Indian Strategic Studies: 2025

3 September 2025

Trump's rebuke, Xi's handshake, Putin's oil: India's foreign policy test

Soutik Biswas

"This is a time for us to engage America, manage China, cultivate Europe, reassure Russia, bring Japan into play, draw neighbours in, extend the neighbourhood and expand traditional constituencies of support," Indian Foreign Minister S Jaishankar wrote in his 2020 book The India Way: Strategies for an Uncertain World.

For over a decade, India has styled itself as a key node in a new multipolar order: one foot in Washington, another in Moscow, and a wary eye on Beijing.

But the scaffolding is buckling. Donald Trump's America has turned from cheerleader to critic, accusing India of bankrolling Moscow's war chest with discounted oil purchases. Delhi now faces the sting of Trump's public rebuke and higher tariffs.

With multipolarity fraying, many say Prime Minister Narendra Modi's planned meeting with Xi Jinping in Beijing on Sunday looks less like triumphal diplomacy and more like pragmatic rapprochement.

Yet, Delhi's foreign policy is at an uneasy crossroads.

India sits in two camps at once: a pillar of Washington's Indo-Pacific Quad with Japan, the US and Australia, and a member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), the China and Russia-led bloc that often runs counter to US interests. Delhi buys discounted Russian oil even as it courts American investment and technology and prepares to sit at the SCO table in Tianjin next week.

There's also the I2U2 - a grouping of India, Israel, the UAE and the US that focuses on technology, food security and infrastructure - and a trilateral initiative with France and the UAE.

Analysts say this balancing act is no accident. India prizes strategic autonomy and argues that engaging with competing camps gives it leverage rather than exposure.

Is AI Setting Up a New China Shock for US Workers?

Robert A. Manning, and Matthew Burrows

Rarely has such an unfolding transformational change been in plain view yet elicited so little forethought of the large-scale social repercussions. While the extent and speed with which jobs are lost is unclear, the United States should take a lesson from its earlier China Shock episode and prepare ahead of time for a wave of lost employment by upping workers’ skills for the jobs that artificial intelligence (AI) will create. Moreover, with inequality already approaching unprecedented levels, US democracy won’t survive with all the benefits of AI flowing to capital as happened during globalization. Some of the productivity gains would be better spent on avoiding a new cohort of losers.

The Middle Class Will Be Hurt This Time

There is no end to the warnings. The IMF has proclaimed that about 60 percent of jobs may be impacted by AI in advanced economies. Roughly half the exposed jobs may benefit from AI integration, enhancing productivity. For the other half, AI applications may execute key tasks currently performed by humans, which could lower labor demand, leading to lower wages and reduced hiring. In the most extreme cases, some of these jobs may disappear. With rapid advances towards agentic AI capable of perceiving the environment around it, reasoning, planning, and taking action to achieve complex, multi-step goals with minimal human intervention, the balance could shift to more jobs lost.

JP Morgan has said that “half of the vulnerable jobs in the United States will be automated away over the next 20 years.” They believe that, unlike with past technological advances, where lower-skilled jobs were made redundant, those most at risk with AI would be “white-collar professional service jobs such as budget analysis and technical writing,” going on to say that “[these jobs] look more vulnerable than childcare work or pipelaying.”

A 2023 Pew Research Center study found that “workers with a bachelor’s degree or more (27%) are more than twice as likely as those with a high school diploma only (12%) to see the most exposure” and be at risk of losing their jobs.

Trump Cedes the Clean Energy Lead to China

Christina Lu

A woman stands behind a sheet of solar panel material, made up of smaller blue rectangles. Her arms are outstretched to either side to hold the panels up. She wears a hair net and a surgical mask as well as a white lab coat. The metal scaffolding of a workshop or factory floor is visible behind her.A worker produces photovoltaic modules for solar panels in a factory in Suqian, in east China’s Jiangsu province, on Jan. 23. AFP via Getty Images

Trump’s decision to abruptly stop construction at Revolution Wind—a nearly completed giant wind farm off the coast of Rhode Island—is the latest in an avalanche of moves meant to gut the U.S. wind and solar industry and dismantle renewable energy projects championed by his predecessor. The United States is the world’s biggest oil producer and exporter of natural gas, and the Trump administration has wholly embraced those fossil fuels in its bid to achieve what it has called “American energy dominance.”

Addressing China’s military expansion in West Africa and beyond

Tressa Guenov

The next National Defense Strategy (NDS) is being drafted at a critical moment when the United States risks permanently ceding strategic influence to China in Africa—especially West Africa—without a reimagined approach to the continent. With lifesaving foreign assistance drastically reduced due to the current administration’s budget cuts to the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and State Department programs, along with uncertain economic effects from tariffs, the United States has voluntarily weakened its diplomatic and economic tools to influence and support Africa.

This reality gives additional weight to the importance of defense diplomacy and military cooperation as critical means by which the United States can exercise strategic influence in the region. While the US administration may be looking to narrow the United States’ role on the continent, Africa is too vast, important, and complex to attempt bilateral defense diplomacy, military-to-military relations, and counterterrorism efforts on the cheap, by proxy, or from afar.

Key issues for the Department of Defense (DoD) include acknowledging the looming strategic dilemma posed by China’s increased influence in Africa; developing a cohesive and responsive strategy to counter that influence; managing bilateral defense relationships; and addressing other regional priorities such as Russia’s growing influence and counterterrorism issues, which also have inextricable connections to China. The new NDS needs to lay a foundation to address these challenges. The alternative is over-regionalization of the China challenge to the Indo-Pacific, which could impose short-sighted limitations that will affect the US role in Africa for years to come.

No, the conventional wisdom on China is not ‘dangerously wrong’

Denny Roy

The US policy-making community has gravitated toward a belief that China under Xi Jinping’s leadership is aggressive – specifically, that Beijing wants to seize more territory and seeks to supplant the US role as regional strategic leader and global superpower.

