India is now the world’s 5th largest economy

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Data from the IMF shows India has risen to become the world’s fifth largest economy, when ranked by nominal GDP.

India, in this ranking, has leapfrogged France and the UK.

Despite its growth, challenges remain, from sustainability to infrastructure.

India became the world’s fifth largest economy last year, according to data from the IMF’s October World Economic Outlook. When ranked by nominal GDP, the country leapfrogged France and the UK.

The country's GDP growth has been among the highest in the world in the past decade – regularly achieving annual growth of between 6-7%.

This rapid rise has been fueled by a number of factors, according to a 2016 McKinsey Global Institute report, including urbanization and technologies that have improved efficiency and productivity.

Supreme Court Decision On Women Officers: Need For Holistic Policy Planning

By Lt. Gen. Rakesh Sharma PVSM,UYSM,AVSM,VSM (Retd.)

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The Hon’ble Supreme Court of India on 17 Feb 2020, ruled for Government to grant permanent commission to women officers in the Army at par with their male counterparts, should they wish to continue with it, after completing their Short-Service Commission (SSC). The judgement has also stated that women officers be allowed career progression through availing command opportunities as their male counterparts. Naturally the order has far-reaching implications for the Army, ones that mandate serious deliberations. At this juncture, it is inconsequential to debate on the progress of the women officers court cases that continued over a decade. The issue has been deliberated by studies at the apex levels and the Army Commanders collegiates. The Government position has had its time in the courts and in affidavits, and stands finally negated by the Apex Court judgement.

In fact the situation among the three Services is different – the Indian Air Force (IAF) is located in AF Stations/ bases where feasibilities are different, and there are also no incessant operations. The Indian Navy has to manage deployments in high seas. Similarly the ten arms and services in which Permanent Commission (PC) exists, each have their own operating conditions and challenges. There are imaginations and apprehensions of all kinds being voiced, largely on social media, although many of them have merit. However, these cannot be dragged in discussions ad infinitum, it will only cause consternations. Time now is to look forward and we have to undertake Indian Army and India- specific measures. It is incorrect to ape or compare with other armies experiences and policies, as these have little relationship with the Indian structures. It is imperative to crystallise the thoughts in a manner that the judgement is executable in exactitude with its attendant concerns.

Trump’s India Visit Should Enhance US-India Space Cooperation

By Namrata Goswami

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Space is one of the primary factors for enhancing a country’s comprehensive national security and technological capability. Today, the race to space is much more than a “flags and footprint” mission reminiscent of the Apollo era. It is a quest to establish permanent presence on the moon and beyond.

China’s long-term space ambitions articulate such a grand vision. It is in this context that space cooperation between the United States and India — the world’s oldest and the world’s largest democracies, respectively — acquires a strategic context and urgency. Unlike U.S. Congressional restrictions on U.S.-China space cooperation, the United States and India are not affected by any such restrictions. Given the ways that their strategic partnership has improved over the years, it is rather a puzzle that their cooperation in space is not even closer and strategically aligned.

During U.S. President Donald Trump’s first visit to India on February 24-25, 2020, it is appropriate for space cooperation to be elevated to a higher realm, given both countries have similar long-term ambitions for a moon landing, and robotic exploration missions to Mars.

After the US-Taliban deal, what might negotiations between the Taliban and Afghan side look like?

Vanda Felbab-Brown

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The research reported here was funded in part by the Minerva Research Initiative (OUSD(R&E)) and the Army Research Office/Army Research Laboratory via grant #W911-NF-17-1-0569 to George Mason University. Any errors and opinions are not those of the Department of Defense and are attributable solely to the author(s).

Will the deal that the United States and the Taliban have apparently struck finally allow the United States to extricate itself from its longest war? Likely, if a seven-day violence reduction test can be passed, a requirement that allows the deal to be formally signed and to start being implemented. Will Afghanistan eventually find peace? Maybe, if the Taliban, the Afghan government, and Afghan people manage to find a compromise that works for all sides.

But that road to actual peace could turn out to be as long, steep, and winding as the Salang Pass road. Peace may only come to fruition long after U.S. troops have withdrawn and after much intra-Afghan fighting.

Although the exact deal has yet to be disclosed, its basic parameters are known: If incidents and spoiler sabotage are averted during the violence-reduction test, the U.S. will withdraw some 5,000 of its 12,500 soldiers within half a year. The rest will be pulled out gradually, perhaps over three years or less, though a limited U.S. counterterrorism force may remain.

