Indian Strategic Studies: 06/14/25

14 June 2025

CISC Air Marshal Dixit sums up Op Sindoor lessons—traditional battlefield ideas ‘irrelevant’

Javaria Rana

New Delhi: Traditional battlefield concepts such as frontlines, depth areas, and rear zones are no longer relevant in an era defined by long-range precision strikes and real-time surveillance, Chief of Integrated Defence Staff (CISC) Air Marshal Ashutosh Dixit said Wednesday.

“When weapons can strike targets hundreds of kilometres away with pinpoint accuracy, the classical ideas of front, rear, and flanks become irrelevant. The front of the theatre merges into one,” he said. “This new reality demands that we extend our surveillance envelope far beyond what previous generations could have imagined.”

Speaking at a seminar on surveillance and electro-optics, jointly organised by the Centre for Air Power Studies (CAPS) and Indian Military Review (IMR) in the national capital, he emphasised that modern surveillance capabilities must now allow the military to detect, track and identify threats while they are still in staging areas, airfields or bases deep within adversary territory.

“This existed as a concept earlier, but today we have the means to realise it,” he said.

Speaking on the achievements of Operation Sindoor, he said, “The operation had clearly demonstrated that indigenous innovation, when properly harnessed, can match and even exceed international benchmarks.”

He added that at the core of the success was IAF’s Integrated Air Command and Control System (IACCS), which was also synced and integrated with the Army’s Akashteer system, providing a joint and integrated approach to the air defence of the nation.

“In modern warfare, information without the ability to act upon it rapidly is of limited value. IACCS compressed our sensor-to-shooter timelines dramatically, enabling responses that outpaced adversary decision cycles,” said Air Marshal Dixit.

India’s new warfare: Drones, data, and the defence race that can't wait

Sarahbeth George

Warfare isn’t what it used to be. The enemy might not come with boots and rifles, but with buzzing drone swarms, silent cyberattacks, and AI algorithms calculating their every move. For India, this future is already here. The recent exchange of drone fire between India and Pakistan in May 2025—the most serious clash in decades—marked the beginning of a new era. Both sides unleashed loitering munitions and kamikaze drones. For the first time in South Asia, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) became one of the central instruments of conflict. It was a live demonstration of what future conflict looks like.

Thousands of UAVs filled the skies. Some watched. Some struck. Others confused enemy sensors or jammed communications. It was the subcontinent's first true drone war—and perhaps the start of a new era.

Swarms over Sindoor: When the future arrived earlyIndia’s “Operation Sindoor” launched with precision missile strikes on nine terror camps across the Line of Control. But it was the drones that stole the headlines. Loitering munitions like the IAI Harop and kamikaze UAVs from Indian and Israeli origin swarmed across targets. In response, Pakistan retaliated with Turkish Bayraktar TB2s and Chinese Wing Loong IIs.

Each side deployed over 1,000 drones. Not just to attack, but to observe, disrupt, and deceive.

“This marks a significant shift in the character of South Asian warfare,” said Rabia Akhtar, visiting fellow at Harvard’s Belfer Center in a report by Foreign Policy. “Drones weren’t just tools of surveillance. They were instruments of strategic messaging—fast, low-risk, and deadly.”

For the Indian Army, the learning curve was sharp.

“Managing the airspace with so many flying objects, jammers on both sides, and other users of airspace will be a huge challenge,” admitted a senior officer in a Deccan Herald report.

Gangster tells BBC why India's biggest hip-hop star was murdered

Soutik Biswas & Ishleen Kaur

It was a killing that shocked India: Punjabi hip-hop star Sidhu Moose Wala shot dead through the windscreen of his car by hired gunmen.

Within hours, a Punjabi gangster named Goldy Brar had used Facebook to claim responsibility for ordering the hit.

But three years after the murder, no-one has faced trial - and Goldy Brar is still on the run, his whereabouts unknown.

Now, BBC Eye has managed to make contact with Brar and challenged him about how and why Sidhu Moose Wala became a target.

His response was coldly articulate.

"In his arrogance, he [Moose Wala] made some mistakes that could not be forgiven," Brar told the BBC World Service.

"We had no option but to kill him. He had to face the consequences of his actions. It was either him or us. As simple as that."

On a warm May evening in 2022, Sidhu Moose Wala was taking his black Mahindra Thar SUV for its usual spin through dusty lanes near his village in the northern Indian state of Punjab when, within minutes, two cars began tailing him.

CCTV footage later showed them weaving through narrow turns, sticking close. Then, at a bend in the road, one of the vehicles lurched forward, cornering Moose Wala's SUV against a wall. He was trapped. Moments later, the shooting began.

