Indian Strategic Studies: 05/28/25

28 May 2025

In Translation: The Digital Growth of Bengali-Language At-Tamkeen Media

Cara Rau

On 15 February 2025, the Bengali-language Islamic State-supportive At-Tamkeen Media Foundation created a room on Element. At-Tamkeen Media is an unofficial media outlet that spreads Islamic State propaganda online, targeting the Bengali-speaking community. According to its website, Element is a messaging platform that emphasises secure communications through features such as end-to-end encryption and decentralisation. The use of highly secure platforms such as Element by extremist actors poses a challenge for content moderation and the online-offline safety nexus. This Insight will discuss At-Tamkeen’s recent expansion onto new social media platforms and explore possible avenues for countering its growing online presence. At-Tamkeen should not be confused with At-Tamkin, an Indonesian IS-supportive media outlet.

At-Tamkeen and its online presence have existed for several years. The group has posts on Facebook dating back to as early as 2022. However, beginning in February and March 2025, the group began to expand onto new social media platforms where it did not previously have a presence.

The At-Tamkeen chat room has been active on the Islamic State’s Rocket.Chat server since 1 March 2025, and the group is also active on SimpleX. At the time of writing, the group’s GemSpace and Telegram accounts are suspended. According to Rocket.Chat’s Github repository, it is a free and open-source, fully customisable communications platform for organisations with high standards of data protection. Users can host Rocket.Chat on their own servers, meaning they can run and maintain the service using a private web server instead of relying on a third-party outside of the administrator’s control. This is one of the features that makes the platform highly secure. According to its App Store page and website, GemSpace is a messaging app where chats are encrypted, calls are protected, and communication spaces are private or public, as desired. SimpleX is described on its website as a messenger focused on providing complete privacy to users. Further details on SimpleX will be explored below.

Proxy Wars and Silent Partners: The Pahalgam Attack a Stress Test for India–China Stability

Jagannath Panda and Eerishika Pankaj

The April 2025 Pahalgam terrorist attack marks a significant moment in South Asia’s evolving security matrix. While the India–Pakistan binary continues to dominate discourse, China’s ambiguous posture following India’s Operation Sindoor warrants deeper scrutiny. This issue brief assesses Beijing’s silence, the implications for China-India ties, and China’s alignment with Pakistan’s strategic calculus. Drawing on past crises like Pulwama, Balakot, and Uri, it interrogates China’s selective neutrality, its shielding of Pakistan, and the erosion of its credibility as a regional stabilizer. By weaving in Chinese media narratives and official statements, the analysis critically evaluates whether Beijing is prepared—or even interested—in playing a constructive role in South Asian stability. The brief concludes that unless India recalibrate its strategic assumptions and narrative posture, China will continue to manipulate the region’s instability through plausible deniability and transactional diplomacy.

China’s Techno-Military Modernization in Tibet and its Impact on Climate

Amrita Jash

This issue brief examines China’s extensive techno-military modernization in the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), with a focus on infrastructure development and its ecological implications. The Chinese government’s investment in TAR’s infrastructure development, a crucial component of the 14th Five-Year Plan, is focused on large-scale dual-use infrastructure, including road networks, highways, airports, and railroads. Despite being presented as developmental, these infrastructure projects significantly expand China’s military mobility and enhance its strategic depth in the region. However, this rapid securitization comes with serious ecological consequences, such as grassland degradation, waterway pollution, and community displacement. Consequently, Tibet’s fragile ecosystems are increasingly strained by anthropogenic pressures, particularly those linked to China’s intensified land use and infrastructure expansion. This issue brief argues that China’s aggressive infrastructure drive, under the guise of economic development, is a primary driver in accelerating the climate and ecological crisis on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (QTP)—underscoring the entanglement of geopolitical strategy and environmental degradation on the ‘Roof of the World.

The Economy as Battlefield: The 21st Century Sino-American Cold War

Glenn Chafetz

The main battle space in the conflict between the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the United States is not land, sea, air, space, or even cyberspace. It is the American economy. In this Second Cold War, the principal U.S. combatants do not fire weapons, sail ships, or fly aircraft; they run businesses. Although commonly referred to as the “Second Cold War,” it remains putative and is not officially recognized by the U.S. government. This war is asymmetric: the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) centrally directs the entirety of its party-state-economic machinery, including its putatively private companies, against the decentralized, civilian assets of the United States’ commercial sector, critical infrastructure, and civil society. U.S. political leaders struggle to respond effectively because the tactics and “weapons” China employs, most notably cyber intrusions, commercial espionage, and influence operations, are hidden, incremental, and deniable. Moreover, the principal targets of the CCP efforts are private companies and infrastructure networks diffused across the United States, and the government has neither the resources nor authorities to defend so many entities. This means that businesses must defend themselves. However, the U.S. private sector is not remotely up to that task.

