How the China-Japan Rift Could Cost Both Countries

Miranda Jeyaretnam

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China and Japan have been locked in a diplomatic spat that could come at a heavy cost to both sides.

On Nov. 7, Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi suggested that an attack on Taiwan could constitute an existential threat to Japan and warrant a forceful response, prompting strong condemnation from Beijing. China has imposed a slew of economic measures that appear aimed at Japan, as its Commerce Ministry said Takaichi’s comments have “severely damaged” trade cooperation between the two countries. China claims sovereignty over the self-governed island of Taiwan and maintains the right to take control of it by force if necessary.

Tensions thus far show no sign of abating, with China sending a letter to the U.N. promising self-defense if Japan “dared to intervene militarily in the Taiwan Strait,” drawing criticism from Tokyo. On Friday, the Chinese embassy in Japan also posted on X that China has the “right to take direct military action” without U.N. Security Council authorization if Japan “takes any step to once again implement a policy of aggression. Takaichi for her part has refused to cave to pressure to retract her remarks, noting that they were consistent with Japan’s long-held position, while Japanese officials have sought to cool tensions through dialogue.

Hezbollah in the Digital Sphere: The Cyberattack Group BQT.Lock and Its Leader Karim Fayad

Alma Research

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This report, written by Dos-Op and the Alma Center, presents a comprehensive mapping of the cyberattack group BQT.Lock (BaqiyatLock) and its leader Karim Fayad, revealing a direct and systematic affiliation with Hezbollah and the Iranian cyber apparatus.

BQT.Lock operates as an offensive cyber arm with a distinctly ideological and religious motive, combining criminal cyber activity, (including ransomware attacks and the sale of ransomware tools), with the advancement of Hezbollah’s security, psychological, and economic goals.

The group operates a Ransomware-as-a-Service platform under the brand Baqiyat and claims to have encrypted hundreds of servers and stolen sensitive data around the world.

The Persian Gulf’s geopolitical flexibility is a useful revelationby Gilead Sher, opinion contributor

Gilead Sher

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Gone are the days of rigid alliances and permanent enemies. In their place, the wealthy Gulf states — led by Saudi Arabia and Qatar — are taking a new approach: Cutting flexible, case-by-case deals to buy stability while keeping every option on the table. This is very useful: It helped end, or at least pause, the ruinous Gaza war.

Nevertheless, there are more than a few quid pro quos. A proposed sale of up to 48 cutting-edge F-35 stealth fighters to Saudi Arabia by President Trump cuts directly to the core of American foreign policy in the Middle East.

For decades, the qualitative military edge — a statutory commitment guaranteeing Israel’s technological superiority over any regional coalition — has served as the unshakeable bedrock of U.S. defence strategy.

Can Washington reconcile this massive arms deal with its strategic obligation to protect Israel’s qualitative military edge, or is this sale a direct and fundamental breach of the commitment that underpins regional stability?

Trump’s tariffs might actually be working as he intended

Matthew Lynn

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It was, by any measure, a lot of red ink. When Volkswagen announced its third-quarter profits at the end of October, the German auto giant said it anticipated heavy losses for this year. The reason? It is taking a 5 billion-euro hit from tariffs imposed in the American market.

Likewise, the German sportswear manufacturer Adidas warned of a 120 million-euro hit to its earnings, in part because the levies its sneakers now face in the United States, while Toyota warned of a $9 billion hit from tariffs.

For anyone following the corporate earnings season over the last month, a clear theme has emerged from the giants of European and Asian industry: President Trump’s tariff regime is starting to significantly reduce their profits.

But hold on. Weren’t we told that tariffs would simply be passed straight on to American consumers in the form of higher prices? That they were a tax on ordinary working people?

Instead, it is already becoming clear that at least some of the costs are being paid by foreign conglomerates and even by foreign governments.

Trump’s Ukraine Fiasco

Richard Epstein

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President Donald J. Trump has long regarded himself as the ultimate of negotiations, even before the 2016 campaign, when he crowned himself such in his best-seller The Art of the Deal. Sadly, it should now be evident that Trump has lost his touch; today, he has no idea how to act when high-stakes international matters are on the table. The plan was reportedly drafted by Trump and Putin, with no involvement from Ukraine, which helps explain why reports that the supposed deal calls for “Outright capitulation” from Ukraine, which “risks becoming another Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.” The New York Sun stated “Trump’s Peace Plan for Ukraine Leaves Putin Gloating, Zelensky Despondent,” given Trump’s explicit demand that Ukraine accept these terms of abject surrender or lose American military and logistical support. It was exactly backwards. He should have leaned on Putin to moderate his demands.

But now that Trump has made the wrong choice, one can hope that an errant United States has already its wad by having reduced its support so far that by now, Ukrainian ingenuity has stepped up. Ukraine replaced American long-range Tomahawk missiles with its homegrown Flamingos, with the same range and power, all guided by its own intelligence and cybercapacity, buttressed by increasing support from Germany and other NATO allies. The President that he can take advantage of a current corruption scandal (of which there are many instances of in the second Trump administration). But Europe has to, and will, step up its support, so the correct political judgment is, as the UK’s Independent, to tell Trump to buzz off while backing Ukraine to the hilt.

Zelenskyy’s grim choice: Take Trump’s peace deal or rely on flaky European friends

Tim Ross, Clea Caulcutt, Bjarke Smith-Meyer and Nette Nöstlinger

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LONDON — European officials congratulated themselves after talks in Geneva at the weekend suggested Donald Trump will listen to their concerns about forcing a bad peace deal on Ukraine.

“While work remains to be done, there is now a solid basis for moving forward,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said as she hailed “good progress” resulting from “a strong European presence” at the talks.

It was certainly “progress” for top advisers from the EU and the U.K. to be invited to join Sunday’s meeting in Switzerland after they were cut out of America’s original 28-point plan, which they feared was so biased it would embolden Russia to launch further attacks.

