The Top 10 Global Risks for 2026

Ian Bremmer

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2026 is a tipping point year.

That’s not because we should expect a coming confrontation between the two biggest powers, the U.S. and China. Nor are tensions between the U.S. and Russia likely to spiral out of control this year. Instead, 2026 looks set to be a time of great geopolitical uncertainty, because the U.S. is unwinding its own global order.

What began as tactical norm-breaking has become a system-level transformation: President Donald Trump’s attempt to systematically dismantle the checks on his power, capture the machinery of government, and weaponize it against his domestic enemies. With many of the guardrails that held in Trump’s first term now buckling, we can no longer say with confidence what kind of political system the U.S. will be when this revolution is over. Ultimately, the revolution is more likely to fail than succeed, but there will be no going back to the status quo. The U.S. will be the principal source of global risk this year.

Exclusive: Closer look at new Chinese structures near Pangong Lake and what they mean

Ankit Kumar

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New high-resolution satellite imagery sourced by India Today shows China continuing to upgrade its permanent military presence in the disputed Eastern Ladakh region of Pangong Tso. China has controlled this position near the Sirijap post since the 1962 war, when it was lost from India’s control, though India continues to consider it part of its territory. The imagery clearly shows construction work on a new complex with multiple permanent structures coming up only meters away from the water body.

This is significant as it could allow China's People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to station more resources closer to the current buffer zone

Tehran’s Moment of Reckoning

Aviva Klompas

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The capture of Nicolás Maduro by U.S. forces this weekend was not merely a Venezuela story. It was a message to Tehran.

For years, American foreign policy has been defined less by enforcement than by signaling. Warnings were issued, deadlines announced, negotiations perpetually extended, and consequences endlessly deferred. President Trump appears determined to reverse that pattern.

The operation against Venezuela made one thing unmistakably clear: Trump expects to be taken seriously.

That matters most for Iran, which has spent years betting that U.S. threats are rhetorical, reversible, or constrained by fear of escalation. That bet is beginning to look reckless.

Trump NSS Reshapes US Engagement in the South Caucasus

Aytac Mahmmadova

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The South Caucasus has long occupied an ambiguous place in US foreign policy, neither central to US national security nor irrelevant to it. The region has historically mattered insofar as it intersected with larger geopolitical contests: between Russia and the West, between energy producers and consumers, and between stability and fragmentation along Eurasia’s inner frontier. The 2025 US National Security Strategy codifies a shift that will sharpen this logic, moving the United States decisively away from expansive regional engagement toward selective, interest-driven involvement.

While the document does not explicitly address the South Caucasus in its regional sections, its underlying principles, such as restraint, burden-sharing, transactionalism, and rejection of transformational agendas, will fundamentally reshape Washington’s engagement with the South Caucasus states. This recalibration reflects broader strategic realities: finite American resources, diminished appetite for open-ended commitments, and recognition that regional outcomes will ultimately be determined by local power dynamics rather than external patronage.

Europe's last hope in the AI race

Bernardo Kastrup

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The global AI boom is built on staggering inefficiency: repurposed videogame chips, vast energy waste, and escalating costs. While the US and China race blindly ahead, philosopher of mind and the Founder and CEO at Euclyd, a Dutch company developing chips and systems for core AI datacentre compute, Bernardo Kastrup, argues that Europe has an overlooked opportunity to redesign AI hardware itself, and in doing so reclaim technological sovereignty.

As a philosopher of mind and computer engineer, AI is the one topic that connects both of my professional aspirations. And since this powerful new technology is bound to shape the future of civilization, either supporting or undermining our ways of life, the survival of European values so consistent with my own idealist views—such as personal liberty, liberal democracy, human rights, equality of opportunity, consumer protections, distribution of power, etc.—will largely depend on how we manage the ongoing technological transition. To ensure the survival of its way of life, Europe must thus have the means to control the deployment of AI in its territory, so it happens on our terms.

The $20 Trillion Question: How to Spend It and How Not To

William Murray

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$20 trillion is a lot of money.

One would expect a big bang to follow the spending of twenty-thousand billion dollars. It’s a lot of money! It’s pretty much the total present value of America’s GDP.

This is the sum that was globally spent — largely by Europe and the United States — in a coordinated effort by the developed world to decarbonize the global economy. China, in contrast, sold the world windmills and solar panels while it opened a new coal-fired power plant per month.

