Indian Strategic Studies: October 2025

1 October 2025

US tariffs put 10 million jobs at risk, says India’s top economists

Rahul Oberoi

At the India Today Conclave in Mumbai, three of the country’s top economists including Tanvee Gupta Jain of UBS, Sajid Z Chinoy of JP Morgan, and Samiran Chakraborty of Citibank sounded a cautious note on the country’s growth prospects amid rising US tariffs and a shifting global trade order.

Tanvee Gupta Jain, Chief India Economist at UBS, highlighted the impact of steep penalties on India’s exports. “A 50% penalty, which includes 25% reciprocal tariff and 25% penalty for buying military equipment from Russia, is one of the highest across emerging markets,” she said.

According to Jain, nearly $35 billion worth of Indian goods are exposed, equal to about 0.8% of GDP. The pain is most acute in low-margin, labour-intensive sectors like gems and jewellery, textiles, leather, and footwear, which employ over 10 million workers.

“We do see a GDP growth drag because of these higher tariffs. Despite this, India is still projected to grow at 6.7% in FY26,” she noted, while stressing the need to boost domestic demand.

Sajid Z Chinoy, Managing Director and Chief India Economist, JP Morgan, cautioned against retaliatory measures. “From a narrow economic perspective, very simple answer, no. We have much more to lose from retaliation and escalation,” he said. He highlighted the importance of service exports, which account for 7% of GDP compared with just 1% from goods exports to the US.

“That’s the epicentre of urban consumption, white-collar jobs, and housing. We must negotiate in good faith and, in the near term, provide a bridge to keep enterprises alive. Just as we did during Covid with targeted fiscal and credit support,” he added.

Samiran Chakraborty, Chief Economist at Citibank India, echoed the urgency of quick policy action but urged a broader rethink. “It’s important that we arrest this as quickly as possible, but we also need to recognise that the world is becoming more protectionist. We can no longer build our future growth narrative purely on exports,” he said.

Has the United States Really Lost India?

Sameer Lalwani

In a post to Truth Social, President Donald Trump lamented that the United States had “lost India” to China. The September 5 post featured a photo of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi alongside Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping—as if a new troika had emerged from their Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit. A few days earlier, Xi and Modi had held a bilateral meeting—during the latter’s first trip to China after a seven-year drought—and expressed their intentions to work as “partners, not rivals”. Some analysis suggests that this rapprochement, paired with a downturn in US-India relations, might presage a major shift in global affairs. That analysis is overstated.

The China-India rivalry will likely persist due to fundamental disagreements and distrust over economic coercion, border aggression, Pakistan relations, and technology stacks. Meanwhile, the US-India relationship is likely to stabilize and rebound due to a much deeper and more substantive defense partnership.

There remains an iron ceiling to the India-China relationship, which is shaped by behavioral and structural factors. Prime Minister Modi’s mending of fences with Xi at the SCO summit must not be interpreted as more than risk mitigation and opportunistic posturing. Although the two countries seek to restore normal relations on their border and build economic ties, the outcomes of India-China bilateral engagements appear more tactical and rhetorical than strategic. The two leaders agreed on so little that, after the meeting, they issued separate statements that often sidestepped or conflicted with each other. The few deliverables were paltry in nature: nothing more than potential action on people flows through direct flights, visa facilitation, border trade, and access for pilgrims.

The readouts of the leaders’ meeting revealed deep fault lines on strategic and defense issues. These included divides on whether border peace serves as the foundation of the relationship, whether China can countenance a multipolar Asia, whether terrorism and its state promoters are a challenge for the relationship, and whether there is a meaningful mechanism for addressing the stark trade deficit between the countries.

“War Without Harm”: China’s Hybrid Warfare Playbook Against Taiwan

Yen-ting Lin

The escalating tensions across Taiwan are not isolated provocations—they are calculated maneuvers in China’s evolving blueprint for hybrid warfare. Unlike traditional military campaigns, this strategy seeks to conquer Taiwan without destroying its infrastructure or economy, aiming instead to coerce submission under a pretense of “peaceful” unification.

China’s approach to this “war without harm” involves a systematic five-phase strategy: sabotaging critical infrastructure, waging cognitive warfare through disinformation, conducting cyber-physical convergence attacks, employing military encirclement, and leveraging political subversion. Recent incidents, including the Matsu cable sabotage and disinformation campaigns during Taiwan’s 2024 elections, provide a glimpse of what future efforts to destabilize Taiwanese defense and erode public trust might look like. The attacks represent more than just scattered provocations among the typical ebb and flow of cross-Strait relations—they constitute a new model for hybrid warfare, one designed to neutralize Taiwan’s ability to resist while preserving its value as an economic and strategic asset.