A new article by David C. Kang, Jackie S. H. Wong and Zenobia T. Chen in the prestigious journal International Security argues that this conventional wisdom is “dangerously wrong” and will unnecessarily worsen geopolitical tensions.

This article presumably puts forth some of the best arguments supporting one side of a debate that is vitally important as the US-China rivalry intensifies, making war look increasingly possible.

The authors fail, however, to prove their main assertion that China is essentially a status-quo power with limited and reasonable aims.

To make their case, the authors make three main arguments.

Priorities

First, they say China is focused on things other than expanding its power, influence and territory. Beijing “is concerned about internal challenges more than external threats or expansion,” they say. The PRC government wants only “domestic stability; sovereignty and territorial integrity; and social-economic development.”

Even if internal challenges are the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) highest priority, they can lead to aggressive or bullying behavior abroad. Take regime security, for example. Mao Zedong’s fear that the new CCP regime would not survive the political pressure of a US ally on its border – distinct from the threat of military invasion – was perhaps the crucial consideration in his decision to intervene in the Korean War in 1950.

In an extension of the internal issue of controlling Tibet, China has encroached into and built infrastructure in disputed parts of Bhutan as a means of punishing that country for hosting Tibetan refugees.

From Shield to Spear: How Golden Dome Points the Way toward Breaking China’s Kill Web

Matthew Smokovitz

If the United States fights China on China’s terms, it may risk collapse in the opening hours. Such a war would not begin with a slow exchange of fire—it would be a race between the two sides to sever the other’s ability to think and act as a single, coordinated force. Beijing has spent decades forging its warfighting system into a tightly integrated brain and nervous system. Theater commanders fuse data from satellites, over-the-horizon radars, airborne sensors, and undersea arrays into a shared real-time picture. From this picture, precisely timed orders flow to air, sea, and missile forces. That operational coherence—seeing, deciding, and striking as one—is what turns scattered operational assets into a lethal, synchronized kill web.

That coherence is China’s greatest strength and its most brittle hinge. When missile salvos arrive just as bombers spring in from their launch points, when submarines maneuver without orders because their neural network tells them the enemy’s retreat path—this is operational synchronization in action. But when data flows stall, when timing errors creep in, that neural network misfires. Missiles still launch, radars still receive—but the system fights as a collection of disjointed parts. Strikes fizzle. Orders lag. Reflexes fail.

Traditionally, the United States has attacked such integrated systems by methodically rolling them back—destroying radars, missile batteries, and command centers one by one. In Desert Storm, in the Balkans, that worked. But against China’s kill web? It is a slow, costly path to disaster. Mobile launchers reposition before they are struck. Redundant sensors light back up. Alternate comms routes reroute data. The brain and nervous system remain intact even as its limbs are wounded.

This is where Golden Dome enters the discussion. Conceived as a homeland missile shield, Golden Dome envisions a multilayered architecture—with one layer even space-based—using both sensors and interceptors in orbit. This space layer is vital for defense—it is a vantage point above the battlefield no terrestrial platform can match. But as the concept takes shape, it makes clear that such a layer will possibly be necessary to countering China’s kill web. Space-based interceptors are not just tools to strike incoming missiles targeting the US homeland and its interests; they can also hold the enemy’s neural infrastructure at risk.

The Path to a Good-Enough Iran Deal

Robert Einhorn

It is not clear whether the recent Israeli and U.S. military strikes have decreased or increased the likelihood of a nuclear-armed Iran. The attacks have certainly inflicted major damage to the country’s nuclear program. But they have not extinguished the Islamic Republic’s interest in nuclear weapons. They have amplified uncertainty about the quantity, location, and current condition of critical elements of Iran’s nuclear program. And they have failed to block Iran’s pathways to building a bomb, including by using its surviving equipment, materials, and expertise in a small, covert operation.

In the aftermath of the strikes, the Trump administration has resumed its pursuit of a new nuclear agreement that would prohibit uranium enrichment and its associated infrastructure in Iran––a “zero enrichment” outcome that would stymie any Iranian intention to build a bomb but that has been firmly rejected by Tehran, at least so far. If, after determined efforts, such an agreement cannot be achieved, the administration may seriously consider relying solely on military and intelligence means to thwart Iran’s efforts to revitalize its nuclear program, an approach strongly favored by the Israeli government. But a military option could lead to perpetual armed conflict in the region without reliably preventing Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons. A preferable option would be to negotiate an agreement that permits but strictly limits and rigorously verifies uranium enrichment in Iran.

Back to the Table

Since the ceasefire ending the 12-day war, the Trump administration has sought to resume its bilateral engagement with Iran. But Iran has not been ready to meet, in part due to divisions within Tehran’s elite on the merits of negotiations with the United States. Iranian officials, including Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, have insisted on preconditions that Washington is unwilling to accept, such as a U.S. guarantee that Iran would not be attacked while negotiations were underway. According to Reuters, however, regime “insiders” say that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and members of the clerical power structure have recently reached a consensus that resumed negotiations are vital to the survival of the regime. If that is the case, Iran and the United States are likely to find a formula for returning to the negotiating table before long.

The Iran Nuclear Crisis Might Be Back On

Stephen Silver

Key Points and Summary – Three major European powers—the U.K., France, and Germany—have officially moved to reinstate UN sanctions on Iran by invoking the “snapback” provision of the 2015 nuclear deal.

-The move puts a 30-day clock on diplomacy to find a peaceful resolution before the sanctions, which target everything from Iranian assets to its ballistic missile program, are reimposed.

-Iran has condemned the action as “illegal and unjustified.”

-This diplomatic pressure is mounting on other fronts as well, with Australia expelling Iran’s ambassador after linking Tehran to terrorist attacks on its soil.

The New Iran Crisis?

After weeks of threats, the U.K., France, and Germany have sent a letter to the UN Security Council, announcing plans to invoke the “snapback” provisions to reinstate sanctions on Iran, Axios reported Thursday.

Those United Nations sanctions had been suspended for the last ten years, since the JCPOA nuclear deal in 2015, but will now be reinstated.

There is, however, a 30-day period in place before the sanctions officially take effect, during which further negotiations might still take place.