China’s Goals And Methods

China outlines its strategy in the current People’s Liberation Army (PLA) doctrine. China envisions winning this war without firing a shot. Victory follows instead from the compromise of U.S. critical infrastructure and erosion of the economic foundations of U.S. power. Beijing’s goal is to render the United States logistically, economically, and politically incapable of challenging China’s freedom of action globally, and most especially in the Western Pacific. Being prudent, China’s leaders plan for the possibility of a hot war on the way to this goal, but they view shooting wars as unpredictable, and thus best avoided. It is far better to reduce the United States’ ability to use, or even seriously threaten, military action. Toward that goal, the CCP applies three broad methods: compromise of U.S. critical infrastructure; reduction of U.S. economic power; and influence over U.S. politics and society.

Compromise of Critical Infrastructure

Nine Critical Lessons from Israel’s October 7 War and What They Mean for SOF

Thomas Searle

Early on the morning of October 7, 2023, Hamas launched one of the largest and deadliest terrorist attacks in history. The attack and ensuing war between Israel and Iran’s Axis of Resistance is reshaping the Middle East. There are many lessons to be learned from this war. This paper looks at nine of the most important lessons from the perspective of Special Operations Forces (SOF).The U.S. and its allies will continue to underestimate terrorists.

Background: Terrorists are highly effective spoilers who routinely derail U.S. foreign policy, but the U.S. Government continues to underestimate them. President Biden and his administration knew that the terrorist attack in Benghazi in September 2012 and the rise of ISIS derailed the Obama administration’s foreign policy. They also knew the 9/11 terrorist attacks derailed the George W. Bush administration’s foreign policy. And yet, they still underestimated terrorists and were shocked when the October 7 terrorist attack derailed their foreign policy. The Israeli government also underestimated the terrorists and was similarly shocked, even though Israel has suffered terrorist attacks throughout its history.

While underestimating terrorists is a consistent theme throughout history, underestimating Palestinian terrorists in October 2023 seems particularly egregious. The Palestinian nationalist cause had been weakening for years, and the Abraham Accords threatened to make Palestinians irrelevant to the future of Israel and the Middle East. Under such circumstances, violent Palestinian groups, like Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, were forced to attempt a spectacular terrorist attack to make their cause relevant again. The exact time, place, and nature of their attack was not foreordained, but a major Palestinian terrorist attack should have been expected – and Gaza was the best place for Palestinian terrorists to plan, organize, and train for a major attack. With such an obvious congruence of interests between Palestinian terrorists and Iran, everyone should have anticipated ample Iranian resources to support whatever attack the Palestinian terrorists conducted.

Europe needs a new Great Power Nato is just a social club

Edward Luttwak

All through European history, the intervals of peace, during which reconstruction and progress overcame the ravages of war, were secured by a temporary equilibrium between the Great Powers of the day.

It is obvious that there was no such equilibrium on 23 February 2022, when Russian columns started rolling towards Kyiv, and Russian President Vladimir Putin had just described Ukraine not merely as Russian, but as the homeland of the very first Russian state: Kievan Rus’.

That warning of an imminent invasion was quickly confirmed by satellite photographs of long columns of Russian armoured vehicles preparing to advance. It was then that the US President, the French President and the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, together with every other active European ally, had an opportunity to arrange an emergency meeting and issue a categorical warning to Russia, dovetailed with a convincing promise of maximum support to Ukraine.

There had been plenty of time to prepare for that moment — in fact eight years, given thinly disguised Russian soldiers had first infiltrated and then invaded the two Russian-speaking regions of Donetsk and Luhansk in April 2014, when Crimea was also seized.

But when the moment came, and Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine, there was no cohesive and determined power ready to respond quickly and effectively. Nato had done just that several times during the Cold War, by promptly reinforcing threatened allies with thousands of air-lifted troops from the so-called “Allied Command Europe Mobile Force”.

That, however, was the old, pre-enlargement Nato, which was still a veritable military alliance of countries capable of defending themselves, and help weaker allies in trouble, and whose chronically weak Mediterranean member states, with the most resplendent uniforms and least combat strength, had no Russian troops on their borders.

Trump's Trade War: What Answers for the European Union?

