Is India Planning an Exchange of Territory With Myanmar?

The Diplomat  |  Rajeev Bhattacharyya

An official Indian government proposal dated May 26, 2026, outlines a plan to exchange 1.4 square miles of territory with Myanmar to resolve a decades-old boundary dispute in Manipur's Chandel district. This proposed swap, contiguous to Myanmar's Kabaw Valley in the Sagaing Region, aims to complete the demarcation between border pillars 65 and 68 within three months.

The expedited demarcation is driven by New Delhi's urgency to construct a comprehensive border fence and patrol track along the entire 1,643-kilometer frontier. The Manipur government and central authorities have previously struggled to resolve disputes in sensitive zones like Molcham, Moreh, and Choro Khunou. To secure this porous boundary against illegal immigration, cross-border crime, and insurgent movements, India has sanctioned $3.22 billion for the physical barrier. This strategic initiative seeks to finalize the work of the Joint Boundary Commission, which was established under a bilateral agreement signed in 1967 but left several sectors highly contested.

Comment

The proposed territorial exchange in Manipur's Chandel district reveals how unresolved border demarcations from the 1967 India-Myanmar Boundary Agreement continue to hinder New Delhi's contemporary security infrastructure plans. Finalising the boundary between border pillars 65 and 68 is a prerequisite for the construction of the planned 1,643-kilometre border fence. This territorial adjustment reflects a pragmatic shift in Indian border management along the Manipur sector, prioritising physical sealing over long-standing cartographic disputes to mitigate Naga and Meitei insurgent movements. By addressing these legacy anomalies, India seeks to eliminate the legal and administrative ambiguities that have historically exploited the porous Sagaing Region frontier.

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Why China Will Not Sell 5th-Generation J-35 Fighter Jets to Pakistan (Yet)

The Diplomat  |  Yang Xiaotong

Pakistan’s proposed acquisition of approximately 40 Chinese-made fifth-generation J-35 fighter jets remains stalled as Beijing hesitates to approve the landmark arms sale. This highly anticipated transaction would fundamentally alter the military balance of power on the Indian subcontinent, where neither Islamabad nor New Delhi currently operates advanced fifth-generation stealth aircraft.

Historically, the Chinese government has supplied extensive military hardware to establish its neighbor as a strategic counterweight against Indian forces along their disputed borders. However, Chinese policymakers fear that introducing these advanced stealth platforms could destabilise the fragile peace and provoke escalation over Kashmir. Furthermore, domestic military requirements within the People's Liberation Army take precedence, while the Pakistani defence budget remains severely constrained by ongoing economic challenges. Consequently, despite previous aerial engagements like the 2025 border conflict involving fourth-generation J-10C and Rafale aircraft, a near-term transfer of these high-end platforms remains highly improbable.

Comment

Beijing's hesitation to export the J-35 stealth fighter preserves the Indian Air Force's temporary qualitative edge. This breathing space allows New Delhi to operationalise its S-400 Triumf air defence squadrons along the Line of Control. Consequently, the delay mitigates immediate interception challenges for India's Sukhoi Su-30MKI fleet, which remains highly vulnerable to low-observable targets.

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Nepali PM Balendra Shah’s Image as a Change Agent is at Risk

The Diplomat  |  Biswas Baral

Nepal’s Prime Minister Balendra Shah is facing a critical erosion of his public image as a reformist leader following his administration's aggressive execution of public plans at the expense of the country's impoverished populations. This governance style prioritises visible infrastructure projects over the basic welfare of marginalized citizens, threatening the political capital of his newly formed cabinet.

The transition from municipal leadership in Kathmandu to the federal executive office on July 14, 2026, has amplified scrutiny of these authoritarian tendencies. Historically, the prime minister leveraged a populist mandate to bypass traditional parliamentary procedures and constitutional norms. However, the ongoing eviction of urban squatters and a perceived indifference to rising unemployment have galvanized domestic opposition. This domestic backlash risks destabilizing the ruling coalition and complicating Nepal's delicate balance of foreign relations in South Asia. Ultimately, the administration's trajectory depends on whether the executive pivots toward inclusive governance or continues to rely on a centralized cult of personality to maintain authority.

Comment

The Kathmandu Metropolitan City squatter clearance campaign under Balendra Shah's leadership demonstrates a stark strategic trade-off between rapid urban modernisation and grassroots social stability. By bypassing the National Land Commission to expedite these evictions, the executive prioritises immediate aesthetic and infrastructural metrics over long-term institutional consensus. This preference for unilateral executive action over procedural deliberation risks alienating the urban poor, potentially transforming localised grievances into a broader systemic backlash against the federal coalition in Kathmandu.

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China’s Moment of Weakness

Foreign Affairs  |  Logan Wright

China is experiencing a period of profound economic decay that has fundamentally altered the nature of its strategic challenge to the United States. This rapid domestic transformation presents Washington with an urgent and potentially definitive opportunity to reshape its competitive posture in the Indo-Pacific before Beijing can stabilize its financial markets.