Afghanistan Could End Up in a Civil War. Time For U.S. Forces to Leave.

by Daniel L. Davis 

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Three separate political groups in Kabul are threatening to form a government of their own in opposition to current President Ashraf Ghani—and against each other. Before the political situation in Kabul completely breaks down and American troops get caught in a multi-sided civil war—which perversely might not even include the Taliban—we must quickly and methodically withdraw our troops.

While most U.S. media have been focused on the potential for a ceasefire between U.S. forces and the Taliban, the political scene in Kabul is on the verge of a complete breakdown. 

Three separate political groups in Kabul are threatening to form a government of their own in opposition to current President Ashraf Ghani—and against each other. Before the political situation in Kabul completely breaks down and American troops get caught in a multi-sided civil war—which perversely might not even include the Taliban—we must quickly and methodically withdraw our troops.

The Problem: 

Afghanistan: Ghani-Abdullah Row May Thwart the Prospect of Peace

By Daud Khattak

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On February 18, Afghanistan’s Independent Election Commission (IEC) declared President Ashraf Ghani the winner of the September 28 presidential election. Hours later, Ghani’s key rival, who also happens to be his chief executive officer in the so-called National Unity Government, challenged the final outcome by declaring a parallel government.

“We are announcing our victory. We will now form an inclusive government,” tweeted Dr. Abdullah Abdullah. He also wrote a letter to the European Union on February 20 calling the election results “illegal and unacceptable to all Afghans.” Going a step further, Ghani’s previous vice president and former warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum termed the final result a “coup” and urged his supporters to take to the streets.

Amid the nearly five-month delay in announcing the conclusion, the hotly contested Afghan presidential election had faded into the background as something more important was happening: The much-awaited outcome of the 18-month peace talks between Taliban representatives and the United States. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced on February 21 that the two sides plan to formally sign their peace deal at the end of the month.

Political Reform Urgently Needed in Afghanistan

By Jennifer Brick Murtazashvili and Mohammad Qadam Shah

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After counting votes for more than five months, Afghanistan’s independent Election Commission (IEC) this week declared that President Ashraf Ghani had won a second five-year term. This has plunged the country into a political crisis that threatens to derail the impending peace agreement between the United States and the Taliban. Ghani’s main opponent, Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah has said the IEC’s results are a “coup” and has threatened to form an alternative government. Ghani’s own vice president, Abdul Rashid Dostum, urged citizens to march into the streets to protest. Former President Karzai had opposed holding the election and warned that they would be a disaster, Karzai said the peace process should be prioritized. Even the Taliban declared the announcement of Ghani as the winner illegitimate. 

Almost two decades of increasingly fraudulent elections have damaged citizen trust in democracy. The faith of Afghans in their political system was illustrated with tragically low voter turnout levels. Less than 20 percent of the eligible population voted in the September 2019 election. Allegations of corruption swirled months before voting took place; most Afghans sat on the sideline. Fearing insecurity as well as an expectation that the outcome was already fraudulently predetermined, Ghani was reelected with support from fewer than 10 percent of eligible voters: 923,592 votes out of a population of more than 30 million. 

This crisis shows that without urgent reform to the centralized political system, Afghanistan will remain mired in factionalism and civil conflict. Without political reform peace will be impossible.

The West Can’t Even Agree on Itself, Much Less China

BY KEVIN BARON
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MUNICH – The West is failing and conflict with China is inevitable. Or is it? To judge from the hand-wringing at the high-powered Munich Security Conference last weekend, the only consensus about Western power right now is that there is no consensus.

Munich is an interesting event. In a small but ridiculously ornate Bavarian hotel, world leaders trailed by delegations and security details as big as their personalities squeeze past former global figures and sycophants, ambassadors and legislators, bureaucrats of today and yesterday, opposition-party officials patiently lying in wait, academics and scholars, a very skeptical global press, and a smattering of wide-eyed young professionals.

Everyone talks. The whole affair feels like a scene of whispering courtesans in Dangerous Liaisons, if it happened inside a crowded London tube station at rush hour. All that’s missing are the wigs.

Instead of dalliances, the two issues that hung over every hallway conversation were: What to do about China? And what to do about ourselves, the West?

They whispered about the conference theme — “Westlessness” — which asks, “Is the world becoming less Western?”

