Indian Strategic Studies: 2025

31 July 2025

How the Islamic Republic of Iran Can Be Transformed

Fears of repeating the regime change mistakes made in Afghanistan and Iraq are understandable. But Iran is not Afghanistan or Iraq; invasion is not needed. Its people have risen up repeatedly for the past four decades but failed due to the government having brute force and weapons at its side. If the fundamentalist autocrats and their enforcers are weakened sufficiently from outside through martial means in addition to longstanding economic sanctions, Iran’s people could boot out the ayatollahs and transform their country. Un-strategically there is a deep yet unfounded consensus among western observers that any and all foreign action either strengthens the regime in Iran or would cause catastrophe there.

So, unwittingly serving the interests of Iran’s leaders, analysts keep recommending and policymakers keep trying diplomatic overtures, economic pressures, and occasional limited military strikes to rein in the Islamic Republic’s hostile actions and convince it to behave like other typical nations—all to no avail. Such actions are the geopolitical equivalent of the Whack-a-mole arcade game, demanding repeated expenses of energy with no durable, productive, result. Letting the leadership in Tehran repeatedly rebuild its capabilities is a mistake; it needs to go. Delaying the end only makes the task more difficult for Iranians and the world more dangerous for others.

The twelve-day war during June 2025 between Israel and Iran ended after the United States of America intervened with bombardment to seriously damage—but failed to destroy—the Islamic Republic’s nuclear facilities and then work with Qatar to broker a ceasefire. That truce temporarily halted the battle between the Islamic Republic, Israel, and the United States of America, but it will not end more than four decades of ever-rising hostilities unleashed by those fundamentalist Shi‘ite theocrats and epitomized by Iran’s nuclear program. Indeed, “Iran does not trust the ceasefire,” according to the Defense Minister Brigadier General Aziz Nasirzadeh. So, believing that Israeli and American bombings have stifled the ayatollahs and thereby set the stage for a post-Iranian regional order, is wishful thinking.

Since the war, Iran’s hardliners are further entrenching themselves at home while rearming allies abroad. Domestic dissent is being excised through hundreds of arrests and executions. Weapons programs, including nuclear and ballistic ones, are undergoing damage evaluation, restoration, and production. Threats of blockading the Strait of Hormuz and fetwas or religious injunctions against leaders of other nations have resumed. Cyberattacks on western institutions are ramping up. Regional proxies are once again launching missiles at Israel and sinking merchant vessels in the Gulf of Oman.

The 3 Big Lies Xi Will Try To Sell Trump About Taiwan

They say the best lies contain grains of truth. That’s what makes Beijing’s disinformation about Taiwan so dangerous.China has devised several misleading narratives about Taiwan that are designed to weaken America’s support for the island. It has been actively peddling these narratives in U.S. policy circles. U.S. officials must be prepared to recognize and counteract these falsehoods.The first is the false notion that cross-Strait tensions are entirely the fault of Taiwan’s “troublemaker” president, Lai Ching-te.

To be sure, Beijing has grievances with Lai and his nativist Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). Lai has a history of pro-independence activism, and his speeches since becoming president have included statements viewed as provocative in China.Beijing feels compelled to respond forcefully to perceived slights by Taiwan’s president to placate domestic audiences, so U.S. policymakers shouldn’t be surprised when Lai’s speeches spark aggressive military maneuvers.

But Lai has moderated his policies since running for president, and officials and academics from China know he lacks the authority to declare formal independence. In private conversations, they sometimes acknowledge not feeling threatened by Lai, and some believe the more controversial parts of his speeches are largely intended to appease radical elements of his political base. They’re probably right.Tensions existed long before Lai entered the scene. His predecessor, Tsai Ing-wen, went out of her way early in her tenure to avoid antagonizing Beijing. But the Communist Party apparently decided having an enemy in the DPP that it could blame for its failures in Taiwan was more politically expedient than preserving cross-Strait stability.

The notion that Lai or his party is solely responsible for cross-Strait tensions is an attempt to create friction between the U.S. and Taiwanese governments. Beijing knows Trump doesn’t want unnecessary trouble and will go to great lengths to convince him Lai is making his job harder by stoking tensions with China. Trump must see through Beijing’s attempts to manipulate him and firmly support the government in Taipei, while having administration officials work quietly, behind closed doors, to address legitimate concerns with Taiwan’s government.

Taiwan and South Korea: Bridging the Cybersecurity Gap

Davide Campagnola

In 2024, Taiwan’s Government Service Network faced an average of 2.4 million daily cyberattacks. Meanwhile, South Korean public institutions dealt with 1.62 million daily cyberattacks in 2023. These numbers, driven in large part by North Korean and Chinese state actors, have made Taiwan and South Korea the first and second most targeted geographies in the Asia-Pacific.

And the toll is increasing. South Korea reported a 48% rise in cyber incidents in 2024 compared to 2023, jumping from 1,277 to 1,887 cases. Taiwan likewise experienced a steep rise, from around 990 incidents in 2023 to over 1,400 in 2024. Government networks, critical infrastructure, and the high-tech sector are all primary targets.

Yet, despite facing similar digital threats, Taiwan and South Korea remain largely disconnected in the cybersecurity sphere. In June 2023, Taiwan’s Minister of Digital Affairs Audrey Tang met with South Korea’s newly appointed representative in Taipei to explore opportunities for collaboration on digital resilience and cybersecurity defense. At the Summit for Democracy in Seoul in 2024, Tang emphasized Taiwan’s experience countering AI-enabled threats to democratic integrity. These moments signal emerging but still insufficient cooperation.