Here’s how a Taiwan conflict might play out under this new hybrid warfare paradigm:

Phase One: Cutting Taiwan Off from the World via Infrastructure Sabotage

The first phase involves operations that leverage non-military and proxy actors, such as state-aligned civilian vessels, to target infrastructure in such a way that creates a classic ‘gray zone’ dilemma for Taiwanese policymakers. To respond risks escalating tensions and alienating international support, as any retaliation can be framed as aggression against non-combatants. Conversely, failing to respond allows China to continue disrupting Taiwan’s critical systems unchecked. This strategic ambiguity is central to China’s hybrid warfare strategy, enabling significant disruption while evading direct attribution.

Documented incidents attest to how this strategy is neither isolated nor unprecedented. In February 2023, Chinese vessels severed cables near the Matsu Islands, leaving residents and businesses without internet access for over 50 days . A similar operation in January 2025 targeted the Trans Pacific Express Cable System, with Chinese-linked entities concealing their involvement through sophisticated vessel-tracking obfuscation. The operations align with a broader global pattern of infrastructure sabotage, as seen in the 2024 Baltic Sea attacks, where China-linked vessels disrupted European undersea networks to gain strategic leverage without triggering conventional retaliation.

China Plans, America Reacts

STEPHEN S. ROACH

NEW HAVEN – China’s leaders are hard at work putting the finishing touches on the country’s 15th Five-Year Plan. Meanwhile, since the beginning of his second term, US President Donald Trump has issued a record 205 executive orders and signed only a handful of bills into law. The comparison is striking: While China has a strategic planning process, America has neither a plan nor a strategy.

The planning exercise is a foundational pillar of the People’s Republic of China. The first plan ran from 1953 until 1957 and was strongly influenced by Mao Zedong’s post-revolutionary relationship with Joseph Stalin. Over the ensuing years, the plans became more elaborate, as did the preparation process.

The State Planning Commission that set Soviet-style industry targets in the early 1950s was eventually replaced by the National Development and Reform Commission. In addition to following the guidance of the Communist Party of China and drawing on the expertise of the ministries that comprise the State Council, the NDRC consults with outside academics and industry leaders. The gestation period for China’s planning process is long: As soon as the National People’s Congress approves a five-year plan, work on the next one commences.

China’s five-year plans have been far from perfect. The first four were unmitigated disasters, dominated by Mao’s ideological zealotry and overreach. The second plan (1958-62) featured the catastrophic Great Leap Forward, while the fourth plan (1971-75) was shaped by the disastrous Cultural Revolution.

Synthesis Paper: Velvet glove, iron fist: Understanding China's use of state threats

SOC ACE Research Programme

This briefing provides an overview of the scale, scope and nature of the challenge posed by Chinese state threats, drawing on research published in the SOC ACE Research Paper, Old Wine, New Bottles? The Challenge of State Threats. The research examines the activities of the four main states seeking to revise the international order: Russia, Iran, North Korea and China (hereafter referred to as “the revisionist states”). However, it recognises the particular importance of China. One of the most populous countries in the world, China is probably the only state capable of challenging the US across a full spectrum of economic, political and military power.

China’s September 2025 Military Parade: How PLA Ground Forces Are Adapting to Future Wars and Force Projection

Joshua Arostegui

China’s military parades are often viewed as a form of deterrence by giving Xi Jinping an opportunity to showcase the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) advanced weapons systems to the world and bring like-minded authoritarian leaders from partner states together in a show of unity against the Western-led international liberal order.1 The extravagant events, however, also open a window into understanding Beijing’s expectation of how and where it will fight in the future. Despite the unveiling of several new weapons driven through Tiananmen Square during the 70-minute parade, most of them, like the YJ-20 hypersonic anti-ship missile and LY-1 shipborne laser air defense system, were designed to deter and defeat the United States and its allies in the air and maritime domains of the Indo-Pacific region.2 Yet, the first formations of vehicles to cross in front of Xi and his guests, those belonging to the PLA Army (PLAA), PLA Air Force Airborne Corps (PLAAFAC), and PLA Navy Marine Corps (PLANMC), represented something different: an acknowledgement that future wars will be global and force projection needs to be accompanied by land-based firepower and protection.

Tanks: Prioritizing Protection and Mobility

As it did in the 2019 the People’s Republic of China (PRC) anniversary parade, the PLAA led the vehicle portion with its most capable main battle tanks (MBT). While the Type-99A MBT spearheaded the army’s columns in 2019, newly unveiled Type-99B main battle tanks from the 112th Combined Arms Brigade, 82nd Group Army, led the formation. Official Chinese media described the Type-99B as an upgrade from the Type-99A, with improved all-weather communications, firepower, and maneuver capabilities.3 Despite such noteworthy advances in heavy MBT technology, the new Type-100 fourth-generation medium tanks and accompanying Type-100 support vehicles that followed the Type-99B stole the show as they represented China’s next development in advanced deployable armored platforms.