5 Places World War III Could Break Out in 2026

Christian Orr

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-Today, five flashpoints could drag nuclear-armed powers into a global war as soon as 2026: Russia’s grinding campaign in Eastern Europe, a Chinese move on Taiwan and the South China Sea, a still-unfinished Korean War on a nuclear peninsula, Iran’s collision course with Israel, and the volatile India–Pakistan rivalry in South Asia.

-Each theater is now wired into great-power competition—meaning a miscalculation in any one of them could light the fuse for everyone.

World War III in 2026? These 5 Flashpoints Should Worry Washington

Throughout the Cold War, it was commonly envisioned that World War III would break out in Eastern Europe, as dramatically depicted in bestselling novels such as “The Third World War: August 1985” (published in 1980) by the late General Sir John Winthrop “Shan” Hackett and “Red Storm Rising” (published in 1986) by the late Tom Clancy, as well as nuclear apocalyptic movies such as “The Day After” and “Threads.”

No one will support it': Ukraine's soldiers react to US peace plan

Jonathan Beale, Anastasiia Levchenko and Volodymyr Lozhko 

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Ukraine's frontline soldiers have reacted to draft US peace proposals with a mixture of defiance, anger and resignation.

The BBC spoke to half a dozen who sent us their views via social media and email in response to the original US plan – details of which were leaked last week.

Since then, American and Ukrainian negotiators have been working on changes to the proposals – and are set to continue talks about the "peace framework".

Of the original US plan, Yaroslav, in eastern Ukraine, says it "sucks… no one will support it" while an army medic with the call sign Shtutser dismissed it as an "absolutely disgraceful draft of a peace plan, unworthy of our attention".

But one soldier with the call sign Snake told us "it's time to agree at least on something".

This is what the soldiers who spoke to the BBC had to say about some of the key points in the original US draft peace plan.

A Decade After the Paris Agreement, Climate Promises Still Leave the Poor Behind

Brian Mukhaya

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Ten years after the landmark Paris Agreement, the world is still trying to solve two crises as if they were separate: climate change and economic development. That’s a dangerous illusion. Climate progress cannot succeed if billions of people remain in poverty, without electricity, stable food systems, or the means to build better lives. And development, if it ignores climate risk, is little more than a short-term fix that will collapse under the weight of future disasters.

I saw this tension firsthand at COP30 in Belém, Brazil, the annual UN climate summit. The energy there was unmistakable—a mixture of urgency and frustration. Delegates from across Africa reminded the world that promises made in Paris have not been kept. Wealthy nations pledged to support developing countries as they cut emissions and adapted to rising temperatures. Yet, a decade later, those commitments remain largely unfulfilled.

A Self-Defeating Reversal on Ukraine

Thomas Wright

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The Trump administration’s new plan for Ukraine is apparently to reverse all the progress it has made there in recent months. And not just that—to create a much bigger strategic problem that will bedevil the administration for the next three years. The strangest part of all of this is that the plan emerged at a moment when Donald Trump’s Ukraine policy had finally found its footing after a very turbulent start.

Over the past 24 hours, multiple media outlets, citing several administration officials with direct knowledge, have published details of a new U.S. peace proposal that is tantamount to a Ukrainian surrender. As drafted, the plan would require Ukraine to give up territory and fortifications in the parts of the Donbas that it still controls, cut the size of its armed forces by half, abandon weaponry that Russia deems to be offensive (including long-range missiles), accept an end to U.S. military assistance, and agree to a ban on foreign troops on Ukrainian soil. The Trump administration is dangling a U.S. security guarantee for Ukraine in the event of future Russian aggression, but what that would entail is unclear and would almost certainly fall far short of a NATO-style mutual-defense commitment. The plan actually guts the one security guarantee that would make a real difference, namely a strong and capable Ukraine.

Globalisation and its Discontents

Noel Yaxley

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Ray Freeman Cycles, founded in 1890, was a lovely family-run business that served Norwich with all its cycling needs for over 125 years. Nestled at the end of Heigham Street, this charming shop, with its distinctive yellow sign and large front windows, had a delightful Victorian feel; place Fred Dibnah might’ve adored. It was based on traditional, socially conservative communitarian beliefs. Everyone who worked there knew your name and family. It was somewhere you could go for a chat, as well as anything bike-related. If you had a puncture, you’d go to Ray’s. Whether you’d knocked your chain off the gears or buckled your wheel, the guys there could fix it in no time.

I still vividly remember stepping into that shop as a kid: the place was a treasure trove with its endless shelves of dusty screws, bolts, and tyres. The air carried that unmistakable, comforting yet overwhelming, smell of oil. When my bike was ready, one of the guys would show up in grease-covered overalls, give my father a firm handshake, and the two of them would sort out the price with ease. That all ended recently. Richard Freeman, the proud fifth-generation owner, decided to retire in 2021 after fifty years of committed service to the community through bicycle maintenance.

A Farewell to Europe

Cheryl Benard

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In military history, there are instances in which one side unleashes a completely new weapon or form of combat, leaving the adversary so entirely off guard that they are unable to muster any effective defense. The Eurasian rider nomads are an example; their archers stunned the Europeans with their ability to shoot accurately from the back of a galloping horse, an assault method never seen before. Their incredibly agile hit-and-run mounted troops fired off flurries of arrows while attacking at high speed, and then, in a maneuver called the “Parthian shot,” they continued to shoot backwards over their shoulders as they sped away.

The longbow upended medieval combat by adding unparalleled lethal range; the Byzantine use of Greek fire introduced shock and awe into naval battles; the British use of tanks in the First World War brought mobility and firepower to static trench warfare. These are the black swans of combat—forms of attack that you can’t prepare for, because you can’t imagine them. You must then wrap your mind around what just happened, regroup, and alter your defensive and offensive arsenal. If you can’t manage that fast enough, you’re going down.

Europe is presently under attack from just such an unexpected, black-swan form of warfare. The undercover invaders are wreaking havoc, upending the economies, undermining civil security with hitherto unseen levels of crime, splitting domestic politics, degrading the education systems, gridlocking the courts, and altering the cherished cultural practices of their host nations. While also plotting terrorist attacks, building ISIS cells, and unleashing a wave of sexual assault. European governments are struggling even to grasp what is happening, let alone formulate an effective response.