That deficiency is no longer just a missed opportunity—it is a strategic vulnerability. The logic for cooperation is clear. The costs of non-cooperation, however, remain overlooked. Without coordinated resilience, an attacker can exploit the weakest link, ricochet across sectors, and destabilize entire systems.The Case for Taiwan-ROK Cybersecurity CollaborationSecuring the Semiconductor Industry. South Korea and Taiwan are two pillars of the global semiconductor industry. Advanced semiconductor production is geographically concentrated in these two countries, creating a chokepoint in global supply chains. This level of technological dominance makes both countries tempting targets for espionage and data theft.

China’s Military-Civil Fusion in Space: Strategic Transformations and Implications for Euro

China’s Military-Civil Fusion (MCF) strategy is a multi-purpose tool to enhance national power, accelerate technological innovation, and drive industrial and economic development.

MCF has reshaped China’s space sector, driving rapid innovation and fostering the rise of private commercial space actors aligned with national security and industrial goals.

Europe has already been outpaced by both China and the U.S. in key space capabilities, weakening its defense posture and reducing its strategic influence in a domain that is increasingly shaping the broader geopolitical balance.

Without credible capabilities, the EU risks being sidelined from setting the rules and standards in the space domain, limiting its ability to defend strategic interests and values.Dependence on U.S. space providers challenges the EU’s strategic autonomy, undermining secure.

independent access to space, at a time of growing uncertainty over the future of the transatlantic security alliance.Drawing lessons from China’s model, the EU must accelerate innovation and better mobilize its private space sector to secure a competitive and autonomous position the global space race.

China’s AI Policy at the Crossroads: Balancing Development and Control in the DeepSeek Era

Scott Singer and Matt Sheehan

The release of DeepSeek-R1 in early 2025 transformed the global artificial intelligence (AI) landscape overnight, with the model demonstrating capabilities that placed Chinese models squarely at the global frontier. Seemingly surprised by their developers’ success, China’s leaders have responded with a newly found confidence. They have invited leading AI pioneers to high-level Chinese Communist Party (CCP) meetings.

1 encouraged local governments to accelerate AI deployment across critical infrastructure,2 and promised to create and improve China’s AI laws and policies.3 This shift represents a substantial departure from China’s self-perception in the period immediately following ChatGPT’s November 2022 release. At that time, China prioritized economic stimulus and regulatory flexibility to help Chinese companies catch up to the cutting-edge systems produced by U.S. companies, such as OpenAI and Anthropic.

China’s recent policy evolution reflects a fundamental pattern in the CCP’s strategic thinking: when China perceives itself as technologically vulnerable, it leverages technology as an engine for economic growth; when it feels strong, it reasserts control through heavy-handed ideological measures. These competing imperatives of control and growth have shaped Chinese AI policy since top leadership began paying close attention to AI in 2017, evolving cyclically with China’s self-perception of its relative technological capabilities and economic position.

DeepSeek’s rise has placed this cycle at an inflection point: while China’s leaders have regained confidence in the country’s AI capabilities, China’s lackluster economy threatens the financial foundation for continued success. It marks the first time since 2017 that the main factors driving Chinese policymaking—its technological confidence and broader economic growth—have moved in opposite directions. This unfamiliar situation will test the leadership in new ways and make it harder than ever for observers—inside and outside of China—to anticipate Beijing’s moves.

Strange Alliance: The Convergence of the Radical Left and Radical Islam

The undeclared strategic alliance between the radical left and radical Islam has become so conspicuous that it demands a comprehensive dissection and analysis. This growing strategic and ideological affinity between the radical left in the West and radical Islamic organizations and regimes that have wrapped themselves up in anti-imperialism flag has not only trivialized the left’s vociferous commitment to democracy, social justice, and anti-oppression but has also turned the radical left into the “frontier guards” for fundamentalist and militant Islamic organizations and regimes.

This strange symbiosis between these diametrically opposing movements not only contributes to the greater strangulation and stifling of democratic aspirations in Islamic societies but is also geared to embolden radical Islamists to foster illiberal values in the West.Before analyzing the ramifications of the unusual alliance between two diametrically opposed ideological movements for democracy, it is essential to examine the basis for their mutual attraction. It has become mind-numbing to witness how the radical left that conceptualizes religion as “the opium of the masses” and displays a progressive view of gender and sexual orientation has gravitated toward radical Islam, which espouses principles that run counter to the values that the radical left stands for.

As will be demonstrated later, even though both movements raise the flag of social justice, equality, and fighting oppression, these are not necessarily the basis for their mutual attraction. The historical force of mutual attraction between these two ideologically different radical movements emanates from their shared hostility toward the US-led Western imperialism in particular and Western liberal democracy in general (Vidino, 2022; Salzman, 2025).

The roots of the radical left’s attraction to and fascination with radical Islam can be traced back to the 1979 revolution in Iran, which culminated in the collapse of the pro-Western monarchy and the ascendancy of the Islamic regime. The prevailing anti-American and anti-Western slogans during the revolution resonated with the Western leftist intellectuals’ anti-imperialist crusade (Sixsmith, 2018). The Islamic Revolution in Iran was perceived by prominent Western leftist intellectuals, such as Edward Said and Richard Falk, as a harbinger of emancipation and freedom from the yoke of imperialism, colonialism, and Western hegemony (Zarnett, 2007).

Road to Palestinian state must pass through Saudi Arabia

Bill Emmott

War makes bystanders feel powerless. Throughout the so-far 22 months of brutal conflict that began with Hamas’s slaughter and abduction of Israelis in October 2023, Europeans have looked and felt impotent.This has only partly been because they have also been divided; mainly, it has been because their words, brave or not, proved irrelevant. The question now is whether the decision by France’s President Emmanuel Macron to join 11 other EU countries in giving diplomatic recognition to a Palestinian state will be yet another demonstration of European powerlessness and irrelevance.

There is a chance that this French initiative could prove different. That chance does not depend much on European unity or disunity, but rather on whether France and others can build a partnership with Arab states, led by Saudi Arabia, that is powerful and determined enough to force Israel and the United States to change course. The chance currently looks a small one, but it may be worth taking.The timing of President Macron’s announcement was no accident. On July 28-29, France and Saudi Arabia are scheduled to co-chair a ministerial conference at the United Nations in New York on the Palestinian question, which is intended to be followed by a conference of heads of state in New York in September, alongside the UN General Assembly.