Designed for long-range rapid deployment, campaign target seizure, tactical deep assault, urban attack and defense operations, and joint fire guidance, the lighter Type-100 vehicles represent the army’s ability to push more powerful, yet sustainable, forces abroad.4 According to military affairs expert Fu Qianshao, while the Type-99B represents the latest in heavy armor firepower, the Type-100 vehicles were developed to work together through “informationized” and “intelligentized” interconnectivity. The tanks can use their 105mm main guns to strike targets while the support vehicles detect and destroy smaller mobile unarmored threats with a suite of sensors, mounted UAS, and 30mm main guns that appear capable of firing at a 90-degree angle.5 Additionally, both vehicles were designed to be more survivable by equipping the GL-6 active protection system (APS) with 360-degree quad-faced phased array radar and remote weapon stations to target drones and other airborne threats.6

PLA’s New-Quality Forces: The Information Operations Group at the 2025 Military Parade

On September 3, 2025, China held the 17th military parade since the founding of the People’s Republic of China, which featured a multi-dimensional display of 45 formations, including marching formations, equipment drive-bys, and aerial flyovers. Following Xi Jinping’s directive to accelerate the development of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) into a world-class military, the PLA has established a new force structure of “four services and four arms” and a modern warfare concept of “information dominance, system support, elite force operations, and winning through jointness.”

Since the PLA replaced the Strategic Support Force in April 2024 with three strategic arms—the Aerospace Force (ASF), Cyberspace Force (CSF), and Information Support Force (ISF)—the Chinese government had provided only high-level descriptions of these units and their missions. The military parade provided observers and analysts with an opportunity to further examine their roles. The three strategic arms not only paraded independently in front of Tiananmen Square for the first time, but their equipment was also organized into three formations within a single Information Operations Group (IOG). This joint organization is a reflection of the PLA’s combat model in which these arms are functionally complementary in the information operations kill chain and are essential to integrating the operations of all PLA services.

How Russia is Helping China Prepare to Seize Taiwan

Oleksandr V Danylyuk and Dr Jack Watling

Chinese President Xi Jinping has directed the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to be ready to militarily seize Taiwan by 2027. A large-scale amphibious operation is highly risky, with the sites suitable for landing craft to deliver troops and equipment ashore constrained by the gradient and load bearing capacity of the beaches. Seizing airfields could allow troops to flow in by air, but as Russia discovered during its invasion of Ukraine, runways can be quickly denied. The PLA is therefore eager to identify ways of diversifying both the methods and locations at which it can move units onto Taiwan.

Although the areas where Russia surpasses China in military capability are diminishing, Russia has practical experience and capabilities for air manoeuvre that China lacks. According to contracts and correspondence obtained by the Black Moon hacktivist group, Russia agreed in 2023 to supply the PLA with a complete set of weapons and equipment to equip an airborne battalion, as well as other special equipment necessary for airborne infiltration of special forces, along with a full cycle of training for operators and technical personnel to use this equipment. In addition, Russia is transferring technologies that will allow China to scale-up the production of similar weapons and military equipment through localization and modernization.

The approximately 800 pages of contracts and collateral materials appear genuine and details from within the documents have been independently verified. However, there is also the possibility that parts of the documents have been altered or omitted.

The Russian Offer

The agreements provide for the sale by Russia to China of:37 BMD-4M, light amphibious assault vehicles with a 100 mm gun and 30 mm automatic cannon.

11 Sprut-SDM1 light amphibious anti-tank self-propelled guns with a 125 mm cannon.

11 BTR-MDM ‘Rakushka’ airborne armoured personnel carriers.

Several Rubin command and observation vehicles and KSHM-E command vehicles.

Countering the Digital Silk Road: Saudi Arabia

Vivek Chilukuri and Ruby Scanlon

The year 2025 marks the 10th anniversary of the Digital Silk Road (DSR), China’s ambitious initiative to shape critical digital infrastructure around the world to advance its geopolitical interests and technology leadership. A decade after its launch, digital infrastructure and emerging technologies have only grown more vital and contested as demand for connectivity, digital services, and emerging technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) expand. Against this backdrop, the DSR has become increasingly central to China’s broader strategy to challenge and ultimately supplant the U.S.-led digital order, and in doing so, reap potentially vast security, economic, and intelligence advantages. To assess the DSR’s impact 10 years after its inception—and explore how the United States and its allies can offer a more compelling and coherent alternative—the CNAS Technology and National Security team has undertaken a major research project that produces in-depth case studies of four diverse and geostrategically critical nations—Indonesia, Brazil, Kenya, and Saudi Arabia—and culminates in a full-length report.

The fourth case study focuses on Saudi Arabia. For the study, researchers from the CNAS Technology and National Security team traveled to the country to interview U.S. and Saudi policymakers, personnel in technology firms, members of civil society, and academics. Drawing on these interviews and desk research, this case study seeks to shed light on the current dynamics and stakes of the U.S.-China competition to shape Saudi Arabia’s digital ecosystem.