Over the past four years, structural shifts in the Chinese financial system and broader economy have eroded the foundations of the country's rapid growth model. These systemic vulnerabilities, detailed in Rhodium Group's research on financial markets, limit Beijing's capacity to project power globally, sustain its aggressive industrial policies, and finance its overseas development initiatives. Consequently, domestic policymakers can exploit these fiscal constraints to secure long-term advantages in technology policy, military planning, and student visa regulations. Navigating this transition requires the administration to pivot from countering an ascendant superpower to managing a structurally weakened competitor that remains highly volatile.

Comment

Slowing domestic growth directly constrains Beijing's ability to subsidise capital-intensive projects under the Belt and Road Initiative. This fiscal contraction limits the state's capacity to absorb the massive financial overhead required for the rapid expansion of the People's Liberation Army Navy fleet. Consequently, the high costs of maintaining advanced platforms like the Type 055 destroyers will increasingly compete with local government debt-stabilisation priorities within China's provinces.

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Evolution, Not Revolution: Why China Isn’t Pushing Its Cleantech Advantage in the Hormuz Crisis

Council on Foreign Relations  |  David M. Hart

China massively reduced its fossil fuel imports following the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, moderating global oil price spikes to protect its broader export economy. The Chinese government resisted leveraging this energy crisis to aggressively accelerate its clean energy technology exports, prioritizing overall global trade stability over short-term market disruption.

This restraint stems from the fact that the "new three" sectors—solar panels, batteries, and electric vehicles—accounted for only 6 percent of China's $3.77 trillion total exports in 2025. Consequently, escalating energy costs would have severely depressed global demand for China's primary revenue-generating exports like electronics, textiles, metals, and chemicals. With domestic demand stagnating, the Chinese government prioritized overall economic stability and vital export revenues over short-term cleantech market expansion. Ultimately, the crisis is projected to drive a gradual, long-term global transition toward Chinese-supplied renewables as importing nations seek to mitigate future energy security risks.

Comment

Beijing’s decision to suppress domestic oil demand during the Strait of Hormuz closure exposes a critical strategic trade-off between long-term industrial dominance and immediate macroeconomic survival. While the "new three" clean energy sectors represent China's future geopolitical leverage, their minor share of total export value makes them secondary to legacy manufacturing sectors during global supply shocks. Protecting the broader export base of electronics and chemicals from demand destruction outweighs the tactical benefit of accelerating global clean energy adoption. This defensive posture reveals that China remains deeply vulnerable to global energy price volatility despite its massive domestic renewable energy expansion.

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China Bulletin: July 23, 2026

U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission

China established "routine" Coast Guard patrols east of Taiwan and conducted its first open-ocean submarine-launched ballistic missile test in the South Pacific, significantly escalating regional security tensions. These coordinated actions project Beijing's maritime law enforcement authority while demonstrating a credible sea-based nuclear second-strike capability designed to deter external intervention.

This dual-track security push occurs alongside mounting domestic economic challenges, as Chinese credit growth plummeted to record lows in the first half of 2026 despite historically low benchmark lending rates. Furthermore, the ongoing conflict in Iran has driven up input costs, slowing real GDP growth to 4.3 percent in the second quarter and forcing a heavy reliance on artificial intelligence-related exports to sustain economic momentum. In response to these structural headwinds, Beijing is also consolidating its domestic technology sector by restricting local data center construction to national hubs, signaling a shift toward computing efficiency over raw scale.

Comment

The South Pacific trajectory of the recent test validates the extended range of the JL-3 missile when deployed from protected bastions like the South China Sea. Launching from a surfaced Type 094 platform, however, exposes persistent engineering limitations in underwater ejection systems and hydrodynamic stability during submerged firing sequences. This technical caution suggests that while the People's Liberation Army Navy has achieved the necessary range for a second-strike capability, operational reliability under combat conditions remains unproven.

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The Northern Frontier: China’s Presence in the Russian Far East

Strategic Space  |  Joanna Nawrotkiewicz

China's designation of Vladivostok as a domestic transit cargo hub in June 2023 marked a significant expansion of Beijing's economic footprint in the Russian Far East. This concession, accelerated by Moscow's post-invasion isolation, allows landlocked northeastern Chinese provinces to bypass domestic bottlenecks by routing goods through Russia's primary Pacific port.

Historically, the region was ceded to the Russian Empire under nineteenth-century treaties that Beijing officially associates with its "century of humiliation" narrative. Rather than pursuing overt territorial revisionism, the Chinese Communist Party utilizes managed cross-border connectivity to secure resource corridors and Arctic access while suppressing domestic nationalist grievances to preserve its strategic partnership with Moscow. Conversely, Russian policymakers face a persistent dilemma, fearing that growing economic asymmetry will bind their sparsely populated eastern territories closer to Beijing's economy than to their own federal center. Despite these integration efforts, bilateral cooperation remains highly transactional, as demonstrated by prolonged negotiations over the Power of Siberia 2 pipeline and banking restrictions.