The French initiative is intended to inject momentum and an air of diplomatic seriousness into a process that otherwise looked destined to fail. It may still fail. But the small chance that it could make progress depends on France and others convincing the Arab leaders, especially Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman, that by working together, they might be able to make the Americans take them seriously.Which really depends on Saudi Arabia’s crown prince showing the courage and determination to press America’s Donald Trump to take the idea of a Palestinian state seriously.

Big Oil’s Power Couple Heads to Guyana

Tsvetana Paraskova

Following the completion of Chevron’s acquisition of Hess Corporation, the U.S. supermajor will need to overcome a previously strained relationship with its biggest competitor at home, ExxonMobil, and work together as joint venture partners in the hottest oil province in the world, Guyana’s offshore oil treasure trove.Chevron’s foray into the fastest-growing exploration and production spot globally could also be a sign of what’s to come for the biggest international oil and gas majors. Big Oil may be looking to acquire smaller companies with prized assets to boost reserves amid lower spending on exploration within the industry over the past five years.

For Chevron, the acquisition of Hess, whose completion was announced last week, means the supermajor is now gaining 30% in Guyana’s Stabroek offshore block—where the operator ExxonMobil is leading the production of more than 660,000 barrels per day (bpd) from several projects in the block.Chevron’s deal was finalized after a more than a year-long arbitration battle initiated by Exxon, which challenged the Chevron-Hess deal, claiming it had a right of first refusal for Hess’s stake under the terms of a joint operating agreement (JOA) for the Stabroek block. Hess and Chevron claimed the JOA doesn’t apply to a case of a proposed full corporate merger.

The arbitration case has reportedly strained the relationship between the top executives of the two biggest U.S. oil firms.In the legal fight, Chevron had much more to lose than Exxon because Guyana’s resources were the key reason for pursuing Hess Corp, more than the reason for adding producing assets in the Bakken shale basin in North Dakota.With the arbitration ruling in favor of Chevron, the company announced the completion of the Hess acquisition, “following the satisfaction of all necessary closing conditions, including a favorable arbitration outcome regarding Hess’ offshore Guyana asset.”

Britain isn't broken

As the author of a book about the UK called “Failed State” it might see a little hypocritical for me to complain about doomerism. But as I said in the introduction to that book I’m not a declinist. Our problems are nowhere near as bad as previous moments in our history, and there are solutions if we’re willing to pursue them.Our two core issues are low productivity growth which, combined with a series of expensive crises.

has left us with a difficult fiscal situation, and the creaky, overcentralised, system of governance that was the focus of my book. These both have a knock on effect across the public sector. It’s frustrating but hardly terminal. Compared to the years immediately after World War Two, with much of the country in rubble and a ruined economy, or the mid-1970s with runaway inflation, blackouts and a three day week our troubles are small scale.But spend a little while scrolling through X, or reading a right-wing paper, and one would think Britain was on the brink of civil war, with endless warnings of imminent ethnic conflict and a tidal wave of violent crime.

Last week one of the Telegraph’s resident apocalypse correspondents Alison Pearson took to wondering when there would be a military coup to save us from the hell in which we live. Nigel Farage made a speech warning about “societal collapse” and “civil disobedience on a vast scale” in protest at immigration and crime. The Government are not being quite so hyperbolic but have been briefing about society “fraying at the edges” and the risk of more riots. Last month, culture minister Lisa Nandy talked about her concerns that the North would “go up in flames”.

It's true that there’s plenty of anger around and it is likely that we’ll see further protests this summer along the lines of those in Epping over the past few weeks. Some of these could turn violent. But summer riots, even if they happen, are hardly a new phenomenon. We saw them in 2001 in various northern cities following racial tensions, and in 2011 after the police shot Mark Duggan. The 2011 riots led to 3.5 times as many arrests as last year’s. In each case the damage has been done by fairly small groups catching the police by surprise and violence has been contained within a few days.

Liberalism Doomed the Liberal International Order

The liberal international order is dying, and its transatlantic backers are grieving. During the first Trump administration, many were in denial, but few are now. Some are angry, denouncing a villain—usually U.S. President Donald Trump—for having unnecessarily destroyed what they hold dear and vowing to step forward to bolster global institutions: in March, for instance, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock declared that “a ruthless time has begun in which we must defend the rules-based international order and the strength of law more than ever against the power of the strongest.

Others, such as NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, hope they can bargain—that by coming on bended knee to the White House and flattering Trump, they can persuade the United States to reinvest in its historic alliances and defend key principles such as territorial sovereignty. Still others are depressed, resigned to the order’s demise but unable to imagine an alternative future.

Few of these mourners seem truly ready to accept the order’s passing. But they should. Praying for its resurrection is not just naive; it is counterproductive. All these responses misdiagnose the order’s deepest illness and thus prescribe the wrong remedy. The liberal international order’s crisis cannot be blamed on Trump’s peculiar brand of nihilistic politics, nor on the hard neoliberal turn that the order took in the 1990s, nor on the rise of revisionist, illiberal powers such as China and Russia.

These factors did play a role, but the postwar order ultimately decayed because what many saw as its greatest strength—how its institutions, norms, and rules were grounded in liberal principles—was actually a source of weakness. By providing universally acknowledged public goods, creating inclusive institutions, and committing to the rule of law, its backers believed that the order would prove particularly hardy.

