity and tactical alliances that balance the independence of different factions with shared strategic objectives. The coalition’s ability to bring together various groups with local interests under a broader jihadist framework has helped it stay cohesive while expanding its territory and influence. JNIM’s hostility toward the West is a key driver, viewing Western influence as a form of neo-colonial domination that it opposes through ongoing militant activities aimed at reshaping the political landscape in the Sahel region.

Metrics of Militancy: A Comparative Analysis of Al-Shabaab and JNIM

Al-Shabaab and JNIM have consistently ranked among the ten most active terrorist organizations worldwide in recent years. Between January 2018 and July 2025, both groups were responsible for hundreds of attacks across Africa, playing a significant role in driving regional instability, according to data from the Global Terrorism Trends and Analysis Center (GTTAC), funded by the U.S. Department of State.

As shown in Figure 1, Al-Shabaab’s operational tempo peaked in 2018 with 535 attacks, then gradually declined in subsequent years. The group carried out 477 attacks in 2020, which decreased to 290 in 2021. This decline aligns with successful military operations by U.S. forces and the Somali National Army. The number of attacks further dropped to 248 in 2022 and 242 in 2023, with a slight increase to 262 in 2024.

In contrast, JNIM’s activity has shown a more fluctuating yet upward trajectory. After a relatively lower number of attacks between 2018 and 2020, the group gained momentum starting in 2021, with 177 attacks. This number rose sharply to 362 in 2022, 369 in 2023, and reached its highest level in 2024 with 474 attacks. JNIM’s expansion has been facilitated by political instability, especially in the wake of recent coup attempts in Burkina Faso, Niger, and Mali. These power vacuums enabled JNIM to extend its operations from Mali into Burkina Faso and Niger, where the group conducted a growing number of attacks in both 2023 and 2024.

Figure 1: Attacks by Al-Shabaab and JNIM (2018-2024)

Figure 2 displays the total casualties—both wounded and killed—caused by attacks from JNIM and Al-Shabaab between 2021 and 2024. As expected, the casualty numbers closely align with the number of attacks, showing a strong positive relationship between attack frequency and the number of people affected. Overall, the more attacks there are, the higher the number of casualties.

Al-Shabaab’s attacks from 2021 to 2024 resulted in about 2,000 casualties, showing a relatively steady but still significant level of violence. In contrast, JNIM’s growing operational capacity during the same period caused a sharp increase in casualties. In 2024 alone, JNIM was responsible for 4,609 people killed or wounded—the highest annual total for the group during this time. This spike coincides with the group’s expanding presence across the Sahel and its increasing ability to take advantage of regional instability.

Figure 2: Casualties caused by al Shabab and JNIM (2018-2024)

Figure 3 illustrates the number of attacks carried out by Al-Shabaab that targeted government and military personnel compared to those targeting civilians between 2018 and 2024. As a de facto governing entity in some of the territories it controls, Al-Shabaab operates within an ideological framework consistent with al-Qaeda’s “near enemy” doctrine, which prioritizes attacks against domestic state structures over civilian populations. Consequently, the group has consistently directed more attacks against government and military targets than civilians throughout this period. This trend reflects its strategic objective of weakening state institutions and security forces. The number of such attacks peaked in 2024, marking the highest level over the past three years and underscoring Al-Shabaab’s continued focus on undermining governmental authority and asserting control over contested regions.

Figure 3: Number of Al-Shabaab Attacks Targeting Government, Military, and Civilians (2018-2024)

Figure 4 shows the distribution of JNIM attacks targeting government, military, and civilian populations between 2018 and 2024. Unlike Al-Shabaab, JNIM has conducted more attacks on military facilities and has also caused significant civilian casualties. Although the group has aimed to act as a de facto authority in parts of the Sahel, its operational strategy reflects both tactical and ideological changes. At first, JNIM followed a “hearts and minds” approach, trying to gain local support by avoiding civilian targets and presenting itself as a protector against foreign influence. However, the recent increase in attacks on civilians indicates a strategic shift. This trend may be a punishment for communities seen as unsupportive of the group, showing a broader shift in al-Qaeda’s strategy in the Sahel. The rise in violence targeting civilians highlights the difficulties JNIM faces in balancing governance goals with coercive control.

Figure 4: Number of JNIM Attacks on Government, Military, and Civilians (2018-2024)

Figure 5 illustrates the predominant weapon types used by Al-Shabaab and JNIM between 2018 and 2024, highlighting a consistent reliance on firearms, improvised explosive devices (IEDs), and other explosive-based attacks. For Al-Shabaab, firearms constituted the most frequently used weapon category from 2018 to 2022, followed closely by IEDs. However, a notable shift occurred beginning in 2022, with bombing attacks—categorized under explosives—surpassing firearms as the primary method of attack through 2024. This transition may reflect a strategic adaptation aimed at increasing lethality, targeting density, or operational efficiency, particularly in urban and semi-urban environments where such tactics can produce higher casualties and broader psychological impact.

Figure 5: The Number of Attacks by Al-Shabaab Using Firearms, IEDs, and Explosives from 2018 to 2024.

Figure 6 demonstrates a distinct pattern in JNIM’s weapon usage compared to Al-Shabaab, with a clear and consistent preference for firearms across most of its attacks from 2019 to 2024. While IEDs and other explosive-based attacks were most prominent in 2018, firearms quickly became the dominant weapon type in subsequent years. This sustained reliance on firearms may be attributed to several factors, including the relative ease of access to small arms, JNIM’s geographic proximity to Libya—a known hub for small arms trafficking—and the group’s increasing use of ambush tactics targeting military convoys and installations. Furthermore, the frequent use of firearms in attacks resulting in civilian casualties suggests a deliberate choice of weaponry suited to close-range engagements and intimidation tactics. The noticeable decline in IED usage between 2022 and 2024 may reflect a tactical shift away from roadside bombings and toward more direct assaults on military facilities, aligning with JNIM’s broader strategy of undermining state security forces through targeted engagements.

Figure 6: The Number of Attacks by Al-Shabaab Using Firearms, IEDs, and Explosives from 2018 to 2024.

To conclude, al-Qaeda has greatly expanded its operational capacity in Africa through its regional affiliates—Al-Shabaab in the Horn of Africa and JNIM in the Sahel. These developments follow al-Qaeda’s broader ideological and strategic momentum, especially after perceived victories in Afghanistan with the return of the Taliban and in Syria through Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). Al-Shabaab has kept a consistent level of activity in recent years, regularly targeting military and government personnel with IEDs and explosives. Meanwhile, JNIM has rapidly increased its operations, especially since 2021, taking advantage of political instability and weak governance in the Sahel, and increasingly attacking civilians with firearms. Despite ongoing counterterrorism efforts, both groups have shown remarkable resilience, adapting to changing conditions and maintaining their operational capabilities. Given these trends, it is likely that al-Qaeda will continue to sustain—and possibly strengthen—its presence across Africa in the near future.

It is crucial for the U.S. government to pay closer attention to al-Qaeda’s growth in Africa. This expansion is driven by the spread of Salafi-jihadist ideology, worsening political and economic grievances, and the rise of post-coup governments in the Sahel that increasingly align with Russia and the Wagner Group. As al-Qaeda deepens its roots in these regions, Africa could become a more stable base for planning transnational attacks, expanding recruitment, and undermining U.S. interests abroad.

Tags: Africa, Al Qaeda, Counterterrorism strategy, Global War on Terror, global war on terrorism, terrorism

About The Authors

• 
  
• Mahmut Cengiz
• Dr. Mahmut Cengiz is an Associate Professor and faculty member at the Terrorism, Transnational Crime, and Corruption Center (TraCCC) and the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University (GMU). He has extensive international field experience, having provided capacity-building and training assistance to both governmental and non-governmental partners across the Middle East, Asia, and Europe. Dr. Cengiz is the author of seven books and numerous scholarly articles and book chapters that critically address issues related to terrorism, transnational crime, terrorist financing, and human trafficking. His 2024 book, Murder by Mail, co-authored with Mitchel P. Roth, offers an historical analysis of weaponized mail, tracing its development over two centuries. He contributes regularly to Small Wars Journal and <iHomeland Security Today. Since 2018, Dr. Cengiz has been a key figure in the establishment and continued development of the Global Terrorism Trends and Analysis Center (GTTAC). In addition to his research and policy contributions, Dr. Cengiz teaches graduate-level courses on Terrorism, American Security Policy, and Narco-Terrorism at George Mason University. He is a Fellow at Small Wars Journal–El Centro.
• View all posts 
• 
  
• Gorkhan Aksu
• Gokhan Aksu is a researcher specializing in the policing of terrorism. He earned his Ph.D. in Justice, Law, and Criminology from American University. His research examines the challenges of counterterrorism policing in diverse communities, emphasizing community-oriented and procedural justice approaches to address those challenges. He is affiliated with the Orion Policy Institute, an independent, non-profit think tank in Washington, D.C., dedicated to advancing good governance, human rights, and evidence-based public policy.

10. China, China, Chi—wait, what? Air Force mulls next steps amid homeland focus

Strategy is about prioritization. Are we going to get the priorities right in the new NDS/NWS?

Excerpts:

“Homeland defense pretty much captures all threats,” Meink told reporters Monday. “Pretty much covers everything in the systems that we need to do. We have to make sure that we cover that whole spectrum of threats to the country. There's massive overlap in what we need to defend the homeland from the China-level threat, as we do in being able to protect some of our partners and allies overseas.”

Defense policy experts and military insiders, however, were alarmed—in part by the unclear guidance on which missions should be prioritized. More importantly, they wondered if there would be enough funding to cover the wide range of national security priorities highlighted by the new administration, from “Golden Dome” missile defense to conflicts with alleged narco-terrorism organizations.

"All of the services, including the Air Force, are missing the clear strategic guidance needed to make essential prioritization decisions as they reach the end game of the budget process and try to chart an organizational path forward,” a former defense official said.

China, China, Chi—wait, what? Air Force mulls next steps amid homeland focus

Officials tout applicability of ongoing modernization, but experts and former officials have doubts.

By Thomas Novelly

Senior Reporter

September 25, 2025 04:52 PM ET

defenseone.com · Thomas Novelly

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md.—Three words have dominated the conversation at the Air & Space Force Association’s Air, Space and Cyber Conference near Washington D.C. in recent years: “China, China, China.”

That phrase, frequently repeated by former Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall, was used to footstomp the need for increased funding and focus on major defense programs. Building drone wingmen, unveiling a long-range nuclear bomber and developing plans for the next-generation fighter jet were viewed as necessities to compete with near-peer threats—namely, China’s rapidly-developing military capabilities.

But at the conference this week, past messaging about the yearslong push for great power competition was replaced with frequent mentions of new administration priorities. And the ongoing multi-billion dollar modernization efforts received a new justification: they are now crucial to the new focus of President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth: defending the homeland and its hemisphere.

Air Force Secretary Troy Meink, who took office four months ago, said the service can take on the wide variety of missions the new administration has spotlighted.

“Homeland defense pretty much captures all threats,” Meink told reporters Monday. “Pretty much covers everything in the systems that we need to do. We have to make sure that we cover that whole spectrum of threats to the country. There's massive overlap in what we need to defend the homeland from the China-level threat, as we do in being able to protect some of our partners and allies overseas.”

Defense policy experts and military insiders, however, were alarmed—in part by the unclear guidance on which missions should be prioritized. More importantly, they wondered if there would be enough funding to cover the wide range of national security priorities highlighted by the new administration, from “Golden Dome” missile defense to conflicts with alleged narco-terrorism organizations.

"All of the services, including the Air Force, are missing the clear strategic guidance needed to make essential prioritization decisions as they reach the end game of the budget process and try to chart an organizational path forward,” a former defense official said.

While the former official attributed that to the lack of a National Defense Strategy, which is historically released in the fall, they added it also shows a lack of clear and united messaging from the military on what must be prioritized.

“What will be interesting to see is how definitive the new strategic guidance is; how much it shapes next year's budget; and how consistent leadership is in aligning resources to strategy once it is signed,” the official added.

Meink, once a KC-135 Stratotanker navigator and instructor who last served as principal deputy director of the National Reconnaissance Office, does not seem to want to follow in the footsteps of his predecessor—who often unveiled major policy goals and insights from the podium of the defense conference.

In a 2022 keynote speech, Kendall debuted his seven operational imperatives: a list of priorities that served as a mission statement of sorts for the Department of the Air Force. In a 2024 speech at the conference, alongside Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin and Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman, the then-Air Force secretary released a list of 24 efforts and goals focused on “reoptimizing for Great Power Competition.”

While Meink’s keynote address did directly mention China several times and highlighted the military’s rapid pace of development, he also hedged his bets.

“It’s not just against China either. The president’s priorities: defend the homeland and maintain our dominance against all adversaries, particularly China.” Meink said. “Whether it’s the terrorist groups, whether it’s a full up China, we have to defend, we have to be innovative against all of those activities.”

Todd Harrison, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute focused on defense budgeting, said taking on China and supporting the homeland require two very different strategies.

“You don’t project power to defend the homeland,” Harrison said. “If you want to deter China, you have to be able to project power, and that’s very different than having your forces home and having the type of capabilities that are just intended to operate behind the moat.”