Sébastien JEAN

The announcement, on April 2, 2025, of “reciprocal tariffs” by the United States has opened a sequence of profound break with decades of established trade policy practices, where the administration behaviour has been marked by dogmatic blindness, amateurism, and self-serving interests.

Finding a coherent strategy behind the rapid succession of measures, suspensions, and purported agreements is challenging, and the successive policy reversals are best explained by the administration’s own inconsistencies. The damage is nonetheless real for partners. For the European Union, it calls for firm but measured responses, without seeking symmetrical retaliation. While division is a threat, the inherent slowness of European procedures could be an asset in this context, as the United States will be confronted with its own contradictions. Broad retaliatory measures should be considered, beyond trade in goods, and the hypothesis of a first activation of the anti-coercion instrument should not be ruled out at this stage, on the contrary.

Cash Flow: Breaking Down the Houthis’ Multibillion-Dollar Financial Networks

Adam Rousselle

Yemen-based Ansar Allah, widely known as the Houthis, continues to have a profound impact on global security. The group’s ongoing operations in the Red Sea affected an estimated US $1 trillion worth of maritime cargo between October 2023 and May 2024, and despite periodic kinetic attacks, its operations show no signs of abating. Moreover, evidence suggests the Houthis enjoy the financial and military backing of Russia and China, in addition to their established ties with Iran. This Insight explores the Houthis’ financing mechanisms, including leveraging technology to evade sanctions and the involvement of foreign facilitators with demonstrable and plausible ties to foreign governments.

Generating Cash Locally and Abroad

Contrary to some popular conceptions, the Houthis’ relationship with Iran and other foreign backers is not that of a charity case. Although the group benefits from its foreign partnerships, it must generate revenue to pursue its own ends. For this reason, the Houthis oversee vast global financial networks, engaging in illicit trade and leveraging technology to finance its multibillion-dollar operation.

Air attacks against the Houthis in Yemen have constrained their local revenue generation potential. In recent years, the group’s control over ports near Hodeida has been central to its local revenue streams as Yemen highly depends on imports, which serve 90% of its needs, including basic foodstuffs and fuels. The Houthis capitalise on this reality by levying high fees at ports under their control and tariffs of up to 100% on goods brought in from Yemeni ports outside of their control. The group also uses its ports to generate revenue through smuggling operations, reselling Iranian oil and weapons to buyers in East Africa, including the Somalia-based al-Shabaab and Islamic State Somalia (ISS). However, the ongoing war has likely taken a toll on these revenue generation schemes, with the recent bombings of key Houthi ports damaging much of the group’s core infrastructure.

May 2025 Updated Analysis of Russian Shahed 136 Deployment Against Ukraine

Dr. Igor Anokhin and Spencer August Faragasso

Recorded drone strikes over the period March 1 through May 12, 2025 show Russia continued its near daily bombardment of Ukraine with Shahed 136 drones, causing immense destruction, despite ceasefires. Russia announced a limited one-month ceasefire, starting on March 18th, meant to exempt attacks of Ukrainian energy infrastructure, a common target. While the number of drones launched during this timeframe dropped, Ukraine still witnessed near-daily attacks. 2 Ukrainian officials have presented evidence that Russia disregarded this ceasefire and continued to attack Ukraine’s power plants and electrical grid with Shahed 136 drones. 3 After another, albeit brief, ceasefire from May 8th to the 10th, coinciding with Victory in Europe Day, Russia resumed attacks on Ukraine using Shahed drones. While the majority of the drones are being downed, 12.5 percent on average across the assessed reporting period are hitting their targets. In a worsening development, May has so far experienced a much greater hit rate of 18 percent. Only a small number of the drones are required to survive the journey to cause great damage to Ukrainian infrastructure and other targets. Ultimately, the Shahed 136 is a key weapon to Russia that enables it to maintain daily destructive pressure on Ukraine, despite negotiation attempts to end the war. Russia may be learning new ways to avoid its Shahed 136 drones being downed by Ukraine.

This report assesses data covering the period of March 1, 2025, to May 12, 2025, on the Russian military’s attacks with Shahed 136 drones, building upon a previous assessment released in early March 2025. 4 We assess the data as the number of Shahed 136 reportedly launched, the number intercepted, the number that successfully struck their targets, the number of drones reported as “lost”, and the number of drones that reportedly returned to Russian (or Belarusian) territory. The data analyzed for this report came from open-source channels verified by the Institute and official statements released by the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Assessing the true number of Shahed 136 drones used in the attacks continues to be complicated considering Russia’s prolific use of decoy drones like the Gerbera and the Parody that mimic the Shahed.

