Online Dissent in China Doesn’t Mean Xi Jinping Is on His Way Out

Yujing Shentu

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Lately, a wave of speculation has emerged in Western media asking whether Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping is losing his grip. Faced with rising youth unemployment, elite disaffection, and a deteriorating administrative apparatus, it’s tempting to believe the Chinese leader is on the way out. But this narrative, while seductive, fundamentally misreads the evolving architecture of digital authoritarianism in China.

What looks like volatility is often a carefully staged illusion. For those unfamiliar with China’s digital ecology, a surge in online dissent might be taken as a sign of insecurity. But through the lens of inter-network society, this is precisely how power is maintained. Rather than crumbling, Xi Jinping’s regime has grown more sophisticated – tightening its control through new instruments of emotional manipulation and algorithmic governance.

The internet is not a battlefield between free voices and censors, but a state-engineered matrix of inter-subjectivity – a shared sense of what can be thought, felt, and done. The CCP doesn’t just control what is seen; it shapes how people feel about what they see, and how they believe others feel too. Kevin J. O’Brien’s 1996 theory of “rightful resistance” still resonates – but the CCP has built pathways to reroute it. The result is a feedback loop: digital advocacy exists not to contest power, but to strengthen the state’s claim to moral authority. By allowing selective grievances to surface, the party presents itself as receptive. But the moment grievances become systemic or principle-based, they are erased.

A striking example came on June 24 with the viral case of the “Guangxi Girl.” A video posted on Douyin (Chinese TikTok), and widely reshared, showed a young woman from Guangxi province being abruptly seized and taken away in an ambulance. Her cries – “I have hepatitis B!” – triggered a wave of online speculation that she was being forcibly hospitalized or worse. The comments discuss poverty, health, and public distrust – all sensitive topics for the CCP.

In Xi’s China, online discussion of cases like Guangxi Girl’s is allowed – until the focus shifts from interest to rights. The existence of such online content shows not the fragility of Xi’s rule, but its sophistication. The debate was allowed, even as official media labeled the story “fake news” and proclaimed that the original poster of the video had been punished.

The U.S. Needs Its Own Drone Industry to Counter China

Sumantra Maitra

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Justin Marston is the founder and CEO of Mithril Defense, a drone startup based in Texas that aims to provide security solutions for domestic law and order problems. Its flagship program includes drones that are armed with pepper sprays to neutralize school-shooting suspects, the first such project in the United States. It’s a new company and boasts a team that includes a Seal Team Six command chief. Marston sat down with The American Conservative to answer some questions on why drones are the future, where we stand in a competition with China, and what the main challenges facing drone startups in the U.S. are.

What are the challenges facing the U.S. when it comes to drone swarms?

China totally dominates the drone industry. DJI makes over 70 percent of the drones that are purchased, and likely has components in half of the rest. You really have to purposefully design to be non-Chinese, otherwise some of the chips in the drone will have come from China. This is true in Ukraine and Russia too—the vast majority of the drones made in both countries have some if not the majority of their components coming from China, even if the drone itself is assembled in the local country. It's difficult to understate how much China is the center of gravity for the drone industry.

All the drones currently manufactured in the U.S. are really too expensive (and often not smart enough) to run in drone swarms. There are lightshow drones that are really stupid and less of a threat. Most of the big ones you see are like that—they follow pre-prepared flight plans like a dance. As an example, this drone light show had 10,000 drones; they probably cost $200 to $300 each.

Rebuilding GCC–Iran relations in the shadow of war

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Iran’s attack on Qatar’s al-Udeid Air Base in June 2025 interrupted its cautious de-escalation with Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states. GCC states will now have to negotiate the threat of the Israel-Iran ceasefire ending and the implications of further US involvement in the war with Iran.

On 23 June 2025, Iran launched a barrage of ballistic missiles against Qatar’s al-Udeid Air Base, home to the US Central Command Forward Headquarters, in response to strikes by the United States on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Although Iran insisted that the attack targeted US forces and not Qatar, the sight of intercepted ballistic missiles lighting up Doha’s night sky – which caused civilians in Bahrain, Kuwait and Qatar to take shelter – has left its mark on the psyches of Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) leaders and populations alike. The attack marked an unprecedented development in Iran’s relations with the GCC despite years of cautious de-escalation. Although Iran had attacked Saudi Arabia’s oil facilities using cruise missiles and uninhabited aerial vehicles (UAVs) in September 2019, those attacks were carried out covertly and out of sight of civilians, and were wrongly attributed to the Houthis at first.