Mobile footage captured the aftermath. His SUV was riddled with bullets, the windscreen shattered, the bonnet punctured.

No War, No Peace: India’s Limited War Strategy of Controlled Escalation

Nishank Motwani

India is fundamentally rewriting the rules of engagement with Pakistan. In response to high-casualty terrorist attacks – most recently the 2025 Pahalgam massacre that triggered Operation Sindoor – New Delhi has adopted a doctrine of calibrated military retaliation designed to operate below the nuclear threshold. By asserting that Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal no longer provides blanket immunity for cross-border terrorism, India is discarding old constraints and demonstrating it has the political will and military capability to respond to terrorist attacks traced back to the Pakistani state.

This evolution is no longer implied – it has now been formalized. In a landmark speech, Prime Minister Narendra Modi outlined India’s updated national security doctrine, emphasizing that future terrorist attacks will be met with swift and forceful retaliation, executed on India’s terms. The policy eliminates the distinction between terrorist actors and the states that provide them safe haven, signaling a shift toward holding state sponsors directly accountable. This affirms what New Delhi has long argued: that Pakistan’s deep state is not merely permissive of proxy groups – it is complicit.

Modi also rejected any strategic utility in Pakistan’s nuclear signaling, making clear that such threats will not deter India from targeting terrorist infrastructure. This codifies India’s willingness to act across the Line of Control and beyond it regardless of nuclear posturing from Islamabad.

This is not recklessness disguised as resolve. It is a deliberate and now officially articulated doctrine to impose costs without triggering full-scale war. India’s limited strikes – air and ground – are designed to signal that acts of terror will have consequences, even if those consequences stop short of a general war. In doing so, India is challenging a long-held assumption in Western policy circles: that any clash between nuclear-armed rivals in South Asia will inevitably spiral into catastrophe.

Three reasons why China can't afford to invade Taiwan

Zoe Desch

Taiwan has become a focal point for the U.S.-China conflict, with the Pentagon turning its attention towards a hypothetical conflict with China — referring to it as the “sole pacing threat” — and China continuing combat and blockade drills around the island.

However, despite China’s demonstrations of military power, Taiwan’s unique economic niche and geographic position make it a particularly thorny target for Beijing. The Chinese Communist Party’s legitimacy rests largely on the robust economy it has built, and the direct economic repercussions of an invasion or blockade of Taiwan stand to shatter the foundations of Beijing’s domestic power.

There are three non-military conditions that make a full military assault or blockade of Taiwan a nonviable option for the CCP. First is the global importance of Taiwan’s semiconductor manufacturing base, second is the impact on trade and the shipping industry running through the Taiwan Strait and Luzon Strait, and third is China’s own less-than-favorable economic conditions.

The semiconductor issue

Taiwan is the largest manufacturer of semiconductors in the world. In the fourth quarter of 2024, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) —Taiwan’s largest producer of semiconductors — took a 67.1% market share of all chips globally, and produced nearly all of the most advanced chips. There is no viable replacement for Taiwan’s manufacturing in the semiconductor market; not only does the nation represent a massive share of the chip industry, its infrastructure uniquely supports the scale and quality of production.

Semiconductors represent an irreplaceable enabler of global economic activities. If Taiwan were to stop producing chips, both the American and Chinese economies — not to mention the world economy — would contract and ignite a global depression. Chips enable electrical grids, manufacturing, home utilities, automobiles, and more; they have permeated every facet of the global economy.

US and China agree on plan to ease export controls after trade talks in London

Nectar Gan and John Liu

The United States and China have agreed on a framework to implement their trade truce, officials on both sides said Wednesday, after concluding two days of talks in London to defuse tensions and ease export restrictions that threaten to disrupt global manufacturing.

American and Chinese negotiators agreed “in principle” to a framework on how to implement the consensus reached by the previous round of talks in Geneva last month and a phone call between the two countries’ leaders last week, China’s trade negotiator Li Chenggang told reporters in London, according to Chinese state broadcaster CGTN.

President Donald Trump on Wednesday said in a Truth Social post that a “deal” with China has been completed.

“Our deal with China is done,” Trump said in his all-caps social media post, adding that both countries agreed to ease export restrictions, per the prior arrangement agreed upon in Geneva in May. And the United States will allow Chinese college students to attend American universities after Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced last month a plan to “aggressively revoke” some Chinese students’ visas.

Officials on both sides will now take the proposal back to their leaders for approval, US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told reporters in a separate briefing in London, Reuters reported. “If that is approved, we will then implement the framework,” he said.