When asked by reporters where he stood on the outstanding reoptimization efforts left on Kendall’s list, Meink said he hadn’t made any final calls on them.

“You don't make organizational changes when you first come to the job,” Meink said, later adding “I know we're getting close” to making decisions.

And when asked if he would have his own strategic vision, Meink offered little insight.

“I think a lot of the ideas that have been floated around, regardless where they came from, are important, right? I take a little bit of a different approach to that,” Meink said. “I'll be honest, I'm not a big believer in the competition side of the house … you need to be able to win. Period.”

This year, defense spending saw a major influx of cash through the one-time reconciliation bill passed by Congress. It’s not clear if such funding would pass again. Meink acknowledged that trade offs might be necessary with some of the administration’s priorities.

“Money's always a challenge, and we're doing the trade-offs to support that entire range of missions,” Meink said. “There are always trade-offs.”

As the Department of the Air Force’s top civilian weighs those priorities, questions loom over who will be the next top uniformed leaders of the service.

Allvin very suddenly announced his retirement last month—marking the shortest tenure of an Air Force chief of staff since the 1990s and the latest casualty in a Pentagon leadership shakeup since Trump took office. Sources told Defense One general was replaced due to his focus on Kendall’s past reoptimization efforts.

When asked about the status of a replacement, Meink provided little detail but said he was confident they would find a suitable successor.

“We're not going to not have a chief,” Meink said. “In the end, that has to work through the administration, but the bottom line is, we will not not have a chief. Gen. Allvin and I will make sure that we have a chief.”

defenseone.com · Thomas Novelly

11. The $100,000 H-1B Visa Mistake

The $100,000 H-1B Visa Mistake

Companies that can’t import talent will hire more people overseas.

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/donald-trump-h-1b-visa-fees-legal-immigration-jobs-0d9c4194

By The Editorial Board

Follow

Sept. 25, 2025 6:04 pm ET

Photo: dado ruvic/Reuters

President Trump has succeeded in shutting down illegal immigration, but he can’t seem to make up his mind whether to eliminate legal immigration too. Witness his recent moves to put the H-1B skilled-worker program out of the reach of all but the richest companies.

The President last Friday issued an executive order that requires employers to pay the government $100,000 for each foreign worker they bring into the country on an H-1B visa. The Department of Homeland Security this week separately proposed overhauling its annual H-1B lottery to give priority to the highest-wage foreign workers.

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The $100,000 fee is a de facto tax on hiring skilled foreign workers in the U.S., and the transparent goal is to price them out of the market. Companies hire foreigners because there aren’t enough Americans graduating from U.S. colleges with the right technical skills. International students account for 71% of the full-time graduate students in computer and information sciences. Tesla filed 658 visa applications for manufacturing engineers in 2024, a skill set that isn’t taught at many elite U.S. colleges.

The order claims that companies abuse the H-1B program to hire cheap foreign workers who take the jobs of U.S.-born workers and suppress their wages. But Congress has restricted H-1B visas to 85,000 a year, and demand has exceeded the quota for the last 20 years. Employers filed 442,000 applications this year, five times the limit, and a lottery is held each year to allocate the visas. Some 30,000 employers were approved last year for at least one new H-1B visa, which shows the broad demand.

There’s scant evidence that foreign workers are taking U.S. jobs. Between 2003 and 2024, U.S.-born employment in STEM occupations increased by three million, according to the National Foundation for American Policy. The unemployment rate for computer and math occupations was 3% and 1.4% for architecture and engineering last month, both lower than a year ago.

The White House ignores that employers are required to pay visa holders the higher of the prevailing wage or actual wage paid to comparable U.S. workers. So there’s no financial incentive to hire foreign workers. An analysis by Glassdoor found that salaries for “foreign H-1B workers are about 2.8 percent higher than comparable U.S. salaries” on the job-search platform.

As for DHS’s lottery proposal, wealthy companies that can afford to pay foreign workers more will be at an advantage over startups. If companies aren’t allowed to hire foreign workers in the U.S. because they are too expensive, they’ll go abroad. There will be fewer startups and less innovation. This will not help the U.S. in the AI race with China.

Federal law doesn’t give the President carte blanche authority to set visa fees, so he’s invoking a provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act that lets a President restrict entry of foreigners to protect national security. He claims, again without evidence, that the H-1B program is a national-security threat.

As with his willy-nilly tariffs, he’s abusing his national-security powers. His order may violate the Supreme Court’s major questions doctrine, which says the President needs clear authorization from Congress for economically significant actions.

The White House is worried about a softening labor market. But the President’s mass deportations are partly to blame by reducing the supply of workers in industries like agriculture and construction. Mr. Trump said last summer that any foreigner who graduates from a U.S. college “should be able to stay in this country.” What happened to that fellow?

Appeared in the September 26, 2025, print edition as 'The $100,000 H-1B Visa Mistake'.

12. Senators Want Answers From Big Tech on H-1B Workers, Layoffs

Senators Want Answers From Big Tech on H-1B Workers, Layoffs

Letters are sent to Amazon, Apple and other big companies from top lawmakers on Judiciary Committee

https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/h1b-visa-grassley-durbin-letter-tech-firms-8fe931e9

By Anvee Bhutani

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Updated Sept. 25, 2025 4:16 pm ET

Sens. Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa), in glasses, and Dick Durbin (D., Ill.) asked big companies in their letter why they keep hiring thousands of H-1B visa holders while cutting other jobs. Photo: Andrew Thomas/Zuma Press

Quick Summary

• Lawmakers are scrutinizing large U.S. companies, including Amazon and Apple, over their use of H-1B visas amid American layoffs.View more

WASHINGTON—Big U.S. companies are facing heightened scrutiny from Capitol Hill over their use of foreign employees on H-1B visas, with lawmakers raising concerns about layoffs and slumping job prospects for Americans.

On Wednesday evening, Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa) and ranking member Dick Durbin (D., Ill.) sent letters to the country’s largest users of H-1B visas—including Amazon.com, Apple and JPMorgan Chase—asking them to explain why they continue to hire thousands of H-1B visa holders while also cutting other jobs.

The senators asked for detailed information on how many H-1B workers the companies employ, what wages they are paid, and whether American workers have been displaced in the process. The letters cited reporting by The Wall Street Journal about the weak tech job market.

The move comes less than a week after President Trump announced an overhaul of the H-1B program, including a new $100,000 fee for companies sponsoring foreign workers. That move caused panic for some companies worried they could retroactively be on the hook for fee payments. They mobilized human-resources teams and lawyers to address employee concerns and ensure compliance.

Number of H-1B visa beneficiaries approved in fiscal 2025, by company

Amazon.com

14,667

Tata Consultancy Services

5,586

Microsoft

5,189

Meta Platforms

5,123

Apple

4,202

Google

4,186

Cognizant Technology Solutions

3,681

Deloitte Consulting

3,180

JPMorgan Chase

2,440

Walmart

2,390

Note: Total approvals include new employment approvals, continuation approvals, same employer approvals, concurrent approvals, change of employer approvals and amended approvals. Data are through the third quarter of fiscal 2025, which ends Sept. 30.

Source: U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services

The H-1B system, created in 1990, is the primary pathway for foreign professionals to work in the U.S. Roughly 700,000 people currently live in the country on H-1B visas, according to a National Foundation for American Policy analysis of government data, with technology companies among the biggest users. Most H-1B holders are from India and China.

Amazon, the largest H-1B sponsor in the U.S., won approval for more than 14,000 new hires on the visa in fiscal 2025—the most of any company—even as it has announced layoffs affecting tens of thousands of jobs in recent years.

“With all of the homegrown American talent relegated to the sidelines, we find it hard to believe that Amazon cannot find qualified American tech workers to fill these positions,” the senators wrote to Amazon Chief Executive Andy Jassy.

Aside from Amazon, Apple and JPMorgan, the other companies receiving letters included Deloitte, Alphabet’s Google, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, Walmart, Cognizant Technology Solutions and Tata Consultancy Services. The firms were asked to respond by Oct. 10.

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The Trump administration says the new $100,000 fee for H-1B visas will help U.S. workers. Immigration lawyer LaToya McBean Pompy and law professor Bill Ong Hing discuss the impact. Photo Illustration: Xavier Wang

Trump’s announcement has already rattled American businesses. In the days after the policy was unveiled, companies scrambled to assess its reach. Microsoft and JPMorgan were among the companies that advised H-1B employees to remain in the U.S. or return immediately, fearing they could be barred from re-entry or hit with unexpected costs.

To hire H-1B workers, employers have to attest they will pay them the same wage as other workers with similar experience and qualifications, or the prevailing wage in the field in which they will be working. In 2024, recipients earned a median salary of $120,000, nearly double the median earnings of roughly $62,000 a year for a full-time worker in the U.S.

JPMorgan declined to comment. The other companies didn’t respond to requests for comment.

SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS

What will be the consequences of the changes to the H-1B visa program? Join the conversation below.

Write to Anvee Bhutani at anvee.bhutani@wsj.com

Appeared in the September 26, 2025, print edition as 'Senators Query Big Tech About H-1B Workers'.

13. Will ‘Iron Lady’ Takaichi Sanae Be Japan’s First Female Prime Minister?

Excerpts:

When it comes to policies, Takaichi is so uncompromising that she divorced Yamamoto Taku, a veteran LDP lawmaker, over political differences in 2017. After Yamamoto retired from politics, however, she remarried him in 2021. This time, Yamamoto Taku changed his family name to Takaichi, symbolizing the power balance in their marriage. 

If Takaichi becomes the first female prime minister of Japan, it would contribute to improving gender equality in the country. Takeda Hiroko, a professor at Nagoya University who researches gender and politics, pointed out, “Having a woman become prime minister could really shift how the world sees Japan.” 

According to Global Gender Gap Report 2025 published by the World Economic Forum, Japan ranked just 118th out of 148 countries. One such indicator is that the number of female political leaders in Japan is low. Needless to say, a female prime minister would help shift this assessment. 

In Japan, it is still difficult for women to continue their careers due to social expectations regarding child-rearing. Takaichi pledged to change this situation, saying, “I have personally experienced nursing and caregiving three times in my life. That’s why my determination has only grown stronger to reduce the number of people forced to leave their jobs due to caregiving, child-rearing, or children refusing to attend school… I want to create a society where people don’t have to give up their careers.”

The LDP presidential election will be held on October 4. Whether Japan will have its first female prime minister will depend on the performance of Japan’s own “Iron Lady,” Takaichi Sanae.

Will ‘Iron Lady’ Takaichi Sanae Be Japan’s First Female Prime Minister?

Takaichi’s popularity among LDP supporters stems from conservative bona fides. But her win would also be a landmark for gender equality.

https://thediplomat.com/2025/09/will-iron-lady-takaichi-sanae-be-japans-first-female-prime-minister/

By Daisuke Akimoto

September 24, 2025

Takaichi Sanae (left) presents Prime Minister Ishiba Shigeru with a petition on behalf of an LDP committee, Dec. 11, 2024.

Credit: Kantei (Cabinet of Japan)

The presidential election race within the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) to choose a successor to outgoing Prime Minister Ishiba Shigeru kicked off on September 22. This time, there are five candidates for the LDP presidency: former Economic Security Minister Takaichi Sanae, 64; Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Minister Koizumi Shinjiro, 44; former LDP Secretary General Motegi Toshimitsu, 69; Chief Cabinet Secretary Hayashi Yoshimasa, 64; and former Economic Security Minister Kobayashi Takayuki, 50.

Among them, Takaichi is the only female candidate, and she’s considered one of the frontrunners. A poll conducted by Yomiuri Shimbun on September 13-14 showed Takaichi on top with 29 percent support, followed by Koizumi with 25 percent, Motegi with 7 percent, Hayashi with 6 percent, and Kobayashi with 3 percent. Another opinion poll taken on September 18 by Jiji Press showed that Koizumi was the most favored, followed by Takaichi. Therefore, many Japanese analysts see the contest as a two-way race between Takaichi and Koizumi. 

If Takaichi wins the LDP leadership election, she will presumably become Japan’s first female prime minister. Based on her policy preferences, what would a Takaichi government mean for Japan’s economic, foreign, and security policy, especially Japan-U.S. relations?

Takaichi’s popularity among LDP supporters stems from the fact that she is an experienced conservative politician and a direct protege of the late Prime Minister Abe Shinzo, the conservative’s icon. She first ran for the LDP presidency in 2021. Last year, Takaichi was narrowly defeated by Ishiba; this year’s race marks her third bid for the presidency. 

In the upper house elections in July 2025, some conservative voters in Japan supported not the LDP but other right-wing parties, such as Sanseito and the Conservative Party of Japan. In particular, Sanseito increased its seats in the Diet using its nationalistic “Japanese First” platform. Takaichi’s conservative political stance could appeal to conventional conservative voters in Japan, and the LDP might be able to regain their support.