French nuclear weapons, 2025

Hans M. Kristensen, Matt Korda, Eliana Johns, Mackenzie Knight-Boyle

France’s nuclear weapons arsenal has remained stable in recent years, but significant modernizations are underway of the country’s ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, submarines, aircraft, and nuclear industrial complex. We estimate that France currently has a nuclear weapons stockpile of approximately 290 warheads. In addition, approximately 80 retired warheads are awaiting dismantlement, giving a total inventory of approximately 370 nuclear warheads. The Nuclear Notebook is researched and written by the staff of the Federation of American Scientists’ Nuclear Information Project: director Hans M. Kristensen, associate director Matt Korda, and senior research associates Eliana Johns and Mackenzie Knight-Boyle.

This article is freely available in PDF format in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ digital magazine (published by Taylor & Francis) at this link. To cite this article, please use the following citation, adapted to the appropriate citation style: Hans M. Kristensen, Matt Korda, Eliana Johns, and Mackenzie Knight-Boyle, 2025. French nuclear weapons, 2025. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 81(4), 313–326.

France’s nuclear weapons stockpile has remained stable over the past decade and contains approximately 290 warheads for delivery by ballistic missile submarines and aircraft. Nearly all of France’s stockpiled warheads are deployed or operationally available for deployment on short notice. In addition, up to 80 warheads—the older TN75 warheads assumed to have been recently removed from the Le Vigilant submarine—are believed to be in the dismantlement queue and are likely no longer considered part of France’s stockpile.

The current force level is the result of adjustments made to France’s nuclear posture following former President Nicolas Sarkozy’s announcement on March 21, 2008, that the arsenal would be reduced to fewer than 300 warheads (Sarkozy 2008). As Sarkozy said in 2008, the 300-warhead stockpile is “half the maximum number of warheads [France] had during the Cold War” (Sarkozy 2008). By our estimate, the French warhead inventory peaked in 1991-1992 at around 540 warheads, and the size of today’s stockpile is about the same as it was in 1984, although the composition is significantly different.

US and its allies unprepared to repel saturation missile attacks

Stephen Bryen

Between June 13 and 24 Iran launched 574 missiles attacking Israel. Some of them got through, despite Israeli and US efforts to stop them. Until now we have lacked convincing data allowing some cogent analysis of the results of missile defenses. That information is partly supplied by a new study by the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, a Washington-based think tank that is pro-US defense and pro-Israel.

There are some surprises. The biggest one is the role of THAAD operated by US personnel in Israel and in the Gulf.THAAD is the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system. It is designed to intercept short-, medium- and long-range ballistic missiles. THAAD interceptors cost $12.7 million each, making them expensive, but not nearly as costly as the AEGIS SM-3 Block 2A interceptor that is priced at just under $28 million per shot.THAAD is a hit-to-kill, or kinetic kill, interceptor that does not use explosives.

It has an operational ceiling of around 92 miles, so it is not capable of exoatmospheric intercepts (310 to 620 miles). Israel’s high altitude interceptor, Arrow 3, is said to be capable of intercepts in the exoatmosphere.According to the JINSA report, in the June conflict THAAD intercepted 47.7 percent of all the missiles fired at Israel, an unexpectedly high proportion.

In doing so, the US expended at least 14% of its total THAAD interceptor stockpile. JINSA says it will take Lockheed, which manufactures the THAAD interceptors, around eight years to replenish the US stockpile, assuming the rate of production is not significantly increased.Take Note: We only know the number of Iranian missiles shot down by THAAD (92). We do not know how many THAAD interceptors were launched to shoot down the Iranian missiles.

Iran’s plan to abandon GPS is about much more than technology

For the past few years, governments across the world have paid close attention to conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East. There, it is said, we see the first glimpses of what warfare of the future will look like, not just in terms of weaponry, but also in terms of new technologies and tactics.Most recently, the United States-Israeli attacks on Iran demonstrated not just new strategies of drone deployment and infiltration but also new vulnerabilities. During the 12-day conflict, Iran and vessels in the waters of the Gulf experienced repeated disruptions of GPS signal.

“At times, disruptions are created on this [GPS] system by internal systems, and this very issue has pushed us toward alternative options like BeiDou,” Ehsan Chitsaz, deputy communications minister, told Iranian media in mid-July. He added that the government was developing a plan to switch transportation, agriculture and the internet from GPS to BeiDou.Iran’s decision to explore adopting China’s navigation satellite system may appear at first glance to be merely a tactical manoeuvre. Yet, its implications are far more profound. This move is yet another indication of a major global realignment.

For decades, the West, and the US in particular, have dominated the world’s technological infrastructure from computer operating systems and the internet to telecommunications and satellite networks.This has left much of the world dependent on an infrastructure it cannot match or challenge. This dependency can easily become vulnerability. Since 2013, whistleblowers and media investigations have revealed how various Western technologies and schemes have enabled illicit surveillance and data gathering on a global scale – something that has worried governments around the world.

Iran’s possible shift to BeiDou sends a clear message to other nations grappling with the delicate balance between technological convenience and strategic self-defence: The era of blind, naive dependence on US-controlled infrastructure is rapidly coming to an end. Nations can no longer afford to have their military capabilities and vital digital sovereignty tied to the satellite grid of a superpower they cannot trust.This sentiment is one of the driving forces behind the creation of national or regional satellite navigation systems, from Europe’s Galileo to Russia’s GLONASS, each vying for a share of the global positioning market and offering a perceived guarantee of sovereign control.

There Are No More Reasons for U.S. Presence in Middle East | Opinion

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu left Washington without a ceasefire deal for Gaza. Like U.S. efforts to broker an Iran nuclear agreement and end Houthi attacks in the Red Sea, the war in Gaza is yet another example of the United States being over-engaged and overconfident about a favorable outcome in the Middle East.

Diplomacy is a good thing; so is encouraging stability across the Middle East. But instead of obsessing about fixing the region's problems, Washington needs to focus on vital U.S. interests, of which there are few in the Middle East. That means drawing down the majority of the 40,000 to 50,000 U.S. troops spread across 30 bases in the region.