What was the net effect of this “Green" Marshall Plan? Hydrocarbon consumption continued to increase anyway. All that was achieved was a tiny reduction, just 2%, in the share of overall energy supplied by hydrocarbons. Put simply, as the energy pie got bigger and all forms of energy supply increased, hydrocarbons ended up with a slightly smaller share of a larger pie.

The U.S. Captures Maduro: Deterrence, Legitimacy, and What Comes Next?

Brigham A. McCown

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The United States has used force abroad when it has judged its security or strategic influence to be at risk, particularly in regions it considers vital to its interests. The military operation that apprehended Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela fits this pattern, reasserting deterrence in response to Washington’s diminished influence in its own hemisphere. But the administration’s ultimate success depends on returning Venezuela to the path of democracy without getting bogged down in another doomed nation-building project.

Much of the initial commentary has focused on oil markets or alleged violations of the War Powers Resolution. But since the resolution’s enactment in 1973, presidents of both parties have authorized limited military actions without congressional authorization when they judged core U.S. interests to be at stake. Action against the Maduro regime reflects a broad, if sometimes understated, bipartisan concern. Congress should now be fully briefed and engaged in its proper oversight role.

The Maduro Raid: A Military Victory with No Viable Endgame

Mark F. Cancian

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The capture of Nicolás Maduro and his wife has electrified the world and generated immense discussion about its impact on the future. In thinking about that future, it’s important to separate the military, political, economic, and legal strands. The military operation was brilliantly executed. However, this was a raid, which means that all U.S. forces withdrew. Maduro’s officials, including his vice president, remain in charge of Venezuela. The Trump administration proposes to work through these officials, not through the Venezuelan opposition. This will likely fail, requiring additional air and missile strikes. President Trump wants a revival of oil production, but stability is a prerequisite. In the background, the courts will decide the constitutional issues raised by this operation. Those decisions will shape future U.S. operations but will have little effect on the situation in Venezuela.

A Brilliant Military Operation

At the January 3 press conference, President Trump and other administration officials were effusive in their praise for the operation and the service members who conducted it. Many observers tend to discount the president’s exaggerated rhetoric, but in this case, it was appropriate. This raid will likely be regarded as one of the classics in military history.

The Maduro Raid: Early Reports & Cautions

Salamander

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If you didn’t get a chance to listen to Sunday’s Midrats Podcast with Mark and me, give it a listen to hear a broader discussion with some additional detail thrown in. Today is going to be a bit different.

We are still just ~72-hours from the events, so there is an order of magnitude more of what we don’t know than we do, but some items are breaking out from the fog.

On yesterday’s podcast, I briefly mentioned a framework for discussion that I think is helpful to flesh out here—an addendum to my comments on the podcast, so to speak.

As we stand here the Monday after the events of Friday night/Saturday morning, what are some clear items of consideration at the Tactical, Operational, Strategic, and Political levels?

After Venezuela, Trump Offers Hints About What Could Be Next

David E. Sanger

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Barely 48 hours after toppling the leader of Venezuela and asserting U.S. rights to the country’s oil, President Trump threatened Colombia with a similar fate, declared that Cuba was not worth invading because “it’s ready to fall,” and once again claimed that Greenland needed to come under American control as an issue of national security.

Mr. Trump’s claims, in interviews on Sunday and then a lengthy back-and-forth with reporters aboard Air Force One as it returned from his private club in Florida, offered a glimpse of how emboldened he felt after the quick capture of Nicolás Maduro, the strongman who was seized on narco-trafficking charges.

More than 150 fighters, bombers and other aircraft took part in Venezuela strike

Nicholas Slayton

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The Saturday attack on Venezuela to capture President Nicolás Maduro was carried out by U.S. Army special operations units, who inserted via helicopter into Caracas and grabbed Maduro and his wife after a firefight with Venezuelan forces. While they were carrying out the raid, roughly 150 aircraft covered them in the skies and carried out airstrikes on Caracas and other parts of Venezuela.

The force included a mix of Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps bombers, fighter jets and electronic attack planes, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine said on Saturday. Speaking at a press conference with President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Caine said that the force used included “F-22s, F, 35s, F-18s, EA18s, E-2s B-1, bombers and other support aircraft, as well as numerous remotely piloted drones.” The various aircraft hit several targets in Venezuela, including the La Guaira port, the military headquarters complex at Fort Tiuna in Caracas and multiple airports.