Another strength of Takaichi is her long-term political experience. Takaichi was first elected as a member of the lower house in July 1993. In 2006, during the first Abe Cabinet, Takaichi held five posts simultaneously: minister of state for science and technology policy, minister of state for innovation, minister of state for Okinawa and Northern Territories Affairs, minister of state for gender equality, and minister of state for social affairs and food safety. 

In December 2012, Takaichi became the LDP’s Policy Research Council Chairperson, and was selected as minister for internal affairs and communications during the second Abe Cabinet in September 2014. 

In August 2022, during the second Kishida Cabinet, she became minister in charge of economic security, minister of state for intellectual property strategy, minister of state for science and technology policy, minister of state for space policy, and minister of state for economic security. She was selected as minister of state for “Cool Japan” strategy in September 2023. 

After her defeat in the 2024 LDP presidential election, Takaichi has kept her distance from the Ishiba Cabinet. Given the Cabinet’s low approval rate, that could be regarded as another advantage for her in the presidential race.

Takaichi officially announced her bid for the LDP presidency on September 19. In doing so, she promised a master plan to double the size of Japan’s economy within 10 years, stating: “I have never denied the need for fiscal consolidation, which of course is important… But the important thing is growth. I will make Japan once again a vigorous land of the rising sun.” 

Her proposed policies include tax cuts, cash payments, and the abolition of the provisional gasoline tax rate. Regarding her fiscal policy, however, Jeffrey Hall, a lecturer at Kanda University of International Studies, commented, “There will be a lot of resistance even from her own party over what they would consider fiscal irresponsibility… It could have immediate impacts on Japan’s economy if she tries it. So it is a risky thing.” Thus, some critics view fiscal policy as Takaichi’s weakness in the presidential campaign.

Takaichi’s conservative political views could win her support, but may also cause some concerns about her candidacy – particularly about the foreign policy implications. On August 15, 2022, Takaichi, then the economic security minister of the Kishida Cabinet, paid a visit to Yasukuni Shrine in order to express “her gratitude with respect for the souls of those who died in service to the country.”

One of the nightmare scenarios for Japanese relations with neighbors including China and South Korea would be Takaichi’s visit to the Yasukuni Shrine as a prime minister of Japan. No matter how she tries to justify it, it would cause serious diplomatic tensions, as was the case following then-Prime Minister Abe’s visit to Yasukuni.

Japan is currently enjoying a warm period in relations with South Korea, and ties with China have also seen some small signs of stability as both countries brace for the impact of Trump’s tariffs. Both relationships would be jeopardized if a future Prime Minister Takaichi emphasizes conservative views of historical issues.

In a news conference on September 19, Takaichi did not mention a potential visit to Yasukuni Shrine, but she called China an “important neighbor” and stressed the significance of strengthening the bilateral relationship. 

In the field of defense policy, Takaichi would take up the mantle of her mentor by continuing the Abe Doctrine. Takaichi reiterated her strong will to amend the Japanese Constitution to codify the existence of the Self-Defense Forces. During her first bid for the LDP presidency in 2021, Takaichi, as “Abe’s disciple,” stated that if elected she would work to push through legislation to legalize Japan’s strike capability against enemy bases, which was accomplished under Kishida. 

Without a doubt, Takaichi would seek to enhance Japan’s defense capabilities and reinvigorate the Japan-U.S. alliance based on her political philosophy, which is similar to Abe’s. It should be noted that Abe formed a strong bond with President Donald Trump. In addition to Abe, Takaichi considers former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher as her role model. 

Meanwhile, two veteran LDP Diet members – former Foreign Minister Kono Taro and Finance Minister Kato Katsunobu – announced that they would support Koizumi, although they ran themselves in the presidential race last year. 

Kono was one of the frontrunners in the 2021 presidential election race, although he was eventually defeated by former Prime Minister Kishida Fumio. In other words, Kono’s decision not to run for the presidential election is significant. 

Moreover, Kato is thought to be an influential conservative legislator in the LDP. As he offered his support to Koizumi, Asahi Shimbun reported that Koizumi “appears to have scored an early victory in winning over conservatives in the party.” Takaichi may face a repeat of the 2024 race, when she won the most votes in the first round only to lose in the second round, as Diet members preferred the more moderate Ishiba.

When it comes to policies, Takaichi is so uncompromising that she divorced Yamamoto Taku, a veteran LDP lawmaker, over political differences in 2017. After Yamamoto retired from politics, however, she remarried him in 2021. This time, Yamamoto Taku changed his family name to Takaichi, symbolizing the power balance in their marriage. 

If Takaichi becomes the first female prime minister of Japan, it would contribute to improving gender equality in the country. Takeda Hiroko, a professor at Nagoya University who researches gender and politics, pointed out, “Having a woman become prime minister could really shift how the world sees Japan.” 

According to Global Gender Gap Report 2025 published by the World Economic Forum, Japan ranked just 118th out of 148 countries. One such indicator is that the number of female political leaders in Japan is low. Needless to say, a female prime minister would help shift this assessment. 

In Japan, it is still difficult for women to continue their careers due to social expectations regarding child-rearing. Takaichi pledged to change this situation, saying, “I have personally experienced nursing and caregiving three times in my life. That’s why my determination has only grown stronger to reduce the number of people forced to leave their jobs due to caregiving, child-rearing, or children refusing to attend school… I want to create a society where people don’t have to give up their careers.”

The LDP presidential election will be held on October 4. Whether Japan will have its first female prime minister will depend on the performance of Japan’s own “Iron Lady,” Takaichi Sanae.

Authors

Guest Author

Daisuke Akimoto

Daisuke Akimoto, Ph.D. is an associate professor at the Tokyo University of Information Sciences.

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14. It may take a generation for a stable new world order to emerge

Excerpts:

1945 was followed by the independence of former colony nations across the Global South, while the UN system and its associated institutions provided the undergirding for a more stable and predictable world order. After 1991, following the independence of former Soviet countries, the Western and more specifically the US character of global governance, and of globalization, became unchallenged features of the global order.

These eras are now firmly over. The journey towards a more complex and blended reality, whereby different visions and offerings of global governance co-exist and in some cases combine, is just beginning. Navigating it will require fresh, innovative thinking that exhibits an openness to change. But it will also need a firm understanding of what existing structures need to be preserved.

It may take a generation for a stable new world order to emerge

With an unpredictable US fragmenting the Western alliance, and China presenting itself as a paragon of stability, a more complex and blended reality will determine the coming years in global governance.

https://www.chathamhouse.org/2025/09/it-may-take-generation-stable-new-world-order-emerge

Expert commentPublished 8 September 2025 —3 minute READ

Image — Leaders arrive for a reception in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on 3 September, 2025. (Photo by Xinhua / Kremlin Press Office/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Dr Samir Puri

Director, Global Governance and Security Centre

Starkly contrasting visions of world order and global governance are being prominently displayed this September at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization Plus meeting and the United Nations General Assembly.

Rather than the outright victory of one vision over the other, the likely long-term outcome will be a more complex blended reality. Established structures of global governance such as the UN are struggling to adapt to a more multipolar reality. Ushering in a more stable future world order will be a generational undertaking. During that time, the risks of insecurity and further wars will simmer.

US retrenchment, Chinese ambition

China’s hosting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization Plus meeting in Tianjin on 1 September brings these points home. 20 world leaders from different parts of the non-Western world attended, allowing Xi Jinping to present China as a paragon of stability. This comes at a time when US foreign policy is anything but, given the Trump administration’s aggressive trade policies, including towards its closest allies, and its withdrawal from some multilateral institutions.

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China is using the SCO summit and Victory Day parade to showcase its vision of a new world order

As the US cedes important features of its global leadership role to China, both countries are also focusing on military competition in the Indo-Pacific. China’s huge military parade, staged immediately after the SCO meeting, saw Xi flanked by Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un. 

Ostensibly the event was intended to commemorate the eightieth anniversary of the Second World War’s end. But it mainly served to project a fearsome display of Beijing’s growing military power. 

Meanwhile, the US is taking the next steps in its strategic tilt towards the Indo-Pacific by reducing some security assistance to Eastern European countries, shifting the burden of deterring Russia ever more rapidly to European countries.

Security questions are not the only form of competition underway. The post-1945 US-led world order has also relied on the stabilizing force of its economic leadership – now undermined by the Trump administration’s tariff policies – and the moral and practical powers resulting from its leading place in multilateral institutions.

There will be evident incongruity when the eightieth session of United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) convenes on 9 September, given the Trump administration’s openly expressed cynicism toward the gathering. There are 180 separate agenda points in the Provisional Agenda of the Eightieth Regular Session of the General Assembly. Although only a handful pertain specifically to the Palestinian territories, the mood around UNGA will be dominated by outrage toward Israel’s continuing war in the Gaza Strip. The mood, and attitudes towards the US, will not have been helped by the suspension of US visas for Palestinian passport holders.

The impression all this creates is…of older, established global governance structures that are unable to deliver effective responses that reflect a workable quorum of world opinion.

Fractures within the Western alliance over this matter are widening. The Trump administration is steadfast in its support of Israel’s continuation of the war. In July, by contrast, the UK, France and Canada renewed their calls for a two-state solution. This follows the lead of many Global South countries that have been loudly criticizing Israeli policy in Gaza for some time, with some rallying around South Africa’s genocide case brought at the International Court of Justice in the Hague in December 2023.

The impression all this creates is deeply concerning: of a world riven by superpower competition, by bitter ongoing wars and of older, established global governance structures that are unable to deliver effective responses that reflect a workable quorum of world opinion.

Spreading rot

Other areas of global governance are also withering, such as security. There is an absence of new arms control treaties, for instance, to mitigate the risks of militarizing outer space or the growing automation of weapons systems. Meanwhile treaties on existing arms, from nuclear weapons to land mines, are also fragmenting with countries withdrawing and failing to agree new terms. The absence of international norms, regulations and standards around these issues opens a path to increasingly unfettered competition and proliferation that risks greater insecurity in the future.

Article 2nd half

Amidst this backdrop, it is significant that President Xi announced China’s new ‘Global Governance Initiative’ at the latest SCO meeting. While details were scarce, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi explained that the Global Governance Initiative is ‘designed to firmly support the central role of the UN in international affairs’.

Related content

Chatham House creates new Centre for Global Governance and Security

This is likely to frame China’s participation at UNGA this year, with Beijing hoping to present itself as a growing global force for stability, as juxtaposed with the US’s unpredictable foreign and trade policies.

This should be interpreted as a blending between the old and the new: China continues to work through a mixture of established multilateral platforms while advancing new offerings of its own – such as Xi’s suggestion of a Chinese development bank for SCO members to mitigate the US dollar risks they are facing. 

The language of supporting sovereign equality is a compelling message to a growing number of countries, even if China is mainly using it to enhance its position at the top of the international hierarchy. 

The eightieth anniversaries of the end of the Second World War and of the formation of the UN are a reminder that security challenges and global governance offerings are entwined in important ways. 

The journey towards a more complex and blended reality, whereby different visions and offerings of global governance co-exist and in some cases combine, is just beginning.

1945 was followed by the independence of former colony nations across the Global South, while the UN system and its associated institutions provided the undergirding for a more stable and predictable world order. After 1991, following the independence of former Soviet countries, the Western and more specifically the US character of global governance, and of globalization, became unchallenged features of the global order.

These eras are now firmly over. The journey towards a more complex and blended reality, whereby different visions and offerings of global governance co-exist and in some cases combine, is just beginning. Navigating it will require fresh, innovative thinking that exhibits an openness to change. But it will also need a firm understanding of what existing structures need to be preserved.

15. A respected European statesman has praise for Trump

As I have noted, the Finnish President gave a brilliant speech at the UNGA.

You can watch his 20 minute speech at this link. It is well worth the time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLzUhjf7XQU

A respected European statesman has praise for Trump

“We’re going in the right direction,” said Finnish President Alexander Stubb of the war in Ukraine, “and I don’t think we’d be here without Trump.”

https://wapo.st/4nnbNH2

September 26, 2025 at 12:00 a.m. EDTToday at 12:00 a.m. EDT

7 min

Summary

35

Finland's President Alexander Stubb addresses the 80th session of the U.N. General Assembly on Wednesday. (Richard Drew/AP)

Column by Ishaan Tharoor

Finnish President Alexander Stubb cuts a larger figure on the world stage than many of his predecessors. Suave and cerebral, Stubb was a fixture at gatherings of the global cognoscenti like the World Economic Forum even before he took office last year. He’s also developed what some may view as an unlikely rapport with President Donald Trump in recent months — even sharing in a round of golf with Trump at his Palm Beach, Florida, club, during which Stubb told his U.S. counterpart that Russian President Vladimir Putin could not be trusted.

Get concise answers to your questions. Try Ask The Post AI.

On the sidelines of the U.N.’s General Assembly this week, Trump ratcheted up pressure on Putin after meeting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. In a Tuesday social media post, Trump suggested Russia was a “paper tiger” and backed Ukraine to reclaim all its territory lost to the Russian invasion. The statement marked a sharp departure from Trump’s earlier sympathy for Putin and disdain at Zelensky’s weak hand.