Realpolitik not rhetoric: Witkoff’s Ukraine peace plan is generous to Kiev

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It didn’t take long for the predictable chorus of indignation to make itself heard. Steve Witkoff’s 28-point peace proposal for the Ukrainian War said far more about just how detached Kiev and its diehard supporters in the European establishment are from reality than it did about the plan itself. They didn’t even wait for the ink to dry to denounce the document as a Kremlin trick, a capitulation dressed up in diplomatic prose, or a ploy designed to “sell out” the Ukrainians. Yet, for all the outrage, not many have paused to consider what the plan actually asks of each side – and, more importantly, what it does not ask of Kiev.

When one strips away the performative moral grandstanding, what one encounters is an ironic truth: If the proposal were genuine, and if its broad contours were a practical way forward–which is to say, acceptable to Moscow – then in many respects the plan would be far more favourable to Ukraine than any settlement it is likely to obtain later. Indeed, viewed in the cold light of realpolitik rather than the comforting glow of rhetoric, the proposal seems so lenient to Kiev that it’s all but inconceivable Moscow would accept it – which alone should give pause to those dismissing it out of hand for being too “pro-Russian” or even, as The Guardian has absurdly claimed, as having fundamentally been co-written by the Russians themselves.

The Murky Plan That Ensures a Future War

Anne Applebaum

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The 28-point peace plan that the United States and Russia want to impose on Ukraine and Europe is misnamed. It is not a peace plan. It is a proposal that weakens Ukraine and divides America from Europe, preparing the way for a larger war in the future. In the meantime, it benefits unnamed Russian and American investors, at the expense of everyone else.

The plan was negotiated by Steve Witkoff, a real-estate developer with no historical, geographical, or cultural knowledge of Russia or Ukraine, and Kirill Dmitriev, who heads Russia’s sovereign-wealth fund and spends most of his time making business deals. The revelation of their plan this week shocked European leaders, who are now paying almost all of the military costs of the war, as well as the Ukrainians, who were not sure whether to take this latest plan seriously until they were told to agree to it by Thanksgiving or lose all further U.S. support. Even if the plan falls apart, this arrogant and confusing ultimatum, coming only days after the State Department authorized the sale of anti-missile technology to Ukraine, will do permanent damage to America’s reputation as a reliable ally, not only in Europe but around the world.

The central points of the plan reflect long-standing Russian demands. The United States would recognize Russian rule over Crimea, Donetsk, and Luhansk—all of which are part of Ukraine. Russia would, in practice, be allowed to keep territory it has conquered in Zaporizhzhia and Kherson. In all of these occupation zones, Russian forces have carried out arrests, torture, and mass repression of Ukrainian citizens, and because Russia would not be held accountable for war crimes, they could continue to do so with impunity. Ukraine would withdraw from the part of Donetsk that it still controls—a heavily reinforced and mined territory whose loss would open up central Ukraine to a future attack.

The Ukraine Peace Plan Looks Like a Giant Gamble

Reuben Johnson

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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Nov. 20 was scheduled to meet with senior U.S. Army civilian and military officials in Kyiv—the highest-level Army delegation to visit the Ukraine capital since Russia invaded the country in February 2022.

The visit came after the U.S. presented a previously unannounced plan to end the war.

“The good news is that there is an interest from the U.S. side in ending the war,” said a Ukrainian defense industry executive speaking from the far-western region of the country, near the border with Poland.

“The bad news is that this is a plan that calls for substantial concessions on the part of Ukraine, while at the same time Russia gives up almost nothing in return,” he continued. “There are also no concrete guarantees that Russia would not attack Ukraine again—just promises on paper. We have all been here before. It’s that useless piece of paper called the Budapest Memorandum.”

What does US ‘national interest’ really mean?

Christopher Mott

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In foreign policy discourse, the phrase “the national interest” gets used with an almost ubiquitous frequency, which could lead one to assume it is a strongly defined and absolute term.

Most debates, particularly around changing course in diplomatic strategy or advocating for or against some kind of economic or military intervention, invoke the phrase as justification for their recommended path forward.

But what is the national interest, really?

It should come as no surprise that the term is actually as contestable as any other social science label. Different people will approach the question with perspectives that vary based on factors as different as what region they originate from or what their concept of the national government is. A person of a more conservative disposition might see it as ensuring the protection of a culture from outside influence, while a leftist could see it as one defined by class interests, with the National Interest itself being both defined and controlled by the ruling class of a given society for their own internal as well as external self-interest.

The End of the Longest Peace?

Graham Allison and James A. Winnefeld

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The past eight decades have been the longest period without a war between great powers since the Roman Empire. This anomalous era of extended peace came after two catastrophic wars, each of which was so much more destructive than prior conflicts that historians found it necessary to create an entirely new category to describe them: world wars. Had the rest of the twentieth century been as violent as the preceding two millennia, the lifetimes of nearly everyone alive today would have been radically different.

The absence of great-power wars since 1945 did not happen by accident. A large measure of grace.

Japan's high-stakes gamble to turn island of flowers into global chip hub

Suranjana TewariAsia 

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The island of Hokkaido has long been an agricultural powerhouse – now Japan is investing billions to turn it into a global hub for advanced semiconductors.

More than half of Japan's dairy produce comes from Hokkaido, the northernmost of its main islands. In winter, it's a wonderland of ski resorts and ice-sculpture festivals; in summer, fields bloom with bands of lavender, poppies and sunflowers.

These days, cranes are popping up across the island – building factories, research centres and universities focused on technology. It's part of Japan's boldest industrial push in a generation: an attempt to reboot the country's chip-making capabilities and reshape its economic future.

Locals say that beyond the cattle and tourism, Hokkaido has long lacked other industries. There's even a saying that those who go there do so only to leave.

But if the government succeeds in turning Hokkaido into Japan's answer to Silicon Valley - or "Hokkaido Valley", as some have begun to call it - the country could become a new contender in the $600bn (£458bn) race to supply the world's computer chips.

In Ukraine's 'kill-zone', robots are a lifeline to troops trapped on perilous eastern front

Abdujalil AbdurasulovIn 

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"The toy is delivered," a Ukrainian soldier whispers into the radio.