Throughout the 1980s, the United States had only two permanent bases in the Middle East. Aside from some short-lived ground operations, it largely stayed offshore with an occasional rotation of naval assets to protect the free flow of oil to global markets.

Two vital interests—oil and terrorism—eventually brought U.S. forces on shore. Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait raised the danger of a single hegemonic power controlling global oil supplies. After deploying 540,000 troops to push Iraq out of Kuwait in the First Gulf War, Washington adopted a strategy of dual containment to prevent either Iraq or Iran from dominating the region. Around 25,000 U.S. troops were stationed permanently at new bases in the Persian Gulf throughout the 1990s.

The September 11 terrorist attacks, related wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the 2014 rise of ISIS brought the next surge of troops. New U.S. bases emerged in Syria, Iraq, Jordan, and elsewhere. Troop levels soared at times to above 200,000.The big question now is: why are U.S. troops still in the Middle East? U.S. vital interests in the region are gone, but the forces stay. It makes no sense.

US flattens EU: Brussels is too weak to be a pole in a multipolar world

The trade deal on July 27 between America and the European Union was disastrous for Europe. The Financial Times described it as “the EU [succumbing] to Trump’s steamroller.” The deal sees the EU agree to a broad-based 15 per cent tariff on all goods exported to the US, except for steel and aluminium, which will see higher tariffs. The EU will also spend $250 billion (€214 billion) on American energy per year for the next three years. Europe also is dropping their own tariffs.

The deal is shockingly one-sided; the only thing the EU “got” was President Donald Trump not engaging in a trade war.But while Commission President Ursula von der Leyen negotiated the deal, this truly is not her fault. The European Union is stuck in this situation – where they have to see NATO’s General Secretary (and former long-term Dutch prime minister) call Trump “Daddy” and then, weeks later, engage in a humiliating trade deal – because the EU is fundamentally not built for a multipolar world. Instead, it’s been stuck in what could be called its “Articles of Confederation” stage.

America’s current constitution is not its first governing agreement. That was the Articles of Confederation, which were written during the Revolutionary War. The Articles were a loose association of the 13 states where each state had immense powers; unanimity was needed to make key decisions, and the “central government” – a Congress elected from each state – could only act by getting permission from the governments of the 13 states. Sound familiar?

This system came and went quickly. By 1787, America’s leaders realised that, in the multipolar world of the late 1790s, America could simply not exist as a viable state with such a weak governing structure. The country was unable to take action; not with the British or French poles, not in regard to its own continent, not even with its own defence or taxation policies. Needing to ask every state for permission led to massive delays and an inability to take decisive action. By 1789, America had a new constitution, a president, George Washington, and a new governing model. The rest is history.

Russia’s Aeroflot cancels flights after pro-Ukraine hackers claim cyber-attack

The Russian airline Aeroflot was forced to cancel dozens of flights on Monday after a pro-Ukraine hacking group with a track record of claiming responsibility for hacking targets in Russia said it had carried out a cyber-attack.Aeroflot did not provide further details about the cause of the problem or how long it would take to resolve, but departure boards at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport turned red as flights were cancelled at a time when many Russians take their holidays.The Kremlin said the situation was worrying, and prosecutors confirmed the airline’s problems were the result of a hack and opened a criminal investigation.

A statement purporting to be from a hacking group called Silent Crow said it had carried out the operation with a Belarusian group called Cyber Partisans, and linked it to the war in Ukraine.Glory to Ukraine! Long live Belarus!” said the statement.Silent Crow has previously claimed responsibility for attacks this year on a Russian real estate database, a state telecoms company, a large insurer, the Moscow government’s IT department and the Russian office of the South Korean carmaker Kia. Some of these resulted in big data leaks.

“The information that we are reading in the public domain is quite alarming. The hacker threat is a threat that remains for all large companies providing services to the population,” the Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said.We will, of course, clarify the information and wait for appropriate clarifications.”Aeroflot, the transport ministry and the aviation regulator did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the hacking claim, according to Reuters.

Rafe Pilling, director of threat intelligence at the cybersecurity firm Sophos, said the attack appeared to be driven by political motives.It appears to be a sort of a politically motivated hacktivist event from two groups opposed to Russia,” he said.Pilling added that despite Silent Crow’s claims to have accessed the personal data of Aeroflot customers, the attack did not appear to be financially motivated – unlike ransomware attacks that cripple a target’s computer systems and siphon off data for financial gain.

The End of History and the Return to Geopolitics

In his 1992 book The End of History and the Last Man, Francis Fukuyama put forward one of the most challenging and enduring hypotheses in the International Relations corpus. As the unexpected fall of the Soviet Union and the ascendancy of the Western liberal democratic order seemed to herald the natural Long Peace after humanity’s most violent moment. For the proponents of Fukuyama’s hypothesis, this counterfactual unipolar moment could be seen as a linear progression, sustained by the triad of democracy, trade, and interdependence.

For others, it signaled a reminder of our captivity to history and a prelude to the eventual end of the current world order. However, the return of history does not mean its strict repetition. Today’s so-called “return to power politics” does not resemble a German-style rise to systemic confrontation, but rather marks a shift away from the U.S.-led Western status quo. The international system, as constructed after the Second World War, has become almost unrecognizable, owing to the rise of emerging powers, the historic transfer of relative wealth and economic influence from West to East, increasing globalization, transnational forces, and the narrowing gap in power differentials between states.

The failure of the “end of history” thesis stems from two key assumptions: (1) the necessity of a globally adopted democratic order, and (2) the universal acceptance of liberalism as the foundation for human theodicy. For Fukuyama’s hypothesis to hold, democracy and liberalism would have needed to spread universally, to every country. Yet, this convergence has not occurred. Some states, like China, have embraced aspects of economic liberalism without adopting democratic governance, showing that the liberal-democratic pairing is neither natural nor inevitable.