A shifting battlefield dynamic and looming Ukrainian counteroffensive may be shaping Trump’s thinking, but so too the quiet diplomacy of figures like Stubb, a mainstream center-right politician who has lobbied for months for clear security guarantees for Kyiv and increased sanctions on the Kremlin that would compel Putin to the negotiating table. We spoke Thursday morning in New York City, a day after Stubb had addressed the General Assembly. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Are you surprised by Trump’s rhetorical shift, especially since the infamous White House bust-up in February with Zelensky?

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I think [the Tuesday post] was a very strong message, potentially a game changer, and I don’t think it left any space for interpretation. Don’t underestimate the capacity of Donald Trump to negotiate a deal. He has a rhyme and rhythm for these negotiations. He tried the carrot first with Russia and Putin, which in my mind culminated in the [summit last month] in Alaska. And then, when there were not the results the president wanted — which was very simple, just come to the negotiating table and stop killing innocent civilians — the president comes back with the stick. And this is where the Kremlin should and probably will wake up to the reality that President Trump has run out of patience.

When we met in Davos in January, you told me you were “carefully optimistic” about Trump’s role in bringing peace to Ukraine. How are you feeling now?

I am cautiously realistic. We probably have achieved more than was expected, so in that sense my cautious optimism at the time was even too careful. We hadn’t made any progress on the peace negotiations until Trump came in and it’s important to keep in mind that Ukraine is doing much better today than they were in January.

I recently visited Kyiv, and had a one-hour tête-à-tête with President Zelensky. I found him to be in a good place. He was confident, carefully optimistic, but at the same time realistic. I got a security briefing from [Ukrainian defense minister Rustem] Umerov and his team. I saw the situation on the battlefield and things are not looking bad for Ukraine. We’re going in the right direction and I don’t think we’d be here without Trump.

Now that we’ve seen Trump wielding the stick, as you put it, what comes next?

There are two elements here. One is a bilateral meeting between Zelensky and Putin. We just need a time and a place. And, in order for that meeting to take place, we need a ceasefire. Once a ceasefire enters into force that’s when we can begin peace negotiations in earnest. We are closer to a peace agreement today than we were yesterday.

President Donald Trump, left, and Finnish President Alexander Stubb. (Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP/Getty Images)

There have been numerous reports about your growing bond with Trump and your role as an interlocutor between the White House and your colleagues on the continent.

Under no circumstances do I want to inflate my own role in this. I feel privileged that, as the president of a smaller country, I am able to communicate with the most powerful president in the world. I quite enjoyed our golf round and hope we can play another golf round at some stage.

During his General Assembly address, Trump spoke directly to European leaders about his opposition to mass migration and green-energy policies. When he says, “your countries are going to hell,” what do you hear?

As always with the politics of President Trump, there’s an ideological element there, which I think a lot of foreign policy pundits misread or underestimate. The MAGA movement is real. We have to live with that. I have always said don’t do foreign policy in a world that you’d like to exist — do it in a world which exists. There are things on which Europeans respectfully disagree with the president, for example, on climate change. There, history will show us who is on the right side of it.

So what effect has Trump’s ideological posture had on Europe?

Due to circumstance, Europe is probably more united than ever before. That circumstance is a combination of Brexit, where the other 27 [member states, apart from Britain] huddled up and said: ‘Whoa, we don’t want that to happen to us.’ It’s a combination of covid, where we ran the procurement and distribution of vaccines together. It is the circumstances of the war of aggression of Russia in Ukraine, and the global energy transition, and also the transatlantic relationship, which is itself shifting.

Europe is handling it as well as we could. We try to work closely with America even on issues that we disagree with, and I don’t see that as a problem. I see President Trump interacting closely with European leaders, and I see that relationship working even with the disagreements. We can be open and frank with each other and that’s the foundation of any good relationship.

There’s been a lot of talk about Europe’s fragile position in between the old superpower across the Atlantic and a rising China. How do you see things?

I am probably much more optimistic than I have been for a couple of decades. I have never seen more unity or resolve, especially since [Russia’s] full-scale invasion three-and-a-half years ago. We’ve been very pragmatic and solutions-oriented — turning a peace facility into an instrument that essentially finances war, or ramping up our own military production, and committing ourselves to increasing our defense expenditure to 5 percent.

I used to say that we have a threat from the east, which is Russia, and we have a challenge from the west, which is the United States — a challenge in a good kind of way. And that I think has united Europe. As far as China is concerned, I think Europe is playing a careful balancing game, somewhere wedged in between China and the United States. We go hand-in-hand with the United States, but we do have some economic realities with China, which we have to understand.

We live in an age of uncertainty, and my argument is that it will take five or ten years to settle. And in the meanwhile, we have to work back to multilateral cooperation rather than multipolar transaction. It’s not going to be easy, but I do think it’s doable.

To that end, you outlined a number of proposals in your General Assembly address for U.N. reform, including expanding the Security Council to more countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America, and taking away the veto power. Is that realistic?

We’ll see whether any of those ideas go through, but my big idea here is that if we want multilateralism and the U.N. to be revived, then the Global South, which is going to decide the next world order because it has demography and economics on its side, will have to be given agency. And agency means power at the U.N. Security Council.

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16. The Cost of the AGI Delusion

"Done right."

Excerpts:

Done right, AI could revolutionize the government’s efficiency. Even if it helps only in mundane areas, such as energy load optimization, cybersecurity and IT, predictive maintenance, logistics, supply chain management, and acquisition paperwork, it will allow larger bureaucracies to overcome or eliminate regulatory hurdles. That could, in turn, fuel more private-sector adoption. Right now, private sector pilot projects with frontier AI sometimes fail to successfully transition from prototype to full capability, often because of integration challenges or misalignment between a proposed AI solution and the problem it targets. By some estimates, more than 80 percent of AI projects fail to deliver results. Industry surveys report that 88 percent of pilots never reach production. The IT company Gartner projects that 40 percent of “agentic AI” deployments—autonomous AI systems capable of planning and executing multi-step tasks with minimal or no human oversight—will be scrapped by 2027. By placing greater value on and demonstrating how AI can be integrated into large, complex bureaucracies, the government can help forge a pathway for private companies, lowering their perceived risks. By adopting AI, Washington can also create demand signal for scalable, near-term AI applications.

But protecting American AI leadership will require the government to do more than just help itself and the private sector. The United States will also need to invest in universities and researchers who can make invaluable technical breakthroughs in AI safety, efficiency, and effectiveness, but lack the capacities of big firms. The Trump administration must therefore follow through on its plan to expand support for the National AI Research Resource, a nascent, government-provided consortium of AI infrastructure that would provide researchers, educators, and students with the specialized tools they need for advanced AI work.

None of these steps means U.S. officials should abandon thinking about AGI. In fact, some of the best policies for ensuring AI leadership today will also hasten the arrival of more advanced systems. Any policy that supports AI research and development, such as the immense investment in technology mandated by the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act, will lead to more sophisticated algorithms. So will continued investment in the country’s power infrastructure, which helps the energy-intensive AI industry grow and function.

But Washington must ensure that the pursuit of AGI does not come at the expense of near-term adoption. Racing toward a myth is not sound policy. Instead, the country’s primary goal must be rapidly scaling practical AI applications—improvements that meet government needs and deliver real efficiencies today and tomorrow. Otherwise, the United States could keep producing the world’s fanciest models. It could lead in algorithm creation. But it will still fall behind countries that make better use of AI innovations.

The Cost of the AGI Delusion

Michael C. Horowitz and Lauren Kahn

Foreign Affairs · More by Michael C. Horowitz · September 26, 2025

By Chasing Superintelligence, America Is Falling Behind in the Real AI Race

Michael C. Horowitz and Lauren Kahn

September 26, 2025

At the World Artificial Intelligence Conference, Shanghai, July 2025 Go Nakamura / Reuters

MICHAEL C. HOROWITZ is Senior Fellow for Technology and Innovation at the Council on Foreign Relations and Richard Perry Professor and Director of the Perry World House at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the former U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Force Development and Emerging Capabilities.

LAUREN A. KAHN is Senior Research Analyst at the Center for Security and Emerging Technology at Georgetown University.

• More by Lauren A. Kahn

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In early August, one day before releasing GPT-5, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman posted an image of the Death Star on social media. It was just the latest declaration by Altman that his new AI model would change the world forever. “We have discovered, invented, whatever you want to call it, something extraordinary that is going to reshape the course of human history,” Altman said in a July interview. He compared his company’s research to the Manhattan Project and said that he felt “useless” compared with OpenAI’s newest invention. Altman, in other words, suggested that GPT-5 would bring society closer to what computer scientists call artificial general intelligence: an AI system that can match or exceed human cognition, including the ability to learn new things.

For years, creating AGI has been the holy grail of many leading AI researchers. Altman and other top technologists, including Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and computer science professors Yoshua Bengio and Stuart Russell, have been dreaming of constructing superintelligent systems for decades—as well as fearing them. And recently, many of these voices have declared that the day of reckoning is near, telling government officials that whichever country invents AGI first will gain enormous geopolitical advantages. Days before U.S. President Donald Trump’s second inauguration, for example, Altman told Trump that AGI would be achieved within his term—and that Washington needed to prepare.

These declarations have clearly had an effect. Over the last two years, Democratic and Republican politicians alike have been discussing AGI more frequently and exploring policies that could unleash its potential or limit its harms. It is easy to see why. AI is already at the heart of a range of emerging technologies, including robotics, biotechnology, and quantum computing. It is also a central element of U.S.-China competition. AGI could theoretically unlock more (and more impressive) scientific advancements, including the ability to stop others from making similar breakthroughs. In this view, if the United States makes it first, American economic growth might skyrocket and the country could attain an unassailable military advantage.

There is no doubt that AI is a very powerful invention. But when it comes to AGI, the hype has grown out of proportion. Given the limitations of existing systems, it is unlikely that superintelligence is actually imminent, even though AI systems continue to improve. Some prominent computer scientists, such as Andrew Ng, have questioned whether artificial general intelligence will ever be created. For now, and possibly forever, advances in AI are more likely to be iterative, like other general-purpose technologies.

The United States should therefore treat the AI race with China like a marathon, not a sprint. This is especially important given the centrality of AI to Washington’s competition with Beijing. Today, both the country’s new tech firms, like DeepSeek, and existing powerhouses, like Huawei, are increasingly keeping pace with their American counterparts. By emphasizing steady advancements and economic integration, China may now even be ahead of the United States in terms of adopting and using robotics. To win the AI race, Washington thus needs to emphasize practical investments in the development and rapid adoption of AI. It cannot distort U.S. policy by dashing for something that might not exist.

WILDEST DREAMS

In Washington, AGI is a hot topic. In a September 2024 hearing on AI oversight, Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal declared that AGI is “here and now—one to three years has been the latest prediction.” In July, South Dakota Senator Mike Rounds introduced a bill requiring the Pentagon to establish an AGI steering committee. The bipartisan U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission’s 2024 report argued that AGI demanded a Manhattan Project–level effort to ensure the United States achieved it first. Some officials even believe AGI is about to jeopardize human existence. In June 2025, for instance, Representative Jill Tokuda of Hawaii said that “artificial superintelligence, ASI, is one of the largest existential threats that we face.”

The fixation on AGI goes beyond rhetoric. Former Biden administration officials issued executive orders that regulated AI in part based on concerns that AGI is on the horizon. Trump’s AI Action Plan, released in July, may avoid explicit mentions of AGI. But it emphasizes frontier AI, infrastructure expansions, and an innovation-centric race for technological dominance. It would, in the words of Time magazine, fulfill “many of the greatest policy wishes of the top AI companies—which are all now more certain than ever that AGI is around the corner.”

The argument for dashing toward AGI is simple. An AGI system, the thinking goes, might be able to self-improve simultaneously along multiple dimensions. In doing so, it could quickly surpass what humans are capable of and solve problems that have vexed society for millennia. The company and country that reaches that point first will thus not only achieve enormous financial returns, scientific breakthroughs, and military advancements but also lock out competitors by monopolizing the benefits in ways that restrict the developments of others and that establish the rules of the game. The AI race, then, is really a race to a predetermined, AGI finish line in which the winner not only bursts triumphantly through the ribbon but picks up every trophy and goes home, leaving nothing for even the second- and third-place competitors.

It is unlikely that superintelligence is actually imminent.

Yet there is reason to be skeptical of this framing. For starters, AI researchers can’t even agree on how to define AGI and its capabilities; in other words, no one agrees on where the finish line is. That makes any policy based around achieving it inherently dubious. Instead of a singular creation, AI is more of a broad category of technologies, with many different types of innovations. That means progress is likely to be a complex and ever-changing wave, rather than a straight-line trip.

This is evident in the technology’s most recent developments. Today’s models are making strides in usability. The most advanced large language models, however, still face many of the same challenges they faced in 2022, including shallow reasoning, brittle generalization, a lack of long-term memory, and a lack of genuine metacognition or continual learning—as well, of course, as hallucinations. Since its release, for instance, GPT-5 has looked more like a normal advancement than a transformative breakthrough. As a result, some of AGI’s biggest proponents have started tempering their enthusiasm. At the start of the summer, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt said that AI wasn’t hyped enough; now, he argues that people have become too obsessed with "superintelligent" systems. Similarly, in August, Altman declared that AGI is “not a useful concept.” In some ways, when it comes to AGI, the computer science world may still be where it was in 2002, when the then director of MIT’s AI lab joked that the true definition of AI was “almost implemented.”