In the dead of night, he and his partner move quickly to roll out their cargo from a van. Speed is crucial as they are within the range of deadly Russian drones.

The fifth brigade's new "toy" is an unmanned ground vehicle (UGV), a robot that provides a lifeline for Ukrainian troops at the front in Pokrovsk and Myrnograd, a strategic hub in eastern Ukraine.

Russian forces are relentlessly trying to cut off Ukraine's supply routes in the area.

Without fresh food and ammunition, Ukraine's frontline soldiers would face a choice of either surrender or a costly retreat.

Kyiv has sent special forces, elite assault units and drone groups to reinforce its troops in and around Pokrovsk, but Russia's grip on routes into the city means going in with armoured vehicles would bring almost certain death.

ASEAN Is No Longer Just a Talk Shop

Derek Grossman, 

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A professor of political science and international relations at the University of Southern California.Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim and Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi at the ASEAN summit in MalaysiaMalaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim and Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi walk past national flags during the ASEAN summit in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on Oct. 26. CHALINEE THIRASUPA/POOL/AFP via Getty Images

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is often dismissed as little more than a talk shop—long on meetings and statements but short on concrete action. As I have previously argued in Foreign Policy, the bloc has generally suffered from policy paralysis since its inception in 1967, mainly because of disunity among members over collective security actions to address challenges across Southeast Asia. This assessment, however, needs an update: In recent years, the 11-member group has increasingly striven to match its words with deeds—probably due to rising threat perceptions, stronger leadership, and greater pressure from U.S.-China competition that is pushing ASEAN to act to avoid irrelevance.

The latest example involves Cambodia and Thailand, two ASEAN members that have been locked in border disputes for many decades. During U.S. President Donald Trump’s visit to Malaysia last month for the annual ASEAN summit, he also presided over a peace signing ceremony that officially ended hostilities between Phnom Penh and Bangkok over the disputed Preah Vihear temple and surrounding areas. But a fresh round of violence has put these two countries back on edge. On Nov. 10, four Thai soldiers were wounded by a land mine, followed by an exchange of gunfire that led to the death of one Cambodian villager. Bangkok blames Phenom Penh for recently planting the explosive device, while the Cambodian government claims it was lef

The Inevitable Logic of a Japanese Nuclear Weapon

Bilahari Kausikan, 

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a former Singaporean diplomat.A screen fixed to a wall shows a video of a mushroom cloud. A soldier in a formal dress uniform stands beside the screen with his hands clasped behind his back as he leans against the wall.A security guard stands next to a screen showing a video about China’s atomic bomb program at an exhibition in Beijing on Oct. 17, 2007. China Photos/Getty Images

It is no longer a question of if but when Japan and South Korea will acquire independent nuclear deterrents within the U.S. alliance system. That system would otherwise loosen in East Asia as the United States’ extended deterrence—the so-called nuclear umbrella—erodes due to China’s and North Korea’s acquisition of second strike capabilities targeting the U.S. mainland. To acquire nuclear weapons will be a politically difficult and highly fraught decision—much more so for Japan than for South Korea, where opinion polls already show considerable support. But regardless of public opinion, changes in the global and regional strategic environment are inexorably pushing both countries in this direction. Resisting the logic of these changes could lead to very grave geopolitical consequences.

In democracies, security policy must rest on a foundation of public support. Such a foundation does not yet exist in Japan on the nuclear question. It is therefore imperative that Japan engage in an open, realistic, and timely public debate to build a national consensus on this vital issue. Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi took a first step in this direction earlier this month, when she announced that her government is considering a review of Japan’s long-standing policy on hosting nuclear weapons.

Don’t Call This a ‘Peace Plan’

Christian Caryl

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the former Moscow bureau chief for Newsweek and U.S. News & World Report.British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain declares "peace for our time" at Heston Aerodrome in London on his return from negotiations with Adolf Hitler in Munich, Germany.British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain declares "peace for our time" at Heston Aerodrome in London on his return from negotiations with Adolf Hitler in Munich, Germany. Central Press/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

The 1938 Munich Agreement left the Czechoslovak state with no choice but submission. Led by Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, Britain joined France and Italy in accepting Adolf Hitler’s demands for Czechoslovak territory. The Führer managed to neutralize two of the country’s other neighbors, Poland and Hungary, by offering them other chunks of Czechoslovak land—which also effectively thwarted the Soviet Union (another ally of Czechoslovakia at the time) from intervening, since the Poles refused to allow Soviet troops to cross their territory.

Updated peace plan could be a deal Ukraine will take - eventually

Sarah RainsfordSouthern

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That's why when the US began pushing it to agree to a deal by Thanksgiving on what looked close to surrender terms, Ukraine pushed back.

It scrambled senior officials to talks in Geneva and all of Sunday we saw delegates from the US and Ukraine shuttling back and forth between the two main venues in black limousines with darkened windows.

They were joined by national security advisers from Germany, France and the UK.

The only time I glimpsed Andriy Yermak, heading the negotiating team from Kyiv, he looked stony-faced.

No wonder: the starting proposal on the table was so skewed towards Russia's demands, the talks began with the US Secretary of State Marco Rubio having to deny it had been written by the Kremlin.

But Donald Trump had been clear that Ukraine needed to sign up fast or face unspecified consequences. So Kyiv had to engage.

On Sunday night, Marco Rubio declared there'd been "tremendous progress" in the talks with just a "couple of things" still outstanding. When pressed, he wouldn't be more specific, calling the situation "delicate".

Golden Dome faces challenges of size, scope and scale from every angle

Casey Laughman

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A Space X Falcon 9 rocket launches from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, Feb. 14, 2024. The rocket was launched as part of classified mission USSF-124, sending six satellites to orbit - two for the Missile Defense Agency and four for the Space Development Agency. (U.S. Space Force photo by Airman 1st Class Spencer Contreras)

The announcement of the Golden Dome missile defense system to protect the United States from missile attacks represented a major shift in defense priorities for the US military — and presents myriad challenges when trying to protect a country the size of the US.