Comment

The designation of Vladivostok as a transit hub for Chinese domestic cargo exposes the structural imbalance defining the contemporary Sino-Russian alignment. While Moscow relies on the Free Port of Vladivostok to mitigate Western sanctions, Beijing exploits this dependency to integrate the Russian Far East into its own northeastern economic grid without assuming the administrative costs of territorial governance. This transactional dynamic allows the Chinese Communist Party to extract critical resource concessions while maintaining the flexibility to stall high-capital projects like the Power of Siberia 2 pipeline when geopolitical risks escalate. Consequently, the Sino-Russian partnership functions not as a mutual defence pact, but as an asymmetric arrangement where Beijing dictates the terms of Siberian resource extraction.

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When China Gets Its Own Mythos: Preparing for an AI Cyber Crisis

Foreign Affairs | Michael Sulmeyer

Anthropic’s Claude Mythos AI model has demonstrated unprecedented capabilities in autonomously identifying and exploiting software vulnerabilities, raising urgent national security concerns. This technological leap threatens to compress the timeline for the United States and its allies to secure critical infrastructure against AI-powered cyberwarfare from years to mere months.

Historically, executing highly disruptive physical attacks on industrial control systems required scarce, elite specialists fluent in obscure proprietary protocols. However, China is rapidly developing domestic alternatives like Zhipu AI’s GLM-5.2 and utilizing adversarial distillation to harvest American IP. Beijing aims to leverage these offensive AI capabilities to preposition state-linked actors within Western water, power, and transit networks, establishing a credible deterrent over Taiwan. To counter this imminent threat, Washington must deploy joint capabilities from the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command to disrupt adversary distillation infrastructure and empower specialized entities like the Idaho National Laboratory.

Comment

The integration of autonomous vulnerability discovery tools like Claude Mythos shifts the doctrine of cyber operations from targeted, high-resource intrusions to automated, continuous saturation campaigns. Prepositioning operations, such as those executed during the Volt Typhoon campaign, no longer require prolonged reconnaissance phases to map proprietary industrial control protocols. Consequently, the operational threshold for disabling critical infrastructure falls dramatically, transforming cyber-physical disruption from a rare strategic option into a cheap, persistent tool of peacetime coercion. By automating the transition from access to physical control, these models compress the decision cycle between initial penetration and systemic failure.

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Houthi attacks raise fears of wider Middle East conflict and more global economic damage

BBC News  |  Frank Gardner

Yemen's Houthi rebels have launched missile attacks against shipping in the Red Sea, threatening to choke off the strategic Bab el-Mandeb Strait and disrupt the primary maritime corridor connecting Europe to Asia. This escalation directly targets Saudi tankers, including two vessels struck this week, severely undermining Riyadh's efforts to bypass the blockaded Strait of Hormuz.

The maritime crisis stems from a breakdown of the 2022 Yemeni ceasefire, drawing the entrenched insurgent group back into active regional hostilities alongside ongoing US military strikes against Iranian command and drone infrastructure. As the US Central Command continues nightly retaliatory raids, the dual blockades of these critical Middle Eastern chokepoints threaten to severely destabilise global energy supply chains and escalate international inflation. Concurrently, a newly announced US-Saudi civil nuclear agreement raises long-term proliferation concerns, risking a broader regional arms race involving rival powers Turkey and Egypt.

Comment

The targeting of vessels transiting past the Bab el-Mandeb nullifies the operational utility of the Saudi East-West Pipeline as a strategic bypass. While the Petroline allows crude to reach the Red Sea terminal at Yanbu' Al-Bahr, subsequent southward maritime transit remains entirely vulnerable to Houthi coastal missile batteries. This operational bottleneck forces a reliance on northern transit routes through the Suez Canal or costly Cape of Good Hope diversions, exposing the limits of land-based pipeline redundancies against persistent littoral denial capabilities.

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Yemen: Conflict, Red Sea Security, And U.S. Policy

Eurasia Review  |  Christopher M. Blanchard

Yemen-based Houthi militants renewed threats against Israeli and Saudi Arabian shipping in mid-2026, raising the risk of severe disruptions along the strategic Bab al Mandab Strait. This escalation follows a temporary bilateral truce brokered by Oman in May 2025 after intensive United States military strikes against Houthi targets.

The ongoing civil war, which began in 2015, has entrenched Houthi control over northwestern Yemen and the capital city of Sana'a. Recent regional friction has fractured the anti-Houthi coalition, leading to the dissolution of the Southern Transitional Council after Saudi military intervention in late 2025. Consequently, the United States has designated the Houthis as a Foreign Terrorist Organization and authorized the transfer of seized weapons to counter their persistent maritime threat. Meanwhile, a severe funding shortfall has forced the World Food Programme to terminate operations in Houthi-controlled northern Yemen, leaving over 18 million people acutely food insecure.