Executive Summary

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is the heavyweight of the Arab world and a rising global power. The kingdom boasts the world’s second-largest proven oil reserves and fourth-largest sovereign wealth fund. Besides Türkiye, it is the only trillion-dollar economy in the Middle East.1

Under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), Saudi Arabia has gone all in on Vision 2030, an audacious initiative to diversify the petro-economy, modernize society, and expand the kingdom’s global influence. Technology is central to Vision 2030, and up to 70 percent of its goals involve data and artificial intelligence (AI).2 The kingdom views emerging technologies as essential to creating good jobs, indigenizing critical industries and supply chains, and realizing Neom, the crown prince’s trillion-dollar techno-region in the country’s northwest. For all of Riyadh’s ambition, its leaders recognize that they cannot achieve Vision 2030 without foreign technology partnerships.

The End of Humanity, Not History: The Great Demographic and Ethical Crisis of the 21st Century

Selçuk Aydın, Mehmet Fatih İzgi

With the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the liberal West claimed ideological victory. This triumph is often narrated through a Eurocentric lens of historical continuity. But it is important to recall that Soviet Union considered itself rooted in Western Marxism, albeit refracted through Leninist anti-imperialist and anti-colonial perspectives. Francis Fukuyama’s 1989 declaration of the “End of History” (1) captured the prevailing belief that liberal democracy and free-market capitalism had triumphed as the final stage of human political, economic and ethical evolution inspired from the Hegelian progressive historical approach. Within this context, scholars such as Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye Jr. envisioned a world governed by “complex interdependence,” (2) where cooperation, rule of law and liberal norms would prevent large-scale conflict and global fragmentation.

But as the 21st century unfolds, the foundational assumptions of the liberal order are crumbling—not only because of external rivals, but also due to its own internal contradictions. The West no longer occupies the central position in shaping the dominant discourse on global challenges: its moral credibility has been undermined in places such as Palestine; demographic policies have failed to reverse declining fertility, while migration policies designed to compensate for population loss have transformed Western nation-states into multi-ethnic, multi-religious and multicultural societies, fuelling the rise of far-right politics; and its retreat from the liberal promise of free trade toward protectionism has coincided with the momentum of economic development shifting toward alternative centres such as China.

Hence, far from the end of history, we may be witnessing the implosion of liberalism itself, as its core premise of individual autonomy erodes the foundations of societies, nations and civilisations, and the West loses its moral, demographic and economic centrality.

The Demographic Collapse

Nowhere are liberalism’s internal contradictions more evident than in the demographic crisis engulfing the developed world. Fertility rates in nearly every Western country have dropped far below replacement level. (3) Traditional family structures are eroding; and marriage is increasingly delayed or abandoned altogether.

The U.S. Military’s Great Drone Crisis Has No Easy Fix

Stephen Silver

U.S. Army Pvt. 1st Class Ian Wojick, assigned to 552nd Military Police Company, 25th Infantry, aims a DroneBuster, an anti-drone weapon, toward the sky during the Joint Pacific Multinational Readiness Center Exportable (JPMRC-X) exercise at Fort Magsaysay, Philippines, June 1, 2025.

This iteration of the JPMRC-X marks the second Combat Training Center (CTC) rotation conducted in the Philippines. As part of the Army’s premier regional CTC, JPMRC-X enables the U.S. Army, joint force, allies, and partners to develop skills in realistic environments and conditions. Through exportable capabilities, JPMRC-X strengthens war-fighting readiness, enhances multilateral relationships, and contributes to regional security and stability in the Indo-Pacific. (U.S. Army photo by Staff Sgt. Keith Thornburgh)

-The U.S., meanwhile, risks trailing in low-cost, expendable attack drones.

-A Trump executive order and a Pentagon memo vow to “unleash” American drone dominance, but critics argue the pace and scale fall short.

-The near-term answer isn’t exquisite tech—it’s cloning simple, long-range, one-way drones by the tens of thousands, arming units fast, and training to fight with swarms—not just admire them.

Where’s the American Shahed Drone?

The Shahed drone has become a key weapon in Russia’s war with Ukraine.

According to an IISS report back in April, Russia has “doubled down” on the use of the drones, by “launching ever-increasing numbers, expanding production capabilities and refining tactics.”

That report, which cited Ukrainian Air Force figures, found that the number of drones launched by Russia had been increasing month-to-month, from late 2024 to early 2025. In fact, Russia has sent 34,000 drones and decoys into Ukraine so far this year, nine times the number in the equivalent amount of time in the previous year.

Swarming the Skies

Russia Provokes Europe Despite Weakness In Its Economy

Mike O'Sullivan,

Quite some years ago, at an evening gathering in Moscow, I had the pleasure of interviewing Natalya Kaspersky (in 1997 she founded the cyber security firm Kaspersky Lab with her then husband Eugene - he and many Kaspersky Lab colleagues had previously worked in the KGB).

I put a question to her regarding the growing number of Russian entrepreneurs, who seemed to thrive in a range of countries – the U.S., Canada, Germany and so on – but I was surprised by her answer – that the talent of the new entrepreneurial class was entirely due to the Russian state, its educational system and various socio-political institutions.