Even where liberal democracy has spread, it has not consistently demonstrated its superiority. In recent decades, some authoritarian regimes have outperformed democracies in areas such as economic development, social cohesion, and crisis management, challenging the assumption that liberal democracy is the most effective or desirable model. This performance gap has become particularly evident in response to social crises. The COVID-19 pandemic, for instance, exposed how certain authoritarian systems could act more decisively and effectively in times of global emergency. As the world grapples with increasing transnational crises—climate change, resource competition, pandemics, cyber threats, migration—resilience and adaptability may matter more than regime type alone.

Learning from Mao’s ‘nightmare’ youth revolution in China

Wanning Sun

In the 1960s and 70s, the youth of the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia rebelled by protesting against the Vietnam War, trying psychedelic drugs, embracing free love and discovering the Beatles. Meanwhile, what their contemporaries in China were getting up to was just as transformative.The key difference, as Linda Jaivin’s book shows, is that the young Chinese rebels’ actions had profoundly destructive consequences – and their senseless behavior was masterminded by their “great leader,” Mao Zedong.

Review: Bombard the Headquarters! The Cultural Revolution in China – Linda Jaivin (Black Inc.) Bombard the Headquarters! is a compelling but disturbing account of what happened in China during the Cultural Revolution. In just over 100 pages, alternating between broad brush strokes and a fine-grained touch, Jaivin’s book takes the reader on a tumultuous journey through the political upheavals in China from 1966 to 1976.

She is a consummate storyteller. This, when combined with an intimate knowledge of Chinese language and a solid grounding in existing scholarship on China, equips her well for the mammoth challenge of making sense of the most indelible national trauma of 20th-century China.The book starts with the years 1949–66, giving readers a taste of how Mao, motivated by political neurosis, set out to foment a new revolution.

Having established the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949, he became increasingly worried about the “capitalist, feudalist and revisionist” elements he believed had infiltrated the PRC government and Chinese society. He wanted to ensure China did not stray from its socialist values. But he also wanted to remove his detractors from the Party ranks and reassert his authority.So he encouraged Chinese youth to take part in the struggle against the “capitalists” and “bourgeois.” This led to the emergence, in 1966, of a number of cultural and social features that later came to be uniquely associated with the Cultural Revolution.

Reversing Previous Restrictions, Washington Allows NVIDIA To Sell Advanced Chips to China

The Trump administration is giving China a much-needed boost in the race for artificial intelligence (AI). After a White House meeting between President Donald Trump and NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang, the company announced on July 15 that it would resume sales of its H20 AI chips in China following an April ban.

While NVIDIA produces certain higher-end chips for the domestic market, giving China access to the H20 will allow it to rapidly integrate AI into its military while it continues to pursue self-sufficiency.Commerce Department Allows NVIDIA, AMD To Resume Sales of Advanced ChipsWhile NVIDIA will still be required — on paper — to obtain export licenses from the Commerce Department to sell its H20 line to Chinese customers, the Trump administration has said they will be granted automatically.

Though not quite as powerful as NVIDIA’s newer chips, the H20 remains essential for AI deployment due to its memory capabilities that outclass the firm’s previously export-compliant H100 line. NVIDIA also reported that it would be introducing a new chip based on its leading Blackwell design specifically for the Chinese market and geared toward integrating AI into the industrial manufacturing sector.

Following the announcement, American semiconductor firm Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) unveiled plans to resume sales of its leading AI chips in China, which were also blocked in April. As with NVIDIA, AMD’s chips have become essential inputs for training advanced AI models.China Remains Reliant on U.S.

Semiconductors Despite Self-Sufficiency PushDespite Beijing pouring significant subsidies into its domestic semiconductor industry, China cannot produce chips capable of training leading AI models, leaving Chinese firms reliant on American suppliers. This reliance has led to significant computing shortages. Even DeepSeek, a leading Chinese AI developer, has publicly stated that its models’ power remains constrained due to American export controls on advanced AI chips.

Fighting Irregular Wars: Is it Time to Rethink the Laws of Perfidy?

On June 8, 2024, Israeli forces executed a hostage-rescue operation in Nuseirat, central Gaza. The Israeli operation was widely reported to have utilized civilian disguises, with some forces allegedly being transported in civilian vehicles and wearing civilian clothing. In the aftermath, the former Executive Director of Human Rights Watch, Kenneth Roth, contended that these alleged uses of civilian disguises may have violated the laws of perfidy. This contention prompts one to consider the usefulness of disguises in combatting irregular adversaries embedded within civilian areas, and to wonder whether this rescue operation would have been possible without some form of disguise.

Could it be that the laws of armed conflict (LOAC) prohibit the utilisation of disguises in this manner? This article will analyze the current state of the law and discuss the tensions and dilemmas that arise when the law confronts the realities of irregular wars. Following close examination, there appear to be compelling reasons to debate the suitability of the laws of perfidy in the context of irregular wars, and there might even be a case for limited reform.

It was suggested on multiple occasions that the Nuseirat operation may have violated the laws of perfidy. Perfidy is defined in Article 37 of the 1977 Additional Protocol (I) to the Geneva Conventions: Art. 37 states that perfidy is the act of a combatant falsely leading their adversary to believe that they are entitled to certain protections under the LOAC, with the intention of betraying this confidence. Article 37 explicitly mentions several examples of perfidious conduct, including feigning surrender, feigning incapacitation due to wounds, and feigning civilian or non-combatant status. In relation to feigning civilian status, Article 44 (3) should also be noted, as it clarifies that if combatants carry their arms openly during attacks and the deployments preceding them, there can be no argument that they have perfidiously feigned civilian status.