The model is Israel’s Iron Dome, but that system covers a relatively small area and mostly protects against traditional ballistic missile attacks. Golden Dome will cover a much larger area, and must be able to counter intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), cruise missiles and hypersonic missiles. All of those requirements add complexity, engineering challenges and cost considerations.

The US has announced $175 billion to fund the program, and has placed it under the control of Space Force Gen. Michael Guetlein. Guetlein will have oversight and acquisition authority for Golden Dome, which signals a different approach than the norm, says John Plumb, former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Space Policy.

Cyber Warfare and Its Limits: A Response to Soesanto and Gajos

Kubo Mačák

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On Nov. 3, Lawfare published a thought-provoking piece by Stefan Soesanto and Wiktoria Gajos advancing the argument that Western governments should learn from Ukraine’s offensive cyber strategy and adopt what the authors call a “responsibly irresponsible” approach to cyber warfare. While they present compliance with international humanitarian law (IHL, also referred to as the law of armed conflict) as a worthy aspiration, they frame it as ultimately at odds with “the realities of contemporary digital conflict”.

The idea that the necessities of war should take precedence over the rules of war is not new. In the 19th century, it appeared as the German maxim “Kriegsraison geht vor Kriegsmanier.” In the 20th century, it reemerged in the post-Nuremberg trials in the form of the (unsuccessful) attempts by some defendants to justify actions such as reprisal killings of civilians during World War II. And in the 21st century, it seems to return as claims that “idealistic legalism” and “arcane rules” lead to inescapable defeat on the digital battlefield, leaving belligerents with no choice but discard these “taboos and legal limitations.”

DOGE disbanded: Elon Musk’s Cost-Cutting Project Quietly Ended Ahead of Schedule

Rebecca Schneid

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The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has been quietly disbanded with eight months left in its charter, according to the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) director.

OPM Director Scott Kupor told Reuters that DOGE—the sweeping cost-cutting effort led by billionaire Elon Musk that dominated the first months of President Donald Trump’s second term—“doesn't exist,” adding that most of the office's functions have been absorbed by OPM, the federal government’s human resources agency.

Kupor said that DOGE is no longer the “centralized entity” it once was when Trump appointed Musk to lead the agency in January.

Later Sunday, Kupor appeared to take issue with the Reuters story in a social media post, without challenging any of its facts.

“The truth is: DOGE may not have centralized leadership under the [U.S. DOGE Service] But, the principles of DOGE remain alive and well: de-regulation; eliminating fraud, waste and abuse; re-shaping the federal workforce; making efficiency a first-class citizen," Kupor wrote on X.

Hybrid warfare in the Information Age: The cybersecurity implications of a distorted information ecosystem

Mujahid Al-Ibenu

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The rapid digitalization of modern societies has intensified the scale, speed and impact of information disorder, creating new vulnerabilities that adversaries exploit across political, social and security domains. Misinformation, disinformation and malinformation have become strategic tools used by state actors, non-state actors, cybercriminal groups and opportunistic individuals to influence public perception, destabilize institutions and compromise national security. Although the phenomenon is often treated as a media problem, the reality is that information manipulation now functions as a cyber-enabled threat vector with operational, psychological and geopolitical consequences.

The fundamental danger lies in the way digital platforms compress time, distance and verification barriers. Once a deceptive narrative is introduced into an information ecosystem, algorithms amplify it based on engagement rather than accuracy. Social media networks act as accelerators that deliver false content at a scale previously impossible. In this environment, disinformation campaigns do not require sophisticated tools; they require emotional triggers, cultural fault lines and an audience overwhelmed by the speed of content consumption. The result is a highly reactive population susceptible to engineered narratives designed to exploit confusion, fear or political polarization.

When AI Goes Rogue, Science Fiction Meets Reality

Dan Lohrmann

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My son and I went to see the movie Tron: Ares, this past week. I was excited to see this 2025 sequel, because the original Tron movie from 1982 is a classic and one of my ’80s sci-fi technology favorites along with the movie War Games.

Without ruining the plot for readers, the 2025 Tron, the latest installment in the franchise, flips the script on the 1982 version. Instead of a human entering into a computer and facing various tests and adventures, a computer “AI agent” comes to life and enters our real world. There are plenty of interesting twists and turns in the movie, and I actually thought the movie was just OK overall. To be honest, I liked the original better.

But this blog is about some of the areas I started thinking about related to the movie’s themes. And the clearest example of a lesson from Tron: Ares is that an AI agent can go rogue and not obey clear instructions.

I wondered: Could that really happen in the future? Or, more pertinent, is it happening now with AI agents?

China’s Approach to AI Development and Governance

Ren Xiao

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Artificial intelligence (AI) is a new technological frontier that has wide-ranging economic, political, and military implications that could lead to changes in the global balance of power. The People’s Republic of China has embraced AI and enthusiastically attempted to advance it as part of the country’s drive to become a self-strengthening scientific and technological power. As a result, China is in many areas at or near the forefront of AI development and application. However, as global AI governance becomes a higher priority in the international community, China, like others, is grappling with the question of how to govern AI and its advancement, both domestically and internationally.

China’s Embrace of AI

In May 2015, China released the Made in China 2025 plan, which provided a blueprint for the next decade to establish the country as an advanced manufacturing powerhouse. The plan identifies nine strategic tasks and key areas, including enhancing manufacturing innovation, promoting integration of information technology and industry, strengthening the country’s industrial base, and building quality and brand development. Almost all of these priorities are directly related to or impacted by the development of AI. Thus, AI has become the core technology indispensable for future intelligent manufacturing and China’s economic plans in this space. The Made in China 2025 plan, together with the subsequent “Robotics Industry Development Plan (2016–2020),” released in April 2016, and the “‘Internet Plus’ Artificial Intelligence Three-Year Action and Implementation Plan,” released in May 2016, demonstrated that China has elevated developing AI technology to a level of national strategy.

JUST IN: New National Cyber Strategy to Impose More Costs on Adversaries

Josh Luckenbaugh

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WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Trump administration is developing a new national cyber strategy, and a key element of it is imposing consequences on malicious actors in cyberspace, National Cyber Director Sean Cairncross said Nov. 18.