China’s restrictions on exports of rare earth minerals and magnets to the US will be resolved as a “fundamental” part of the framework agreement, Lutnick said, according to Reuters. Trump confirmed on Wednesday in his post that the deal included “full magnets, and any necessary rare earths, will be supplied, up front, by China.”

“Also, there were a number of measures the United States of America put on when those rare earths were not coming,” Lutnick added. “You should expect those to come off, sort of as President Trump said: ‘In a balanced way.’”

Why ASEAN’s Future Lies Not In China, But The West – Analysis

Collins Chong Yew Keat

Despite ASEAN’s efforts to increase its friendshoring efforts to court BRICS, GCC and other parts of Global South in revitalising its stabilising and hedging role and in increasing dependence with China, this remains a self fulfilling utopian view driven by ignorance of current and future realities where the future of power parity still lies in the US.

Without ever having the might and capacity for its self defence, ASEAN will still be relying on the US security umbrella and for as long as this fact remains, ASEAN cannot ever be masked by its own self fulfilling fantasy of wanting to be central and non-aligned and getting the best from both worlds.

ASEAN is now feeling deeply vulnerable to the sudden shocks due to the decades of convenient piggyback on Washington under previous leaderships, and ASEAN knows that this void cannot be immediately filled by China, even though Beijing is seen to be the de facto economic alternative and main supplier of capital and resources for the region.

Knowing this fact, while at the same time being extremely wary of upsetting Washington and Trump, ASEAN’s tone is subdued and calculated.

China’s geographical reality of being ASEAN’s most powerful neighbour has been the most pressing factor in forcing ASEAN to maintain its strategic hedging and neutrality model, with the fear of long term aftermath of retaliations from Beijing that will affect the region’s security and economic survival.

Hence, this outdated model no longer works, and with China now facing a time trap to its power relativity, this will further expose ASEAN to both direct and indirect impact from the potential of conflicts.

Lebanon’s Future Hinges on Ending Hezbollah

Lawrence J. Haas

There is much more that Beirut, Washington, and Jerusalem can do together to remove the notorious paramilitary from Lebanon.

As Lebanese president Joseph Aoun moves to neutralize Hezbollah as a military force as part of his efforts to rebuild that war-torn country, the United States and Israel must offer their support. But they need to do so artfully without triggering a backlash that would undercut Aoun and, with him, prospects for change.

The opportunity to fully defang Hezbollah—which, if not taken, may not arise again for some time—comes in the aftermath of the terror group’s disastrous decision to mount a second front against Israel in the wake of Hamas’ October 7, 2023 slaughter of 1,200 Israelis. Israel’s counterattack against Hezbollah last fall decapitated its leadership, leaving the group largely rudderless and significantly weakened.

The question now is whether Aoun’s government will follow through or, instead, give Hezbollah the room to reconstitute itself as a dangerous and lethal force. The stakes could hardly be higher for Lebanon and the region.

Hezbollah, long considered the Middle East’s most powerful non-state actor, is both a militia and a political party. In the areas of Lebanon that it controls as a “state within a state,” Hezbollah runs schools, hospitals, and other social institutions.

Until last September, it was the most powerful member of Iran’s “axis of resistance,” a network of groups that helps Tehran wield asymmetric influence across the region and beyond.

But times have changed dramatically for both Iran and Hezbollah, making Aoun’s move against the latter a major opportunity for Washington, Jerusalem, and regional stability.

Foreign Technology Can and Will Endanger Sovereignty

Ivan Sascha Sheehan

Foreign firms like Switzerland’s Sicpa quietly control vital state functions—tax enforcement, currency authentication, and digital tracking—posing serious risks to national sovereignty with little transparency or public oversight.

Big Tech’s tightening grip on American life has become impossible to ignore. From Silicon Valley’s selective censorship to TikTok’s opaque data harvesting, the public knows the dangers of surrendering digital infrastructure to unaccountable corporate actors. Yet while all eyes remain fixed on Beijing’s influence operations, quieter forces are burrowing deeper into the machinery of state sovereignty, not just in the United States, but across the globe.

One such actor is Sicpa, a Swiss firm with an oversized role in how nations authenticate their currencies, enforce taxes, and increasingly, shape the future of money itself.

What Is Sicpa?

Founded in Lausanne, Switzerland, Sicpa earned its historical reputation by producing high-security inks in banknotes, including US dollars and euros. However, over the past two decades, Sicpa has evolved into something more expansive and far more powerful. Today, it acts as a silent gatekeeper to state sovereignty, managing how governments authenticate currency, regulate excise taxes, track goods, and even think about the future of digital money.