Comment

The resumption of Houthi strikes on shipping in the Bab al Mandab Strait exposes the limits of localised deterrence agreements like the 2025 Oman-brokered truce. By leveraging newly established air links to Sana'a airport, the group has successfully bypassed regional maritime blockades to replenish its precision-guided munitions stockpile. This operational resilience forces commercial shipping to permanently reroute around the Cape of Good Hope, structurally inflating global maritime transit costs.

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Rubio Warns Tehran As Iran Hits Kuwait Bases, Houthis Claim Strikes On Tankers

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty

United States military bases in Kuwait, including Ali Al Salem and Camp Arifjan, targeted by Iranian missile and drone strikes on July 23, have escalated the direct conflict between Washington and Tehran. This multi-front escalation followed a twelfth consecutive night of American airstrikes aimed at degrading the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps' maritime and air defense capabilities.

The collapse of the mid-June ceasefire has forced commercial shipping to reroute as Tehran declares the Strait of Hormuz closed and Yemen's Houthi rebels launch retaliatory strikes against Saudi tankers in the Red Sea. These maritime disruptions threaten global energy corridors, driving up oil prices while expanding the theater of operations. Consequently, Washington has deployed additional troops and assets to the region, raising the total conflict cost to $37.5 billion. Meanwhile, Jordan and Kuwait have intercepted multiple incoming aerial threats, highlighting the growing regional spillover and the heightened risk of a wider interstate war.

Comment

The targeting of Ali Al Salem air base and Camp Arifjan exposes the vulnerability of forward-deployed American logistics nodes to Iranian short-range ballistic missiles and drone salvos. By expanding the geographic scope of retaliatory strikes into Kuwait, Tehran demonstrates that hosting agreements do not guarantee sanctuary during active hostilities. This operational expansion forces a reassessment of theater-wide air defence distribution, requiring Patriot batteries to cover previously low-threat rear areas. The resulting dispersion of defensive assets dilutes the protection available to critical maritime chokepoints like the Strait of Hormuz.

The Bayer Truth About Trump’s Farm and Food Policies

Project Syndicate  |  Christopher Marquis

The US Supreme Court ruled 7–2 on June 25, 2026, that federal pesticide labeling laws preclude state-level lawsuits against Monsanto over cancer risks associated with its Roundup weed killer. This decision, actively encouraged by President Donald Trump’s administration, shields corporate agricultural giants from significant legal liabilities.

Hours after the judicial ruling, the administration sought to balance public sentiment by signing an executive order titled “Advancing Regenerative Agriculture and Strengthening American Farm Resilience.” While the directive purports to secure the healthiest and most affordable food supply in the United States, critics argue it establishes a familiar political pattern of offering reassuring rhetoric to the public while delivering tangible regulatory relief to major corporate interests. This dual approach highlights the ongoing tension between federal regulatory preemption and state-level consumer protection efforts. Ultimately, the alignment of executive policy and judicial outcomes consolidates the market power of multinational agrochemical firms at the expense of local legal recourse.

Comment

The application of federal preemption under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act effectively centralises regulatory authority, limiting the capacity of individual US states to impose stricter consumer warning standards. By shielding multinational entities like Bayer from localized tort liability, this legal mechanism alters the risk environment for corporate chemical manufacturers operating within the American domestic market. This consolidation of federal oversight curtails the traditional dual-enforcement framework wherein state courts supplement national environmental protections. Consequently, the judicial restriction on state-level litigation establishes a precedent that prioritises uniform federal commerce standards over regional public health mandates.

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MORNING GLORY: President Trump, Iran and Napoleon’s still-relevant maxim

Fox News  |  Hugh Hewitt

President Donald Trump faces a critical strategic decision regarding Iran's deeply buried nuclear weapons development facilities, where half-measures risk a catastrophic foreign policy failure. The Islamic Republic is actively constructing an ultra-deep nuclear site inside Pickaxe Mountain, a facility designed to withstand even the heaviest conventional American bunker-buster munitions.

This underground expansion follows the previous U.S. destruction of Iran's Fordow facility using heavy ordnance, highlighting the regime's persistent pursuit of weapons of mass destruction despite severe economic sanctions and hyperinflation. Led by Revolutionary Guards Commander-in-Chief Ahmed Vahidi, the theocratic leadership operates under an apocalyptic Twelver theological framework that prioritises ideological mission over regime survival. Abandoning this confrontation now could result in a severe foreign policy debacle comparable to the 2021 Afghanistan withdrawal, meaning the administration must sustain maximum pressure to prevent a nuclear-armed Tehran from permanently destabilising the Middle East.

Comment

The excavation of the Pickaxe Mountain facility at depths exceeding those of Fordow directly challenges the physical penetration limits of the United States Air Force's GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator. With the Zagros Mountains providing natural granite shielding, kinetic strikes by B-2 Spirit bombers cannot guarantee the destruction of Iran's deeply buried centrifuge cascades. Consequently, the limitations of the GBU-57 payload force Washington to rely on cyber operations like Stuxnet-style disruptions or prolonged economic interdiction to delay Tehran's breakout timeline.