Belligerents in armed conflict have practiced perfidious deception to gain an advantage over their adversaries for centuries. In the early 1400s, the Tudors successfully captured Conwy Castle by sending two men claiming to be carpenters undertaking repairs. Once inside, the “carpenters” attacked the guards and opened the castle gates, allowing the Tudor forces to enter. During World War II, perfidious attacks were launched frequently. For example, a British commando, Lieutenant Bernard James Barton, was awarded the Military Cross after he successfully infiltrated a Nazi base and killed the base commandant.

BRICS Expansion and the Future of World Order: Perspectives from Member States, Partners, and Aspirants

At their October 2024 summit in Kazan, Russia, the original five members of the BRICS coalition—Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa—welcomed into their fold four new members: Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). In January 2025, Indonesia became the bloc’s tenth member. Nine other nations have been officially designated as “partner countries,” and some two dozen have either been invited to join (for example, Saudi Arabia) or expressed interest in doing so (for example, Türkiye). BRICS states including Russia have touted the group’s expansion as a defining moment, heralding the dawn of a post-Western world order in which the “global majority” is finally empowered.

Among analysts, the significance of the BRICS expansion remains a matter of debate. On paper, “BRICS+” has the potential to become a major geopolitical and geoeconomic force. The bloc already boasts about 45 percent of the world’s population, generates more than 35 percent of its GDP (as measured in purchasing power parity, or PPP), and produces 30 percent of its oil. BRICS countries have also established an extensive and thickening latticework of intergovernmental cooperation.

In addition to founding dedicated institutions such as the Contingent Reserve Arrangement (CRA), created in 2014 with an initial funding of $100 billion, and the New Development Bank (NDB) established in 2015 with an initial subscribed capitalization of $50 billion, the coalition has (like the G7 and G20 forums) embraced networked minilateralism, launching transnational partnerships and working groups on topics of shared interest from energy security to health, climate change, sustainable development, and technology transfer. BRICS avowedly seeks to challenge Western-dominated institutions of global economic governance, as well as to displace the U.S. dollar from its entrenched role in the world economy. Many analysts therefore depict BRICS expansion as a watershed moment in the shift to a more egalitarian international system.

However, the ultimate implications of these developments for world order remain unclear. No doubt, the expanding coalition will shape prospects for—and the nature of—international cooperation in a turbulent world. The main uncertainty is whether BRICS+ signals a turn against rather than simply away from the West. Some analysts anticipate that BRICS could evolve into a coherent, anti-Western bloc and complicate prospects for multilateralism, including by deepening divisions within the G20 and the United Nations.

Digital occupation: Pro-Russian bot networks target Ukraine’s occupied territories on Telegram

Yuliia Dukach, Iryna Adam, and Meredith Furbish

Russia’s ongoing territorial occupation of Ukraine’s eastern and southern regions is accompanied by an informational and cultural occupation aimed at flooding local social media communities with messaging designed to foster gratitude and loyalty to Russia. At the same time, this messaging attempts to undermine Ukraine and the Ukrainian government, and to raise doubts about Ukraine’s intentions in the territories currently occupied by Russia. As the most popular digital platform in Eastern Europe, Telegram has become the epicenter of Russian efforts to influence perceptions and opinions of local Ukrainian populations.

This joint report from OpenMinds and the Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab) analyzes the activity of a network of 3,634 automated accounts that posted pro-Russian comments on Telegram channels between January 2024 and April 2025 targeting Ukrainian populations inside Russian-occupied territories. These accounts crafted tailored messages to target the occupied territories, differentiating their content from that aimed at other audiences across Russia and Ukraine.

Our investigation found that automated Telegram comments targeting local audiences in Ukraine fell into three overarching categories: pro-Russian propaganda, anti-Ukrainian propaganda, and abstract anti-war messaging and calls for peaceful coexistence. Individual narratives were often tailored to respond to current events and changes in local conditions, such as power or water outages, but there was also evidence of proactive narratives initiated by the network unrelated to external events.

The bot network used similar messaging when targeting channels based in Russia; however, a significantly larger share of comments targeting the occupied territory channels emphasized positive portrayals of Russian culture and government. Across the sixty-nine narrative themes identified (see appendix), the bot network pushed essentially the same menu of talking points in both Russia-wide and occupied territory channels. What differentiates the content aimed at the occupied territories from that aimed at a wider Russian audience is the proportion of talking points: themes that praised Russian culture, social services, and governance dominated in occupied territory-based channels, accounting for a markedly higher share of content than in Russia-based channels.

How clear and simple data visualizations bring the climate crisis home

Rachit Dubey

Data visualizations are some of the most powerful tools in a climate science communicator’s playbook. The most famous have taken on enormous symbolic value—like the “Hockey Stick” graph showing rising temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere since the year 1000.The original “hockey stick” graph, as presented by Michael Mann, Raymond S. Bradley, and Malcolm K Hughes in their 1999 Geophysical Research Letters paper, "Northern hemisphere temperatures during the past millennium: Inferences, uncertainties, and limitations." American Geophysical Union / Chinese Geophysical Society

But designing climate visuals that are clear to the public and policy makers is not a straightforward task. Many scientific graphics, such as those in reports of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), are designed for technical accuracy and often assume a specialized audience. As a result, they can be difficult to interpret. Prior research has shown that widely used scenario graphs can confuse viewers. For example, people often mix up uncertainty about future emissions scenarios with uncertainty in the climate models themselves.At the same time, there is growing evidence that more intuitive visualizations, informed by psychological research, can help people make better sense of climate data.

For example, one study showed that simply highlighting rising temperatures in red increased support for climate action among liberal viewers.This challenge—how to make climate visuals more meaningful to the public—was the motivation behind the recent study I published in Nature Human Behavior with my colleagues in Princeton’s computer science department. We wanted to know whether some kinds of data visuals can help make climate change feel more concrete and better reflect the urgency of the crisis.