Trump’s Crypto Ambition Populism, Economic Strategy, and the Competition for Digital Future

Yilun Zhang

Trump’s embrace of cryptocurrency is not a departure from U.S. financial hegemony, but a strategic recalibration—intended to extend dollar dominance while offloading its inflationary and fiscal liabilities onto decentralized, privately issued instruments.

Crypto has become a multi-functional tool in Trump’s second-term governance: a populist wedge in electoral politics, a liquidity substitute under fiscal constraint, and a symbolic instrument in the competition with China’s state-led digital finance model.

Personnel and institutional shifts underscore the administration’s intent to mainstream crypto governance: from replacing SEC and CFTC leadership with industry-aligned figures to advancing deregulatory legislation like the FIT21 Act and establishing a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve.

Trump’s crypto strategy is rooted in structural macroeconomic challenges—including inflation, congressional budget paralysis, and the weakening of industrial investment—making digital assets a synthetic growth engine in the absence of conventional stimulus.

The administration’s digital finance agenda is intertwined with broader geopolitical ambitions: it offers an alternative to China’s centralized CBDC regime by promoting a volatile but more open, dollar-linked crypto ecosystem tailored to speculative global capital.

The combined use of tariffs and crypto represents a twin-track approach to decoupling from China—limiting real-sector integration through trade barriers, while redirecting capital flows via tokenized assets and alternative digital markets.

While global liquidity continues to favor the United States in the short term, this advantage is driven by structural volatility and speculative flexibility—not long-term stability. China’s disciplined, industry-led financial model may eventually regain appeal for institutional investors.

Plan B A Service-framed Examination of Economic Warfare

PLAN B: A Service-framed Examination of Economic Warfare is a report that is the result of a series of discussions that took place in the Commandant’s former Office of Net Assessment about U.S. thinking on the strategy and approaches applied to current military problems, specifically related to the challenge of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as a possible, near-peer adversary. As part of a new series that explores alternative futures and understanding the future character of war, this report examined what might be the implications from a possible Sino-American conflict for the U.S. Marine Corps in terms of expanded roles and missions.

Lessons from the War in Ukraine for Space

Andrew Radin, Khrystyna Holynska, Cheyenne Tretter, Thomas Van Bibber

Space-based services and the disruption of these services have played an unprecedented role in the ongoing war in Ukraine. The role of space in the war offers important lessons for how the United States must prepare for events in the space domain in potential future conflicts. In this report, RAND researchers offer an open-source account of space activities throughout the war and extract relevant lessons for the national security community.

This report is organized along three mission areas that proved most significant in shaping the war in Ukraine: satellite communications (SATCOM); positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT); and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR), including overhead imagery or radar. For each mission area, RAND researchers identified the prewar capabilities within Ukraine and Russia, specified how these capabilities were employed or disrupted in the war, and determined any associated challenges or issues for the key stakeholders in the conflict. They relied on publicly available information, including published statements by Western, Ukrainian, and Russian officials; literature from Russian and Ukrainian defense enterprises; and open-source reporting.

Key Findings

Key space services will likely be disrupted in future conflicts. Cyberattacks, Global Positioning System jamming, and other threats have significantly shaped the war, and the growing sophistication of both Russian and Chinese counterspace capabilities only increases the likelihood that the United States and its allies might face similar disruptions in a future conflict.

The widespread availability of space services increases the transparency of the battlefield. The accessibility of commercial imagery or released national imagery will likely make future large-scale conflicts relatively more visible in open sources and to wider audiences.

Commercial space services bring value and vulnerability. Ukraine’s ability to leverage Western commercial services enhanced its warfighting and reduced the need to field its own capabilities. Hesitations about SpaceX highlights how reliability concerns make countries cautious about depending on a single commercial provider.

IJ Infinity Group

Military Strategy Magazine, Spring 2025, v. 10, no. 2

Civil War Comes to the West, Part II: Strategic Realities

Strategy for a Complex Age: To Frame or Solve?

Political Obedience as a Military Strategic Asset: From Cyrus to the 2023 War in Gaza

A New Fight: Deception, Adaptation, and Regeneration

Distributed Maritime Operations, Logistics, Industry, and American Strategy in Asia

Multi-Dimensional Game-Theory Analysis of North Korean Nuclear Threat

SITREP 5/26/25: Russia Unleashes Saved-Up Fury as Ukrainian Air Defense Woes Come to Light

Two days ago Russia unleashed another of the war’s most withering strikes on Ukraine, which was followed up the very next day by a secondary wave to finish off whatever was hit after an obligatory BDA (Battle Damage Assessment) period.