Through its flagship platform, SICPATRACE, the company provides governments with end-to-end systems for digitally tracking and tracing excisable goods such as tobacco, alcohol, fuel, and pharmaceuticals across the supply chain. These systems are deployed in over 20 countries, allowing tax authorities to monitor in real-time what is produced, where that product travels, and who ultimately purchases it.

In principle, such a system promises to combat illicit trade and boost state revenues. In reality, it gives a private foreign corporation significant access to national data and a critical role in domestic revenue enforcement without the transparency or accountability that such power warrants.

Four Steps Necessary to End the Russia-Ukraine War

Thomas Graham

A lasting Russia-Ukraine peace requires private diplomacy, broader European security talks, active US leadership, and continued military aid to Ukraine, prioritizing stability over ideal outcomes or total justice.

Unsurprisingly, the talks between Kyiv and Moscow in Istanbul on June 2 failed to bring the Russia-Ukraine war closer to a ceasefire. Both sides stuck to their maximal demands, with little indication of flexibility, and Ukraine still wants a ceasefire as a prelude to peace negotiations.

Russia insists the root causes of the conflict have to be resolved before a ceasefire is put in place. Meanwhile, the fighting escalates with more intense Russian aerial bombardment of Ukraine and Ukrainian acts of sabotage deep inside Russia.

Nevertheless, the situation is far from hopeless.

To President Donald Trump’s credit, he has focused on the requirements for peace, even if he grossly underestimated the task’s difficulty. While the Ukrainians and Russians are separated by a chasm in their demands, there is a way forward to a ceasefire and an enduring settlement.

What Are the Requirements for a Russia-Ukraine Ceasefire?

First, confidential negotiations, not public spectacles such as in Istanbul, must commence in earnest.

The sensitive compromises necessary to hammer out an agreement can only be reached in private. This does not mean there is no place for talks in the public glare. The Istanbul talks yielded valuable agreement on prisoner exchanges, but more importantly, they can cover quiet diplomacy by distracting media attention.

COMMENTARY: The Most Important Trade-Offs: Force Size vs. Modernization vs. Readiness

Andrew Uscher

If you had an additional dollar to spend on improving force capability in the Defense Department, where would you place your money? There are three elements or “buckets” where you could place your additional dollar: force size, modernization or readiness.

It would be an interesting exercise to divide the entire defense budget into these three elements and add support functions to produce the entire budget.

How do you make the decision of where to place this additional dollar to improve force capability, which can be defined as the ability of your force structure to deter and win wars? That decision is complicated because these three elements all interact with each other.

For example, if one of these elements is especially weak or vulnerable, it could destroy the ability of the other two elements to be effective. If you have a modern and ready air force with only one plane, you would be in trouble. If you had a large force of airplanes which were ready to fight but were old and outdated compared to enemy forces, you would also be in trouble. Finally, if you had a large force of modern planes which were not ready to fight, you would again be in trouble. All three of these elements are vital to the effectiveness of force capability, and they are interrelated.

In the field of operations research, there is a concept known as the “rate-determining step.” This is defined as the process which most slows down the rest of the process, or it could be defined as the best step to focus on if you wish to speed up the entire process. This concept applies to where you would place your additional dollar to improve your force capability. You would likely place that dollar on the element which is the weakest and would most improve your overall force capability.

The size of your forces is the easiest element to define and measure. It is also the element that is easiest to cut when you reduce the size of the defense budget.

Major change ahead: What the future of the IDF will look like in the shadow of the Gaza war

YONAH JEREMY BOB

In the shadow of the unending Israel-Hamas War and the unresolved dispute about trying to integrate more haredim (ultra-Orthodox) into the military, the IDF on Wednesday announced some of the major features that will characterize its new and evolving structure in future years.

It has been about three months on the job for IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Eyal Zamir and Deputy Chief of Staff Maj.-Gen. Tamir Yadai, sufficient time for them to have reached certain interim conclusions about lessons from the war to implement changes in the military.

One previously announced and publicly known change – in keeping with Zamir’s background as a tank commander – is that the IDF will establish a new tank brigade to increase the number of tanks available for combat.

The IDF has now provided a timeline for and details of the brigade, hoping to add one new battalion per year over three years (three battalions making up the new brigade), with the first battalion due to be up and running in the North in 2026.

Estimates are that about 500 reservists will be reassigned to fill the personnel needs of the new tank brigade.