The forthcoming guidance is meant to serve as the “single, coordinated strategy in this domain in a way that hasn't happened before,” Cairncross said during a keynote conversation at the Aspen Cyber Summit. “We are working in very close partnership with our inter-agency colleagues to develop this strategy and get it out the door.”

The national cyber strategy will be a “short statement of intent and policy, and then it will be paired very quickly with action items and deliverables under that,” he added.

A key pillar of the strategy is “shaping adversary behavior, introducing costs and consequences into this mix,” he said.

The United States has not done a “terrific job of sending a signal to our adversaries that this behavior is not consequence free,” he said, “and we need to do that because it is scaling, and it is becoming more aggressive every passing day.” Emerging technologies like artificial intelligence will make cyberattacks more potent, he added.

Hackers Bypass Signal, Telegram And WhatsApp Encryption To Read Messages

Davey Winder

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Nobody wants their secrets to leak, whether that is the Department of War, FTSE 100 companies, or your average consumer VPN user. One place where many secrets exist is within the encrypted instant messages we send via apps such as Signal, Telegram and WhatsApp. So, what if I were to tell you that a new threat has been identified, targeting Android smartphone users, that effectively bypasses the secure encryption that protects the privacy of your messages, and captures them for cybercriminal hackers to read? Welcome to the distinctly dangerous world of the Sturnus trojan.ForbesAmazon Issues Attack Warning For 300 Million CustomersBy Davey Winder

These Hackers Can Read Your ‘Private’ Instant Messages

Security researchers at threat intelligence outfit ThreatFabric have confirmed that they have observed a new and dangerous piece of Android malware, a banking trojan that goes beyond the normal boundaries of such malicious software. Not only can Sturnus, which the ThreatFabric analysis said is “currently in a development or limited testing phase,” provide hackers with the ability to gain full device control and harvest banking credentials, but also, and here’s the killer blow, it can “bypass encrypted messaging” according to the in-depth technical report.

I’m a user of all three of these instant messaging apps, for different use-cases, and rely upon Signal and WhatsApp encryption for some of them. The good news is that this has not been broken, the attackers have not found a way to read your encrypted messages. What they have done, however, is put together a complex technical process that, ultimately, does something very simple indeed: it reads your messages after you’ve decrypted them and they are displayed on the smartphone screen. This harks back to a warning that I used to give people all the time when secure messengers made a big play on the fact that screenshots could be disabled on time-limited, one-hit and done, messages, so the recipient couldn’t take a copy and share it around. They could if they took a photo of the screen with another device.

India’s Cautious Stance toward the Securitization of the Quad

Interview with Rohan Mukherjee

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As the Quad (comprising Australia, India, Japan, and the United States) emerges as a key platform in the Indo-Pacific’s evolving strategic landscape, India maintains a cautious stance toward deepening security commitments within the forum. In this interview, Ruhi Kulkarni asks Rohan Mukherjee about New Delhi’s efforts to balance India’s role in an increasingly securitized Quad with the country’s domestic and regional interests. Mukherjee discusses how India’s approach to the Quad reflects careful calibration in leveraging select economic, security, and diplomatic initiatives while also maintaining nonalignment in its foreign policy engagements.

Even as the Quad has gained increasing strategic significance in the Indo-Pacific, India remains hesitant to embrace it for greater security cooperation. Are there discrepancies between India’s vision for an open, stable, and prosperous Indo-Pacific and that of its Quad counterparts. If so, what is driving these differences?

Much depends on what we mean by “security cooperation.” If this means a treaty alliance, then India is unlikely to embrace it. If we mean more robust cooperation on security issues, then India has supported this vision of the Quad since at least 2020, when the border standoff between India and China began in Ladakh. How firmly New Delhi pursues such cooperation is probably where the difference lies between India, on the one hand, and the United States and its treaty allies, Japan and Australia, on the other. It is noticeable that India became more active in the Quad and supportive of its security objectives after relations with China soured in 2020. Now that diplomacy between Beijing and New Delhi has yielded some agreement on a disengagement process, there will be less incentive for India to aggressively counter China, especially given the importance of bilateral trade.

In this sense, India’s vision for an open, stable, and prosperous Indo-Pacific is different from its Quad counterparts in that New Delhi is more open to an arrangement that develops regional stability by engaging China rather than treating it as an outright adversary—provided that Beijing itself is cooperative. In the past, India has modified the free and open Indo-Pacific framing to add the term “inclusive,” which reflects this more flexible approach to regional diplomacy.

Desh, Bidesh and Fractured Dreams: Bangladeshi Labor Migrants in the GCC

Raisha Jesmin Rafa

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Poor, low-skilled Bangladeshi men and women represent a majority of the laborers migrating to the Gulf region for transitory work. The Bangladesh Bureau of Manpower, Employment & Training (BMET) reports that the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), encompassing Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE, accommodates millions of Bangladeshi labor migrants annually (BMET, 2023a). Bangladesh’s developmental vision champions the role of migrant workers, placing on them the duty of earning foreign currency to nourish the country’s socioeconomic health and national status; migrant remittances contribute well over 6% of Bangladesh’s annual GDP, making it one of the top recipients of remittance flows in the world (Mahmud, 2023:56; The World Bank, 2023). The economic gains, however, mask the deeper structural inequities and power hierarchies forming the substratum of migration. Caught between intricate class, gender, and racial hierarchies, Bangladeshi migrants come to confront multiple challenges throughout the migration lifecycle.

Gender pervades every step of the migration process in Bangladesh, from the recruitment process to the flow of remittances. Prevailing gender norms dictate men’s and women’s migration opportunities, processes, and experiences, creating gender-differentiated impacts. Gender, however, does not operate in a silo and intersects with class and race, revealing the interrelatedness of multiple axes of oppression that can influence the migration ecosystem. These interlinked themes animate this paper as I move beyond the economic dimensions of labor migration to contend that the motivations and experiences of poor, low-skilled Bangladeshi migrants are shaped by their embeddedness in complex power hierarchies linked to class, gender, and race.