Even if some AI models do prove transformative, their effects will be mediated by adoption and diffusion processes—as happens with almost every invention. Consider, for example, electricity. It has generated untold value and utterly transformed the global economy, but it became useful thanks to the thousands of scientists, engineers, inventors, and companies who worked on it over the course of decades. Benjamin Franklin proved lightning was electricity in 1752, Alessandro Volta invented the first battery in 1799, and Nikola Tesla developed alternating current in the late 1880s. Even then, it took many more years before most homes had power outlets. All of these innovations were critical to reaching that eventual endpoint, and no one actor captured the global market for electricity or effectively prevented others from continuing to innovate.

The modern combustion engine provides another case-in-point. It was invented in 1876 by the German engineer Nicholas Otto, but was advanced and improved upon over the course of several decades before automobiles went mainstream. Companies around the world ultimately achieved massive gains from automobiles, not just German ones (although German auto industry is, of course, very successful). Perhaps the most prominent early leader, the Ford Motor Company, was American, and it first dominated the car market thanks to its innovations in production, not engines.

INNOVATION AND ADAPTATION

If AI competition is more likely to span a generation than just a few more years, American officials need to think more about how the country can quickly adopt AI advances and less about how to summon AI’s speculative potential. This is closer to what Beijing does. Although the United States and China are very different and the latter’s approach has its limits, China is moving faster at scaling robots in society, and its AI Plus Initiative emphasizes achieving widespread industry-specific adoption by 2027. The government wants AI to essentially become a part of the country’s infrastructure by 2030. China is also investing in AGI, but Beijing’s emphasis is clearly on quickly scaling, integrating, and applying current and near-term AI capabilities.

To avoid falling behind in AI adoption within the bureaucracy, the United States should launch a large-scale AI literacy initiative across the government. Public employees of all kinds need to know how to use both general AI systems and ones tailored to their jobs. American officials should offer expanded access to AI training both for their particular roles and for general use, including training on issues like automation bias (in which people overestimate the accuracy of AI systems). To do so, Washington can take advantage of the fact that major American companies, including OpenAI and Anthropic, are willing to give public employees and agencies more exposure and access to their technologies, allowing the state, at least for now, to use their large language models virtually for free.

The United States must also modernize its infrastructure and data practices, including within the national security apparatus. Advanced AI models require sophisticated hardware, adequate computing power, and state-of-the-art knowledge management systems to operate effectively. And today, Washington is behind on each. The government has started to make some progress on upgrading its systems, but decades of siloing and bureaucratic processes have created entrenched lags that are hindering innovation. To achieve AI adoption at scale, Washington will likely need to invest billions of dollars in procurement over the next few years, especially for the Pentagon.

Racing toward a myth is not sound policy.

Done right, AI could revolutionize the government’s efficiency. Even if it helps only in mundane areas, such as energy load optimization, cybersecurity and IT, predictive maintenance, logistics, supply chain management, and acquisition paperwork, it will allow larger bureaucracies to overcome or eliminate regulatory hurdles. That could, in turn, fuel more private-sector adoption. Right now, private sector pilot projects with frontier AI sometimes fail to successfully transition from prototype to full capability, often because of integration challenges or misalignment between a proposed AI solution and the problem it targets. By some estimates, more than 80 percent of AI projects fail to deliver results. Industry surveys report that 88 percent of pilots never reach production. The IT company Gartner projects that 40 percent of “agentic AI” deployments—autonomous AI systems capable of planning and executing multi-step tasks with minimal or no human oversight—will be scrapped by 2027. By placing greater value on and demonstrating how AI can be integrated into large, complex bureaucracies, the government can help forge a pathway for private companies, lowering their perceived risks. By adopting AI, Washington can also create demand signal for scalable, near-term AI applications.

But protecting American AI leadership will require the government to do more than just help itself and the private sector. The United States will also need to invest in universities and researchers who can make invaluable technical breakthroughs in AI safety, efficiency, and effectiveness, but lack the capacities of big firms. The Trump administration must therefore follow through on its plan to expand support for the National AI Research Resource, a nascent, government-provided consortium of AI infrastructure that would provide researchers, educators, and students with the specialized tools they need for advanced AI work.

None of these steps means U.S. officials should abandon thinking about AGI. In fact, some of the best policies for ensuring AI leadership today will also hasten the arrival of more advanced systems. Any policy that supports AI research and development, such as the immense investment in technology mandated by the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act, will lead to more sophisticated algorithms. So will continued investment in the country’s power infrastructure, which helps the energy-intensive AI industry grow and function.

But Washington must ensure that the pursuit of AGI does not come at the expense of near-term adoption. Racing toward a myth is not sound policy. Instead, the country’s primary goal must be rapidly scaling practical AI applications—improvements that meet government needs and deliver real efficiencies today and tomorrow. Otherwise, the United States could keep producing the world’s fanciest models. It could lead in algorithm creation. But it will still fall behind countries that make better use of AI innovations.

Foreign Affairs · More by Michael C. Horowitz · September 26, 2025

17. A new financial impetus for peace in Ukraine

From the German Chancellor.

A new financial impetus for peace in Ukraine

We need the mobilisation of resources on a scale that will secure Kyiv’s military resilience

Friedrich MerzAdd to myFT

Financial Times · Friedrich Merz · September 25, 2025

The writer is chancellor of Germany

Vladimir Putin continues his brutal war of conquest against Ukraine with unrelenting ferocity. Every residential block destroyed in Odesa, every night-time strike on a hospital in Kharkiv or on a government building in Kyiv disproves the myth that Russia is willing to make peace. Europe must draw the necessary conclusions from this, ideally together with its partners on both sides of the Atlantic. We must systematically and massively raise the costs of Russia’s aggression.

We do this not to prolong the war, but to end it. Moscow will only come to the table to discuss a ceasefire when it realises that Ukraine has greater staying power. We have that staying power. Europe is more tested now than perhaps at any time in our lifetimes. Germany must — and will — assume a particular share of responsibility.

We need a new impetus to change Russia’s calculations. Now is the moment to apply an effective lever that will disrupt the Russian president’s cynical game of buying time and bring him to the negotiating table. That requires the courage and confidence to set our own agenda, rather than merely react to his.

In doing so we would give the brave people of Ukraine fresh hope. We would also send precisely the right message to Washington: the path to a just and lasting peace must be walked together.

We will support Ukraine in its defence for as long as it takes. That is the decision Europeans have made. The time has now come to back that political promise with an instrument that sends an unmistakable signal of resilience to Moscow. In recent years, we have often played it by ear. Now I am advocating the mobilisation of financial resources on a scale that will secure Ukraine’s military resilience for several years.

Germany has been, and remains, cautious on the issue of confiscating the Russian central bank’s assets that are frozen in Europe, and with good reason. There are not only questions of international law to consider, but also fundamental issues concerning the euro’s role as a global reserve currency. But this must not hold us back: we must consider how, by circumventing these problems, we can make these funds available for the defence of Ukraine.

In my view a viable solution should now be developed whereby — without intervening in property rights — we can make available to Ukraine an interest-free loan of almost €140 billion in total. That loan would only be repaid once Russia has compensated Ukraine for the damage it has caused during this war. Until then, the Russian assets will remain frozen, as decided by the European Council.

Such extensive assistance will require budgetary guarantees from member states. Those bilateral guarantees should, as soon as the next Multiannual Financial Framework is in place in 2028, be replaced by collateralisation under the EU’s long-term budget.

The funds thus mobilised would secure Ukraine’s defence capabilities for several years. I will discuss this proposal with the European heads of state and government at our meeting in Copenhagen next Wednesday. I propose that, at the European Council at the end of October, we give the mandate to prepare this instrument in a legally secure manner.

That decision should, ideally, be unanimous — failing that, it should be adopted by the large majority of member states who are firmly committed to Ukraine. We should also invite partners around the world that have frozen Russian assets to join the instrument. To this end, we will co-ordinate closely with our partners in the G7.

For Germany, it will be important that these additional funds are solely used to finance Ukraine’s military equipment, not for general budgetary purposes. Payments should be disbursed in tranches. Member states and Ukraine would jointly determine which materiel is procured. In my view, such a comprehensive programme must also help to strengthen and expand the European defence industry. That would serve both our collective security and European sovereignty.

In recent days we have been reminded of how comprehensively and systematically peace and freedom in Europe are under threat. As Europeans we hold powerful means to resist that threat. The time has come to use them, so that we may defend our secure, free and united Europe.

Financial Times · Friedrich Merz · September 25, 2025

18. Back to Key West: The Army must own air base defense, not chase Air Force missions

An Air Force critique of the Army Transformation Initiative.

Of course a snarky retort is how many wars have we won since Key West (other than Grenada, Panama, the First Gulf War, Afghanistan in 2001, the Second Gulf War in 2003).

And another question to ask is why doesn't the Air Force adopt the Air Defense mission as most other air forces do around the world?

Excerpt:

The Army’s encroachment on Air Force missions at the expense of air defense is a strategic error that wastes money, particularly against China’s DF-26 missiles, which have a 4,000-kilometer range and are capable of targeting Guam. Further, China’s 2024 exercises showcased drone swarms threatening airfields, underscoring the need for a robust Army air defense presence to protect bases like Andersen Air Force Base. Beyond China, the conflict in Ukraine highlights the potential threat posed by Russia’s Kinzhal hypersonic missiles and Orlan-10 drones, which have been used in Ukraine for swarm attacks. Ukraine’s 10,000 drone types and thousands lost monthly highlight the scale of modern air threats.

Back to Key West: The Army must own air base defense, not chase Air Force missions - Breaking Defense

The Army must return to its Key West roots, writes Lt. Col. Grant “SWAT” Georgulis in this op-ed, and allow the Air Force to focus on air dominance.

breakingdefense.com · Lt. Col. Grant “SWAT” Georgulis · September 25, 2025

The 1948 Key West Agreement resolved postwar interservice rivalries by assigning clear roles: The Army is responsible for land combat, including ground-based air defense to protect troops and bases, while the Air Force handles air superiority, strategic bombing, and deep strikes. Refined by the 1956 Wilson Memorandum, this framework aimed to eliminate redundancy and boost efficiency.

With the Army kicking off its “Army Transformation Initiative” with big changes, now is the perfect time for an updated version of the Key West Agreement to be hashed out. And among other key issues, such as who controls space assets, a final decision should result in the Army abandoning its push for long-range strike systems, such as the Long Range Hypersonic Weapon (LRHW), and the vague, undefined in joint doctrine “Air Littoral” concept, which directly encroaches on Air Force functions.

Instead, the Army must prioritize its critical air base defense mission to ensure joint readiness against hypersonic missiles and small unmanned aerial systems (sUAS), thereby freeing the underfunded Air Force to secure air dominance.

The Army’s Long-Range Precision Fires program, developing hypersonic weapons and LRHW, targets enemy air defenses and command nodes —missions the Air Force has executed since 1948. Former Army Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville pitched these types of capabilities as cost-effective, citing Gulf War Apache strikes as historic evidence. Yet this overlooks the Air Force’s decisive F-117 missions and the extensive employment of Navy Tomahawk missiles, which, combined with other air campaign elements, crushed Iraqi defenses and defeated Saddam’s military.

Prior to the mid-2000s, the US Army integrated short-range air defense (SHORAD) to protect maneuver forces from low-altitude threats. However, as US Army Air Defense Artillery Capt. Leopoldo Negrete explained two years ago, the absence of significant fixed-wing or rotary-wing threats during operations in Afghanistan and Iraq shifted the Army’s focus to point-defense systems like the Patriot, reducing air defense support for mobile ground units.

The Army’s encroachment on Air Force missions at the expense of air defense is a strategic error that wastes money, particularly against China’s DF-26 missiles, which have a 4,000-kilometer range and are capable of targeting Guam. Further, China’s 2024 exercises showcased drone swarms threatening airfields, underscoring the need for a robust Army air defense presence to protect bases like Andersen Air Force Base. Beyond China, the conflict in Ukraine highlights the potential threat posed by Russia’s Kinzhal hypersonic missiles and Orlan-10 drones, which have been used in Ukraine for swarm attacks. Ukraine’s 10,000 drone types and thousands lost monthly highlight the scale of modern air threats.

The Army’s Patriot and THAAD systems are critical for joint base protection, but funding lags as deep-strike programs dominate. Shifting air defense to the Air Force would strain its budget, which has been below 25 percent of the Department of Defense total since 1992, with over $50 billion in annual pass-throughs for programs completely outside the Air Force budget. As David Deptula and Mark Gunzinger note, adding ground defense would divert funds from B-21 bombers, F-35 fighters, and E-7 aircraft, all of which are needed to recapitalize the Air Force and secure future air superiority for joint force operations.

This is not to say that long-range strike systems like LRHW do not have a role to play in layered deterrence, complementing the Air Force’s and Navy’s capabilities. LRHW 400-mile range enables rapid, land-based strikes in contested areas, such as the Pacific, supporting joint operations without relying solely on air or sea platforms that could be employed elsewhere to exploit their inherent mobility and flexibility.