While the U.S. was not involved with this process, having pulled out of the Iran deal in 2018, Secretary of State Marco Rubio commented on the development.

The “remains available for direct engagement with Iran — in furtherance of a peaceful, enduring resolution to the Iran nuclear issue,” the Secretary of State said Thursday.

Russia notes non-stop offensive on front line, Ukraine military points to own successes

He says Moscow controls 99.7% of Luhansk region

Russia has captured 3,500 sq km since March, he says

Aug 30 (Reuters) - Russian forces are waging a non-stop offensive along almost the entire front line in Ukraine and have the "strategic initiative", the chief of Russia's general staff said on Saturday.

"The combined group of troops continues a non-stop offensive along almost the entire front line," General Valery Gerasimov told his deputies in an address published by the Defence Ministry. "At present, the strategic initiative lies entirely with Russian forces."

Make sense of the latest ESG trends affecting companies and governments with the Reuters Sustainable Switch newsletter. Sign up here.

But Ukrainian military spokesperson Viktor Trehubov said Kyiv's forces had scored front-line successes, keeping Russian troops from seizing targets in Donetsk region and halting further advances into Dnipropetrovsk region. In one area, he said, Kyiv's troops had surrounded Russian units.

Reuters was unable to independently verify battlefield accounts from either side.

Russia has stepped up airstrikes on Ukrainian towns and cities far behind the front lines this summer and has continued a grinding offensive across much of the east, trying to gain more territory in its 3-1/2-year-old war in Ukraine.

Russian attacks on Ukraine's capital, Kyiv, on Thursday killed 25 people, Ukrainian officials said.

The strikes took place less than two weeks after U.S. President Donald Trump hosted Russian President Vladimir Putin at a summit in Alaska, a meeting that Washington had hoped would advance his efforts to end the conflict.

Ukraine’s Missile Evolution 2014–2025: From Long-Range Drones to Heavy-Hitters

Fabian Hoffmann

Ukraine’s missile industry has moved through several distinct phases since 2014, from modest post-Soviet capabilities and problem-ridden pre-war programs to wartime improvisation, foreign reliance, and now ambitious attempts at independent production.

The trajectory has been neither linear nor smooth, shaped by Russian interference, Western supply limits, domestic political pressures, and shifting industrial capacity. By 2025, Ukraine fields a diverse but still imperfect long-range strike arsenal, with lighter drones and mini-cruise missiles forming the backbone and new efforts underway to add heavier missile systems.

This post attempts to provide an initial assessment of the evolution of Ukraine’s missile industry and programs, from pre-2022 to today.

2014–2022: Ukraine’s Pre-War Missile Industry

On the eve of 2022, Ukraine retained a real but uneven missile capacity built on Soviet-era design and production hubs at Yuzhnoye and Yuzhmash, complemented by Luch for longer-range missile systems.

Concrete outputs existed but were limited in scale: the Vilkha guided 300 mm rocket entered service in 2018 with serial production beginning in 2019, and the R-360 Neptune coastal anti-ship cruise missile was delivered to the Ukrainian Navy in March 2021, reportedly just achieving initial operational capability before the war. A short-range ballistic missile program, the Hrim-2 (with the export version known as Sapsan), remained mired in prolonged development with uncertain funding and timelines.

Structural constraints in Ukraine’s missile industry were significant. Deep historical dependence on Russian components and markets, sharply disrupted after 2014 and only partially substituted by 2022. Yet opportunities remained in a skilled workforce, legacy facilities, rising domestic demand after 2014, and early export interest, such as talks with Indonesia on the Neptune in 2021.

2022: Ukraine’s Missile Industry Under Fire

Mapping the Russia-Ukraine War Endgame

Graham Allison

Ukrainian president Zelensky brought a map of Ukraine to his meeting with President Trump last week. But he need not have bothered. When he entered the Oval Office, he found that Trump had already mounted a much larger map on an easel next to the Resolute Desk. The US Department of Defense map clearly shows Ukraine’s border with Russia, the 750-mile front line on the battlefield along which Ukrainian and Russian troops are currently fighting, and the areas of each Ukrainian province that Russia now controls. Altogether, Russia has now occupied most of five Ukrainian provinces, which amounts to roughly one-fifth of the country.

To assist in visualizing the options laid out in the various peace proposals, Harvard’s Russia Matters team has produced a second map that overlays the Ukrainian territory Russia currently holds on a map of New England. That 44,000 square miles of Ukraine amounts essentially to the combined area of the northern New England states of Maine, Vermont, and New Hampshire.

In considering alternative Ukrainian futures, it is useful to begin by recognizing that, territorially, it is a big country. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Ukraine emerged along with 14 other newly independent states. Its borders encompassed 233,000 square miles—which is equivalent to all of New England (Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut), plus New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Maryland.

In 2014, Putin seized Crimea, along with parts of two other provinces, Donetsk and Luhansk—some 17,000 square miles of territory. In February 2022, Putin’s armies launched a full-scale invasion aimed at capturing the remainder of the country. Over the past three and a half years, its troops have succeeded in taking control of most of two adjacent provinces (Luhansk and Donetsk) and about two-thirds of two other provinces (Zaporizhzhia and Kherson), which provide a land bridge from Russia to Crimea and Russia’s major naval base at Sevastopol.

So You Want to Work in International Affairs

Luke Coffey

As students return to their campuses after what was hopefully a busy and productive summer—or as recent graduates begin to reckon with the realities of post-university life and the job market—this is an ideal moment to take stock. If you’re interested in a career in international affairs, now is the time to begin thinking strategically about how to land that all-important first job.

After nearly 25 years working in international affairs—first as a young U.S. Army officer during the early years of the so-called global war on terror, then as a rare U.S. national appointed as a special advisor in the British government, and later in leadership roles at major Washington think tanks—I’ve had the privilege of mentoring hundreds of undergraduate students and interns. Many of them have asked me the same question: How do I land my first job in international affairs?