Looking Past China’s Rise for the Trends Shaping Asia

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Under the leadership of President Xi Jinping, China has begun to challenge America’s role as the key economic and political actor in Asia. Increasingly repressive at home, Xi has not shied away from asserting China’s regional authority, positioning Beijing as the power broker on everything from trade routes to the ongoing efforts to denuclearize North Korea. China’s ascendance is also evident in how much attention other global powers are paying to Beijing and its policies. U.S. President Donald Trump launched a trade war with China and frets publicly about its influence. And with its Belt and Road Initiative, China’s influence is spreading well beyond Asia, into much of Africa and even Europe.

But while China’s rise often makes headlines, it is not the only trend shaping events in Asia. Nationalism has become a force in democracies like India, where Prime Minister Narendra Modi rode the wave of Hindu nationalism to a massive victory in the country’s parliamentary elections last year, and the Philippines, where President Rodrigo Duterte’s electoral gains in midterm elections have left even fewer checks on his increasingly autocratic behavior. Meanwhile, Myanmar’s government continues its persecutions of Rohingya Muslims.

Can the United States and China Cooperate on the Coronavirus?

PAUL HAENLE, LUCAS TCHEYAN

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In early February 2020, U.S. President Donald Trump took to Twitter to hail his excellent call with Chinese President Xi Jinping about the coronavirus outbreak. Trump called Xi a “strong, sharp and powerfully focused” leader who was successfully eradicating the coronavirus. That same day, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that Washington would spend up to $100 million to help Beijing curtail the virus, in addition to the nearly eighteen tons in medical supplies it had already sent to China.

Twenty-four hours later, however, Pompeo stood in front of the U.S. National Governors Association with a very different message. In his latest China speech, Pompeo warned of competition with Beijing that threatens “the very basic freedoms that every one of us [U.S. governors] values.” Just days later at the Munich Security Conference, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said that U.S. “accusations against China are lies and not based on facts.”

Paul Haenle

Paul Haenle holds the Maurice R. Greenberg Director’s Chair at the Carnegie–Tsinghua Center based at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China. Haenle served as the director for China, Taiwan, and Mongolia Affairs on the National Security Council staffs of former presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama prior to joining Carnegie.

China expands influence in Africa as US plays catch-up

James Stavridis

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As China continues to implement its trillion-dollar Belt and Road infrastructure initiative, a principal focus will be engagement in Africa. China knows that Africa's youthful population is exploding, that the continent is rich in natural resources and that it is massive in geographical scale.

It represents a huge potential market for Chinese goods and a zone of significant political influence in countering the U.S. globally. But while China is alive to all these possibilities, and indeed is actively exploring them, the U.S. has only just started to play catch-up and faces losing out to its superpower rival.

Economically, Africa continues to expand in raw output, technological sophistication and growth, which may hit 4% in 2020. While some of the larger economies can drag down overall expansion, countries like Ethiopia, Rwanda and Kenya are showing strong growth.

Africa's population is already 16% of the world at 1.3 billion people, and is forecast to grow to 2.5 billion by 2050 and 4 billion by the century's end.

Specific examples point to the success of China's strategic approach. Just over a year ago, Senegal signed up to the BRI, becoming the first nation in West Africa to do so while welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping in an elaborate ceremony.

China's Swarms Of Rocket Drones Could Be A Big Problem For The U.S. Military

by Michael Peck

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Key point: What’s particularly interesting about a Chinese drone swarm is China’s predominance in drone production.

China has a history of overwhelming its enemies with sheer numbers of troops.

Now, China may have a modern iteration on that tactic: swarms of tiny rocket-armed helicopter drones that will swamp enemy forces like angry bees.

“China’s domestically developed helicopter drones carrying proximity explosive mortar shells, grenade launchers and machine guns can now form swarms and engage in coordinated strikes,” according to Chinese newspaper Global Times, citing a statement by the Guangdong-based Zhuhai Ziyan company, which makes unmanned aerial vehicles. The system was also displayed at a recent Turkish defense trade show.

“With a single push of a button, the drones can autonomously take off, avoiding colliding in the air and finding their way to their designated target,” Global Times said. “Once they receive an order to attack, they will engage the target autonomously in a coordinated manner. Upon finishing a mission, the system will lead the drones back to base and land automatically. The operator does not need to expose himself or herself in a dangerous frontline as the drones can easily be controlled remotely.”

China’s Government Is Like Something out of 1984

By VICTOR DAVIS HANSON

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The Chinese Communist government increasingly poses an existential threat not just to its own 1.4 billion citizens but to the world at large.

China is currently in a dangerously chaotic state. And why not, when a premodern authoritarian society leaps wildly into the brave new world of high-tech science in a single generation?