Today, not unlike both America and China, the Russian state and the notion of entrepreneurship are at odds. Many wealthier, young Russians lurk in Dubai, Cyprus, Georgia or parts of Asia, and the domestic labor market in Russia has been badly damaged by the war in Ukraine. Tellingly in the context of Natalya Kaspersky’s comments, much research talent has been directed into military focused technologies, and more broadly Russia’s ‘War Economy’ has become the only game in town.

This has created opportunities and dependencies for Russia. On one hand, together with China, and Iran, Russia is now a key part of an energy empire – that trades commodities, and builds commodity supply chains for at least one half of the world (India is shifting into this sphere). Both Russia and China have their claws into Africa, in a sinister repeat of what Tom Pakenham called the ‘Scramble for Africa’.

In contrast, Russia’s isolation and mono-sectoral economy leave it heavily dependent on China – some 90% of high-tech imports into Russia come from China, and it is yet unclear what financial support it gets from Beijing. In a week when Argentina’s economy and financial markets spluttered to a halt and triggered a rescue by Washington, Russia risks becoming China’s ‘Argentina’ if that makes sense.

There are however a few lessons for Western policymakers from Russia’s war economy, the first of which relates to debt. An under-remarked point is that Russia’s debt to GDP is only (officially) 20% which at least means it is not constrained by a huge debt burden, unlike the U.S., Britain, France, China, Italy and Japan. As the historian Niall Ferguson has remarked, no empire that has paid more to service its debt than its military has survived. In the future, indebtedness and military strength will be inter-related.

In 2008, after its partial invasion of Georgia, a post-mortem took place on the relatively poor state of the army (its training, equipment, and tactics) and hence began a modernization process in earnest. Many critics would say that elements of this – such as the structure and training of the army have failed completely, but other elements, notably military technology are a lot better. Germany, Spain, and Italy all need, or are about to embark on modernizations of their armies, while other countries like Ireland will need to remake their armies almost from scratch. In this respect, in a more contested world, there is a premium on getting military modernization right.

Senior General reveals how US military was caught off guard by Israeli airstrike on Hamas in Qatar

Maitreyee Thakkar

The US military was caught off guard by Israel’s unprecedented ballistic missile strike on a Hamas compound in Doha, Qatar, earlier this month, a senior US Air Force commander has confirmed.

Speaking at the Air, Space & Cyber Conference in Maryland, Lt. Gen. Derek C. France — commander of Air Forces Central and Combined Forces Air Component Commander for US Central Command — acknowledged that American forces received no advance warning of the September 9 raid.

“This strike that Israel did against the Hamas target in Doha was something that we had no indications and warnings of, because our surveillance and all our attention was not put on [it],” France said. “It wasn’t something that we expected.”

A surprise raid in QatarThe Israeli strike targeted a Hamas meeting in Doha that was linked to ongoing ceasefire discussions backed by the United States. According to Qatari and regional officials, six people were killed, including several Hamas members and a Qatari internal security officer. Senior Hamas leaders reportedly survived the attack.

Israel’s military employed air-launched ballistic missiles fired from fighter jets over the Red Sea, using high-arcing trajectories that bypassed the sovereign airspace of neighboring Middle Eastern states. Some outlets described the missiles as being fired into space.

US detection came only after launchDespite having advanced global missile detection networks, US officials admitted their first indication of the strike came only after the missiles were already airborne. Lt. Gen. France confirmed that US sensors detected the launch in real time but provided no prior warning.

American surveillance systems in the region are generally concentrated on monitoring threats from Iran and other established threat directions, making the Israeli strike especially difficult to anticipate.

The incident highlighted ongoing Pentagon efforts to improve midcourse tracking of missiles — particularly through new space-based sensors being developed by the Space Development Agency and the Missile Defense Agency.

CBRN Threats and Incidents Involving Non-state Actors - 2024 Annual Report

Magnus Normark, Anders Larsson, Henrik Ramebäck, Anna Karin Tunemalm, Per Wikström

The aim of this annual report is to present an updated assessment of the threat posed by non-state actors' use of chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear (CBRN) materials to cause adverse effects on society. The content is based solely on open-source information and includes a selection of incidents. The report is produced by a research group at FOI (Swedish Defence Research Agency), with grants from the Swedish Ministry of Defence. There were no confirmed attacks involving CBRN materials that caused significant adverse consequences for society during 2024. As in previous years, there were several cases of possession of toxic materials and information on the production of toxic substances found among criminals and violent extremists from both Islamist and right-wing milieus. In some cases, these actors have been linked to international terrorist organisations. The authors note that poisonous materials continue to be used relatively often to threaten, intimidate, or harm other people. In most cases that have come to our attention, the threats have been directed at individuals who are closely related to the perpetrator. Threats referring to poisonous or infectious materials are also used for financially opportunistic purposes, or to demonstrate dissatisfaction with companies, authorities, or other public functions and individuals.