Why Israel’s War in Gaza Has Been So Deadly for Journalists

John Haltiwanger

At least five journalists were killed in Israeli strikes on Nasser Hospital in the southern Gaza Strip on Monday. The attack involved consecutive strikes in quick succession, which is often referred to as a double-tap strike—in which first responders, including medical workers and journalists, are targeted shortly after the initial strike. Double-tap strikes are widely considered a war crime and viewed as deliberate.

The journalists killed in the hospital attack included Mariam Abu Dagga, Mohammed Salama, Ahmad Abu Aziz, Hussam Al-Masri, and Moaz Abu Taha. They worked or freelanced for outlets including The Associated Press, Reuters, and Al Jazeera, among

Winning through people: The human capital advantage in great-power competition

Beth Foster and Alex Wagner

The next National Defense Strategy (NDS) will likely continue to emphasize deterring great-power competition from escalating into conflict; accelerating the development and deployment of new technologies and capabilities; shifting resources from the United States’ military presence in Europe and the Middle East toward the Indo-Pacific; and strengthening the defense industrial base. However, the time has come for the NDS to give greater attention to another essential component of US military power: its human capital.

While effective diplomacy, exquisite sensor platforms, and advanced weapon systems are essential to deterrence, the men and women in uniform—and the Department of Defense (DoD) civilians who support them—remain the United States’ most enduring strategic advantage. They are highly capable and resilient, rigorously trained and well-educated, and operate within a decision-making structure where plans serve as starting points and a commander’s intent guides action.

The upcoming NDS must therefore elevate the “people” component of the US national security enterprise—integrating personnel challenges and opportunities more directly into the strategy and recognizing the robust capabilities of the people behind the platforms. Three specific priorities stand out in this regard: recruiting, service member resilience, and quality of life. While this list is by no means exhaustive, these issues demand urgent attention and investment if the current administration hopes to fulfill its promise of “peace through strength.”

A vision for US hypersonic weapons

Edward Brady and Michael E. White

Any future large-scale conflict in the Pacific will be in a highly contested environment where US capability will be aggressively challenged in the air, on land, at sea, and in space. The US military must have the ability to rapidly deliver lethal effects at range in a timescale of relevance. On their own, traditional strike weapons do not have sufficient speed or range to enable effective operation on what will be the highly contested battlefield of the future. Hypersonic weapons, if fielded in sufficient numbers to defeat critical targets necessary to degrade adversary capabilities, will enable effective use of traditional weapon systems and allow for future battlefield dominance. A layered defeat construct must be deployed to defend against ballistic and hypersonic missiles targeting US assets.

How do hypersonic weapons fit into weapons evolution?

For centuries, weapons have trended toward increasing speed, range, and accuracy. Hypersonic weapons build on these trends. Advanced engine technology and improved materials enable missiles to travel at hypersonic speeds (above Mach 5) while maintaining meaningful maneuverability. Because of their speed, hypersonic weapons, especially hypersonic cruise missiles, tend to have greater ranges than similarly sized weapons.

Faster weapons with longer ranges are more lethal than slower, shorter-range weapons. The faster speeds mean that targets have less time to evade or defend themselves. Hypersonic weapons are more likely to penetrate enemy defenses optimized for slower munitions, meaning missile salvos can comprise fewer missiles. Longer ranges mean that shooters can engage from farther away, potentially outside detection or engagement range of enemy defenses, depending on launch platform capabilities.

In the next decade, exquisite hypersonic weapons will be keys to “open the door” for forces equipped with more traditional weapons. This paradigm is like the United States’ 1991 employment of the new F-117 stealth fighters equipped with precision bombs to dramatically degrade Iraqi air defense command and control. This innovation made it possible for traditional airpower to attack other targets. In a similar vein, highly capable platforms like the B-21 stealth bombers or Virginia-class fast-attack submarines can employ hypersonic weapons against high-value targets in enemy defenses, reducing the overall effectiveness of the enemy defense system at much lower cost than a more traditional force package.

Ukraine’s painful endgame

Owen Matthews

Some wars end in victory. Others conclude with a negotiated peace. But no war in history has ever ended with justice. As the endgame of Putin’s war on Ukraine approaches, it is becoming clear that the final settlement Kyiv will be asked to accept will be both painful and extremely unjust.

In Washington in late August, US President Donald Trump was caught on a hot mic telling visiting European leaders that ‘I think Putin wants to make a deal. You understand? As crazy as it sounds!’. Trump is correct that Putin wants to make a deal to end the war. But he is wrong to say that it’s crazy. What Trump does not seem to have understood is that Putin remains laser-focused on ending the war on his own terms. In practice, this means sticking to most if not all of the war aims with which he began his invasion.

The atmospherics of Trump’s August meeting with Europe’s leaders, plus Keir Starmer and Volodymyr Zelensky, were positive. All agreed that a step had been taken towards peace, and all welcomed Trump’s initiative in opening talks with the Kremlin – though they themselves had shunned Putin for three years. But, in truth, the path to a negotiated peace winds through thickets of thorny detail inhabited by devils by the dozen. It’s worth taking a detailed look at what Putin is likely to demand of Ukraine and its allies, and examine which of them Zelensky can plausibly accept and which are out of the question.

Trump, perhaps understandably given his career in real estate, seems to believe that Putin’s core demand is Ukrainian territory. That’s mistaken. In truth, as France’s President Emmanuel Macron remarked in Washington, what Putin really wants is Ukraine’s political subjugation. That’s what Putin was referring to when he said after his meeting with Trump in Alaska that ‘we need to eliminate all the primary root causes of the conflict’. That is a clear reference to Putin’s familiar historical thesis that Ukraine is an invented country that has been used for centuries by Russia’s enemies as a base from which to attack Moscow – and, in his view, remains so today.

Zelensky rejects proposals for buffer zone to end Ukraine war

Amy Walker, Katy Watson

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has rejected proposals for a buffer zone between Ukrainian and Russian forces as part of a peace deal, arguing it does not reflect the realities of modern warfare.