Report From Hungary

George Friedman

My ongoing trip to Europe has brought me to Hungary, the country in which I was born. My profession requires me to be clinical and distant about the nations we study, but it is an oddity of American life that those who have come here or whose families come here retain an element of affection for the places they left. I say it’s odd because, for the most part, the life they left behind was unpleasant enough to make them leave. Immigrants from Ireland or Italy, even after several generations, have those feelings. My wife, who is an official member of the General Society of Mayflower Descendants, is still fascinated by the royal family. (Later generations of her family immigrated to Australia, where she was born.) I must add if I may that it gives me supreme pleasure that a Friedman is listed on a chart showing descendants of William Bradford, once the governor of Plymouth colony. So it is that I choose not to discuss Hungary, my homeland, but the United States, my beloved home.

My mother and father survived Hitler’s camps, while my sister, 11 years older than me, was sheltered in the Swiss Embassy. It was rare that the core of one’s family survived, and yet mine did. I was born in 1949 and was regarded as our revenge on Hitler. He was dead, but they went on. It was an odd burden to bear.

Six months after I was born, my father received a message saying he was to be arrested by Soviet authorities and their Hungarian comrades for being anti-communist. At that point, the extent of my father’s ideology was that life was better than death, so we fled Hungary. My parents hired smugglers who one night took us in a rubber raft across the Danube to Czechoslovakia, also under Soviet control, and on to Vienna. It was a more complex and dangerous journey than I can tell, because I was shielded while growing up from the terrors of the time and had to piece it together much later.

A trillion dollars annually for the Pentagon: Military spending is out of control

Dan Grazier

Members of Congress are likely to increase defense spending by $150 billion through the budget reconciliation process. When added to the Trump administration’s fiscal year 2026 Department of Defense base budget proposal, Pentagon spending will total over $1 trillion a year.

There are two factors that virtually guarantee that defense spending will never dip below that mark again.

The first is political. If a future budget proposal dips below the $1 trillion mark, there will be howls about national security cuts, and few politicians are willing to weather those attacks.

The second reason is more practical. The reconciliation boost includes development funding for a slew of new weapons programs — the F-47, Collaborative Combat Aircraft, the B-21 strategic bomber, Sentinel ballistic missiles, underwater drones, hypersonic missiles and more. The services aren’t buying these weapons yet, just paying to develop them. As expensive as they are now, they will become vastly more expensive in coming years when they go into production.

This is the beginning of a Pentagon spending “time bomb.” New programs currently entering into development will be vastly more expensive than they initially appear as they transition into the production and sustainment phases in coming years.

The American people are now dealing with the explosion of the last Pentagon spending time bomb, the one that started on Sept. 11, 2001. We now pay more on the military than at any time since the end of World War II. Even at the height of the war on terror, with American troops fighting in two separate theaters, the military wasn’t spending as much in real terms as it does now.

How Global Governance Can Survive

Victor Cha, John Hamre, and G. John Ikenberry

The last time U.S. President Donald Trump attended a Group of Seven (G-7) leaders’ summit in Canada, in 2018, he treated it like a reality TV show. “Trump Blows Up G7 Agenda,” read the headline in Politico. Trump arrived late; called for Russia’s readmission to the group (a nonstarter with the other members); described the host, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, as “very dishonest and weak”; and refused at the last minute to endorse the joint statement at the end of the meeting.

This month, as leaders of the advanced industrialized democracies that make up the G-7—Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States—prepare for their annual summit, Canada is hosting once again. With Trump’s tariff war in full swing and targeting the other countries in attendance, this meeting could be even more contentious than his last visit.

But it doesn’t have to be. The G-7 has the potential to play a meaningful role in global governance: taking on a position the Trump administration does not want for the United States and addressing the problems of burden sharing that appear to lie at the root of many of Trump’s concerns about U.S. global leadership. In previous meetings, G-7 members have made clear their interest in addressing technological advancements, public health, major wars, and other issues beyond the group’s traditional mandate. With many international institutions today paralyzed by geopolitical rivalries, the world needs concerted action now more than ever.

Yet to truly turn the G-7 into a body that can sustain the rules-based order, its members need to bolster their ranks, streamline their procedures, and strengthen the group’s legitimacy in the eyes of the world. Pulling off this reinvention would position the G-7 for leadership—and could even be the kind of sweeping project that appeals to Trump.

UK cyber agency pushes for 'strategic policy agenda' as government efforts stall

Alexander Martin

Although the NCSC — a part of the cyber and signals intelligence agency GCHQ — is not a policymaking body in the United Kingdom, its latest blog post is explicit in setting out the need for more political attention on cybersecurity.

It was co-written by Ollie Whitehouse, the agency’s chief technology officer, and Paul W, its principal technical director. Whitehouse has repeatedly warned that the technology market is broken and failing to incentivize building resilient and secure technology, and argued that regulation and legislation are not keeping pace with technology change.