However, Army deep-strike systems lack the Air Force’s stealth and flexibility, and fixed-site missiles are vulnerable to preemptive strikes. The Army should continue to explore these long-range strike capabilities, but should not pursue them at the expense of its core Key West air base defense mission.

Underfunding base defense capabilities such as Patriot, Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD), and other emerging air defense systems risks leaving joint bases vulnerable, undermining the platforms—Air Force jets and Navy ships—that LRHW purports to complement. Nor should these programs be transferred to the Air Force, as such programs would overburden the Air Force’s already-strained budget and dilute its rightful focus on air superiority.

Anti-Doctrinal Distraction: The Air Littoral

Another aspect that needs to be sorted out between the services is the Army’s “Air Littoral” concept, which aims to achieve dominance in low-altitude airspace (from the surface to several thousand feet) for Army aviation and small Unmanned Aerial Systems (sUAS). This redundant, fabricated “subdomain,” supposedly dominated by “drones,” blurs lines with Air Force roles like air superiority and close air support, risking confusion with naval “littoral” terminology. Lacking doctrinal clarity—and not an approved term in the U.S. military—it diverts resources from air defense.

Proponents argue that it reflects the complexity of multi-domain warfare, as seen in Ukraine’s frustrating air and ground operations. However, air superiority, accomplished through defended airfields, solves the stalemate unfolding between Ukraine and Russia. Desert Storm showcased joint strength through specialization: Army ground forces, Air Force air dominance, and Navy sea control. Unnecessary overlap fosters friction, not synergy.

The Army’s cancellation of a $2 billion reconnaissance helicopter and rapid buy of 600 Coyote counter-UAS systems show it’s learning from Ukraine, as George noted in 2024: “Aerial reconnaissance has fundamentally changed.” The air littoral notion, while acknowledging UAS threats, is entirely unnecessary, as established doctrine already addresses the issue of control over low-altitude airspace. The Army would be better served focusing on securing air bases in the Pacific, and allowing codified airspace management procedures to counter sUAS threats in the air, by exception.

Some argue that deep-strike and air littoral roles enhance Army relevance in multi-domain warfare. However, that overlooks the fact that the Army excels in several key missions it undertakes — indeed, the service is vital to how the US conducts integrated operations. No one doubts that the US Army is ready to stand up and defend its country in any way possible.

But not duplicating missions already assigned to other services will allow the Army to focus on its important core competencies. The Army’s strength lies in ground-based defense, complemented by new long-range strike capabilities, such as the LRHW. Programs like Directed Energy Maneuver-SHORAD lasers and Patriot can counter evolving aerial threats, protecting both maneuver forces and airbases. By focusing on service-specific discrete roles rather than pursuing duplicative new capabilities, the Army can remain relevant as a critical enabler to the joint force of the future.

The Army must return to its Key West roots: prioritize air base defense while sustaining long-range strike development as a complementary capability. By fully funding Patriot, THAAD, SHORAD, and other emerging air defense and counter-UAS capabilities, the Army could shield joint forces, thereby allowing the Air Force to focus on its core competency — air dominance.

As stated in Congressional testimony by David Deptula, Dean of the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, “A dollar spent on duplicative capability comes at the expense of essential capacity or capability elsewhere.”

Congress and the Pentagon should redirect funds from Army long-range fires to air defense, codify roles (Army for primarily ground-based air defense and some complementary long-range strike capability, Air Force for aerial dominance), and stop the redundancies inherent in Army mission overreach that undermine the entire concept of jointness. The strength of joint operations resides in the separateness of the service capabilities.

With China and Russia advancing, an updated Key West roles and missions agreement optimizes joint force operations in the Pacific.

Lt. Col. Grant “SWAT” Georgulis, USAF, is a Master Air Battle Manager and currently assigned as the Deputy Chief of C2 Inspections as part of the Headquarters NORAD and U.S. NORTHCOM Inspector General team. The views expressed in this article are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the United States Air Force.

breakingdefense.com · Lt. Col. Grant “SWAT” Georgulis · September 25, 2025

19. Billboards aimed at troops ask 'is this what you signed up for?'

"Domestic PSYOP" aimed at our own troops?

Billboards aimed at troops ask 'is this what you signed up for?'

The signs outside the North Carolina bases are aimed at troops troubled by legal issues around military units ordered into domestic law enforcement roles.

Patty Nieberg

Published Sep 25, 2025 10:32 AM EDT

taskandpurpose.com · Patty Nieberg

“Did you go to Airborne just to pull security for ICE?” a billboard asks in Fayetteville, North Carolina. The billboard is one of two put up last week in North Carolina outside of two of the largest military bases, the Army’s Fort Bragg and the Marine Corps’ Camp Lejeune.

The signs are part of a campaign run led by veterans, About Face: Veterans Against The War and Win Without War, that wants to reach troops who may have questions on the legality of current or future orders as the Trump administration increasingly uses the military for domestic duties that include immigration and law enforcement.

The billboards direct viewers to a website titled: “Not What You Signed Up For” with encrypted email and messaging platforms where service members can access resources and experts with link to the GI Rights Hotline and the National Lawyers Guild’s task force focused on military law.

“We have several cities that the administration has threatened or announced to send the National Guard into, or to have those governors send the National Guard into,” said Harrison Mann, the associate director for policy and campaigns for Win Without War. Mann was an Army major when he resigned from the Defense Intelligence Agency in 2024 over the Biden administration’s use of American military hardware to support Israel’s military in its war with Hamas.

A billboard outside of Fort Bragg, North Carolina sponsored by two groups seeking to reach military members with legal concerns over troops used in domestic deployments and law enforcement work. Image via Win Without War.

“We want to make sure those troops also can know their rights and understand their options,” he said.

The groups behind the signs have so far sponsored three billboards. The Fort Bragg sign sits between two central streets leading to the base, Bragg Boulevard and the All-American Freeway, where a large percentage of troops assigned to the base pass as they enter through the main gate. At Camp Lejeune, the group’s sign sits on Lejeune Blvd, just off a bridge that leads to the base’s main gate. The group has also sponsored a third mobile billboard on a truck to drive around Washington D.C. where National Guard members have been deployed since August.

Beginning last summer, the Trump administration has widely deployed troops in law enforcement roles. Unlike typical disaster and emergency deployments for guard troops, local leaders and significant portions of local residents have widely rejected the Trump-backed deployments, including 700 Marines and 4000 National Guardsmen sent to Los Angeles in June and more than 2,000 National Guard troops from seven states currently in Washington D.C.

In addition, nearly 1,700 National Guard troops from 19 states have been authorized to support Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, according to the National Guard Bureau. As of Wednesday, 1,500 troops were on duty assisting with administrative and logistics, including units with the Virginia National Guard that are collecting and entering biometric data, scheduling appointments, and tracking fleet expenses.

A billboard outside of Camp Lejeune, a Marine Corps base in North Carolina. Image via Win Without War.

The billboard campaign comes amid a growing concern from progressive veteran groups and military legal experts that troops could be faced with orders that go against their conscience or are deemed unlawful in future courts martial under different political administrations.

One of the lawyers that troops can be connected to is James M. Branum. He said many younger troops are telling him, “This is not what they signed up for.” More senior troops, he said, are “just biding their time” and want to “keep [their] head down.”

Though Branum said he expected to field more calls from Guardsmen who are unhappy with their deployment, he’s found himself counseling more active duty troops who are “reading the writing on the wall,” and “concerned about what’s coming.”

Brittany Ramos DeBarros, organizing director for About Face: Veterans Against The War, said her personal military experience shaped the work she’s doing now, including the campaign.

“I was really swayed by this kind of military culture that makes you feel like if you disagree with what’s happening, you’re the only one and there’s something wrong with you, and you don’t have any choices,” she said. “You’re not alone. There are people out here who will support you.”

DeBarros joined the Army on a Reserve Officers’ Training Corps scholarship and deployed to Afghanistan in 2012. During her time there, DeBarros grew disillusioned with the gap between the military’s stated mission in Afghanistan and the reality on the ground. In the Reserves, she began speaking out about the war and civilian casualties as a captain. She was threatened with a court-martial and was eventually discharged.

DeBarros said she sees the operations on U.S. soil reflecting a lesson she came to terms with in Afghanistan — that the military’s purpose is “to carry out violence as effectively and efficiently as possible” and that its use for peace-keeping or diplomacy are “not realistic.”

“That carries forward to today when I see the National Guard being deployed in U.S. cities to carry out these policing operations, to support domestic issues around immigration,” she said. “Anyone who has really spent a lot of time in the military understands that sending the Marines to LA to supposedly keep the peace is one of the most kind of antithetical things you can do.”

For Mann’s 13-year Army career, he said he never thought about whether the orders he was given were lawful. But with the growing political nature of the domestic deployments, he said that veteran groups like his want to ensure troops know their rights and can ask questions.

“I don’t want the first time that a soldier or Marine thinks about how they’re going to respond to an unlawful order to be when it’s getting shouted at them in Baltimore or Memphis or wherever,” Mann said. “People need to start thinking about that now. So the overarching goal is just to start that conversation, both within the military, and make everybody besides the military aware of that risk.”

The law of ‘Lawful Orders’

The military’s Manual for Courts-Martial states that a service member can defend against obeying an order if they knew it to be unlawful or “a person of ordinary sense and understanding would have known the orders to be unlawful.”

However, they would choose to violate it “at their own peril,” Branum said, adding that “all the pressure is on the service member to make the right call.” If a military member refuses an order, the lawfulness of that order would be determined by a military judge, according to the manual.

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Earlier this month, a federal court in California ruled that the deployment of troops to LA was illegal and went against a federal law known as the Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits the use of federal troops to enforce domestic laws.

In a statement to Task & Purpose about the billboards, Pentagon Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson said Win Without War was “not a veteran’s group” and that it uses Democratic money “to solicit donations for poorly designed graphics.

“The Department of War is proud to work alongside our interagency partners to keep America’s borders secure and its communities safe,” Wilson said.

First amendment

But is it legal to use a billboard to encourage military members to question orders?

A 2014 Supreme Court case on a protester outside of a military base ended with the court ruling against the protester.

For 17 years, Dennis Apel protested outside of Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. He was sentenced to two months in prison after squirting his own blood out of a syringe at the base sign days before the U.S. declared war on Iraq. He continued protesting but stood in a designated “protest zone.” Apel was barred from the base and then convicted of violating that bar. His case was heard by the Supreme Court, where arguments centered around whether the land was controlled by the military.

“A public road outside of a closed military base, especially in a designated protest zone, is a place where all should be able to peacefully protest,” Apel’s lawyer, Erwin Chemerinsky, wrote in an online blog post about the case.

The Supreme Court’s 2014 ruling did not address the Constitutionality of the case but did determine that even though the protest area was outside of the Vandenberg fences and not technically used for military activity, it “does not diminish the base commander’s control over the entirety of the jurisdiction,” a Lawfare blog summarized.

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Patty Nieberg

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Patty is a senior reporter for Task & Purpose. She’s reported on the military for five years, embedding with the National Guard during a hurricane and covering Guantanamo Bay legal proceedings for an alleged al Qaeda commander.

• Military Life

taskandpurpose.com · Patty Nieberg

20. How First Amendment protects Americans' speech -- and how it doesn't

Excerpts:

The First Amendment protects speech across the political spectrum, even speech Americans do not like. Both liberal comedian Jon Stewart and conservative commentator Tucker Carlson have recently agreed on this.

As Carlson said recently, "If they can tell you what to say, they're telling you what to think. ... There is nothing they can't do to you because they don't consider you human."

Just last year in the NRA case referenced above, the Supreme Court clearly stated that even indirect government efforts to curtail protected speech are indeed unconstitutional. In light of that ruling, efforts to limit criticism of the administration, any administration, should give all Americans, regardless of their political views, great pause.

Voices Sept. 25, 2025 / 9:53 AM

How First Amendment protects Americans' speech -- and how it doesn't

https://www.upi.com/Voices/2025/09/25/first-amendment-protects-speech/4261758805418/

By Ray Brescia, Albany Law School

upi.com

Imagine a protest outside the funeral of a popular political leader, with some of the protesters celebrating the death and holding signs that say things like "God Hates the USA/Thank God for 9/11," "America is Doomed" and "Don't Pray for the USA."

No matter the political leanings of that leader, most Americans would probably abhor such a protest and those signs.

What would tolerate such activities, no matter how distasteful? The First Amendment.

The situation described above is taken from an actual protest, though it did not involve the funeral of a political figure. Instead, members of the Westboro Baptist Church protested outside the funeral of Marine Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder, a U.S. service member killed in Iraq.

Through demonstrations like this, members of this group were conveying their belief that the United States is overly tolerant of those they perceive as sinners, especially people from the LGBTQ community, and that the death of U.S. soldiers should be recognized as divine retribution for such sinfulness.

Snyder's family sued for intentional infliction of emotional distress, among other claims. A jury issued a $5 million award in favor of the family of the deceased service member. But in a nearly unanimous decision issued in 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court found that the First Amendment insulated the protesters from such a judgment.