Being the largest series of strikes in some time, they revealed a heaping of new information about the state of things in Ukraine, particularly vis-a-vis Ukraine’s air defenses and upgrades to Russia’s own strike systems.

For instance spokesman for Ukraine’s airforce Yuri Ignat noted that Iskanders have been upgraded and now use a variety of countermeasures:

First he says Iskanders now fire off radar decoys and execute terminal maneuvers that make them impervious to Patriot systems. We know Iskanders have always had these abilities, but they may not have been programmed to use them in the beginning of the war, perhaps because Ukraine initially lacked the ability to shoot them down anyway, until being pumped up with Western arms.

What’s interesting is, on the previous strikes a month or so ago, the Iskander was seen to be possibly dispensing one of these radar decoy countermeasures. This was the infamous strike where a Patriot can be seen going up and missing the Iskander missile:

US, allies warn Russian cyber group targeting Western IT, defense firms to hamper aid to Ukraine

Carley Welch

WASHINGTON — Russian military hackers are carrying out a cyber campaign targeting Western information technology, defense and transportation companies in an effort to slow the flow of foreign assistance to Ukraine, according to a joint cybersecurity advisory.

The Tuesday advisory, authored by a slew of foreign and US cyber and military intelligence agencies including US Cyber Command, the National Security Agency and DoD Cyber Crimes Center, accuses the 85th Main Special Service Center’s military unit 26165 inside the Russian General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate, or GRU, of using “a mix of known tactics, techniques, and procedures” to target companies located in the US, NATO nations and other allied countries.

Unit 26165, which is also known as Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) 28, Fancy Bear, Blue Delta or Forest Blizzard, has been conducting the campaign since shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine over three years ago.

“In late February 2022, multiple Russian state-sponsored cyber actors increased the variety of cyber operations for purposes of espionage, destruction, and influence — with unit 26165 predominately involved in espionage,” the report read. “As Russian military forces failed to meet their military objectives and Western countries provided aid to support Ukraine’s territorial defense, unit 26165 expanded its targeting of logistics entities and technology companies involved in the delivery of aid.”

The advisory did not name the companies targeted, and neither the Pentagon nor the NSA responded to a request for comment by the time of publication.

The warning follows a similar one from September, in which US and partner security organizations said another Russian hacking unit, GRU unit 29155, was also attempting to disrupt aid to Ukraine.

The new warning said hackers infiltrated the systems of several companies and entities through a variety of means, including but not limited to: credential guessing, phishing emails with links leading to fake login pages, phishing links that delivered malware, and weaponizing a Microsoft Outlook NTLM vulnerability.

America the Unreliabl

Yuval Levin

“America’s allies around the world now recognize that the reassuring constancy of the American colossus is not a dependable fact,” writes Yuval Levin.

Thanks to Trump, decision-makers in foreign capitals and corporate boardrooms have realized they can’t depend on the U.S. government. And there is no going back.

First, he raises tariffs. Then he drops them. He halts grants. Then a judge reinstates them. He fires federal workers and then they get rehired. If you feel like you’ve got an acute case of whiplash after the first few months of Donald Trump’s return to the White House, you are not alone.

The obvious upshot of these frantic reversals is costly and dangerous uncertainty. Decision-making is difficult when some basic rules of American life seem always in flux.

But the deeper implication of this frenzied approach is not uncertainty. It is a widespread and dawning recognition of vulnerability.

US Tariffs: Own Goal in ASEAN

Salman Rafi Shiekh

US trade policies are rapidly isolating Washington in the Indo-Pacific region while enabling Beijing to expand its trade alliances, at least in the region immediately surrounding it. As it stands, ASEAN is turning out to be a key region where this game is playing out both directly and indirectly. ASEAN’s position—and the way it has…

Welcome to the Global Intifada

Bari Weiss

Last night, outside of the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C., a gunman opened fire and murdered two young people because he thought they were Jews and because they were gathered in a Jewish place for an event hosted by a Jewish organization.

Before I tell you about their alleged killer and the culture of lies that created the climate for his murderous rampage, I want to tell you about the people he cut down. Because I promise you: There will be no campaigns or hashtags or celebrities’ videos urging all of us to say their names.

Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim. Those are their names. They met at work—they were staffers at the Israeli embassy—and fell in love. Yaron, 30, had purchased an engagement ring for Sarah, 26, a few days ago. They were meant to fly to Israel this coming Sunday so that she could meet his parents, who live in Jerusalem, before he proposed.

Yaron was born in Israel to a Jewish father and a Christian mother. He was raised partly in Germany—he spoke German, Hebrew, and Japanese—and the mixed nature of his life embodied the very best of the West and the openness of our civilization. His friend Mariam Wahba, a Coptic Christian born in Egypt, said he was a “kind and generous friend, a devout Christian, and a defender of Israel. We would sit and debate early Christian theology for hours over a gin and tonic, and he would check in on me after every attack on Christians in Egypt.”

Sarah Milgrim was a Jew raised in Kansas who began working at the embassy in November 2023—a month after the Hamas massacre of October 7, 2023. She had two master’s degrees—one in international studies from American University, and a second in natural resources and sustainable Development from the United Nations University for Peace. Sarah was an idealist: she volunteered with Tech2Peace, which supports entrepreneurship between young Palestinians and Israelis. When she was a high school senior, in 2017, some swastikas appeared on her public high school. “I worry about going to my synagogue, and now I have to worry about safety at my school,” she told the local TV station at the time. “And that shouldn’t be a thing.”

US, allies warn Russian cyber group targeting Western IT, defense firms to hamper aid to Ukraine

Carley Welch

WASHINGTON — Russian military hackers are carrying out a cyber campaign targeting Western information technology, defense and transportation companies in an effort to slow the flow of foreign assistance to Ukraine, according to a joint cybersecurity advisory.

The Tuesday advisory, authored by a slew of foreign and US cyber and military intelligence agencies including US Cyber Command, the National Security Agency and DoD Cyber Crimes Center, accuses the 85th Main Special Service Center’s military unit 26165 inside the Russian General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate, or GRU, of using “a mix of known tactics, techniques, and procedures” to target companies located in the US, NATO nations and other allied countries.

Unit 26165, which is also known as Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) 28, Fancy Bear, Blue Delta or Forest Blizzard, has been conducting the campaign since shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine over three years ago.

“In late February 2022, multiple Russian state-sponsored cyber actors increased the variety of cyber operations for purposes of espionage, destruction, and influence — with unit 26165 predominately involved in espionage,” the report read. “As Russian military forces failed to meet their military objectives and Western countries provided aid to support Ukraine’s territorial defense, unit 26165 expanded its targeting of logistics entities and technology companies involved in the delivery of aid.”

The advisory did not name the companies targeted, and neither the Pentagon nor the NSA responded to a request for comment by the time of publication.

The warning follows a similar one from September, in which US and partner security organizations said another Russian hacking unit, GRU unit 29155, was also attempting to disrupt aid to Ukraine.

The new warning said hackers infiltrated the systems of several companies and entities through a variety of means, including but not limited to: credential guessing, phishing emails with links leading to fake login pages, phishing links that delivered malware, and weaponizing a Microsoft Outlook NTLM vulnerability.

New tech, new threats: drones, 3D-printed guns, artificial intelligence and violent extremism

Jean-Luc Marret

The historical evolution of terrorism or political violence can be observed within a technology cycle framework. The use of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) as a tactic, while present in earlier periods, was arguably “mainstreamed” in the context of the chaotic situation that followed the fall of Saddam Hussein. Then, the Salafi-jihadi GSPC group initially deployed this terrorist standard in Algeria in the mid-2000s, before spreading it to Western Europe, jointly with global jihad fringes. The same could be said about mass urban terrorism or high jackings:

violent techniques and uses of emerging technologies are disseminated by phases of imitation, until security countermeasures win, if possible.

Terrorist or violent extremist groups may well have a historical imagination that harkens back to a perfect epoch or an eschatological future, they are “in the now”: beyond their doctrine or vision, they seek access to technology and know-how. Some of them benefit from state support. Support from a state such as Iran can function as an innovation accelerator, offering asymmetric actors access to advanced capabilities relative to the state’s own technological level. Conversely, the absence of such support compels violent extremist networks and groups to pursue technology in a more empirical way. This may entail acquiring mass-market technological products for asymmetrical purposes, such as purchasing drones for reconnaissance or propaganda. Alternatively, they may rely on the improvised initiative of an activist or sympathizer with limited skills. For instance, Hamas has frequently sought the assistance of engineers who are sympathetic to its nascent drone program (on-site assembly of Iranian systems, local R&D).