"Only those who do not understand the technological state of today's war propose a buffer zone," he told reporters on Friday.

His comments followed a report suggesting European leaders were considering a 40km (25-mile) buffer zone as part of either a ceasefire or longer-term agreement.

The war in Ukraine has evolved into a conflict driven by drone technology, and Zelensky suggested a buffer zone of sorts already existed because of the threat of drone strikes close to the front line.

Buffer zones can create demilitarised zones between warring countries, such as North and South Korea, and physical boundaries such as the Iron Curtain - which separated the Soviet bloc and the West following World War Two.

According to a report in Politico, European diplomats said the proposal among military and civilian officials was for a strip of land in Ukraine to be blocked off between the two forces.

But Zelensky said there already was an area on either side of the front line where heavy artillery was unable to operate because of the risk of drone-fire.

"Today, our heavy weapons are located at a distance of more than 10km from each other, because everything is hit by drones, " he said.

"This buffer - I call it a 'dead zone', some call it a 'grey zone' - it already exists."

Peace deal dead, new war drums beating for Ukraine

Stephen Bryen

There is growing evidence that not only have the Ukraine peace talks stalled, but NATO has won over Washington to not only continue the war but to expand it.

While Russian President Vladimir Putin has flown off to meet with his two buddies, Xi Jinping and Kim Jong Un, in China on an unprecedented four-day jaunt, NATO, with full US backing, is stepping up its effort to hand the Russian army a major defeat and, following that, introducing NATO troops to “stabilize” Ukraine.

What is the evidence? First and very noticeable is the US decision to ship 3,350 missiles to Ukraine, ostensibly to be paid for (someday?) by the Europeans (which ones are not defined). These are known as Extended Range Attack Munitions (ERAM), a type of air-launched cruise missile.

The Aviationist reports that “Ukrainian Air Force’s F-16s, Mirage 2000s and its fleet of Russian-origin MiG-29s, Su-25s and Su-27s would be able to operate it. This new weapon would be an addition to the AASM Hammer and GBU-39 SDB already employed by Ukrainian fighters.”

According to open source intelligence, ERAMs have a range of 250 miles (402 kilometers). However, that is the range once launched by an aircraft. Washington says it opposes Ukrainian missile attacks on Russian territory, and while it is restricting the use of long-range HIMARS, it is not restricting the use of ERAM.

ERAM reportedly carried a 500-pound (227-kilogram) warhead, far larger than any Ukrainian UAV and more than double any of the different HIMARS missiles (M31 Utility Warhead, ATACMS warhead). It may be that ERAMs can be fielded with cluster munitions, although much about the ERAM is uncertain.

Ukraine has also introduced a new cruise missile called Flamingo (FP-5). Developed by a Ukrainian company called Fire Point, the missile has a range of 3,000 kilometers and carries a massive one-ton warhead.

Britain’s debt crisis is a danger to democracy

Mani Basharzad

‘If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.’ This is what Herbert Stein, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, once wrote. It’s accurate when we think about public debt. The question is not whether it can continue forever, but when and how it ends. Some are already warning that the alarm is on and that we are heading for an IMF bailout. The mainstream argument against debt focuses on its economic risks, but there is another aspect to it: public debt is a danger to democracy itself.

The UK now has the highest level of debt since the early 1960s. According to the ONS, government borrowing since April has hit £60 billion. Public sector net debt (excluding public sector banks) is provisionally estimated at 96.1% of GDP, and according to the Taxpayers’ Alliance, the new Government has already increased debt by almost £200bn since coming to office. Looking at the trend, two major shocks stand out. The 2008 financial crisis pushed public debt from 35% of GDP in 2007–08 to 70% in 2010–11. The upward trend has not stopped since, but the most eye-catching rise came with the Covid shock, which increased public sector net debt from 85% of GDP in 2019–20 to 96% the following year. The last time the UK economy had three continuous years of debt above 90% of GDP was when Harold Macmillan was the prime minister. The new reality we are living with is high debt, but unlike the 1960s, there seems to be no will to cure it.

Balanced budgets and paying back debt are no longer popular. There are reasons for that. On one side are the intellectuals, in Hayek’s words, the ‘second-hand dealers of ideas’: economists who treat government as a magic money tree, such as Stephanie Kelton in ‘The Deficit Myth’ or Barry Eichengreen and his co-authors in ‘In Defense of Public Debt’. They argue that the ability of governments to issue debt has played a critical role in addressing emergencies and financing good things like healthcare and education. On the other side, the idea of a balanced budget has become a curse word, associated with austerity and somehow blamed for all of the world’s problems. The intellectuals on the Left have made balanced budgets and debt repayment sound like sins. But the real danger lies in delaying the hard decisions, which only leads us to a situation where austerity is no longer a choice but a necessity. At that point policymakers will not have the luxury of weighing which path harms people less, they will be forced into immediate measures that hurt people more.

Elon Musk Founder, xAI

Harry Booth

It’s been a big year for Elon Musk, even by Musk standards. In 2024, his company xAI transformed an abandoned Electrolux factory in Memphis into “Colossus,” the world’s largest supercomputer in 122 days—then quickly doubled the number of Nvidia graphics processing units inside to 200,000. In February, xAI released Grok 3, soon followed by Grok 4 in July, which it called the smartest AI in the world.

“With respect to academic questions, Grok 4 is better than PhD level in every subject, no exceptions,” Musk said at its launch. Whereas previous versions of Grok lagged slightly behind state-of-the-art models, Grok 4 bested rival chatbots on several industry benchmarks, including scoring 88.4% on a Graduate-Level Google-Proof Q&A (GPQA), a collection of graduate-level science questions on which PhD students typically average 65%. Though benchmarks can be imperfect measures of real-world performance. “At times, it may lack common sense, and it has not yet invented new technologies or discovered new physics, but that is just a matter of time,” Musk added.