This holding is particularly instructive today.

The Trump administration has vowed to crack down on what it calls hate speech. It has labeled Antifa, a loosely organized anti-fascist group, a terrorist organization. And it has sought to punish figures such as TV host Jimmy Kimmel for statements perceived critical of conservative activists.

What the First Amendment makes clear is that it does not just protect the rights of speakers who say things with which Americans agree. Or, as the Supreme Court said in a separate decision issued one year after the case involving the funeral protesters: "The Nation well knows that one of the costs of the First Amendment is that it protects the speech we detest as well as the speech we embrace."

But free speech is not absolute. As a legal scholar who has studied political movements, free speech and privacy, I realize the government can regulate speech through what are known as "reasonable time, place and manner" restrictions. These limits cannot depend upon the content of the speech or expressive conduct in which a speaker is engaged, however.

For example, the government can ban campfires in an area prone to wildfires. But if it banned the burning of the U.S. flag only as a form of political protest, that would be an unconstitutional restriction on speech.

Protected and unprotected speech

There are certain categories of speech that are not entitled to First Amendment protection. They include incitement to violence, obscenity, defamation and what are considered "true threats."

When, for example, someone posts threats on social media with reckless disregard for whether they will instill legitimate fear in their target, such posts are not a protected form of speech. Similarly, burning a cross on someone's property as a means of striking terror in them such that they fear bodily harm also represents this kind of true threat.

There are also violations of the law that are sometimes prosecuted as "hate crimes," criminal acts driven by some discriminatory motive. In these cases, it's generally not the perpetrator's beliefs that are punished but the fact that they act on them and engage in some other form of criminal conduct, as when someone physically assaults their victim based on that victim's race or religion.

Such motives can increase the punishment people receive for the underlying criminal conduct.

Speech that enjoys the strongest free-speech protections is that which is critical of government policies and leaders. As the Supreme Court said in 1966, "There is practically universal agreement that a major purpose of [the First] Amendment was to protect the free discussion of governmental affairs."

As the late Justice Antonin Scalia explained in 2003, "The right to criticize the government" is at "the heart of what the First Amendment is meant to protect."

Restrictions on government action

The First Amendment prevents the government from taking direct action to curtail speech by, for example, trying to prevent the publication of material critical of it. Americans witnessed this in the Pentagon Papers case, where the Supreme Court ruled that the government could not prevent newspapers from publishing a leaked -- and politically damaging -- study on U.S. military involvement in Vietnam.

But it also applies when the government acts in indirect ways, such as threatening to investigate a media company or cutting funding for a university based on politically disfavored action or inaction.

In 2024, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the state of New York's efforts to punish companies that did business with the National Rifle Association because of the organization's political positions violated the group's First Amendment rights.

Similarly, in recent months, courts have ruled on First Amendment grounds against Trump administration efforts to punish law firms or to withhold funds from Harvard University.

And just last week, a federal court in Florida threw out a lawsuit filed by President Donald Trump against The New York Times that sought $15 billion for alleged harm to the president's investments and reputation.

Nevertheless, some people fear government retribution for criticizing the administration. And some, like the TV network ABC, have engaged in speech-restricting action on their own, such as taking Kimmel temporarily off the air for his comments critical of conservative activists in the wake of Charlie Kirk's killing.

Before Kimmel's suspension, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr described his negotiations with ABC's parent company, Disney, to take action against him.

"We could do this the easy way or the hard way," Carr said. And Trump said that some media companies might "lose their license" for criticizing the president. It is encouraging that, in the face of these threats, ABC has reversed course and agreed to put Kimmel back on the air.

The First Amendment protects speech across the political spectrum, even speech Americans do not like. Both liberal comedian Jon Stewart and conservative commentator Tucker Carlson have recently agreed on this.

As Carlson said recently, "If they can tell you what to say, they're telling you what to think. ... There is nothing they can't do to you because they don't consider you human."

Just last year in the NRA case referenced above, the Supreme Court clearly stated that even indirect government efforts to curtail protected speech are indeed unconstitutional. In light of that ruling, efforts to limit criticism of the administration, any administration, should give all Americans, regardless of their political views, great pause.

Ray Brescia is the associate dean for research and intellectual life at Albany Law School. 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.

upi.com

21. New Pentagon strategy to focus on homeland, Western Hemisphere

Are we overreacting to these reports?

Are military forces fungible when it comes to homeland defense and power projection or forward stationing to project US interests?

I guess what we need to see is a clear articulation and prioritization of US interests at home and abroad. 

New Pentagon strategy to focus on homeland, Western Hemisphere

militarytimes.com · Carla Babb · September 25, 2025

The Pentagon’s top national security focus will mirror that of President Donald Trump’s “America First” agenda, with multiple U.S. officials telling Military Times that the department will prioritize protecting the homeland and the Western Hemisphere.

Countering China will remain a key national security interest of the new National Defense Strategy, which is expected to be released soon, officials said.

The Pentagon document lays out the military’s plans to increase lethality, deter aggression, confront adversaries and defend America’s borders, a mission one official said was “why Trump was elected.”

Republican voters in the 2024 presidential election ranked the economy and immigration as their most important issues, which Trump vowed to address and bring under control. On Jan. 20, on his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order calling on U.S. Northern Command to help “seal the borders and maintain the sovereignty, territorial integrity and security of the United States by repelling forms of invasion including unlawful mass migration, narcotics trafficking, human smuggling and trafficking and other criminal activities.”

“[Protecting] the border is the top priority for the base, and I think for moderates, too. So this shift is fulfilling that promise,” said one official, who spoke to Military Times on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive policy information.

RELATED

Army poised to expand role in homeland defense, commander says

U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command is preparing to open the aperture of its role in defense of the homeland as threats evolve and grow.

Defense of the American homeland has historically been the top national security priority for Republican and Democratic presidents alike.

To achieve this goal, the Pentagon has used a combination of projecting military power forward to meet threats where they are, building alliances to work together against common enemies, maintaining a strong nuclear deterrent and building a missile defense capability to protect key population centers.

After the U.S. was attacked on Sept. 11, 2001, Washington shifted to a counter-terror focus, as near-peer competitor Beijing continued to develop its military.

During the first Trump administration, the Pentagon reprioritized to focus on great-power competition with China and Russia over countering terrorism. Keeping its competitive advantage over China and Russia remained the department’s top priority under the Biden administration.

One official stressed to Military Times this week that the new NDS will not be a complete shift away from China. Instead, the official said the Pentagon can use this hyperfocus on the Western Hemisphere to better counter Chinese malign activity in Latin America, a region often thought of as “America’s backyard.”

“For too long, China, Russia and Iran have been active in Latin America, and Washington’s response has often been somewhere between nonexistent and ineffective,” said Bradley Bowman, senior director of the Center on Military and Political Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

However, analysts, including Bowman, caution that if the U.S. only brings a “military hammer” to a region that needs interagency and public-private sector support for its economic challenges, the U.S. “will lose the competition with China in Latin America and waste a lot of money and military resources.”

He also warned that defending U.S. vital interests in the Pacific, Europe and the Middle East while adopting a more robust U.S. military posture in Latin America could quickly exacerbate existing shortfalls in U.S. military capacity.

“If we take on additional military commitments and requirements and don’t provide the Pentagon commensurate additional resources, readiness will erode. We have seen that movie before, and it is not a good one,” Bowman said.

As part of the new strategy, the department will continue to focus more on drug cartels, including cartels that are tied to China, according to a U.S. official. The official added that China has drastically increased its footprint in Latin America, particularly around the Panama Canal, a critical trade route for both Washington and Beijing.

“So the strategy is still very keyed in on defending against China,” the official stressed.

Michael Shifter, an adjunct professor of Latin American studies at Georgetown University, said the Panama Canal is “clearly” important to Trump. Negotiations are underway to shift two ports there away from Chinese operations to those controlled by the U.S. company BlackRock, and Panama has withdrawn from China’s Belt and Road Initiative, which has extended Chinese investment to more than 100 nations.

With the current administration focused on the illegal drug problem in the region, Shifter hopes U.S. military assistance to Latin America will not repeat the actions of its checkered past. Washington’s war on drugs in the 1980s, along with its determination to keep communism out of the Western Hemisphere, led to policies backing militaries that terrorized local populations and committed human rights atrocities.

The last time the U.S. sent ground troops to Latin America was during the 1989 invasion of Panama to depose de facto ruler Gen. Manuel Noriega, who was wanted in the U.S. for racketeering and drug trafficking. Shifter is “very skeptical” whether the U.S. would send ground troops anywhere in Latin America today.

“I don’t see that the president wants to risk American lives anywhere, and a lot of people got killed in Panama. If he did it in Venezuela, a lot more people would get killed. I think that would be huge risk that I don’t see Trump being prepared to take,” Shifter told Military Times.

Meanwhile, Trump said Friday the U.S. military had carried out its third fatal strike against an alleged drug-smuggling vessel this month.

On Wednesday Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro told BBC News that the strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea near the Venezuelan coast were an “act of tyranny.” The strikes, which the U.S. says are meant to stop the flow of fentanyl, have reportedly killed at least 17 people.

Shifter said actions like these make people in the region nervous while questioning the strikes’ legality.

“[The administration is] trying to say that these are terrorists, like al-Qaida was a terrorist group, but al-Qaida was a military force. These are people that are breaking the law. They’re not terrorists, per se. They’re not attacking the United States like al-Qaida was, and so the legal justification for this is, I think, questionable,” Shifter said.

22. Alien Oracles: Military Decision-Making with Unexplainable AI

Excerpts:

We therefore suggest an oversight mechanism that adapts time-tested military principles for managing complex, high-risk systems, such as field artillery’s demand for independent verification of firing data. Applied to AI, justified trust can be generated not by explaining decisions, but by verifying consistent outputs from multiple, independently developed AIs. We propose bounding human oversight with two machine-speed gates — calibration by consensus and calibration by disagreement — so that only AI outputs surviving independent cross-checks reach a commander, with structured divergence serving as the trigger for human intervention. Put plainly: Without calibration gates, on-the-loop oversight collapses into either rubber‑stamping agent outputs or throttling them to human speed — precisely what AI-enabled warfare is designed to escape.

Calibration by consensus (an example of ensemble learning) uses multiple independent AI agents — perhaps with different algorithms or training data — to analyze the same problem. Just as artillery missions proceed only when independently calculated firing solutions match within tolerance, an AI solution gains justified trust when diverse AI agents converge on congruent outputs.

Calibration by disagreement mirrors the artillery’s adjustment of fire process, where initial shots are expected to miss and their divergence from the target provides essential information for correction. In gunnery, accuracy is achieved not by assuming the first round will be perfect, but by observing the error, diagnosing its cause, and iteratively refining aim until confidence is high enough to fire for effect. Likewise, when multiple AI agents generate conflicting recommendations, the disagreement itself becomes a diagnostic signal: it reveals hidden biases, data anomalies, or unpredictable model behaviors that warrant human scrutiny. Trust emerges not from assuming transparency into the AI’s “mind,” but from the observable and verifiable process of convergence — where divergence is deliberately surfaced, interrogated, and used to correct course before decisions are executed. In both cases, the inner workings of individual AIs are less important than the observable and reliable effects of the multi-agent system: Hidden errors and biases are surfaced through divergence and only recommendations that withstand this adversarial scrutiny are trusted for action.

The military has long understood that trust is earned through results. Grant’s audacious Vicksburg campaign seemed reckless to Sherman, but Sherman knew and trusted his superior. The most impactful AI strategies will frequently defy human logic. The key to cultivating justified trust in these opaque oracles is rigorous calibration and confidence built on experience, not explainability. A decisive advantage in tomorrow’s complex battlespaces requires that the U.S. military develop calibration methods that enable commanders to confidently and swiftly execute AI-generated plans, even when their underlying genius remains a mystery.

Alien Oracles: Military Decision-Making with Unexplainable AI

Andrew Hill and Dustin Blair

September 26, 2025

warontherocks.com · September 26, 2025

Would you stake thousands of lives on a strategy that, by every measure of your training and experience, seems destined for catastrophic failure?

In 1863, with the Vicksburg campaign stalled, Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant conceived a plan that left Maj. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman predicting defeat: The Union Army of the Tennessee would march deep into enemy territory, cutting loose its own supply lines to attack the city from the rear. Sherman, himself no slouch in warfare, saw it as reckless — a trap an “enemy would be glad to manoeuvre a year… to get [Grant] in.” Indeed, it defied all military orthodoxy of the time, which stressed secure supply lines, a safe base of operations, and concentration of force. Grant did the opposite: he cut loose from his depots, marched his army between two enemy forces, and sought to cross the Mississippi without a protected line of retreat. But Sherman followed orders and did his part. Grant’s baffling plan worked and Vicksburg fell.

The tension embodied by Sherman’s skepticism at Vicksburg — where a sound, conventional assessment clashes with an unconventional, risky, but brilliant approach — may find a strange echo in modern warfare. Advanced AI will likely propose strategies that appear as alien to commanders as Grant’s plan did to Sherman: opaque, counterintuitive, yet possibly decisive.