The same arguments had been made under the Biden administration in the United States, where software manufacturers were being urged to ship products that are secure by design. As Jen Easterly, then the director of the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), told the Oxford Cyber Forum last year: “The only way to deal with this problem is to demand more from our vendors.”

It is not clear whether the Trump administration shares those views on vendors, although last week the president signed an executive order scrapping requirements for software companies who sell to the government to attest to CISA that their products are secure.

Despite the apparent sympathy for regulation in the U.K. Labour Party’s 2024 manifesto — which stated that “markets must be shaped, not merely served” — there has been no indication this government will take any market-shaping actions, despite cyberattacks continuing to hit the country.

Amid attacks during last year’s U.K. election campaign, experts told Recorded Future News, that silence about the issue from politicians was indicative of how the topic of cybersecurity is “de-politicised” in Westminster and seen as something technical experts are expected to resolve rather than an issue politicians think they should be held accountable for.

Elon Musk says he regrets some posts about Donald Trump

Danai Nesta Kupemba

Billionaire Elon Musk has said he regrets some of the posts he made about US President Donald Trump during their war of words on social media.

"They went too far," he wrote on his social media platform X.

The two were embroiled in a public fallout after the Tesla owner stepped back from his White House role and called Trump's tax bill a "disgusting abomination".

His post comes after Trump said he was open to the possibility of reconciliation in an interview with the New York Post on Wednesday. The president said he was a "little disappointed" about the fallout, but there were "no hard feelings".

"I think he feels very badly that he said that," Trump said of Musk's blistering social media barrage.

The budget, which includes huge tax breaks and more defence spending, was passed by the House of Representatives last month and is now being considered by senators.

Musk urged Americans to call their representatives in Washington to "kill the bill" as he believed it would "cause a recession in the second half of the year".

The tech entrepreneur claimed, without evidence, that Trump appears in unreleased government files linked to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The White House rubbished those claims.

In response, Trump said Musk had "lost his mind" and threatened to cancel his government contracts, which have an estimated value of $38bn (£28bn). A significant chunk of that goes to Musk's space technology company SpaceX.

"I think it's a very bad thing, because he's very disrespectful. You could not disrespect the office of the president," Trump said in an interview with NBC on Sunday.

Musk appeared to have deleted many of his posts over the weekend, including one calling for Trump's impeachment.

Why the U.K. and Allies Sanctioned Israeli Ministers Ben-Gvir and Smotrich—and What Comes Next

Callum Sutherland

The U.K. and several allies have imposed sanctions on Israeli ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, accusing the two far-right politicians of inciting violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.

Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Norway joined the U.K. in imposing a travel ban on Ben-Gvir—Israel’s national security minister and a West Bank settler—and Finance Minister Smotrich. The five governments also froze any assets either may have in their countries.

“Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich have incited extremist violence and serious abuses of Palestinian human rights. These actions are not acceptable,” said British Foreign Secretary David Lammy. “This is why we have taken action now – to hold those responsible to account.”

The British government reaffirmed its support for a two-state solution and described the ongoing violence against Palestinians in the West Bank as “completely unacceptable.”

The sanctions come as the U.K. and other European nations increase pressure on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to lift the blockade on aid into Gaza, where humanitarian experts warn that famine is imminent.

"Britain has already tried once to prevent us from settling the cradle of our homeland, and we cannot do it again,” responded Smotrich, referring to a 1939 British document limiting Jewish migration. “We are determined God willing to continue building," Smotrich added, speaking at the inauguration of a new settlement in the Hebron Hills.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar condemned the sanctions as “outrageous,” adding that the government would convene a special meeting to determine its response to what he called an “unacceptable decision.”

Here’s what to know about the sanctions.

Can the U.S. Be a Great Power Without Harvard?

Howard W. French

Over the decades, Harvard University has become so prominent in American culture that it is easy to mistake it for the prototypical modern university. Founded in 1636, Harvard is older than the United States itself. Besides this, there are few, if any, universities in the world that have a lower acceptance rate or more distinguished faculty. And Harvard’s $53 billion endowment is larger than the GDP of nearly 100 countries.

Despite the institution’s formidable reputation, though, and for all of U.S. President Donald Trump’s fixation on bringing it to heel, the Harvard that the world thinks it knows is a surprisingly recent creation.