Will ‘Iron Lady’ Takaichi Sanae Be Japan’s First Female Prime Minister?

Daisuke Akimoto

The presidential election race within the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) to choose a successor to outgoing Prime Minister Ishiba Shigeru kicked off on September 22. This time, there are five candidates for the LDP presidency: former Economic Security Minister Takaichi Sanae, 64; Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Minister Koizumi Shinjiro, 44; former LDP Secretary General Motegi Toshimitsu, 69; Chief Cabinet Secretary Hayashi Yoshimasa, 64; and former Economic Security Minister Kobayashi Takayuki, 50.

Among them, Takaichi is the only female candidate, and she’s considered one of the frontrunners. A poll conducted by Yomiuri Shimbun on September 13-14 showed Takaichi on top with 29 percent support, followed by Koizumi with 25 percent, Motegi with 7 percent, Hayashi with 6 percent, and Kobayashi with 3 percent. Another opinion poll taken on September 18 by Jiji Press showed that Koizumi was the most favored, followed by Takaichi. Therefore, many Japanese analysts see the contest as a two-way race between Takaichi and Koizumi.

If Takaichi wins the LDP leadership election, she will presumably become Japan’s first female prime minister. Based on her policy preferences, what would a Takaichi government mean for Japan’s economic, foreign, and security policy, especially Japan-U.S. relations?

Takaichi’s popularity among LDP supporters stems from the fact that she is an experienced conservative politician and a direct protege of the late Prime Minister Abe Shinzo, the conservative’s icon. She first ran for the LDP presidency in 2021. Last year, Takaichi was narrowly defeated by Ishiba; this year’s race marks her third bid for the presidency.

In the upper house elections in July 2025, some conservative voters in Japan supported not the LDP but other right-wing parties, such as Sanseito and the Conservative Party of Japan. In particular, Sanseito increased its seats in the Diet using its nationalistic “Japanese First” platform. Takaichi’s conservative political stance could appeal to conventional conservative voters in Japan, and the LDP might be able to regain their support.

Left-Wing Terrorism and Political Violence in the United States: What the Data Tells Us

Daniel Byman and Riley McCabe

In recent years, the United States has seen an increase in the number of left-wing terrorism attacks and plots, although such violence has risen from very low levels and remains much lower than historical levels of violence carried out by right-wing and jihadist attackers. So far, 2025 marks the first time in more than 30 years that left-wing terrorist attacks outnumber those from the violent far right. Despite its decline this year, right-wing terrorism could easily return to previous high levels. It is important to resource counterterrorism efforts against both right- and left-wing terrorism and work with communities to gain their support against extremists. Leaders across the political spectrum must condemn violent extremism of all kinds, denying it legitimacy and reducing its appeal.

Introduction

The tragic killing of political commentator and conservative activist Charlie Kirk has once again put the spotlight on political violence in the United States, with figures on both sides of the political aisle decrying extremism on the other. To understand the danger of political violence today and to find the best solutions for reducing it, it is important to understand the overall threat landscape and how both left- and right-wing violence have evolved and could change in the future.

Our analysis of terrorism trends in the United States shows that, indeed, left-wing violence has risen in the last 10 years, particularly since President Donald Trump’s rise to political prominence in 2016, although it has risen from very low levels and remains much lower than historical levels of violence carried out by right-wing and jihadist attackers. More contentious politics in the United States and the expansion of the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement appear to have reenergized violent left-wing extremists. The left-wing movement as a whole has not returned to its violent heights of the 1960s and 1970s, but the number of terrorist incidents involving left-wing extremists so far this year puts 2025 on pace to be the left’s most violent year in more than three decades. Moreover, 2025 marks the first time in more than 30 years that left-wing attacks outnumber those from the far right.

It may take a generation for a stable new world order to emerge

Dr Samir Puri

Starkly contrasting visions of world order and global governance are being prominently displayed this September at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization Plus meeting and the United Nations General Assembly.

Rather than the outright victory of one vision over the other, the likely long-term outcome will be a more complex blended reality. Established structures of global governance such as the UN are struggling to adapt to a more multipolar reality. Ushering in a more stable future world order will be a generational undertaking. During that time, the risks of insecurity and further wars will simmer.

US retrenchment, Chinese ambition

China’s hosting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization Plus meeting in Tianjin on 1 September brings these points home. 20 world leaders from different parts of the non-Western world attended, allowing Xi Jinping to present China as a paragon of stability. This comes at a time when US foreign policy is anything but, given the Trump administration’s aggressive trade policies, including towards its closest allies, and its withdrawal from some multilateral institutions.

As the US cedes important features of its global leadership role to China, both countries are also focusing on military competition in the Indo-Pacific. China’s huge military parade, staged immediately after the SCO meeting, saw Xi flanked by Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un.

Ostensibly the event was intended to commemorate the eightieth anniversary of the Second World War’s end. But it mainly served to project a fearsome display of Beijing’s growing military power.