This creates an AI-command dilemma and raises a critical question: How can military leaders develop justified trust in these alien oracles when their reasoning cannot be fully understood? This challenge to trust is not arbitrary. It arises directly from three dynamics of strategically creative AI: strategic acuity, the inverse relationship between AI creativity and comprehensibility, and the limits of explainable AI.

To an extent, this analysis inverts the problem posed by advanced artificial intelligence in warfare. Instead of examining the difficulties posed by lethal, fully autonomous AI agents executing human commands, we highlight the challenge to military commanders who become the agents of an advanced AI system’s possibly brilliant but incomprehensible strategies.

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Strategic Acuity

AI-enabled decision-making is an inevitable feature of future warfare. Military operations in modern warfare are increasing in speed and complexity due to the spread of robotic systems and the growing importance of cyber and electronic warfare — developments that demand fast, coordinated action. For the U.S. military to sustain a competitive advantage in this environment, advanced AI systems should shape command decisions at the operational and strategic levels of war. To do this, the United States will be forced to confront the unprecedented challenge of integrating AI systems whose most decisive recommendations often defy human understanding.

This operational need leads to the first principle: advanced AI systems will possess high levels of strategic acuity, able to formulate judgments of exceptional creativity and effectiveness that far surpass human capabilities in certain complex domains. The exceptional strategic judgment of advanced AI stems from basic technological advantages that allow it to process information, learn, and strategize in ways different from — and in many respects superior to — human cognition. While we cannot do justice to the technological characteristics that may produce AI’s strategic acuity, two current attributes of AI are worth mentioning.

First, modern AI systems, particularly deep learning models, have mass-scale pattern recognition and computational depth. They can process and identify intricate, subtle patterns within vast datasets (e.g., millions of past wargames, sensor feeds, or historical scenarios), enabling advanced AI to perceive complex interdependencies and long-term implications that escape human perception. As one analysis of AI-enabled warfare puts it, this can surface signals residing “far below the noise level for human observation.” An AI can evaluate billions of potential moves in a complex game like Go or chess, calculating probabilities and outcomes with unparalleled depth and speed, allowing it to foresee strategic advantages many turns ahead.

Second, modern AIs can engage in self-supervised learning and unconstrained exploration. Through techniques like reinforcement learning and self-play, advanced AIs can learn and refine strategies without human instruction or even human-generated data. By repeatedly playing against themselves or in simulated environments, they explore the problem space, discovering novel solutions and optimizing strategies, unconstrained by human biases or historical precedents. AlphaZero demonstrated this by achieving superhuman performance in chess, shogi, and Go within hours, developing creative and unorthodox strategies that redefined optimal play.

The Inverse Comprehensibility-Creativity Relationship

However, this acuity gives rise to the second principle: The degree of creativity and non-obviousness in an AI’s strategic judgment is inversely proportional to its immediate comprehensibility to human commanders. The mechanisms that enable truly novel and superior strategic outcomes often make those solutions opaque to human understanding.

Unlike humans, who rely on learned and innate heuristics (which can be prone to biases and other dysfunctions), advanced AI systems can operate on emergent, trans-human heuristics that are optimized purely for performance, not for human interpretability. AlphaGo’s Move 37 against Lee Sedol perfectly encapsulates this: it was a move initially dismissed by human Go masters as a mistake, violating conventional wisdom, yet proved to be a strategically pivotal and ultimately correct play. The same capacity for counterintuitive optimization extends to more complex strategic domains, as seen with DeepMind’s AlphaStar mastering StarCraft II with strategies that were deemed “unimaginably unusual” by top human players.

Military commanders, accustomed to explanations rooted in familiar axioms, historical analogies, and clear causal links, will find these highly optimized AI-generated solutions difficult to intuitively grasp or trust. The inherent disconnect between AI’s alien logic and human intuition means that, as AI becomes more strategically astute and genuinely innovative, the cognitive burden on human commanders to understand why a decision is optimal increases, exceeding the limits of intuitive human comprehension.

The Practical Explainability Limit

Given their strategic acuity and the inverse relationship between AI creativity and comprehensibility to humans, advanced AI systems will be inherently unexplainable in a manner that fully conveys the underlying rationale to human users in real-time decision-making.

Demanding a fully human-comprehensible explanation for AI decisions — especially for the most creative insights — faces practical limits. The sophisticated calculations that drive an AI’s decisions can be incompatible with human-interpretable logic. The AI might provide a post hoc rationalization that appears plausible and comforting, but the explanation may bear little resemblance to the AI’s actual computational path. Just as a parent may explain to a child the apparently magical appearance of gifts with a satisfying but inaccurate story about Santa Claus and reindeer, an AI can generate an explanation for its decision that is human-comprehensible — plausible, comforting, yet fundamentally disconnected from reality — but risks creating an illusion of understanding and misplaced confidence.

Even well-intentioned explainable AI frameworks grapple with this inherent tension. While goals like providing a meaningful explanation are vital, the core challenge lies in ensuring explanation accuracy —that the explanation genuinely reflects the AI’s complex internal processes. For advanced, opaque models, verifying such accuracy is incredibly difficult, often impossible, and even if accurate, humans may struggle to distinguish a valid explanation from a fabricated one. Furthermore, explanations can be manipulated or oversimplified to achieve understandability at the cost of fidelity. In wartime decision-making, the extreme time pressures and cognitive load make the exhaustive analysis needed to decipher or validate complex AI explanations an unrealistic aim.

Training and educating human users to be better skeptics of AI is insufficient to solve this problem. Such skepticism will create deep tension with the military’s need for speed in decision-making. A 2024 Carnegie Endowment study simulating a Taiwan crisis found that leaders hesitated to act on AI-generated recommendations, slowing decisions as they interrogated the system’s logic. One vision suggests that “the new coup d’œil will be a form of intuition about when to have confidence in assured AI and when to question model-driven results.” What if the strategic leaps of an AI system are so far beyond human understanding that such a coup d’œil is no longer possible?

Managing the AI-Command Dilemma

As a result of these dynamics, commanders will face a tough dilemma: accept and act upon recommendations they do not fully understand or intuitively trust, or reject those judgments and risk being beaten by an AI-enabled adversary. As Erik Lin-Greenberg notes, militaries “that effectively integrate AI technology will be better positioned to counter threats, while those that allow AI to stymie decision-making and operations may find themselves disadvantaged on the battlefield.” Future AI systems must be designed not just for technical excellence, but with human psychology and decision-making under pressure in mind. That means designing AI that manages risk, communicates confidence levels, and supports commanders in making informed choices when faced with an AI’s perplexing recommendations. Navigating this AI-command dilemma will be central to future military success.

The central challenge then, is this: How does a military produce justified trust in advanced AI without explainability? If AI-enabled warfare is as fast as some predict, human-on-the-loop oversight will be unable to keep pace with the event rate. Explanations for an AI system’s most creative recommendations will be difficult — if not impossible — to verify at speed.

We therefore suggest an oversight mechanism that adapts time-tested military principles for managing complex, high-risk systems, such as field artillery’s demand for independent verification of firing data. Applied to AI, justified trust can be generated not by explaining decisions, but by verifying consistent outputs from multiple, independently developed AIs. We propose bounding human oversight with two machine-speed gates — calibration by consensus and calibration by disagreement — so that only AI outputs surviving independent cross-checks reach a commander, with structured divergence serving as the trigger for human intervention. Put plainly: Without calibration gates, on-the-loop oversight collapses into either rubber‑stamping agent outputs or throttling them to human speed — precisely what AI-enabled warfare is designed to escape.

Calibration by consensus (an example of ensemble learning) uses multiple independent AI agents — perhaps with different algorithms or training data — to analyze the same problem. Just as artillery missions proceed only when independently calculated firing solutions match within tolerance, an AI solution gains justified trust when diverse AI agents converge on congruent outputs.

Calibration by disagreement mirrors the artillery’s adjustment of fire process, where initial shots are expected to miss and their divergence from the target provides essential information for correction. In gunnery, accuracy is achieved not by assuming the first round will be perfect, but by observing the error, diagnosing its cause, and iteratively refining aim until confidence is high enough to fire for effect. Likewise, when multiple AI agents generate conflicting recommendations, the disagreement itself becomes a diagnostic signal: it reveals hidden biases, data anomalies, or unpredictable model behaviors that warrant human scrutiny. Trust emerges not from assuming transparency into the AI’s “mind,” but from the observable and verifiable process of convergence — where divergence is deliberately surfaced, interrogated, and used to correct course before decisions are executed. In both cases, the inner workings of individual AIs are less important than the observable and reliable effects of the multi-agent system: Hidden errors and biases are surfaced through divergence and only recommendations that withstand this adversarial scrutiny are trusted for action.

The military has long understood that trust is earned through results. Grant’s audacious Vicksburg campaign seemed reckless to Sherman, but Sherman knew and trusted his superior. The most impactful AI strategies will frequently defy human logic. The key to cultivating justified trust in these opaque oracles is rigorous calibration and confidence built on experience, not explainability. A decisive advantage in tomorrow’s complex battlespaces requires that the U.S. military develop calibration methods that enable commanders to confidently and swiftly execute AI-generated plans, even when their underlying genius remains a mystery.

BECOME A MEMBER

Andrew A. Hill, DBA, is the General Brehon Burke Somervell chair of management at the U.S. Army War College.

Dustin Blair is an Army officer who currently serves as chief of fires at U.S. Army Cyber Command. A graduate of the U.S. Army War College, he deployed multiple times to Afghanistan and Iraq.

The views expressed in this article are the authors’ and do not represent the opinions, policies, or positions of U.S. Army Cyber Command, the U.S. Army War College, the U.S. Army, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. government.

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

Image: Midjourney

warontherocks.com · September 26, 2025

23. Justice Department Lays Groundwork for Probes of Soros-Funded Group

Justice Department Lays Groundwork for Probes of Soros-Funded Group

Memo urging investigation comes after Trump called on prosecutors to pursue liberal philanthropist

https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/justice-department-lays-groundwork-for-probes-of-soros-funded-group-215afca4

By Sadie Gurman

Follow and Annie Linskey

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Updated Sept. 25, 2025 6:10 pm ET

President Trump has ordered the Justice Department to prosecute his perceived adversaries. Photo: kevin lamarque/Reuters

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• The Justice Department has instructed federal prosecutors to draft plans for investigating the Open Society Foundations.View more

WASHINGTON—The Justice Department has told federal prosecutors to draft plans to investigate a group funded by liberal philanthropist George Soros, a person familiar with the plans said, amid an escalating crackdown on President Trump’s opponents and critics.

A senior Justice Department official in a memo this week urged several U.S. attorneys offices across the country to investigate the Open Society Foundations and consider an array of criminal charges including fraud, money laundering, racketeering and providing material support for terrorism, the person said.

Trump has threatened to use the federal government to target political speech he deems objectionable in the aftermath of the fatal shooting Sept. 10 of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. Trump’s supporters have attacked Soros because of his long history of financial support for Democrats and liberal causes. The president said last month in a social-media post that Soros should be federally charged with racketeering for what he alleged was his support of violent protests.

A Justice Department spokesman didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. 

Open Society Foundations in a statement denounced the department’s move as an effort to silence Trump’s critics. It said it doesn’t support or fund terrorism. “Our activities are peaceful and lawful, and our grantees are expected to abide by human rights principles and comply with the law,” the group said.

Trump on Thursday signed a presidential memorandum on countering domestic terrorism and organized political violence that his team said will launch an administration-wide effort to root out political violence. The effort will involve various agencies, including the Justice Department and the Treasury Department, in breaking up groups administration officials believe are responsible for recent violence and tracking funding sources that support them.

The president mentioned the names of several top Democrats he said could be examined by the new task force, including Soros and top Democratic donor Reid Hoffman. “Soros is a name certainly that I keep hearing,” Trump said. “I hear names of some pretty rich people that are radical left people.”

George Soros Photo: fabrice coffrini/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Trump in recent days has stepped up demands that Attorney General Pam Bondi use the Justice Department to target his perceived adversaries. Department officials are racing to seek an indictment this week in Virginia against former Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey, even after prosecutors said there wasn’t enough evidence to support a criminal case.

Last Friday, the president ousted the U.S. attorney he had appointed earlier this year in the Eastern District of Virginia, Erik Siebert, who had raised doubts about a Comey prosecution. Siebert also told colleagues he didn’t see a mortgage fraud case to bring against another Trump rival, Democratic New York Attorney General Letitia James.

Justice Department official Aakash Singh this week asked prosecutors to lay the groundwork for Soros investigations, and cited a report by a conservative group known as the Capital Research Center, which tracks liberal money in politics.

In the memo, reported earlier by the New York Times and described to The Wall Street Journal, Singh asked prosecutors to determine whether any of the allegations in the report, including that Soros’s foundation gave millions of dollars to groups tied to terrorism or extremist violence, warrant opening a case.

Write to Sadie Gurman at sadie.gurman@wsj.com and Annie Linskey at annie.linskey@wsj.com

Appeared in the September 26, 2025, print edition as 'DOJ Pushes for Soros-Funded Group’s Probe'.

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