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Trump’s air war in Iran may be reaching its limits

Fox News  |  Paul McLeary

President Donald Trump has threatened to bomb Iranian civilian infrastructure, including power plants and bridges, in response to ongoing attacks on shipping in the Strait of Hormuz. This escalation occurs five months into a U.S. air campaign that has failed to deter Tehran or eliminate its drone and missile capabilities, resulting in the recent deaths of three American servicemembers.

The current military stalemate reflects the historical limitations of relying solely on aviation assets to force regime capitulation or secure strategic maritime chokepoints. To sustain these ongoing operations, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has requested an additional $67 billion on top of a record $1.5 trillion budget, even as independent estimates report 1,700 civilian deaths inside Iran following cuts to the Pentagon's civilian protection office. With 50,000 troops deployed and no ground invasion planned, the administration lacks a clear strategic offramp as domestic political support for the war steadily declines.

Comment

Deploying B-1 bombers against Iranian infrastructure exposes the doctrinal limits of using air power to secure the Strait of Hormuz. Tehran's mobile anti-ship missiles and drone fleets easily survive precision bombardment to maintain active interdiction capabilities. The Pentagon's inability to suppress these mobile systems demonstrates that aerial denial cannot force Iranian capitulation. The resulting stalemate reveals the limits of relying on stand-off precision strikes against entrenched Persian Gulf adversaries.

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Rising U.S. Casualties in the Iran War Should Force a Rethink of Middle East Basing

Council on Foreign Relations  |  Elliott Abrams

U.S. military installations across the Persian Gulf face severe vulnerabilities from Iranian missile and drone strikes, resulting in seventeen American service member deaths and five hundred injuries. These forward positions, including Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar and the Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain, were established when regional adversaries lacked advanced standoff capabilities.

This legacy geographic footprint, situated as close as 62 miles from Iranian territory, offers minimal early warning or reaction time against modern precision-guided munitions. Consequently, the Pentagon is shifting aircraft and personnel to deeper locations like Ramon Air Base in Israel and installations in Jordan to mitigate immediate operational risks. However, establishing a dispersed, resilient basing architecture faces steep obstacles, including multi-billion-dollar construction costs and diplomatic resistance from regional hosts wary of attracting retaliatory strikes. The slow pace of this transition leaves remaining personnel exposed to continued attrition as regional tensions escalate.

Comment

The relocation of assets from Al Udeid Air Base to Ramon Air Base in Israel alters the operational depth of American air power in the Middle East. While this shift increases the physical distance from Iranian short-range ballistic missiles, it simultaneously extends transit times for combat sorties over the Persian Gulf. Consequently, aerial refuelling requirements for platforms like the KC-135 Stratotanker will increase, potentially bottlenecking sustained strike operations. This geographic dispersion also fragments the centralised command structure previously consolidated within the Combined Air Operations Center in Qatar.

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How the U.S. Can Survive a Large-Scale AI Cyberattack

Center for Strategic and International Studies | Andrew Faulhaber

Anthropic’s decision to withhold its Claude Mythos frontier artificial intelligence model due to its 73 percent success rate in expert hacking simulations exposes the growing threat of automated, large-scale cyberattacks against United States critical infrastructure. A coordinated strike on these 16 critical sectors could paralyze power grids, financial systems, and emergency services.

To mitigate these vulnerabilities, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency acts as the national coordinator, yet it lacks the authoritative command to direct other federal entities during a crisis. Establishing a physical operations center for the Cyber Unified Coordination Group would bridge this leadership gap, enabling real-time cyber threat intelligence sharing between the military, civilian agencies, and private operators who own most domestic infrastructure. Furthermore, expanding initiatives like CISA's Cyber Storm exercises and Anthropic's Project Glasswing will incentivize private sector defense, securing critical networks before offensive AI capabilities are fully weaponized by adversaries.

Comment

The structural limitation of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency as a coordinator rather than a directive authority exposes a fundamental vulnerability in American domestic cyber command and control. Informal coordination forums like the Cyber Unified Coordination Group introduce critical latency. Without empowering CISA with the statutory authority to issue binding directives to the Department of Energy and private utilities, the operational response to a grid-scale attack risks fragmentation. This friction between CISA and sector risk management agencies ensures that technical remediation cannot keep pace with the speed of machine-generated exploits.

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Strait escalation

Power Line | Scott Johnson

An Iranian missile attack on Muwaffaq Salti Airbase in Jordan killed two US service members on July 17, 2026, triggering intensive retaliatory strikes by US Central Command against Iranian assets. These retaliatory actions expanded to target critical infrastructure, including bridges around the strategic port of Bandar Abbas, to degrade Tehran's capability to disrupt maritime shipping.