Tactical Action Officers: Information Warfare’s Next Evolution

Rear Admiral Sean Bailey, Captain Brian Evans, and Commander Matthew Timmerman

After more than 24 hours of careful movement to evade detection, the strike group remains more than 18 hours from its designated position to launch strikes. The screen is distributed to the maximum extent feasible, optimizing sensor employment while attempting to complicate adversary targeting. The tactical situation (TACSIT) assessment from the information warfare commander (IWC) holds all units within ordered mission go/no-go criteria. Determining that adversary positioning and sensor capabilities provide a period of simplified maneuver and decreased detection risk, the strike group commander and information warfare commander retire for a couple hours of sleep before the operation’s next phase.

As the strike group continues its clandestine transit, conditions appear to confirm the decreased risk of detection. But then a chat report comes in: The protected satellite communication (SATCOM) voice circuits for the air and missile defense commander and the sea combat commander are down. Immediately, one of the forward screening destroyers reports SLQ-32 detection of an adversary airborne surface search radar. Seconds later, supplementary plot (SUPPLOT) reports indications and warnings of a missile launch. Based on adversary capabilities, the force may have only minutes to respond.

In the Tactical Flag Command Center, the battle watch captain and force tactical action officer assess the situation: Was the screening destroyer the only unit located, or is the entire force now at risk of being targeted? What are the detection ranges of adversary airborne radar versus the destroyer’s SLQ-32? Is the SATCOM disruption a casualty, interference, or jamming? Should we break emission control to defend the force? If so, what sensors should we energize? What’s the updated TACSIT assessment? Has anyone called the IWC?

Uncrewed battle groups? DARPA, admirals offer glimpses of the Navy’s robotic future

PATRICK TUCKER

“I could imagine the battle group eventually becoming completely autonomous,” said Greg Avicola, a program manager at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, outlining a vision of a Navy strike force built not around an aircraft carrier, but of a “heterogeneous” mix of robotic assets of varying size, role, and capability.

“There’s gonna be a lot of experimentation” in design and operation, Avicola said Tuesday at the AWS Summit in Washington, D.C. “If I make the vehicle look like this, and I make the ship look like that, how does that pair? And how do I do the logistics? How do I do the refueling? How do I do the assured comms between those platforms?”

Avicola’s vision is a lot more robo-centric than those offered by Navy leaders, who have generally tempered expectations around replacing manned vessels with uncrewed ones. In 2020, for example, acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly suggested that autonomous capabilities might actually increase the need for manned surface vessels.

But the pace of technological advance—along with the high cost and insufficient industrial capability to build a manned fleet to meet service goals—are changing that equation.

Avicola works in DARPA’s Tactical Technology Office, which in February completed a prototype 180-foot robotic ship, the Defiant, as part of its No Manning Required Ship, or NOMARS, program. Still, he remains agnostic about what future vessels might ultimately look like. He acknowledged that the barriers to fielding robotic warships are not only bureaucratic but also practical.

“How do you make sure when it goes to sea, if it starts breaking down, it can still get home on its own so you don’t have to divert assets to tow it back?” he asked. “If you have an autonomous ship and it's working with the destroyer, and the autonomous ship breaks, and the destroyer has to go off-mission to escort or tow that ship home—guess what? [The Navy] isn’t going to buy any more autonomous ships for decades.”

LESSONS from the NEW COLD WAR

Hal Brands

Of Introduction Lessons from the New Cold War Hal Brands f all the crises, conflicts, and uncertainties of our moment, it is the rivalry between America and China—the New Cold War—that will most fundamentally shape the present age.1 That contest is a battle, in the shadowy space between war and peace, between the world’s greatest powers. Its outcome will shape the international system, and the fate of humanity, for many years to come. In the best case, this struggle is likely to be long, tense, and littered with nasty perils. In the worst case, it could cause history’s most cataclysmic military showdown. Successfully waging, and winning, that competition will be the defining strategic challenge of our time. Beijing knows this: For decades, it has been striving to displace America as the preeminent power in Asia and, ultimately, the world. As Xi Jinping himself has argued, China is “building a socialism that is superior to capitalism” and charging into a “future where we will win the initiative and have the dominant position.”

In the most recent decade, the United States has begun to meet that growing threat. Two presidents, from different political parties, have identified China as the foremost danger to America’s security, prosperity, and global influence. America’s military, its economy, and parts of its government have already been remade by the demands of competition with Beijing; over time, that rivalry could come to suffuse so many aspects of our lives. In a polarized, bitterly divided country, anti China measures are among the few things that still command bipartisan support.3 But are those measures effective? Is America winning the New Cold War? It can be hard enough to tell who is winning a hot war, amid the chaos and carnage of combat. It is harder still in cold wars, where success is often incremental and victories may be measured in hidden intelligence coups, subtle shifts in diplomatic loyalties, or influence over key supply chains, rather than territory won on the battlefield.