The Chinese technological revolution is overseen by an Orwellian dictatorship. Predictably, the Chinese Communist Party has not developed the social, political, or cultural infrastructure to ensure that its sophisticated industrial and biological research does not go rogue and become destructive to itself and to the billions of people who are on the importing end of Chinese products and protocols.

Central Party officials run the government, military, media, and universities collectively in a manner reminiscent of the science-fiction Borg organism of Star Trek, which was a horde of robot-like entities all under the control of a central mind.

Coronavirus: The View From the Chinese Himalayas

By Elisabeth Forster

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Around 8 a.m. at over 3,500meters above sea level, with temperatures firmly below zero, dozens of women from the village rush to the local temple for their morning prayer, all wearing face masks. Monks from the nearby monastery descend to the town to buy groceries, also wearing face masks. It was a peculiar scene, and evidence of the novel coronavirus reaching this mostly untouched place. It was only the beginning.

In response to the global outbreak of the disease officially dubbed COVID-19, the autonomous Tibetan prefecture of Garze in western Sichuan on the Tibetan Plateau decided to close itself off to outsiders — including Chinese nationals. In the majority Tibetan region, the viral outbreak is not only leading to a de facto lockdown, but also feeding into underlying ethnic tensions.

On January 29, hotel owners in Garze abruptly enforced a no-outsiders policy, effectively kicking out all visitors to the region, which spans an area roughly the size of Greece. It is unclear whether this policy was decided by the local government or by the hotel owners themselves.

Before and Beyond 5G: Central Asia’s Huawei Connections

By Umida Hashimova

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During his recent Central Asia tour, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo received a question from the Associated Press about U.S. concerns over China’s 5G investments in the region. Pompeo’s response was reserved, highlighting in his comments the benefits of American investment — “we show up, we create jobs for local people, we obey the local rules, we don’t pollute their neighborhood, we’re good citizens, we’re good neighbors” — and noting that other countries have to play by the “same set of rules of transparency and openness” and do “real market transactions not state-sponsored, politically driven transactions.” 

Beijing, which until recently would have refrained from commenting back, issued a statement accusing the U.S. of slander and stoking discord between Central Asia and China. 

The United States fears that allowing in an organization beholden to the Chinese government, such as Huawei, which is subject to U.S. sanctions, would open the door to the collection of intelligence information and the use of that information to further develop China’s artificial intelligence capabilities.

STRATCOM on China's nuclear buildup

By Bill Gertz
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The commander of U.S. Strategic Command told Congress recently that China is engaged in a troubling buildup of nuclear forces that could be used to wage regional conflict or to coerce nations in Asia.

“Competitors, such as China and Russia, are developing advanced capabilities to directly challenge our strengths across all domains,” Adm. Charles A. Richard, the commander, said last week, singling out Beijing for its large-scale nuclear force modernization.

“China is advancing a comprehensive modernization program for the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and is building a robust, lethal force with capabilities spanning all domains, the electromagnetic spectrum and the information environment,” he stated in prepared testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee on Feb. 13. “These initiatives increase China’s ability to project power further from their mainland and support their aspirations to impose China’s will throughout the Indo-Pacific region.”

The goal of the force buildup is to “establish regional hegemony, deny U.S. power projection operations in the Indo-Pacific and supplant the U.S. as the security partner of choice.”

Cool your jets: Some perspective on the hyping of hypersonic weapons

Ivan Oelrich

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Russia, China, and the United States are in a race to develop and deploy hypersonic glide weapons. Hypersonic vehicles are defined as moving at a speed greater than five times the speed of sound. The US Defense Department has claimed these weapons will provide revolutionary new capabilities and will present daunting new threats against which there is currently no effective defense. Such claims have been repeated with little skepticism in the public and trade press. Many of the claims made for hypersonic weapons are, however, overstated and much of what they can do could be accomplished more easily and cheaply using better-established technology, typically via the modification of ballistic missile warheads.

The international competition to develop and deploy hypersonic weapons is heating up. In 2018, Russian President Vladimir Putin used his annual state of the nation address to announce the deployment of hypersonic weapons, declaring that they were invulnerable to US defenses and were specifically developed in response to American abrogation of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (Putin 2018; Cebul 2018). For its part, the US military has long supported research into hypersonic vehicles (Woolf 2019). However, some experts claim that both Russia and China are ahead of the United States in the development of hypersonic weapons (Davenport 2018), a viewpoint that Michael Griffin, head of Pentagon research and engineering, seemed to endorse in 2018. Speaking at a conference, Griffin said that hypersonic weapons, and defense against them, were his highest technology priorities (Tirpak 2018; Smith 2019), and the Pentagon’s budget request for hypersonic-related research has increased accordingly, jumping to $2.6 billion for fiscal 2020 (Sayler 2019).