Meanwhile, the US is taking the next steps in its strategic tilt towards the Indo-Pacific by reducing some security assistance to Eastern European countries, shifting the burden of deterring Russia ever more rapidly to European countries.

Security questions are not the only form of competition underway. The post-1945 US-led world order has also relied on the stabilizing force of its economic leadership – now undermined by the Trump administration’s tariff policies – and the moral and practical powers resulting from its leading place in multilateral institutions.

Hegseth orders rare, urgent meeting of hundreds of generals, admirals

Tara Copp, Dan Lamothe, Alex Horton, Ellen Nakashima and Noah Robertson

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered hundreds of the U.S. military’s generals and admirals to gather on short notice — and without a stated reason — at a Marine Corps base in Virginia next week, sowing confusion and alarm after the Trump administration’s firing of numerous senior leaders this year.

Transcript: Finland’s President Alexander Stubb’s Speech at UNGA 2025

Pangambam S

The Foundation of Foreign Policy: Values, Interests, and Power

ALEXANDER STUBB: Mr. President, Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, in its simplest form, foreign policy is really about three things: about values, interests and power. I come from a relatively small country, Finland, and our toolkit is mainly about two of those three things. It’s about values and interests. Power, hard or soft, is usually the luxury of bigger players.

The power of a smaller country arises from its capacity to cooperate with others. Smart diplomacy gives a smaller player at least relative influence. The UN is of course case in point. Big players have power through their permanent membership in the UN Security Council. But we, the smaller players, can influence the ebb and flow of international relations by being active in the corridors of diplomacy.

The End of the Post-Cold War Order

Now, most of the speeches that we’ve heard here today have highlighted the fact that the world order, balance and dynamics are changing, much like they did after World War II when the UN was founded. I actually think that the post-Cold War order is over, but we don’t know what the new order is going to look like. It will take at least five to ten years for things to settle.

And my message to this assembly today is that regardless of the size, each and every member state of the United Nations has agency, a say in how the new world order will look like. It is important that we all use this power wisely and responsibly.

Now, I fully appreciate that our interests differ depending on our geographical location, history, state of development or culture.

Europe’s Flattery of Trump Is a Strategy. It Isn’t Working.

Hal Brands

Europe, geographically speaking, is a small peninsula protruding from a much larger landmass, Eurasia. Today, the continent feels small indeed.

Europe is being squeezed by a probing, predatory Russia. It simultaneously faces a US that grows more dangerous, more distant. A continent that flourished in the American global order has reached an epic inflection point: Either Europe will become a geopolitical force in its own right, or it will become an afterthought, a victim, in a fragmenting world.

The pressure from Moscow is unabating. President Vladimir Putin’s grinding war against Ukraine is a siege of Europe’s outer defenses. Aggressive hybrid warfare makes matters worse.

Russian drones and planes overflew Poland, Estonia and Romania — and now, it seems, Denmark and Norway — this month.

President Donald Trump offered wildly inconsistent responses to Russia’s aerial bullying, and has mostly held back US capabilities from NATO’s response. This is part of Trump’s larger pattern of disconcerting behavior: demanding that Denmark cede Greenland; imposing an asymmetric trade deal on Europe; slashing US support for frontline NATO states; and politically backing pro-Russian actors including the Alternative for Germany party and Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

Trump has also consistently blamed the Ukraine war on Ukraine, not Russia. He recently demanded that European countries torch their trade relationship with China, in exchange for harsher US sanctions on Russia — even as Trump seeks his own trade deal with Beijing. Trump’s major contribution to transatlantic security, prodding European states to spend more on their militaries, could be a prelude to the partial withdrawal of US forces from the continent.

Russia becomes more menacing; America becomes more aloof and aggressive. The reaction of most European leaders has been to hug Trump tight.

Microsoft cuts off Israel’s Unit 8200 from cloud services after surveillance revelations

Omer Kabir

Microsoft has blocked Israel’s Unit 8200 from accessing some of its cloud services, following revelations by The Guardian that the intelligence unit had used Microsoft’s platforms for surveillance operations. According to the investigation, the IDF’s Unit 8200 stored recordings of millions of calls made by Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank on Microsoft’s Azure cloud, and used the company’s computing tools to analyze the data.

“We do not provide technology to facilitate mass surveillance of civilians. We have applied this principle in every country around the world, and we have insisted on it repeatedly for more than two decades,” Microsoft’s president and vice chair, Brad Smith, said in a statement on Thursday. The announcement comes after months of employee protests within the company over its ties to Israel, including a demonstration in which staff occupied Smith’s office.

Mutual Defense in Cyberspace: Joint Action on Attribution

Julia Brock and James Andrew Lewis

On the seventieth anniversary of the U.S.-Republic of Korea (ROK) alliance, the leaders of the two countries declared that the Mutual Defense Treaty applies to cyberspace. The United States and South Korea agreed to expand the scope of the agreement and promote cooperation in cybersecurity technologies, policies, and strategies, including cyber threat information sharing.