In recent years, several technologies have emerged – including small drones, 3D-printed weaponry (commonly known as “ghost guns”, or untraceable arms due to the lack of serial numbers and improvised manufacture), and more recently, artificial intelligence tools – that have either already been employed by violent extremist actors or present a significant risk of future exploitation for such purposes.

The aim of this research paper is to provide a concise analysis of how violent extremist actors currently exploit these technologies – or may potentially do so in the future.

Pentagon boosts budget for Palantir’s AI software in major expansion of Project Maven

Sandra Erwin

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon is dramatically increasing spending on artificial intelligence for military operations, raising the contract ceiling for Palantir Technologies’ Maven Smart System to nearly $1.3 billion through 2029.

The Defense Department announced May 21 it is upping the spending limit for software licenses under Maven by $795 million, compared to a ceiling of $480 million just a year ago. The new funding is specifically for U.S. combatant commands, which oversee military operations across geographic regions.

Project Maven, launched by the Pentagon in 2017, was designed to accelerate the adoption of AI and machine learning across the U.S. military. The program uses artificial intelligence to analyze massive volumes of imagery and data from sources like satellites, drones and other sensors, enabling rapid detection, identification and tracking of objects of interest.

In 2022, operational control of the geospatial intelligence aspects of Maven was transferred to the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), which coordinates intelligence gathering from satellite imagery and other location-based sources.

Palantir has separate contracts with NGA and for Maven Smart System software licenses for the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force and Space Force.

“Adoption by the U.S. combatant commands for the first year has been far greater than expectations,” according to a report from William Blair investment firm analysts. The much higher contract ceiling reflects the “mass adoption of the Maven Smart System for geospatial awareness and targeting.”

NGA Director Vice Adm. Frank Whitworth said the agency recently awarded Palantir a $28 million contract to expand access to Maven Smart System for the agency’s analysts.

There are now more than 20,000 active users of Maven across more than 35 military service and combatant command software tools. The user base has more than quadrupled since March of last year and more than doubled since January alone.

ASSESSMENT BASED TAILORABLE EDUCATION AT THE U.S. ARMY WAR COLLEG

Edward Kaplan, John Nagl

Secretary of War Elihu Root established the [War College] in 1901 to help the army develop officers who could manage the demands of global responsibilities.

Chief of Staff of the Army General Randy George has tasked the United States Army to focus on warfighting, delivering combat ready formations, and strengthen the profession of arms while engaging in continuous transformation to the meet the needs of a rapidly changing world. The Army War College has heard that call and is about to engage in the biggest curriculum change in the seven decades since the college moved to Carlisle Barracks after the Second World War.

Of course, the Army War College has long had a similar mandate. Secretary of War Elihu Root established the school in 1901 Root to help the army develop officers who could manage the demands of global responsibilities. While the United States had won the Spanish-American War, its army had struggled to deploy forces across the globe and employ them wisely to accomplish national objectives. Secretary Root imagined the college as “a post-graduate course” where the best officers would “study and confer upon the great problems of national defense, of military science, and of responsible command.”

Originally located at what is now Fort McNair in Washington, D.C., the Army War College educated many of the senior officers who would serve with distinction in the First and Second World Wars. Moving to its current location at Carlisle Barracks in the wake of that great conflict, it has continued to research and teach the subjects of national defense, military science, and responsible command ever since, not just to army officers but to U.S. government civilians from different departments and agencies, officers of the joint force, and an increasing number of officers from our allies and partners around the globe ever since.

Forged in War: Joint Professional Military Education and Great Power Competition

Heather Venable, James Greer, Korey Lantes, Paul Springer

Joint professional military education provides the best preparation for an unknown future by introducing students to a wide range of scenarios while grounding them in the importance of understanding unique contextual factors.

Currently, there are exactly zero members of the active-duty force who have engaged in peer-level conflict in which nations armed with the most advanced technology directly engage in conflict. While this type of conflict is least likely, the reality is that peer conflict poses a greater existential threat. This begs the question: if a nation does not have experience fighting a peer war, then how does one prepare for it? Joint professional military education (JPME) critically builds and enhances lethality and readiness across the joint force by grounding officers in the theory and history of war. Furthermore, JPME teaches officers about the capabilities and limitations of each warfighting domain which further supports their ability to apply this foundational learning to wargaming and joint planning in practical situations. Given the closing technology gap between the United States and China, JPME is one of the few areas in which the US possesses a clear advantage, making it essential for victory.