The Trump Doctrine in Venezuela

RICHARD HAASS

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NEW YORK – Nicolás Maduro is now the former president of Venezuela, a prisoner in US custody. His ouster at the hands of US Special Forces is, however, best understood as the end of the beginning rather than the beginning of the end.

To be sure, few in Venezuela, or anywhere, will mourn Maduro’s removal. He was an autocrat who stole an election, repressed his people, ran his country’s economy into the ground despite possessing enormous oil reserves, and trafficked in narcotics.

But that does not mean that this military operation was either warranted or wise. In fact, it was of questionable legality. It was also of questionable strategic value: Maduro hardly posed an imminent threat to the United States. Make no mistake: this was a military operation of choice, not of necessity.

Trump wants Venezuela's oil. Will his plan work?

Archie Mitchell

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Donald Trump has vowed to tap into Venezuela's oil reserves after seizing President Nicolás Maduro and saying the US will "run" the country until a "safe" transition. The US president wants American oil firms to pile billions of dollars into the South American country, which has the largest crude oil reserves on the planet, to mobilise the largely untapped resource.

He said US companies will fix Venezuela's "badly broken" oil infrastructure and "start making money for the country". But experts warned of huge challenges with Trump's plan, saying it would cost billions and take up to a decade to produce a meaningful uplift in oil output. So can the US really take control of Venezuela's oil reserves? And will Trump's plan work?

With an estimated 303 billion barrels, Venezuela is home to the world's largest proven oil reserves.

From Caracas 'fort' to New York court: Maduro's capture in pictures and maps

Tiffany Wertheimerand

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The US says its military operation to capture Venezuela's president took months of planning, but when Donald Trump gave the order to launch, "Operation Absolute Resolve" only lasted about 150 minutes. The surprise early-morning attack on Saturday marked an unprecedented event in modern politics and culminated in the arrest of Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores.

Captured by troops from an elite US army unit as they tried to flee into a fortified safe room, the pair are now being held in a detention centre in New York and face narco-terrorism charges. As the sun rose on Saturday, the scale of the military operation in Caracas, Venezuela's capital, was clear. Pictures from Fuerte Tiuna, a huge military complex where top government officials live, show bombed out buildings and charred, smouldering cars.

Spies, drones and blowtorches: How the US captured Maduro

Gareth EvansWashington

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For months, US spies had been monitoring Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro's every move.

A small team, including one source within the Venezuelan government, had been observing where the 63-year-old slept, what he ate, what he wore and even, according to top military officials, "his pets".

Then, in early December, a planned mission dubbed "Operation Absolute Resolve" was finalised. It was the result of months of meticulous planning and rehearsals, which even included elite US troops creating an exact full-size replica of Maduro's Caracas safe house to practise their entry routes.

The plan - which amounted to an extraordinary US military intervention in Latin America not seen since the Cold War - was closely guarded. Congress was not informed or consulted ahead of time. With the precise details set, top military officials simply had to wait for the optimal conditions to launch.

The Fall of Maduro—and the Future of Venezuela.

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It’s Monday, January 5. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: Iran’s revolutionary moment. An interview with New York City’s most controversial city council member. Coleman Hughes interviews anthropologist Anna Machin on the science of modern love. And more.

But first: The capture of Nicolás Maduro, and the future of Venezuela.

Barely 48 hours have passed since the audacious U.S. operation to grab Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro. The mission was a stunning success, with no loss of American life. By Saturday night, Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores were in jail cells in New York City.

Trump’s Attack on Venezuela Could Change the World. Here’s How.

RYAN BERG

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Ryan Berg is director of the Americas Program and head of the Future of Venezuela Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The Trump administration is serious about the Western Hemisphere strategy outlined in the recent National Security Strategy document, with a Trump Corollary over the hemisphere. The fact that President Trump launched this operation hours after Nicolás Maduro met with China’s special envoy sends a clear and unequivocal message to China and its role in the Americas. It also sends the message that the ‘axis of authoritarians’ is strong during peacetime, but not decisive for one another in moments of greatest need, when it comes to questions of regime security. Trump already pointed it out in his remarks on the military operation today, where he specifically drew attention to other successful U.S. attacks on adversaries, including against Iran. The axis of authoritarians, and especially Russia and China, may feel additional urgency to prove their value in the face of pressure against their allies such as Venezuela.