Opinion – Sheikh Hasina’s Conviction and the Weaponization of Justice

Christopher Burke

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The news from Bangladesh is stark and historic. Former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has been sentenced to death by a domestic tribunal for “crimes against humanity.” The charges relate not to the ghosts of the 1971 war, but to the brutal crackdown on the student-led popular uprising that ultimately ended her long and often autocratic rule in the summer of 2024. The verdict is a profound, contradictory moment. A victory for the victims of state-sanctioned violence, it affirms that modern political leaders are not beyond the law. However, the legitimacy of the verdict is undermined by procedural flaws forcing a deeper examination of questions haunting transitional regimes. When does national justice become an unquestionable international precedent and when is it a political weapon of the next regime?

The conviction of Sheikh Hasina marks the latest challenge to the concept of sovereign immunity-an increasingly antiquated idea that a Head of State cannot be prosecuted for their actions. The trend was cemented in the late 1990s. The indictment of the sitting President of Yugoslavia Slobodan Milošević shattered the notion that leaders are untouchable while in office. This was reinforced by the subsequent convictions of Liberia’s Charles Taylor by the Special Court for Sierra Leone and Chad’s Hissène Habré by the Extraordinary African Chambers. Habré’s 2016 conviction for crimes against humanity by a hybrid court in Senegal was a major milestone–African justice for an African dictator.

Hasina’s case adds a unique layer. Unlike Taylor and Habré who were tried for atrocities committed decades ago, Hasina was convicted by a domestic court, the International Crimes Tribunal, for ordering the deadly repression of a political movement in a struggle for self-preservation that ended her regime. Ironically, Hasina’s government revived the tribunal in March 2010 to try alleged crimes from the 1971 war. The verdict sends a chillingly relevant message to leaders everywhere. The risk of domestic legal reckoning for crushing dissent is real and immediate. The shield of political office is no longer effective protection from charges of using state power to commit atrocities.

All Under Heaven: China’s Awakening

Francisco Lobo

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This is an excerpt from The Praeter-Colonial Mind: An Intellectual Journey Through the Back Alleys of Empire by Francisco Lobo. Download the book free of charge from E-International Relations.

In 2011, Stephen Spielberg produced another sci-fi narrative with a prehistoric flavor – Terra Nova, a tv production that despite its promise got canceled after only one season. It follows the exploits of a time-traveling family forced to escape an overpopulated and polluted planet Earth in 2149, making their way to a colony established 85 million years in the past. Their world is not only in the throes of combating climate disaster and demographic collapse; as expected, war is also part of this dystopian tale. More importantly, the leader of the colony, Commander Taylor, is a veteran of the 2138 Somalia War where he fought against such fictional foes as the ‘Axis’ and the ‘Russo- Chinese’. For a show that fell under most people’s radars, Terra Nova’s script does seem to capture some of the main struggles of our time – not least climate change, overpopulation, war, and great power competition. This ‘Russo-Chinese’ plotline, in particular, might have been made in a Hollywood basement, but it may yet become a reality in our present.

Russian-Chinese official relations date all the way back to the seventeenth century, when the Treaty of Nerchinsk was signed in 1689 (Becker Lorca 2015, 114). It was an agreement between two imperial powers, those of Tsarist Russia and Qing Dynasty China (Stent 2023, 255). Fast forward to the mid-twentieth century and the picture does not change much. ‘The Soviet Union of today is the China of tomorrow’. This was the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) official slogan for 1953, the same year Xi Jinping was born (Torigian 2024, para. 4). It was an aspirational slogan, adopted at a time when Chinese admiration for the Soviet model was at an all-time high.

Admittedly, following down the path chartered by the USSR meant not only boosting productivity and growth; it also entailed administering violence, lots of violence at home and abroad, by cracking down on domestic dissent and seeking territorial expansion of its sphere of influence, for the Soviet Union was a land empire in everything but name (Stent 2023, 31). Likewise, the People’s Republic of China aimed to regain its lost imperial grandeur following in the footsteps of its Russian ‘elder brothers’ (Ibid, 262), not only by furthering the communist ideology common to both, but also by displaying an unwavering commitment to the ‘One China’ policy (Maçães 2019, 141) whereby the territorial integrity of this modern-day land empire can only be accomplished if it engulfs Tibet, Hong Kong and Taiwan.

China might be winning the AI race. Does it matter?

Jenna Benchetrit 

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A Beijing company recently released China's smartest artificial intelligence model yet — narrowing the gap between that country and the U.S. in a race that some have likened to a new cold war.

Kimi K2 Thinking, which was developed by Moonshot AI, is a generative AI-powered chatbot similar to OpenAI's ChatGPT and Anthropic's Claude.

“It’s the closest a Chinese model has come to matching a U.S. or Western model’s performance since Deepseek in January,” said Michael Deng, a geoeconomics technology analyst at Bloomberg. That model caused a market meltdown over fears of Chinese AI advancement.

Kimi K2's release flew under the radar by comparison. But it scored high on Humanity's Last Exam, a notoriously difficult, 2,500-question benchmark that tests an AI's reasoning abilities beyond regurgitating information, placing just behind recent ChatGPT models and surpassing both Claude 4.5 and Meta's Llama.

"It is definitely [still] the case that the U.S. is ahead of China on AI," said Dan Wang, the author of Breakneck: China's Quest to Engineer the Future. But, according to those same benchmarks, that lead "is narrowing in all sorts of ways."

Whether China's advancements against the U.S. matter depends on who you ask, according to experts who spoke with CBC News.

That some North American companies and consumers are choosing Chinese-made AI "just tells you about the technical sophistication that we're seeing from China and that it really rivals the best from what we're seeing in the U.S. right now," said Sheldon Fernandez, the Toronto-based co-founder of DarwinAI, which developed AI for quality control in manufacturing and has since been acquired by Apple.

Open-source AI models like the ones being developed in China "are cheaper and you can control them in your own environment," he said. They can be modified to suit a user's needs, though that might require some technical expertise.