Musk founded xAI in 2023 to offer an alternative to OpenAI, an organization he helped found in 2015, but whose ChatGPT he has called “woke.” Joining the AI race later than its rivals, xAI has spent aggressively to compete, raising $10 billion in July in debt and equity, which included a reported $2 billion from Musk’s SpaceX. The Financial Times reported later that month that xAI is seeking to raise more in a deal that could value the firm at up to $200 billion. Musk has denied that he is fundraising.

That pace of process, and Grok’s integration into Musk’s social platform, X, has helped the chatbot amass at least 35.1 million monthly active users, though this lags behind ChatGPT’s 700 million per week and Google Gemini’s 450 million per month. Soon after Grok 4’s release, the company also announced a near-$200 million contract with the U.S. Department of Defense to develop tech tools for America’s military.

As Trust in America Wavers, Can Defense Technology Fill the Gap?

Savar Suri

In Robert Kagan’s 2018 book, The Jungle Grows Back, there was a clear warning: the post-World War II (WWII) ‘Pax Americana’ that the world has experienced could diminish if the United States withdraws from its role as the worldwide ‘gardener’. He argues that the relative peace of the last 80 years is the exception, not the norm, and should be managed with great care. In 2022, four years after the book’s publication, Kagan’s foresight was tragically affirmed with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In 2023, the October 7 attack on Israel and ensuing war further demonstrated the prescience of Kagan’s book. The jungle is growing back, and the world is acting accordingly.

East Asia’s Defense Pivot

Nations like South Korea and Japan, in particular, face threats as a result of their geography; they are surrounded by China, North Korea, and Russia. Rather than entrusting their defense to an increasingly unreliable United States, Japan and South Korea have begun to invest heavily in a growing defense technology sector. Although they remain aligned with Washington, their new insurance policy also affords them greater control over foreign policy decision-making.

Japan’s Rearmament

Japan is the more surprising of the two. The country, given its WWII legacy, has chosen to remain largely pacifist over the last 80 years, capping defense spending at 1 percent of its GDP. The well-known Article 9 of the constitution prohibits Japan from using war as a means of resolving international disputes, and even forbids maintaining a military large enough to conduct a war.

The AI Action Plans: How Similar are the U.S. and Chinese Playbooks?

Scott Singer and Pavlo Zvenyhorodskyi

In July, both the United States and China put forward their national visions for AI development and governance through their own AI Action Plans. Washington’s plan leans into the rhetoric of AI dominance and transactional dealmaking to advance U.S. national interests. In stark contrast, Beijing has pitched the world on a vision of AI governance that opposes U.S. hegemony, supports multilateralism, and embraces global capacity building in its Global AI Governance Action Plan.

Yet beneath the surface, the two countries’ AI strategies are converging in strikingly similar directions. Both now pursue the same three-pronged approach: accelerating domestic AI adoption, enabling government-supported AI exports and the open-source ecosystem, and managing AI risks without constraining development.

This convergence is new. U.S. AI policy has pivoted since President Donald Trump took office, more vocally supporting the open-source ecosystem and AI exports while downplaying AI safety. Chinese AI policy has also transformed, though over a longer time horizon: its AI policy over the last two years has moved away from the heavy-handed ideological measures. It now has sufficient technological capabilities to usefully deploy the technology in its economy and globally and has begun to slowly increase its discussion of frontier AI risks in key policy documents.

This strategic alignment will fundamentally shape global AI competition, turning it from an ideological confrontation into a race for domestic productivity gains and global technological influence. In that race, it will be the capacity to deliver on the AI Action Plans—rather than their ideological visions—which will determine which superpower shapes the future of AI.

The AI Action Plans in Context

How private intelligence companies became the new spymasters

Shashank Joshi

In 2014 Dan Geer, a computer security analyst, gave a speech at the RSA Conference, an annual gathering of cyber-security specialists, titled: ‘We Are All Intelligence Officers Now’. It described the ways in which computers were insinuating themselves into every aspect of life, the resulting haemorrhage of data, and the change in what it meant to be a collector of intelligence. In his talk, Geer asked: ‘Is it possible that in a fully digital world it will come to pass that everyone can see what once only a director of national intelligence could see?’

Fast forward and it is possible to see Geer’s vision being realised. For a flavour of this, consider an episode that unfolded in 2021. Analysts noticed that CCTV cameras in Taiwan and South Korea were digitally talking to crucial parts of the Indian power grid – for no apparent reason. On closer investigation, the strange conversation was the deliberately indirect route by which Chinese spies were interacting with malware they had previously buried deep inside the Indian power grid. The analysts were in a position to observe this because they had been scanning the entire internet to find command and control (C2) nodes – such as the offending cameras – that hackers tend to use as pathways to their victims.

The attack was not foiled by an Indian intelligence agency or a close ally. It was discovered by Recorded Future, a company in Somerville, Massachusetts, which claims to have knowledge of more global C2 nodes than anyone in the world, and which it uses to constantly disrupt Chinese and Russian intelligence operations. The firm, like others, also scrapes vast amounts of data from the dark web – a part of the internet that can only be accessed using special software – collects millions of images daily, extracts visible text to find patterns, and hoovers up corporate records.

The Chinese intrusion serves as a microcosm for intelligence in the modern age. The cameras in Taiwan and South Korea are among more than one billion around the world, forming a metastasising network of technical surveillance – visual and electronic, ground-level and overhead, real-time and retrospective – that has made life far harder for intelligence officers and the agents they need to develop, recruit and meet. That those cameras could be used to sabotage India’s electricity supply shows how digital technology has enabled covert action on a grand scale; what previously required front companies, physical infrastructure and agents carrying tools of sabotage can now be done virtually. That this could be watched in near real-time by a private company illustrates the revelatory quantity and quality of data that oozes out of the digital world. Intelligence is being democratised – blurring the boundary between what is secret and what is public.

Army senior leader outlines data-driven transformation for warfighting superiority

Shannon Collins

WASHINGTON – The Army is undergoing a significant transformation, shifting its focus to a data-centric approach to ensure warfighting superiority in future conflicts, said Lt. Gen. Jeth Rey, deputy chief of staff, G-6, Pentagon, during a conference last week.