This tactical escalation follows a pattern of Iranian forces adapting to Western air defences by deploying high-speed, manoeuvrable reentry vehicles to overcome the historically low accuracy of their ballistic missile inventory. To bypass interception systems, Tehran has increasingly integrated advanced reconnaissance satellites acquired from China and real-time targeting data provided by Russia. In response to these sophisticated threats and a subsequent drone-related US casualty in northern Iraq, Washington is deploying dozens of aerial refueling aircraft to Israel, signaling preparation for broader joint offensive operations against Iranian territory and regional proxy networks.

Comment

The integration of manoeuvrable reentry vehicles into Iran's medium-range ballistic missile arsenal, as demonstrated at Muwaffaq Salti Airbase, marks a critical shift from saturation tactics to precision terminal guidance. This technological evolution relies heavily on external enablers, specifically Chinese-manufactured reconnaissance satellites and Russian electronic warfare tactics, to overcome the terminal inaccuracies that plagued previous strikes against Israel. US retaliatory strikes on infrastructure near Bandar Abbas indicate a strategic focus on interdicting the maritime supply chains that import these critical dual-use microelectronics.

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Has Trump dragged the US into a forever war in Iran?

The Guardian  |  Mohamad Bazzi

Donald Trump has reignited military hostilities with Iran following the collapse of a short-lived bilateral ceasefire, threatening to drag the United States into a highly volatile, open-ended conflict. This rapid breakdown occurred after Tehran targeted commercial oil tankers in the southern corridor of the Strait of Hormuz, prompting daily retaliatory airstrikes from the Pentagon.

The sudden escalation dismantles a June memorandum of understanding that briefly reopened the vital waterway, which historically handles one-fifth of global oil and liquid gas transit. Despite repeated campaign promises to avoid foreign entanglements, the administration's insistence on a strict naval blockade and demands for unconditional surrender have instead locked Washington into a dangerous cycle of attrition. With future negotiations over Iran's nuclear program and maritime control now completely stalled, the risk of an all-out regional war looms as both sides resume active combat operations across the Middle East.

Comment

The reliance on the US Fifth Fleet to secure the southern corridor of the Strait of Hormuz exposes a critical operational vulnerability in sustained maritime escort missions. By routing commercial traffic closer to the Omani coast, naval planners stretch limited surface combatants across a narrow transit lane highly susceptible to Iranian land-based anti-ship cruise missiles. This geographic compression severely reduces reaction times for Aegis-equipped destroyers. Consequently, the persistent requirement for close-in protection depletes the ready missile cells of Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, limiting their endurance during prolonged engagements with Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps forces.

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Russia’s Digital Iron Curtain: How The Kremlin Is Reshaping The Russian Information Space

Eurasia Review  |  Roman Kusaiko

Russian authorities initiated a domestic ban on Telegram and WhatsApp in January 2026, forcing users toward the state-aligned messenger MAX to consolidate control over the national information space. This aggressive digital clampdown disrupts critical communication channels for military volunteers and frontline soldiers in the Special Military Operation who rely on these platforms for tactical coordination.

The restrictions represent the culmination of a decade-long 'sovereign internet' strategy initiated after the 2011–2012 domestic protests. By systematically acquiring platforms like VK and Rambler, and enforcing data localization laws, the Kremlin has centralized digital infrastructure under state-backed entities. The transition to MAX, managed by VK chief executive Vladimir Kiriyenko, enables extensive data harvesting modeled on China's WeChat ecosystem. However, eliminating independent digital spaces alienates military bloggers and the public, threatening to degrade Russia's soft power. As the 2030 presidential election approaches, this consolidation serves the political ambitions of the Kiriyenko-Kovalchuk alliance, cementing domestic information dominance.

Comment

The enforcement of the Telegram ban by Roskomnadzor signals a doctrinal transition wherein the Kremlin treats the domestic digital layer as sovereign territory. By replacing foreign platforms with the state-controlled MAX messenger, Moscow prioritises internal security and surveillance over external information operations. This transition exposes a critical vulnerability within the Russian Armed Forces, whose frontline units in Ukraine remain heavily dependent on commercial software for real-time artillery coordination.

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Ukraine’s winning strategy against Russia: Attrition

The Hill  |  Gian Gentile, Andrew Radin

Ukraine is successfully executing an attrition strategy against Russia by leveraging deep-strike capabilities and targeting critical infrastructure to offset its adversary's demographic advantages. Ukrainian long-range drone strikes have severely disrupted Russian logistics in Crimea and degraded industrial targets deep within Russian territory, forcing Moscow into an increasingly precarious economic position.

This systematic degradation of supply lines and industrial assets challenges the traditional assumption that a larger population guarantees victory in a prolonged conflict. By shifting the operational focus from rapid territorial maneuvers to continuous material and financial exhaustion, Kyiv is exploiting vulnerabilities within the Russian war economy and oligarchy. Consequently, the Kremlin faces mounting domestic unrest and severe economic strain as its tolerance for massive personnel losses fails to yield decisive strategic breakthroughs. Ultimately, this attritional approach demonstrates how a smaller, technologically agile force can leverage asymmetric capabilities to effectively neutralize a larger opponent's material superiority over a prolonged timeline.