A Trained Eye Sees Strategic Patterns in Venezuela

Masoud Andarabi

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Masoud Andarabi is the former Minister of Interior of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan and previously served as the Acting Director of the National Directorate of Security (NDS), Afghanistan’s lead intelligence agency. He has over a decade of experience leading national counterterrorism operations, intelligence reform initiatives, and regional security coordination.

OPINION -- Venezuela presents a long-standing challenge tied to narcotics trafficking and transnational criminal networks. For years, the country has functioned as a major transit hub for illicit drug flows, money laundering, and organized crime, with direct consequences for U.S. domestic security and for stability across the Western Hemisphere. These realities alone justify sustained U.S. attention.

In Washington and Caracas, the vision for administering Venezuela in the weeks and months ahead appears uncertain and stubbornly complex.

Adam Taylor, Samantha Schmidt, Natalie Allison and Karen DeYoung

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The Trump administration’s bold operation to capture strongman Nicolás Maduro from his home in Venezuela was a startling tactical success. But as the smoke clears in Caracas a day after President Donald Trump said triumphantly that the United States would now “run” Venezuela, the reality of how Washington will administer that country in the weeks and months ahead appears uncertain and stubbornly complex.

Maduro’s allies in Caracas are still in power, some defiantly haranguing about U.S. “imperialism.” The democratically elected opposition leaders are effectively exiled, bluntly sidelined by the Trump administration. And Washington continues to hint at more military action, not only against Venezuela but other perceived enemies in the region such as Cuba and Colombia.

Trump Says U.S. Is ‘In Charge’ of Venezuela, While Rubio Stresses Coercing It

Edward Wong 

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President Trump on Sunday night asserted again that the United States was “in charge” of Venezuela, hours after his top diplomat had pivoted away from such earlier suggestions of direct control to say that the administration would instead coerce cooperation from the new leadership in Caracas.

“We’re dealing with the people that just got sworn in,” Mr. Trump told reporters as he flew back to Washington from Florida. “And don’t ask me who’s in charge, because I’ll give you an answer, and it’ll be very controversial.”

“What does that mean?” a reporter asked.

“It means we’re in charge,” the president said.

Mr. Trump did not provide details, but he appeared to be referring to control over the Venezuelan government, whose top officials made defiant statements after the U.S. military entered the country early Saturday and seized Nicolás Maduro, the autocratic leader.

The Real Challenges and Risks for U.S. Policy Are Still to Come

Juan S. Gonzalez

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The United States’ use of military force to remove Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro marks a turning point for Venezuela and for U.S. policy in the Western Hemisphere. But it would be a mistake to confuse drama with resolution. Images of Maduro in U.S. custody create the impression of finality. Yet this is not the beginning of the end of Washington’s long struggle with Venezuela. It marks the end of the beginning, and the start of a far more difficult and perilous phase.

The Trump administration is treating the removal of Maduro as a tactical success that speaks for itself, even as it deliberately assumes responsibility for what comes next. President Donald Trump has been explicit about that choice. By announcing that the United States will “run Venezuela” for a while, he is not merely projecting confidence. He is intentionally assuming responsibility for the political, economic, and security consequences that follow.

The collapse of Venezuela’s air defense exposes the limitations of Chinese military systems in the face of the U.S. operation

Redaccion Zona Militar

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The U.S. military operation in Venezuela, which neutralized air bases, military barracks, and strategic nodes across the country—and ultimately achieved its objective of removing Nicolás Maduro from power—laid bare one of the main structural weaknesses of the Venezuelan Armed Forces: the fragility of its Chinese-origin air defense system when confronted by an adversary with supremacy in electronic warfare, intelligence, and precision strike capabilities. During the short duration of the operation, U.S. assets succeeded in degrading and blinding key sensors within the defensive network, paving the way for the employment of expeditionary air-mobile capabilities from the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, known as the Night Stalkers, and the Special Forces Operational Detachment–Delta (1st SFOD-D).