The G-6 is the principle military advisor to the Army Chief of Staff and the chief information officer for planning, strategy, network architecture, and the implementation of command, control, communications, cyber operations and networks for worldwide Army operations.

“This fight is moving very fast. We have to be ahead of our adversary,” Rey said.

Future warfare

Future battles could include cyber attacks, autonomous drones, electronic warfare, and artificial intelligence-driven decision making by adversaries.

“The next war may not be kinetic only,” Rey said. “It’s going to be non-kinetic.”

He highlighted the impact of drones and the vulnerability of critical infrastructure in Ukraine as an example.

“Drones are changing the way we do business,” Rey said. “Look at our critical infrastructure. Think about what could happen if a non-kinetic strike does hit us. Those blackouts we’ve been experiencing, we shouldn’t take those lightly. We should be digging in to understand what’s behind them.”

Rey and his team met with Soldiers to discuss the focus on enhancing warfighting mentality, cyber transformation and enabling data-driven decision making. He said the Army is prioritizing electronic warfare and the electronic spectrum.

Reconnaissance-Strike Battle in the Mojave Desert: How Centaur Squadron Prepares Army Units to Win the First Fight on Tomorrow’s Battlefield

Kevin T. Black, Tarik Fulcher, Ethan Christensen, Daniel Gaston and Joshua Ratta

In 1981, the Army created the National Training Center and gave it a critical task: to prepare units to “win the first fight.” Central to that task is an OPFOR—the opposition force—that presents rotational training units with realistic military problems. But doing so is a moving target. The perpetually changing character of warfare demands a dynamic opposition force capable of developments in technology and in tactics, techniques, and procedures. How is the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment “Blackhorse” adapting to meet that imperative? And what can units expect when they encounter Blackhorse OPFOR at the National Training Center?

A few months ago, Major Zackery Spear and Lieutenant Colonel Michael Culler took to the digital pages of the Modern War Institute to call for the US Army to adopt reconnaissance-strike battle as a tactical construct in order to properly implement multidomain operations, as well as for the Army’s combat training centers like the National Training Center (NTC) to create dedicated reconnaissance-strike complex formations to teach rotational training brigades how to survive and win in such an environment. At NTC, this is not some far-off imagined future, but an emerging cornerstone of how the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment gives units their worst day in the desert. It takes the form of the regiment’s Centaur Squadron—a purpose-built reconnaissance and security formation that combines legacy manned and new unmanned platforms to answer priority intelligence requirements, continually challenge brigade combat teams across all nine forms of contact, and preserve Blackhorse combat power for key periods of operations while attritting and shaping a brigade prior to main body contact.

Reconnaissance and Strike on the Modern Battlefield

Professional discussions about combat training centers typically focus on how difficult a rotation can be for training units. But making it difficult is itself immensely challenging for the OPFOR unit, which must ingest observations from real-world conflicts and incorporate them rapidly into its own operating procedures.

2 September 2025

China’s Wakhan Corridor Dilemma: Economic Development or Security?

Situation Reports

On August 21, the Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi landed in Kabul, after visiting India and Pakistan. The visit to Afghanistan holds significance as it comes after a gap of three years, the last being in March 2022. But far more consequential was the actual itinerary of the visit, notably a tripartite meeting with Pakistan and Afghanistan intended to address Chinese security concerns related to a narrow piece of land connecting China and Afghanistan, called the Wakhan Corridor. The Wakhan Corridor is a 350-km narrow piece of land, ranging from 10 to 50 km in width, which connects China’s Xinjiang Autonomous region and Afghanistan’s Badakhshan province in the northeast and is sandwiched between Tajikistan on its western side and Khyber Paktunwa, Gilgit Baltistan to the east.

While it is a fact that the Chinese have been investing in Afghanistan and have not shied away from the country since the Taliban takeover in 2021, Beijing has been cautious in its approach in dealing with the Taliban given that early investments have not been as lucrative as they hoped. According to a report published by the Stimson Center, Chinese investments have more or less remained at the same level since 2021, with imports from Afghanistan not growing in any substantial way. The same report claims that the Chinese investments in the Mes Aynak copper mine have not taken off, nor have investments in the Amu Darya oil fields. Despite these hurdles, the Taliban and Beijing are moving ahead on a plan to build a road through the Wakhan Corridor, connecting China and Afghanistan. According to Al Emarah English, which is the official mouthpiece of the Taliban government, the Wakhan Corridor road will be constructed in two stages, the first running 50 km from Bazai Gonbad in Little Pamir to the zero-point border with China, of which preliminary groundwork is complete with 60% of construction work currently underway as of March 2025. The second stage will cover 71 km, which is to be completed by the end of this year. Experts believe that once this road is complete, it will give China access to new markets in Europe through Afghanistan and at the same time, provide landlocked Afghanistan a new corridor to export and import goods directly with China.

Risk Factors along the Wakhan Corridor

Guns of September: What a Parade May Reveal About China’s Military Modernization

John S. Van Oudenaren

Executive Summary:The People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) upcoming military parade marking the 80th anniversary of the end of WWII will serve as both a symbolic display and an operational exercise, highlighting the PLA’s advancements in new combat domains—such as unmanned systems, directed energy, and electronic warfare—while also revealing improvements in command structure and organizational capacity. The parade aims to underscore loyalty to Xi Jinping as central to combat readiness, even as recent purges expose deep institutional instability and a persistent “trust deficit” between the CCP and the PLA. These tensions underscore the regime’s challenge in balancing political control with genuine military professionalization.

The PLA will use the parade to demonstrate its growing joint capabilities, showcasing an integrated “Four Services + Four Arms” model and the role of new branches like the Aerospace and Cyberspace Forces. The involvement of militia units and strategic strike formations further emphasizes the whole-of-force approach underpinning China’s military modernization trajectory

The People’s Republic of China (PRC) is finalizing plans for its massive 80th anniversary commemoration of victory in the “Chinese People’s War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression” (中国人民抗日战争) and “World Anti-Fascist War” (世界反法西斯战争) (People’s Daily, June 25). The event, to be held in Beijing on September 3, will feature a troop review and speech by Chinese Communist Party (CCP) General Secretary and Central Military Commission (CMC) Chairman Xi Jinping. Global attention will likely fixate on the long columns of entirely domestically produced armored vehicles, missiles, and warplanes rolling through Tiananmen Square, highlighting the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) growing firepower (China Daily, June 24; Xinhua, June 25). The parade will also contain important indications about PLA command structure, organizational capacity, and operational readiness.