The United States and the ROK have significantly strengthened their cybersecurity cooperation in recent years. South Korea’s membership in NATO’s Cooperative Cyber Defense Centre of Excellence laid the groundwork for enhanced information sharing, joint exercises, and the development of shared standards. The U.S.-ROK Cybersecurity Working Group, established in 2022, has focused on strengthening mechanisms for collaboration and joint defense, as well as defensive strategies. Both countries have also emphasized the importance of international partnerships in addressing cyber threats posed by authoritarian states. The U.S.-ROK Strategic Cybersecurity Cooperation Framework, signed in April 2023, further solidified this commitment by increasing information sharing and joint response efforts.

Washington and Seoul are actively engaged in countering cyber threats, particularly those from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). The Counter Ransomware Initiative (CRI), the U.S.-ROK-Japan Trilateral Summit, and the ROK’s 2024 National Cybersecurity Strategy each highlight the shared goal of disrupting the DPRK’s malicious cyber activities and protecting critical infrastructure. Recent memoranda of understanding (MOUs) between the United States and the ROK have further strengthened cooperation in areas such as computer emergency response team communications and supply chain resilience.

Current Cooperation Structures

The overarching structure for the U.S.-ROK alliance is the 2023 Strategic Cooperation and Coordination Framework (SCCF). The SCCF provides a diplomatic mechanism to facilitate discussions between the two countries on a range of issues, particularly those concerning security, military cooperation, and regional challenges. The SCCF aims to enhance bilateral coordination, improve strategic alignment, and address concerns related to the Korean Peninsula, North Korea, and other regional security matters.

Tipping the Scales

Caleb Withers

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 confounded expectations around the role of cyber operations in modern conflict. Although many experts predicted a sweeping, highly coordinated cyber offensive would play a decisive role alongside conventional forces, the reality proved otherwise. In a war between a cyber-savvy great power and a digitally advanced state, cyberattacks played a relatively modest role. This limited impact underscores a key limitation of offensive cyber operations—sophisticated attacks require months of planning and thousands of hours of labor. Consequently, the need to plan and synchronize cyber operations well in advance of execution can be an obstacle to achieving strategic military objectives. Human timelines often bottleneck the fullest realization of cyber aggression.1

Sufficiently capable artificial intelligence (AI) systems could overcome this bottleneck. While current systems show only nascent capabilities to autonomously execute the complex, multistep tasks required for sophisticated cyber operations, progress in these capabilities has been real and rapid, with no indication of slowing. Today, AI systems primarily serve as tools to automate specific tasks, such as research or code generation. In the future, AI systems might become capable of autonomously executing operations across the full cyber kill chain, from reconnaissance to impact.

This report examines how emerging AI capabilities could disrupt the cyber offense-defense balance. Historically, attackers have had significant structural advantages in cyberspace: defenders must secure vast attack surfaces, while attackers need only succeed once. AI has, on balance, helped defenders, allowing them to mitigate these challenges by scaling defensive activities and responding to attacks in real time. But policymakers should not assume this dynamic will hold indefinitely. Three challenges could lead AI to disproportionately empower attackers in the future.

First, growing inference costs at the frontier of capabilities may benefit well-resourced attackers who can selectively target high-value assets, while defenders struggle to protect their entire attack surface. Second, automating the full cyber kill chain could accelerate operations from human to machine speed, dramatically enhancing the potential of cyberattacks to support military and geopolitical objectives. Third, persistent technical challenges in model safety and reliability create asymmetric advantages for attackers with higher risk appetites who can better tolerate both system failures and collateral damage from their operations. Moreover, these technical challenges will not occur in isolation. Organizations and nations will need to navigate sociotechnical challenges as they look to integrate AI more deeply into their cyber defenses, along with commercial and geopolitical pressures to develop and deploy AI systems at the potential expense of identifying and mitigating offensive risks.

The Cost of the AGI Delusion

Michael C. Horowitz and Lauren Kahn

In early August, one day before releasing GPT-5, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman posted an image of the Death Star on social media. It was just the latest declaration by Altman that his new AI model would change the world forever. “We have discovered, invented, whatever you want to call it, something extraordinary that is going to reshape the course of human history,” Altman said in a July interview. He compared his company’s research to the Manhattan Project and said that he felt “useless” compared with OpenAI’s newest invention. Altman, in other words, suggested

Army Cyber Institute (ACI)

Cyber Defense Review, 2025, v. 10, no.1

The Battlefield is not ‘Over There’ – It is Here, 24/7

A Conversation with the U.S. Army Chief Information Officer: Mr. Leonel Garciga

The Sword of Damocles: A Cybersecurity Paradigm Shift for the Defense of Critical Infrastructure

Southeast Asia: Where Facebook is the Internet

Toward Clarity in Cyber’s “Fog of Law”

Lights Out: What Hurricanes Reveal about Cyberattacks and Blackouts

Fighting Through Disruption: Reframing Cyber Resilience for Power Projection and Strategic Credibility

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