Europe's Digital Strategy - Part 1: AI Regulation

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Last week, the EU took steps to further flesh out their emerging digital strategy with the release of two white papers, one on AI regulation, and the other on a European data strategy. Together, the documents show the tension that exists in European digital policymaking. The EU is alarmed by the potential harms of technologies like AI, and believes that the precautionary principle is the only way to manage these risks. But at the same time, the EU is anxious to capitalize on the opportunities presented by the data economy, and fears becoming little more than a pawn in the digital geopolitics playing out between the U.S. and China. Whether and how the EU will be able to resolve this tension is yet to be seen, though these documents offer our clearest picture yet of how the EU plans to try.

The first white paper, on promoting “excellence and trust” in artificial intelligence, has so far been largely notable for what it does not include, namely, the five-year ban on the use of facial recognition in public spaces that had been part of an earlier draft. In place of a moratorium, yesterday’s white paper instead calls only for a “broad European debate” on the issue, frustrating many digital rights activists who wished for a stronger statement against the technology. However, the public focus on the debate over facial recognition moratoriums risks distracting from the broader issues raised by the document’s framing of AI’s regulatory challenges.

Is Duterte Trying to End the U.S.-Philippines Alliance?

Joshua Kurlantzick 

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Last week, after hinting at it for some time, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte announced he would terminate a key military pact with the United States. The Visiting Forces Agreement, in place for two decades, allows Washington to keep rotations of American soldiers in the Philippines. As Richard Heydarian has noted, the deal also provides a legal basis for the numerous annual joint military exercises between U.S. and Philippines forces. Tearing it up is the biggest break in bilateral relations at least since Manila forced Washington to give up its Philippine bases in 1991 and 1992. Some analysts, like Heydarian, go further, suggesting it essentially signals the end of the decades-old U.S.-Philippine alliance.

President Donald Trump claimed he didn’t care after the Philippine leader made the break. “I don’t really mind if they would like to do that,” he said after Duterte’s announcement, “it will save a lot of money.” But Secretary of Defense Mark Esper called it “unfortunate.”

Although Duterte often makes bold statements and then recants, he appears determined to go through with this one. He has harbored anti-American sentiments for decades and has grown increasingly infuriated with Washington in the past year. But while Duterte proclaims that shifting away from the U.S., and toward China, will improve the Philippines’ strategic position, axing the Visiting Forces Agreement carries bigger risks for Manila than for Washington. The Philippines’ own defense establishment remains extremely worried about China’s regional strategy and may try to block Duterte. The wider public will also be skeptical. Duterte may still be extremely popular with Filipinos, but Beijing decidedly is not.

Georgia, backed by U.S. and Britain, blames Russia for 'paralyzing' cyber attack

Margarita Antidze, Jack Stubbs

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TBILISI/LONDON (Reuters) - Britain and the United States joined Georgia on Thursday in blaming Russia for a large-scale cyber attack last year that knocked thousands of Georgian websites offline and disrupted national television broadcasts.

Up to 15,000 state, private and media websites were taken out by unknown hackers on Oct. 28, including those belonging to the Georgian president’s office and two private television stations.

Georgia’s Foreign Ministry said it had now concluded the cyberattack, which defaced websites to display an image of former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, was planned and carried out by the Russian military.

The attack “was intended to harm Georgian citizens and government structures by disrupting and paralyzing the functionality of various organizations, thereby causing anxiety among the general public,” said Foreign Ministry spokesman Vladimer Konstantinidi.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry denied the allegations. “Russia did not plan and is not planning to interfere in Georgia’s internal affairs in any way,” the RIA news agency cited Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Rudenko as saying.

Britain and the United States attributed the attack specifically to Unit 74455 of Russia’s military intelligence service, commonly known as the GRU. Up to 12 other countries are also expected to issue supporting statements, officials said.

Western countries have accused the GRU of orchestrating a spree of destructive cyberattacks in recent years, including hacks that took down parts of the Ukrainian energy grid and crippled businesses worldwide in 2017.