Comment

Kyiv’s deployment of Liutyi long-range strike drones against energy infrastructure in Krasnodar Krai demonstrates a doctrinal shift where deep precision strikes substitute for frontline mass. By targeting oil refineries and storage depots, this strategy bypasses the dense Russian S-400 air defence networks in Crimea to inflict compounding economic costs directly on the Kremlin's war machine. This approach redefines classic Soviet-style attritional models by proving that Ukrainian forces can systematically degrade Russian refining capacity without relying on Western-supplied cruise missiles. Consequently, the operational focus of the Ukrainian General Staff shifts from costly territorial counteroffensives to the systematic hollowing out of Russian economic solvency.

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Helping Ukraine Prepare For Another Winter Of Russian Air Strikes

Eurasia Review  |  Luke Coffey

Ukraine requires urgent Western assistance to strengthen its air defenses and protect critical infrastructure ahead of anticipated winter Russian air strikes. While Ukrainian forces have successfully intercepted drones and cruise missiles, countering ballistic and hypersonic threats remains a critical vulnerability due to limited stockpiles of PAC-3 Patriot interceptors.

To address these critical shortages, accelerating US licensing for domestic Ukrainian PAC-3 production and transferring stored European interceptors are vital steps to secure Ukrainian airspace. Concurrently, mitigating the severe humanitarian impact of infrastructure damage requires establishing a dedicated allied task force to pre-position Soviet-era electrical spare parts, cold-weather gear, and mobile substations. Tightening export controls on critical Western electronic components used in Russian missiles further supports this defensive posture. Ultimately, proactive preparation will bolster Ukrainian civilian resilience, protect public health, maintain economic stability, and deny Moscow a key coercive tool during the freezing winter months.

Comment

Licensing the domestic manufacture of PAC-3 interceptors inside Ukraine reveals the acute production bottlenecks currently constraining the Lockheed Martin facility in Camden, Arkansas. By decentralising the assembly of these advanced guided missiles, Washington aims to offset the global deficit in MIM-104 Patriot munitions without depleting active US Army stockpiles. However, establishing high-tech precision manufacturing lines in an active combat zone presents unprecedented logistical vulnerabilities, particularly regarding the secure transport of specialised solid-fuel rocket motors and guidance chips. Consequently, this industrial experiment will serve as a critical test case for the viability of forward-deployed, distributed defence production under persistent threat of precision-guided missile strikes.

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Insurgency-Related Conflict

Council on Foreign Relations  |  Peter J. Quaranto

Modern insurgent groups increasingly leverage transnational extremist networks, digital platforms, and foreign state sponsorship to threaten United States personnel, disrupt global supply chains, and destabilize partner governments. To counter these evolving threats, U.S. policymakers must choose between monitoring, containing, defending, or transforming untenable political and security situations during the critical pre-crisis and early crisis phases.

Historically, overly militarized counterinsurgency frameworks have failed because they ignore the local political economy and the governance services that rebel groups provide to establish legitimacy. As these conflicts become integrated into broader great power rivalries, insurgencies are adopting advanced technologies like autonomous weapons and commercial drones to enhance their tactical lethality. Consequently, effective crisis response requires the intelligence community to proactively assess insurgent command structures, external support networks, and host-government legitimacy. Ultimately, building long-term policy consensus demands deeper coordination between executive agencies and Congress to adapt legal authorities and resource allocations before crises escalate.

Comment

The March 23 Movement’s reopening of commercial banks in Goma illustrates how modern insurgencies exploit administrative vacuums to establish durable local legitimacy. This transition from kinetic operations to civic governance in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo exposes the limitations of conventional Western counterinsurgency doctrines that rely on state-centric security assistance. By embedding parallel financial and administrative structures within North Kivu, the group transforms local economies, rendering external military suppression ineffective against these deeply integrated socio-economic networks.

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The U.S. Is About to Design an AI Regulator. Here’s How to Get It Right.

Council on Foreign Relations  |  Vinh X. Nguyen, Elham Tabassi, Kat Duffy

The White House is currently reviewing a proposal to establish a self-regulatory, industry-funded watchdog for frontier artificial intelligence, modeled after the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. This initiative, supported by Google DeepMind and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, was reported to mandate pre-release safety testing for advanced models to mitigate critical biological, cyber, and deceptive capabilities.

Establishing this oversight framework requires resolving deep structural challenges regarding institutional independence, national security protections, and international standard-setting legitimacy. To prevent conflicts of interest inherent in the issuer-pays model, experts recommend separating safety specifications, shared testing infrastructure, and independent evaluations conducted by trusted public-interest organizations like RAND and the Center for Democracy & Technology. Furthermore, securing multiyear funding tied to model access, designing classified interfaces for intelligence sharing, and certifying continuous-monitoring processes rather than static benchmarks will be vital to sustaining long-term public and allied trust across global markets.