At the core of Venezuela’s defensive architecture was a network of radars supplied by the China Electronics Technology Group, including JYL-1 three-dimensional surveillance systems and the JY-27 metric-wave radar, which for years had been promoted as a supposed “stealth aircraft hunter“. Based on assessments of the swift and decisive operation, these sensors were disabled during the initial phase through intensive electronic jamming, leaving the integrated air defense system without early-warning capability. This was compounded by a widespread electrical power outage across large areas of Venezuela, aimed at dismantling command-and-control capabilities.

The Fragile Foundations of the Intelligent Age

Klaus Schwab

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Beneath a surface of political volatility and technological acceleration lie two quietly deteriorating foundations: truth and trust. Their erosion is reshaping the global landscape more profoundly than the events that dominate headlines.

Truth and trust are often treated as virtues, but they function as conditions: the prerequisites for coherent societies, functional institutions, and stable international systems. Without them, even the most advanced technologies fail to deliver progress; without them, democratic debate becomes impossible; without them, economic and social life slowly lose their connective tissue.

Securing India’s digital destiny: Cybersecurity as a sovereign imperative

Lt Gen M.U. Nair (Retd)

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As India steps into 2026, its digital public infrastructure stands unmatched: Aadhaar, UPI, DigiLocker, FASTag, and CoWIN collectively serve more than a billion citizens. However, the same architecture powering national progress is now a prime target for cyber aggression.

According to the Seqrite India Cyber Threat Report 2026, India logged 265.52 million threat detections in a year—505 every minute. Check Point’s 2025 analysis places Indian organisations at 2,011 cyberattacks per week, one of the highest in the world.

This is no longer an IT problem. It is a national security issue, with economic, geopolitical, and strategic consequences.

The Dragon and the Clock—2027 as the Turning Point Year Between China and Taiwan

Edan Morag

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Many regard 2027 as the year in which the Chinese military could attack Taiwan—especially after former CIA Director William Burns said in 2023 that “as a matter of intelligence, we know that he [Xi Jinping] has instructed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready by 2027 to conduct a successful invasion of Taiwan.” Western research institutes, including Brookings, have used 2027 as a reference point in their analyses. Likewise, in regional assessments by countries close to China and Taiwan—such as Japan and India—2027 repeatedly emerges as a point of departure. This is despite the fact that no official Chinese authority has publicly declared 2027 to be the target year for unification with Taiwan. US intelligence may be correct, or it may not be; therefore, it cannot be stated with certainty that this is indeed Beijing’s target year. Nevertheless, this article analyzes possible reasons for this assessment and discusses what a 2027 contingency would mean for Israel’s security, foreign policy, and economic systems.

The unification of Taiwan with mainland China has long been an important objective of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), but in recent years its importance seems to have increased, and it is now presented as part of China’s core national interests. However, at the same time, prospects for peaceful unification appear to be receding. In the past, Taiwan viewed itself as the “true China,” destined to reunite with the mainland and rule a unified China, but over the past few decades, this situation has changed. Taiwanese public opinion shows that more and more Taiwanese see themselves as a nation separate from mainland China: 64% in 2008, rising to 75% in 2015. According to a Pew Research Survey in 2024, the majority of Taiwanese are not interested in unification (60% prefer the status quo and about 26% prefer independence). In other words, the trend toward Taiwanese separation is expanding, while the desire for unification is steadily shrinking.

Military exercises seek to erase vital buffer zone between China and Taiwan.

Andrew Yeh

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For the thousands of frustrated travelers facing delayed and cancelled flights between Taiwan and its outlying Matsu Islands and Kinmen, there may have been a sense of déjà vu. Last week’s multi-domain Justice Mission 2025 exercises were not the first occasion on which China’s large-scale military drills have disrupted civilian air routes in the region. Yet the increasingly routine character of such exercises should not obscure their significance, nor the ways in which they are challenging long-standing cross-strait arrangements.

Beijing is, once again, testing a core element of the status quo that has underpinned a fragile peace across the Taiwan Strait for decades. This time, the focus is Taiwan’s contiguous zone – the 12-nautical-mile buffer surrounding its territorial waters. The steady normalization of People’s Liberation Army (PLA) military activity within this space marks a subtle but consequential shift, one that lowers thresholds, increases the risk of miscalculation, and sets a potentially destabilizing precedent for future Chinese military operations.

The West anticipates an invasion. Beijing trusts its 15th Five-Year Plan.