Cybercrime is Iraq’s Next Big Challenge

Tanya Goudsouzian  Ibrahim Al-Marashi

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Whatever the outcome of Iraq’s November 11 parliamentary elections, the next government must address the threat of cybercrimes that threaten Iraq’s post-conflict recovery and could inflame both domestic and regional conflict.

From the 2019 defacing of more than 30 government websites to a surge in blackmail and extortion campaigns targeting women and youth on social media, cybercrime in Iraq is rapidly expanding to include attacks aimed at governments and critical institutions.

In September, a blog monitoring the dark web reported that a threat actor claimed to possess the personal records of over 30 million Iraqi citizens, describing the breach as a victory in the “cyber war” against the Iraqi government. If true, the data leak would represent one of the largest digital compromises in history, laying bare the country’s fragile cyber defenses.

Trump might allow Nvidia to sell powerful computer chips to China

Joseph Zeballos-Roig

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President Donald Trump is deciding whether to allow the AI chipmaker Nvidia to sell advanced computer chips to Beijing, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said Monday.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has been lobbying the Trump administration to green-light those chip sales, Lutnick said. At the moment, the firm has ceded its market share in China due to persistent tensions between the U.S. and China that haven't been settled due to the lack of a trade agreement.

Reform Without Purpose Is Just Motion

Tom Balish

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COL (Ret.) Thomas A. Balish served 28 years as an Army aviation officer and scout helicopter pilot, later as Chief of Operations and Integration in HQDA G-8. He now leads LH6-Services, LLC, supporting Army modernization and defense-industry initiatives. He lives in South Carolina.

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth wants to replace JCIDS with a faster, service-led approach—complete with new institutions such as the Requirements and Resourcing Alignment Board (RRAB), Mission Engineering and Integration Activity (MEIA), and Joint Acceleration Reserve (JAR). Each is meant to speed the path from idea to fielding. Yet faster does not necessarily mean smarter. The Army still struggles to define what its formations are supposed to do in twenty-first century warfare. Until that doctrinal foundation is clear—especially for armor, light, and expeditionary forces—no amount of acceleration will help. Doctrine defines purpose: it tells the force why it exists and how it fights. For too long, the requirements process has sprinted ahead of doctrine, building capabilities for environments that no longer exist.

Deep Strike Capabilities

Olena Kryzhanivska

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Since the number of my posts on Ukraine’s Arms Monitor has already exceeded 130, I’ve decided to group them by theme and launch a Topic Navigator.

I’ll send some of the largest and most popular sections by email, but please note that the full Topic Navigator will now be available on Ukraine’s Arms Monitor website at all times.

You can use it whenever you want to explore specific topics — such as UAVs, naval drones, ground drones, Ukraine–Europe cooperation, arms control, and more. If you have suggestions for topics you’d like to see listed, feel free to let me know — I’ll consider them.

New posts and sections will be automatically added to the relevant lists in the Navigator.

Weekend Update #160: The US Becomes A Mouthpiece To Pass On Putin's Demands

Phillips P. OBrien

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Well, what a difference a week makes. Last week there were still many loud voices discussing just how profound the Trump pivot towards Ukraine was in reality (ho, ho). People were focused on “crippling” sanctions on Russia, on Trump being angry at Putin, etc. Then on Wednesday rumors started coming out that the Trump administration had an approved “peace” plan for Russia-Ukraine and the rest, as the say, is tragedy. When the details on the 28 points of the plan were released they were shown to be a threat to the continuing existence of Ukraine as a free and sovereign state (though that did not stop some Ukraine-Trump backers from showing their true colors and saying what a solid plan it was). Then even more fascinating news broke. The peace plan seems to have been at least partly taken word for word from Russian documents—and then we ended up with some fascinating reactions from within the Trump administration with JD Vance playing a key role as a backer of the deal and Marco Rubio (possibly) trying to disassociate himself. Welcome to the 2028 election.

Russian Unreality and American Weakness

Timothy Snyder

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The history of diplomacy is full of strangeness. Touch the surface of the dusty books and peculiar characters spring forth to demand that their tales be heard. And yet the American diplomacy of the past few days, I believe, will stand out as something peculiarly gruesome -- not simply incompetent, but openly courting national and global catastrophe.

A document suddenly appeared a few days ago under the inapplicable (and too-often repeated) heading of “peace plan” regarding the Russo-Ukrainian war. It would be more accurately described as a plan to intensify the war to the profit of a few Russians and Americans. It seems to have produced entirely or mostly by Russians, and then leaked by a Russian negotiator to an American outlet. It was then claimed by a fraction within the White House, endorsed (sight unseen) by the president of the United States, who insisted (at least at first) that Ukraine had to accept it.

Since then there have been many denials, denials of denials, and obfuscations. The scandal will perhaps clarify problems of process in Washington. It is not that we -- America -- are trying to sell out Ukraine. American public opinion is favorable to Ukraine. Republican voters support Ukraine. A majority in Congress supports Ukraine. It is rather that a few Russians and a few Americans have the ability to define as a “peace plan” what is essentially the furtherance of personal economic interests combined with a strengthening of Russia’s capacity for warfighting and a weakening of Ukraine’s. Along the way, it contradicts every major principle of international law and furthers a world dominated by China and its Russian ally.

Commercial innovation, not government production, will win the drone war

Nadia Schadlow

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U.S. Air Force Senior Airman Tequarrie Jackson, 332nd Expeditionary Security Forces Squadron small unmanned aircraft systems operator, controls a Skydio quadcopter in the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility Nov. 6, 2025. The sUAS team specializes in aerial defense through reconnaissance, target identification, and terrain observation by flying drones around base perimeters to better protect and defend personnel and assets. (U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Kari Degraffenreed)

The central theme of Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s recent speech on acquisition reform was that commercial companies and technologies are at the foundation of a strong defense industrial base and military innovation. As he put it, the department wants to harness more of America’s cutting-edge companies to focus their talent and technologies on our toughest national-security problems. New results won’t appear overnight, but the direction launched by Hegseth is the right one.

That’s why defense policymakers should be cautious about a provision now under consideration in the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that could undercut the dynamism we need in one of our most critical emerging defense sectors: unmanned autonomous systems