Comment

Leveraging MLCommons to standardise shared testing instrumentation represents a critical shift from subjective evaluations to reproducible technical benchmarks. However, the rapid saturation of static benchmarks means that point-in-time certifications fail to capture the emergent capabilities of continuously updating frontier models. Consequently, the fluid nature of neural networks implies that effective oversight will depend on continuous-monitoring architectures rather than static compliance checklists.

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Commercialisation of military space: dual-use risks and opportunities

Global Security and Innovation Summit | Boris Pistorius

The United States Space Force and NATO are rapidly integrating commercial dual-use space capabilities into their operational frameworks to bolster military resilience. This deep commercialisation exposes private operators to unprecedented geopolitical risks, including deliberate targeting, cyber attacks, and signal jamming by hostile states seeking to disrupt Western military defense networks.

European governments are driving this shift by committing over US$109 billion by 2030, including €35 billion from Germany and €10.2 billion from France, alongside major European Union initiatives like the IRIS2 secure connectivity constellation. However, the deployment of an estimated 100,000 satellites by 2030 dramatically increases orbital congestion and collision risks under the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which legally attributes commercial space activities directly to their launching states. Consequently, private operators are increasingly compelled to actively participate in multilateral regulatory forums to shape technical standards, establish operational best practices, and mitigate escalating legal and physical vulnerabilities in a contested orbital domain.

Comment

The proximity operations of Russian Olymp-K reconnaissance satellites against Intelsat platforms expose a critical vulnerability in Western space doctrine, which historically separated commercial operations from military deterrence. Under Article VI of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, states bear international responsibility for national activities in outer space, meaning hostile actions against private constellations risk triggering direct state-on-state retaliation. This legal attribution drives a fundamental shift in traditional escalation thresholds, as military commanders can no longer treat commercial assets as neutral bystanders.

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How Anduril’s ‘Thunder’ Tiltrotor Drone Could Shake Up Army Aviation

National Interest  |  Harrison Kass

Anduril’s newly unveiled Thunder drone, a Group 5 hybrid-electric tiltrotor, aims to transform US Army aviation by serving as an autonomous "loyal wingman" to protect crewed helicopters in highly contested airspaces. Operating alongside the AH-64 Apache and MV-75 Cheyenne II, this high-speed platform matches helicopter tactics to survive lethal low-altitude environments.

This operational shift reflects a broader departure from high-altitude counterinsurgency platforms like the MQ-9 Reaper toward survivable, radar-evading systems designed specifically for peer conflict. Powered by the Lattice AI autonomy system, the reusable aircraft executes intent-based commands from human pilots while carrying modular payloads including Hellfire missiles, APKWS rocket pods, and electronic warfare packages to repeatedly strike dynamic targets. As competing aerospace firms like Boeing, Sikorsky, and Bell Textron develop rival vertical-lift wingmen, the Pentagon's pursuit of "affordable mass" will likely accelerate the deployment of these containerized, self-deploying autonomous formations to enhance tactical flexibility.

Comment

Integrating autonomous tiltrotors like Anduril's Thunder into army aviation represents a fundamental shift in rotary-wing doctrine away from traditional scout-attack profiles. Utilising the Lattice AI system to manage multiple uncrewed assets allows a single AH-64 Apache crew to project sensor and strike envelopes deep into contested airspace without increasing cognitive overload. This manned-unmanned teaming model effectively offloads the high-risk penetration phase of low-altitude operations to expendable systems, preserving scarce crewed airframes for command-and-control functions. Consequently, traditional air cavalry tactics are evolving from direct engagement profiles to distributed network orchestration at the tactical edge.

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Our Generals Are Failing Us

Spectator  |  Gary Anderson

United States flag and general officers (FOGOs) are failing to demonstrate strategic competence and operational artistry across multiple critical global theatres. In Iran, military leaders treated a regime-change opportunity as a mere targeting exercise rather than executing a coordinated information campaign against the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, ultimately strengthening the regime's regional grip.

This strategic misstep allowed the group to expand its regional influence through proxies like Hezbollah and the Houthis. Similarly, during the 2021 Afghanistan withdrawal, commanders abdicated tactical responsibility by utilizing the indefensible Karzai International Airport instead of Bagram Air Base. Furthermore, the Marine Corps' controversial Force Design initiative has compromised global readiness by divesting conventional combat power to fund the short-range NEMSIS anti-ship missile system. These systemic shortcomings stem from a risk-averse promotion system and professional military education that prioritises conformity over warfighting proficiency, necessitating rigorous wargaming reforms to cultivate imaginative strategic leaders.

Comment

Divesting heavy armour under Force Design 2030 represents a profound strategic trade-off for the United States Marine Corps. Optimising formations for island-hopping via the NMESIS platform degrades the service's traditional global crisis-response role. This structural specialisation leaves the Pentagon with fewer options for high-intensity land contingencies in European or Middle Eastern theatres. Consequently, prioritising these coastal defence systems compromises the Pentagon's ability to project power during concurrent global crises.

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