The US Didn’t Just Wake Up to Central Asia’s Importance

By Catherine Putz

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In a recent opinion piece published by The Hill, Frederick Starr and Svante Cornell of the American Foreign Policy Council’s Central Asia Caucasus Institute argue that with the release of the new U.S. Central Asia strategy Washington is finally paying attention to the region.

“In releasing this strategy, the Trump administration makes clear that it views Central Asia as a world region where the United States has intrinsic national security and economic interests,” they write. “This is an important departure from the past practice of allowing this region to slip between the cracks.”

In making their argument, Starr and Cornell make an astounding statement which, if not erroneous, is misleading. U.S. interest in Central Asia isn’t new, and its strategy isn’t either.

“[The release of the Central Asia strategy] marks the first time in more than two decades that the United States has come up with a serious approach to a region where vast economic, geopolitical, and civilizational stakes are at issue,” they state in their opening paragraph. 

This could not be further from the truth.

Space Force Wants $5B For Anti-Jam Satcoms

By THERESA HITCHENS

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AEHF satellite for classified military communications

WASHINGTON: With military space leaders increasingly worried about fighting through jamming during conflict, the Air Force’s 2021 budget request includes $205.2 million, an increase of $41.5 million from the $163.7 allocated by Congress in 2020, for development of a new, hard-to-jam satcom system for US and even allied troops on the battlefield.

Designed as a tactical alternative to the Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF) satellite network, the Protected Satellite Communications (PTS) program is budgeted at a whopping $2.4 billion through 2025.

The concern over improving ensured access to satellite communications in the heat of battle is reflected by the recent signing of a new Vision for Satellite Communications (SATCOM) by Gen. Jay Raymond, double hatted as head of Space Command and the Space Force. The goal of the effort, Fighting SATCOM, is to integrate the military’s “collection of stovepiped SATCOM systems” to deal with “a 21st century contested space domain,” the document says.

Governments Are Clamping Down On Foreign Tech Investments

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China, Israel, Russia, and the US are among the many countries blurring the line between prudence and paranoia.

Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu's governments have murky ways of determining when foreign investments cross the line.

Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin instructed his cabinet to launch a new investment cycle “to ensure economic growth rates above the world level.” Yet just a few weeks earlier, he recommended the legislature pass laws to protect investments in Russian industry—specifically highlighting the need to protect Russian data. (As with all of Putin’s “recommendations,” it came with a deadline attached: April 30.)

Connected world: An evolution in connectivity beyond the 5G revolution

By Ferry Grijpink, Eric Kutcher, Alexandre Ménard, Sree Ramaswamy, Davide Schiavotto, James Manyika, Michael Chui, Rob Hamill, and Emir Okan

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The promise of 5G has captured the attention of business leaders, policy makers, and the media. But how much of that promise is likely to be realized anytime soon?

With the first true high-band 5G networks already live, we set out to gain a realistic view of how and where connectivity could be deployed and what it can enable over the next 10 years. But 5G is not appearing in isolation. A new discussion paper, Connected World: An evolution in connectivity beyond the 5G evolution (PDF–10.3MB), takes a more expansive look that ranges from fiber and satellites to Wi-Fi and short-range technologies.

To illustrate what is possible, this research looks at how connectivity could be deployed in mobility, healthcare, manufacturing, and retail. The use cases we identified in these four commercial domains alone could boost global GDP by $1.2 trillion to $2 trillion by 2030. This implies that the value at stake will ultimately run trillions of dollars higher across the entire global economy.

Most of this value can be captured with advanced connectivity, using technologies that have been available for some time now. This raises a puzzling question: Why is so much potential still sitting on the table, and will new technologies alone be enough to realize it? This research looks at the issues holding back the market and what it will take to create momentum.

A Military Perspective On Climate Change Could Bridge The Gap Between Believers And Doubters

by Michael Klare
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As experts warn that the world is running out of time to head off severe climate change, discussions of what the U.S. should do about it are split into opposing camps. The scientific-environmental perspective says global warming will cause the planet severe harm without action to slow fossil fuel burning. Those who reject mainstream climate science insist either that warming is not occurring or that it’s not clear human actions are driving it.

With these two extremes polarizing the American political arena, climate policy has come to a near standstill. But as I argue in my new book,“All Hell Breaking Loose: The Pentagon’s Perspective on Climate Change," the U.S. armed forces offer a third perspective that could help bridge the gap.

I’ve studied military and security issues for decades. Although President Trump has called climate change a hoax and worked to reverse the Obama administration’s climate initiatives, senior U.S. military officers have long been aware of warming’s detrimental effects.