Ashton Ng

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The dawn of 2026 arrived in the Taiwan Strait with a thunderous dissonance. On the water, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) was concluding Justice Mission 2025, a massive exercise involving 89 warplanes, drone swarms, and blockade simulations that Taipei rightly characterized as an unprecedented escalation. Yet, on the airwaves, President Xi Jinping’s New Year’s address offered a different frequency. While he reiterated that reunification is “unstoppable,” the context was not one of imminent fiery conquest, but of cool, historical inevitability.

For defense planners in Washington and Taipei, the impulse is to merge the drills and the speech into a single signal of accelerating aggression – a countdown to a D-Day scenario. Such a reading is superficially correct but strategically flawed. By misinterpreting Beijing’s confidence as urgency, the West risks preparing for the wrong war.

A recent wargame shines new light on China’s extensive dual-use infrastructure in the region.

R. Evan Ellis

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On December 19, an affiliate of the state-run China Central Television (CCTV) ran a story about a recent Chinese military wargame in the city of Xuchang, Henan Province, involving the simulation of combat operations by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) in the Western Hemisphere. Images of the wargame carried by CCTV clearly showed simulated interactions between Red (Chinese) and Blue (Western) forces near Cuba, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Caribbean.

The screens shown by CCTV from the wargame, which also depicted PLA operations in the Sea of Okhotsk and near Taiwan, illustrate how Beijing is thinking about conducting military activities in the Western Hemisphere in the context of a broader war with the West.

Such evidence lends credence to numerous statements by senior U.S. military officials, including former heads of U.S. Southern Command General Laura Richardson and Admiral Alvin Holsey, regarding the risks of China’s “dual-use” infrastructure – including ports, space, telecommunications, and other projects – in times of war.

‘Enough Is Enough’: Greenland’s Prime Minister Issues Stark Warning as Trump Renews Annexation Threat

Callum Sutherland

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Greenland’s Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen has warned the United States to stop its threats of annexation against the territory.

“No more pressure. No more hints. No more fantasies about annexation,” he urged on Sunday, emphasizing that while Greenland is open to a dialogue with the U.S., it will no longer stand for “pressure” or “disrespectful posts on social media.” Nielsen’s impassioned statement comes as President Donald Trump renews his annexation threat against Greenland in the wake of the Venezuela operation which saw Nicolás Maduro captured and brought to the U.S.

In comments that Nielsen labeled “utterly unacceptable,” Trump repeated his eagerness to oversee a U.S. annexation of Greenland, an autonomous territory within the Kingdom of Denmark. “We need Greenland from a national security situation. It’s so strategic,” the President told reporters aboard Air Force One over the weekend. “Right now Greenland is covered with Russian and Chinese ships all over the place. We need Greenland from the standpoint of national security. And Denmark is not going to be able to do it.” Trump claimed that the European Union “needs” the U.S. to “have” Greenland. (European leaders have previously shown support for Greenland against Trump’s annexation threats.)

The Next Evolution in Ukraine’s Drone Defense

David Kirichenko

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To keep pace with Russia’s drone tactics, Ukraine must expand its mid-range drone strike capabilities.

As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine approaches its fifth year, the character of the war continues to evolve into a technical struggle shaped by drones, electronic warfare, and the ability to strike at depth.

Ukraine has compensated for its disadvantage in traditional firepower through innovation. Unmanned systems, particularly first-person-view (FPV) drones, allowed Ukrainian forces to blunt Russian offensives and impose high costs on attacking units. Over time, this approach hardened into a “drone wall,” a layered defensive zone that has turned many Russian assaults into fields of casualties.

That kill zone has expanded steadily, now stretching roughly 15 to 25 kilometers from the front line, with Ukrainian forces increasingly pushing its reach up to 40 kilometers.

In April 2025, I wrote that Ukraine had established its drone wall defenses and that a new kind of no man’s land was emerging. Battlefields would increasingly be saturated with semi-autonomous drones capable of detecting and striking exposed movement, foreshadowing the direction of automated warfare.

Trump Wants Venezuela’s Oil. Getting It Might Not Be So Simple

Molly Taft

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The administration has made it clear that Nicolás Maduro's capture was tied to Venezuela’s vast oil reserves. Much less certain is how US companies will actually access them—or if they even want to.