Yet assessing progress is crucial to knowing whether America has the right strategy. Winning this contest requires learning its lessons so far. This was the goal of a conference I hosted at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in April 2025.4 There are few better places for such a gathering. Johns Hopkins has had a campus in China since the 1980s: It has experienced the ups and downs of the relationship firsthand. The current dean of SAIS, James Steinberg, is one of America’s most respected China hands. A group of experts who attended the conference probed key aspects of the rivalry, from the tech war to the battle for military supremacy in the Western Pacific, and assessed its overall trajectory. The timing for this exercise was propitious, given that it has been roughly a decade since America declared cold war against China—and given that this contest could last decades more.

National Guard activates first-of-its-kind electromagnetic warfare company

Nicholas Slayton

Army Spc. Brandon Lu, a signal intelligence analyst with the 221st Intelligence and Electronic Warfare Battalion, Georgia Army National Guard. The 221st activated the 111th Electromagnetic Warfare Company, the first of its kind in the Army. Army photo by Sgt. Cameron Boyd.

The Georgia National Guard officially activated a new intelligence unit this month, the first of its kind in the Army, specifically tasked with electromagnetic warfare.

The 111th Electromagnetic Warfare Company was activated Saturday, June 7 as part of the Georgia National Guard’s 221st Intelligence and Electronic Warfare Battalion. The company’s four platoons will be specifically trained as electromagnetic warfare teams, according to its first commander, Capt. Caleb Rogers.

While Army intelligence formations like the 221st have long focused on human and signals intelligence gathering — the art of listening in on enemy secrets and data while making sure the enemy isn’t listening back — the new unit is the first of its kind to focus on offensive and direct electromagnetic warfare on the battlefield.

Rogers told Task & Purpose the 111th teams will have three main tasks that separate them from other intelligence units, which he classified as “support, attack, and protect.” The first is intercepting and tracking military and tactical data from enemy forces, a fairly typical intelligence task. But the teams will also be tasked with cyber attacks on enemy formations and active countering of remotely controlled drones and other devices.

The Media Beast Targets The Reform – OpEd

Jeffrey A. Tucker

The National Institutes of Health emerged from the Covid era as among the most disreputable of all the agencies, a partner with the CDC. It was the home of Anthony Fauci, plus his wife, who was in charge of ethics.

Pausing for derisive laughter…

Moving on, the agency has a $47 billion budget and shared patents with Pharma companies that themselves are on the rocks due to grim results of countless drugs, among them the magic Covid shot that proved ineffective and dangerous.

There is poetry in how the scholar called a “fringe epidemiologist” by the previous agency heads is now in charge. His name is Jayanta Bhattacharya, previously a quietly productive professor at Stanford University with specializations in medical services and economics. He joined the ranks of the dissidents of lockdowns, masks, and vaccine mandates, and was smeared the world over for it.

Fast forward five years and he is now charged with fixing up the agency that smeared him, and restoring trust. His actions in the first weeks and months have been an inspiration. He has been transparent, scrupulous, principled, and unbelievably hard-working. Yes, he has cancelled contracts (among with routine torture of animals) and been part of reductions in employment (consistent with normal budgetary concerns).

By way of background, please understand that career civil servants have long been socialized with a habit backed by plenty of evidence. That habit is to ignore all political appointees. They are temporary, but the staff, which possess all institutional knowledge, persists over many elections. That’s the presumption because that’s how it has always been.

How A Fake News Study Tested Ethical Research Boundaries – Analysis

Matthew Allen

The research team, which has been linked to the University of Zurich, covertly tested the ability of artificial intelligence (AI) to manipulate public opinion with misinformation on a subreddit group.

For several months, the researchers stretched the ethical boundaries of observing social behaviour beyond breaking point. They used Large Language Models (LLMs) to invent opinions on a variety of subjects – from owning dangerous dogs to rising housing costs, the Middle East and diversity initiatives.

The AI bots hid behind fictitious pseudonyms as they churned out debating points into the subreddit r/changemyview. Members of the group then argued for or against the AI-composed opinions, unaware they were part of a research project until the researchers came clean at its completion.

The revelation provoked a storm of criticism within Reddit, the research community and the international media.

At first, the researchers, who will not reveal their identities for fear of reprisals, defended their actions, because the “high societal importance of this topic” made it “crucial to conduct a study of this kind, even if it meant disobeying the rules” of the channel, which included a ban on AI bots.

They later issued a “full and deeply felt apology” as “the reactions of the community of disappointment and frustration have made us regret the discomfort that the study may have caused.”

‘Bad science is bad ethics’

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