We ran a series of experiments with over 2,000 participants. Each person was introduced to a fictional town and shown data about how its winters had changed over time. One group saw a standard chart showing a gradual rise in average winter temperature. The other group saw a binary chart indicating whether the town’s lake froze each year. Importantly, both charts reflected the same underlying climate trend. However, people’s responses were very different.People who viewed the binary “froze or not” charts consistently rated climate change as having had a more severe and more noticeable impact on the town, compared to those who viewed the temperature charts. That is, when climate impacts are presented in black-and-white terms, people seem to take them more seriously.

2025’s biggest cyber attacks so far: Millions of customers at risk as hackers target global corporations

Germany-based insurer Allianz Life on Sunday confirmed that it was the victim of a cyber security breach and data of the majority of its 1.4 million customers in North America has been compromised.The company, a part of the global financial services conglomerate Allianz Group, is the latest among the fast-growing list of big corporations - a large number of which are household names - falling victim to cyber attacks.Tech giant Microsoft being hit by a wave of activity also made headlines this month, with the list of its affected clients still growing.

Cyber attacks are becoming more sophisticated, especially with artificial intelligence providing offenders with more ways of infiltrating systems and breaching layers of security.About 560,000 new malware pieces are discovered on average every day, according to San Francisco-based security company DeepStrike, which has an office in Dubai.The National takes a look at some of the biggest names that have been targeted by the digital underworld, on a monthly basis this year.

Twenty-one data breaches were recorded in January, according to the industry watchdog Cyber Management Alliance (CMA), most notably an attack on the UN's International Civil Aviation Organisation and Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, which revealed at the time it was investigating a new threat.Seven ransomware attacks were detected during the month, including on Japanese watch maker Casio and India's Tata Technologies.February: $9.5m in cryptoEach day presents new threats and February escalated worries in the cyber realm, the CMA said.

Five ransomware attacks were recorded during the month, while data breach-related incidents were also reported. Among the victims were companies including US delivery service GrubHub. The attack impacted personal information of a part of its customer base.However, arguably the most damaging attack was the one that befell on decentralised money lender zkLend, which said it lost $9.5 million worth of crypto to hackers - continuing the concerns over digital assets despite some "acts of Genius" from the US government to regulate them.

What to do while pursuing the promise of quantum computing

When Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, predicted in January that it will take at least 15 to 20 years before we have a “useful” quantum computer, his comments caused a stir. The value of quantum computing stocks sharply fell, and quantum computing companies were quick to rebut his remarks, pointing to a small commercial base that is paying to solve some optimization problems now. However, many hold Huang’s belief that current quantum computers are a long way from surpassing current computers in applications like simulating complex chemical reactions, cracking encryption, or enhancing machine learning. Further, Huang’s assessment conflicts with assertions that quantum computing is on the verge of a “moonshot” moment. Is a giant leap forward in quantum computing ahead of us?

There are many efforts underway that channel this enthusiasm about a quantum moonshot. The National Quantum Initiative Act (NQI Act) was passed in 2018. Since then, the U.S. government has been monitoring progress in quantum science closely while developing policies to accelerate development in key areas like computing; however, not only is it premature to launch a national quantum computing push on par with the Apollo program, but the United States must balance investments in quantum computing hardware development with other areas of quantum science. The computers that we are most familiar with, classical computers, underwent decades of development to become reliable, fast,

and small. Quantum computers face even tougher engineering hurdles to do the same. Additionally, there are currently many competing approaches to building a quantum computer, but none of them have a clear path to becoming reliable, fast, and small enough to tackle the tough problems that classical computers truly cannot touch. While progress is being made on reliability and speed, to launch a moonshot effort, at least one approach, preferably two or three, must have a viable path to overcome the engineering challenges required to scale up to the level required to tackle the much-hyped applications.

As this is sorted out, the U.S. government should boost efforts in academia and industry to expand the quantum workforce. The U.S. Congress recently proposed a bill to amend the NQI Act to strengthen public-private cooperation in quantum science. This is welcome for those already in the field, but traditional educational paths are not currently meeting the demand for quantum experts or quantum-informed managers and policymakers, which hinders long-term progress. Quantum science programs must evolve to be cross-disciplinary, and new pathways must be established to cross-train mid-career scientists, engineers, and computer scientists.

30 July 2025

Forecasting the Fifth Wave: Emerging Terrorist Threats in a Changing World

Mahmut Cengiz

The international defense community consistently struggles to predict the changing landscape of global terrorism. Counterterrorism practitioners have frequently been reactive rather than proactive, while the academic community has faced challenges in developing models that reflect terrorism’s complex and dynamic nature. These deficiencies led to the failure to anticipate and prevent major terrorist incidents such as the September 11 attacks in 2001, the 2002 Bali bombings,

the 2015 Paris attacks, and most recently, Hamas’s coordinated attacks on October 7, 2023. This article builds on David Rapoport’s theory of the “four waves” of terrorism to explore a potential “fifth wave.” Analysis of data from the Global Terrorism Trends and Analysis Center (GTTAC) indicates that the strongest candidates for this fifth wave are the continuation of the religious wave—especially the Salafi-jihadist interpretation, and the activities of Iran-backed terrorist groups.

David Rapoport’s theory of the four waves of modern terrorism presents a typology grounded in political orientation and influenced by the historical, cultural, and ideological conditions of distinct periods characterized by heightened terrorist activity. A “wave” denotes a generational cycle of terrorism unified by a shared ideological drive, with revolutionary change serving as the central objective in each phase. Rapoport identifies four major waves: the Anarchist (1880–1920), Anti-Colonial (1920–1960), New Left (1960–1980), and Religious (1980–ongoing).

The first, the Anarchist Wave began in Russia and is widely recognized as the starting point of modern terrorism. It emerged from deep dissatisfaction with the slow pace of political reform, particularly frustration with entrenched authoritarian systems and the persistence of state power, which anarchists sought to dismantle in favor of stateless, egalitarian alternatives, and was characterized by the tactical use of dynamite and the assassination of high-ranking officials, including heads of state.