New Combat Forces on Display

PLA Declares World-Class Ambitions with ‘Strongest Army’ Benchmark

W.Y. Kwok

For the first time, an official PRC publication explicitly defines its goal to “establish a world-class army” (建设世界一流军队) standards as equivalent to the “world’s strongest military”(实力最强的军队), marking a direct competitive framework with the United States and other leading powers.

Released weeks before the Victory Day parade commemorating Japan’s defeat and following the PLA founding anniversary, the commentary leverages historical symbolism to declare CCP’s readiness to compete with, and potentially challenge, the existing global military order.

President Xi Jinping has expedited its “Three-Step” (三步走) modernization schedule since 2017, moving basic military modernization from mid-century to 2035 while targeting a critical 2027 centenary milestone, despite acknowledging ongoing “inadequate capabilities” and “significant gaps” compared to advanced global militaries. The commentary also heavily emphasizes CCP “absolute leadership” over the PLA, signaling Xi’s effort to reinforce military control while questions persist about his authority over the armed forces.

One week after “Army Day” (八一建军节), the August 1 anniversary of the founding of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), the People’s Daily published a commentary titled “Deeply Understand the Significant Original Contributions to Building a World-Class Military in All Respects” (深刻把握全面建成世界一流军队的重大原创性贡献) (People’s Daily, August 7). The piece, written by a professor at the National University of Defense Technology, traces national defense and military strategy development since 1997 and emphasizes Chinese Communist Party (CCP) General Secretary Xi Jinping’s 2016 goal of “building a world-class army” (建设世界一流军队).

This Substack is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Deterring a Taiwan Invasion Lessons from Imperial Japan

Nicholas Welch

Last year, ChinaTalk covered Operation Causeway — the WWII-era US military plan to invade Japan-occupied Taiwan and use the island as a launching base for an assault against Japan. As US Army LTC Kevin McKittrick explained, Causeway was ultimately scrapped because, “the enemy always has a vote.”

Today, we’re exploring how Imperial Japan fended off Operation Causeway — in the form of its own large-scale Taiwan-Okinawa defensive plan, dubbed Operation Sho-2Go 捷2号作戦 (“Operation Victory No. 2”). Executed along side Operation Sho-1Go (Philippines), Operation Sho-3Go (Japan mainland), and Operation Sho-4Go (Hokkaido), Sho-2Go involved rapidly fortifying Taiwan with five divisions — approximately 165,600 troops — and employing a strategy of “vertical resilience” by constructing extensive underground tunnel networks and fortifications to leverage Taiwan’s mountainous terrain. Sho-2Go’s key innovation was to thoroughly disperse and conceal air and naval forces in protected positions, preserving them from initial US attacks, and then concentrate these forces in asymmetric kamikaze strikes against US landing fleets at the critical moment of invasion. Sho-2Go’s successful deterrence of a Taiwan invasion led American troops to target Okinawa instead.

This article is the product of fantastic archival research — using Japanese-language source materials — conducted by Japan Air Self-Defense Force Colonel Hirokazu Honda, who just finished a year-long stint at the Air War College (AWC) at Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama. Colonel Honda earned his commission upon graduating from the National Defense Academy of Japan 防衛大学校 in 2004; he also has a master’s degree in aerospace engineering. He has served as A6, A5, and A1 staff for the Air Staff Office; Commander of the 36th Air Control and Warning Squadron; and defense strategy planner at the Joint Staff Office (J5). Colonel Honda was advised by AWC professor and US Air Force Colonel Jared D. Paslay.1

From Shield to Spear: How Golden Dome Points the Way toward Breaking China’s Kill Web

Matthew Smokovitz

If the United States fights China on China’s terms, it may risk collapse in the opening hours. Such a war would not begin with a slow exchange of fire—it would be a race between the two sides to sever the other’s ability to think and act as a single, coordinated force. Beijing has spent decades forging its warfighting system into a tightly integrated brain and nervous system. Theater commanders fuse data from satellites, over-the-horizon radars, airborne sensors, and undersea arrays into a shared real-time picture. From this picture, precisely timed orders flow to air, sea, and missile forces. That operational coherence—seeing, deciding, and striking as one—is what turns scattered operational assets into a lethal, synchronized kill web.

That coherence is China’s greatest strength and its most brittle hinge. When missile salvos arrive just as bombers spring in from their launch points, when submarines maneuver without orders because their neural network tells them the enemy’s retreat path—this is operational synchronization in action. But when data flows stall, when timing errors creep in, that neural network misfires. Missiles still launch, radars still receive—but the system fights as a collection of disjointed parts. Strikes fizzle. Orders lag. Reflexes fail.

Traditionally, the United States has attacked such integrated systems by methodically rolling them back—destroying radars, missile batteries, and command centers one by one. In Desert Storm, in the Balkans, that worked. But against China’s kill web? It is a slow, costly path to disaster. Mobile launchers reposition before they are struck. Redundant sensors light back up. Alternate comms routes reroute data. The brain and nervous system remain intact even as its limbs are wounded.

This is where Golden Dome enters the discussion. Conceived as a homeland missile shield, Golden Dome envisions a multilayered architecture—with one layer even space-based—using both sensors and interceptors in orbit. This space layer is vital for defense—it is a vantage point above the battlefield no terrestrial platform can match. But as the concept takes shape, it makes clear that such a layer will possibly be necessary to countering China’s kill web. Space-based interceptors are not just tools to strike incoming missiles targeting the US homeland and its interests; they can also hold the enemy’s neural infrastructure at risk.

Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)