JPME has existed in the United States (US) since 1943. The need for educating officers in joint operations has only increased since then given the new domains of cyber and space as well as the rising importance of the electromagnetic spectrum. Indeed, this is the very idea underpinning the US military’s most important doctrinal development in recent decades as it seeks to integrate and coordinate action across multiple military and non-military environments. To make this complex doctrine successful in peer competition requires more thorough joint education than ever.

The Origins of Professional Military Education

Leaders have long recognized the importance of military education to victory. The Treaty of Versailles, for example, required Germany to shutter the doors of its staff officer school, the Kriegsakademie. The Prussians established the school after the costly losses at the battle of Jena-Auerstedt during the Napoleonic Wars. The Kriegsakademie resulted in the transformation of the German military into a highly effective institution in the ensuring years, such as during the wars of German unification between 1863 and 1871.

Three Qualities of Good Leaders: A Message for New Lieutenants from the Chief of Staff of the Army

General Randy George

You are entering our profession with a world that is more dynamic and volatile than I have known in my time in uniform. Warfighting is evolving as rapidly as the technology in all our pockets. You will see more change in the next five years than senior leaders today have witnessed in the last twenty, and you will help lead that change. You’re going to need to think creatively, decide quickly, and act purposefully.

And yet, what won’t change is our Army’s need for physically and mentally tough leaders of character. You are trained for that role. You are ready for what’s next. As you take the next step in your journeys as leaders in the profession of arms, I’d like to share three qualities that good leaders embody.

First, good leaders immerse themselves in their craft. They understand the importance of self-development and spend the effort necessary to properly prepare themselves before they train their units.

You must do this because you will be asked to lead incredible soldiers, who have made it their duty to prepare themselves for combat. Staff Sergeant Clinton Romesha was one of those soldiers in my formation. His tireless preparation paid off when he and his team at Combat Outpost Keating in the mountains of Afghanistan found themselves with the odds stacked against them. They kept the base from being overrun and saved many lives because they were experts. You will lead soldiers like Romesha—soldiers who are immersed in their craft—so take full advantage of the training, coaching, and mentoring that’s available to you. As President John F. Kennedy said, “Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.”

Second, good leaders focus on the here and now. In other words, they play the positions they’re assigned. They are laser focused on the jobs they’re in and aren’t consumed worrying about their ratings or their next jobs. Over the years, I had jobs I didn’t really want. As a brand-new major, I was assigned to the National Simulation Center. That job wasn’t even at the bottom of my wish list. I wanted to head back to a field-grade job in a division. Years later, I got pulled into a joint job in the basement of the Pentagon after coming back from an Afghanistan deployment. In both cases, I heard whispers that these jobs would put me behind in my career. I saw them as setbacks and worried how or even if I would recover. And yet, the truth is those two positions were probably the most developmental jobs I’ve had in my career. They certainly didn’t hurt me. Be an asset to your team. In my experience, good things happen to leaders that buckle down and play position. Don’t spend a minute moping. Learn the job. Build the team. Accomplish the mission.

For DOD, the future of large language models is smaller

PATRICK TUCKER

The U.S. military is working on ways to get the power of cloud-based, big-data AI in tools that can run on local computers, draw upon more focused data sets, and remain safe from spying eyes, officials from OpenAI, Scale AI, and U.S. European Command told Defense One, part of a special broadcast airing Thursday.

When civilians query OpenAI’s ChatGPT, for example, their answers are generated by machines trained on huge amounts of data acquired from third-party sources and millions of user interactions a day. But the government has also hired OpenAI to make need-specific tools built on smaller and more unique datasets, said Sasha Baker, OpenAI’s head of national security policy.

Baker cited the company’s recent work for U.S. national laboratories on nuclear weapons safety.

“They deal with very, very sensitive data, as you might imagine, as a nuclear lab. And so it was absolutely critical for us to figure out a way to make sure that both sides felt good about the security environment,” she said.

The company spearheaded a new form of generative AI that feels like a large language model trained on massive public datasets but that does not need to reach beyond a secure perimeter and perform tasks far more complex than writing a white paper or developing a business plan.

“We're now starting to see the first scientific papers coming out of the labs where they actually cite GPT as a contributor, or, in some cases, even a co-author, of some of the scientific work that they're doing,” Baker said.

Baker also said the company is already offering products that meet FedRAMP security requirements for secret and top-secret information.

Other AI tools are helping combatant commands to integrate vast new information streams. U.S. European Command has joined the Maven program run by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency with support from Palantir, said David Wilts, EUCOM’s chief data and artificial intelligence officer.

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