A view of the El Palito refinery of the Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA.Photo: Jesus Vargas/picture alliance via Getty Images

President Donald Trump has made it clear: His vision for Venezuela’s future involves the US profiting from its oil.

“We’re going to have our very large United States oil companies—the biggest anywhere in the world—go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure,” the president told reporters at a news conference Saturday, following the shocking capture of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro and his wife.

Close Fighting Fundamentals: Tactical-Level Training Considerations to Prepare for Uncertain Future Battlefields

Lt. Gen. Gregory K. Anderson

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Editor’s Note: This article was adapted from LTG Anderson’s Command Note #7 — Enduring Training Guidance Supplemental. Although it was written for XVIII Airborne Corps Soldiers, LTG Anderson provides valuable insights that can benefit all Infantry leaders as they plan and execute training.

The XVIII Airborne Corps will be called to fight, with little advance warning, to a conflict and an enemy for which we do not yet know. Presently, we do not have the clarity, precision, or detail in war plans and contingency plans to know specifically what tasks to train for or what conditions to train against. As such, our Corps needs to possess strong teams, leaders that can think, a mastery of basic skills, and excellence in night fighting to hedge against the uncertainty and full spectrum of what we could (and will) be called to execute. This article is meant to help you visualize the types of skills we need to develop at the tactical level as part of the hedge against uncertainty. THIS IS NOT TRAINING GUIDANCE FOR FIRE TEAMS, SQUADS, and PLATOONS. It is based on my experience and thus has a strong light infantry flavor to it, but if we are going to fight in small units, decentralized, and potentially isolated, then it applies across the entire formation. As we look to fix training management at echelon, I encourage you to develop your visualization of what you want your formation to train towards. Be it artillery tables, forward arming and refueling point (FARP) operations at night, expeditionary logistics, military police (MP) security missions, chemical decontamination, or unmanned breaching operations, commanders must be able to visualize and then describe the training end state to subordinates for them to have a shared reference point as they plan and execute training. After you read this supplemental, ask yourself if it helped you visualize what our training outcomes should look like to be ready for combat. This is “my” description of what I want our formations who might engage in close fighting to be able to achieve, be it infantry, engineers, logistics convoys, or while defending a perimeter in the Corps rear area. Again, this is not guidance; it is a supplemental reference for your consideration as you set out to train your units for uncertainty.

Operation Absolute Resolve: Anatomy of a Modern Decapitation Strike

Josh Luberisse

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At 0201 local time this morning, helicopters from the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment—the Night Stalkers—crossed into Venezuelan airspace carrying Delta Force operators toward a target in Caracas. Less than three hours later, they were back over water with Nicolás Maduro in custody. The operation, codenamed Absolute Resolve, represents the most significant U.S. direct action operation in Latin America since Panama in 1989.

This analysis examines the operation through an asymmetric warfare lens: the intelligence architecture that enabled it, the suppression of enemy air defenses (SEAD) campaign that protected it, and the doctrinal implications for future operations. The purpose is not political commentary but operational education.

Taiwan’s £7.5tn secret weapon is disintegrating

Allegra Mendelson

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Behind the nondescript grey buildings that line the streets of Hsinchu lies one of the most important pieces of technology in the world.

Whirring away inside are rows of white machines that are so advanced – and so secretive – that a select few are allowed inside.

This is Taiwan’s “Silicon Valley” and these facilities produce the majority of the world’s semiconductors – small chips that power virtually every electronic device in use today, from coffee machines to fighter jets.

Every country in the world relies on these chips, including China, which despite threatening to “reunify” Taiwan by force, imports nearly half of the island’s semiconductors

Bold Delta Force raid leads to capture and arrest of Maduro

Jack Murphy

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A bold nighttime raid in Caracas executed by Delta Force and the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment with an air package overhead totaling more than 150 aircraft captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores last night. The mission, called Operation Absolute Resolve, was not a typical JSOC capture/kill raid but rather was designed to serve an arrest warrant based on a Department of Justice indictment against Maduro and his regime. In this sense, the Delta operators were escorts to federal law enforcement officers.

The preparation for Absolute Resolve took months, involving mission rehearsals held in the area of Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and involved a robust inter-agency process conducted in coordination with the CIA, the National Security Agency the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, Air Force Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a press conference today alongside President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.