The Iranian attack on Qatar prompted a display of GCC unity. Qatar, which was caught by surprise, as it did not expect to be the first hit, condemned the attack. Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesperson Dr Majed al-Ansari said the country ‘reserves the right to respond directly’. In a call with the Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman reaffirmed that the Kingdom ‘deployed all its capabilities to support Qatar’. GCC foreign ministers held an emergency meeting in Doha the day after the attack, condemning it while reiterating their ‘full solidarity’ with Qatar. Despite years of rumoured tensions between Abu Dhabi and Riyadh, ‘the most important lesson of the past days and months’ was that GCC ‘unity is indispensable’ and ‘the source of our strength’, Emirati diplomatic adviser Dr Anwar Gargash commented on X one day after the attack.

Beyond The Bombs: Who Really Won The 12-Day War Between Israel And Iran? – OpEd

Kit Klarenberg

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On June 13, 2025, Tel Aviv launched what many international observers and Iranian officials have described as an unprovoked military strike on Iran. Israeli jets bombed military and nuclear sites, while Mossad-run sleeper cells carried out sabotage missions against air and missile defense systems from within Iran, and drones smuggled into Tehran were launched against local missile launch bases.

Dozens—perhaps more—of nuclear scientists and top military commanders were murdered with surgical precision, often in the presence of innocent family members, who were themselves frequently killed. A climate of chaos and uncertainty seemed to engulf everything.

These early results so exhilarated Israeli officials that they talked a big game on where their operation would lead, making several incendiary claims along the way. They boasted of operating in Iranian airspace without hindrance, invited the U.S. to get formally involved with the “elimination” of Tehran’s nuclear weapons program, and anonymously briefed the media that “a multi-faceted misinformation campaign”—in which Donald Trump was an “active participant”—had been conducted “to convince Iran that a strike on its nuclear facilities was not imminent.”

Internationally-wanted war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu forecast on June 15 that Israel’s war on Iran “could certainly” produce regime change, as the government was “very weak,” and that “80% of the people would throw these theological thugs out.”

A hard-hitting response to Netanyahu’s premonitions and Tel Aviv’s military strike quickly arrived from Tehran in the form of a wave of missile attacks. Wreaking unprecedented damage on Tel Aviv and Haifa. The impact on Israeli military installations is difficult to assess due to its strict policy of internal censorship.

The Israel-Iran Ceasefire is a Lie

Andrew Latham

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Key Points and Summary on Iran’s Nuclear Program and Israel – The recent ceasefire between Israel and Iran is a dangerous illusion—a temporary pause, not a resolution.

-Israel’s “Operation Rising Lion,” which successfully degraded Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, has set back Tehran’s breakout time but has not ended its nuclear ambitions.

-The underlying conflict remains unchanged: Israel views a nuclear Iran as an existential threat it cannot tolerate, while Iran sees a bomb as its ultimate guarantee of survival.

The Iran-Israel War Isn’t Over Just Yet

This is not peace; it’s a “long shadow war” that has brushed up against daylight, and the US can no longer pretend a diplomatic solution is just over the horizon.

Iran’s nuclear program has taken a hit. That much is no longer speculation—it’s the judgment of Israeli intelligence, confirmed in fragments by Western officials who speak carefully, but not vaguely. What happened at Fordow wasn’t an accident. What happened at Isfahan wasn’t routine. What happened at Natanz can’t be explained away by power fluctuations or bad luck. Sabotage, precision strikes, cyber disruption—call it what you like, but this was a campaign. And it worked. For now.

Reports suggest Iran’s breakout window has been pushed back—twelve to eighteen months, depending on who you ask. And while that matters, it changes nothing fundamental. These delays, though tactically useful, don’t resolve the underlying problem. Iran hasn’t abandoned its pursuit of a nuclear weapon. It’s been forced to slow down, not stand down. The centrifuges will be replaced. The facilities will be patched up. The enrichment will resume. Everyone involved understands this. No one seriously believes the problem has been solved. The question is what comes next, and who decides how this slow war turns fast.

Between Gaza and Iran, Israel's Hidden War in the West Bank Is Flaring Up

Tom O'Connor

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While much of the world's attention is fixated on Israel's ongoing conflict in the Gaza Strip and its unprecedented direct confrontation with Iran, another front has been quietly boiling over.

Violence is surging in the West Bank, undermining hopes for future Israeli-Palestinian peace and tearing at the already frayed fabrics of Israeli society.

Unrest in this roughly 2,200-square mile territory that includes the disputed holy city of Jerusalem predates the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas. Like Gaza, the West Bank has long been a flashpoint in the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict still serving as the primary catalyst for the region's current crisis.

But an intensification of Israel Defense Forces (IDF) incursions, Palestinian militant activity and violence perpetrated by Israeli settlers seeking to expand territorial holdings considered illegal under international—and sometimes Israeli—law threatens to push the tense situation beyond the brink.

In recent days, Israeli settlers have torched Palestinian villages and even clashed with Israeli security forces in the West Bank, drawing rare criticism from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and far-right allies otherwise largely supportive of settler activity.

While World Watches Iran, Putin Makes Headway in Ukraine

Tom O'Connor

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While the aftermath of the "12-Day War" between Iran and Israel continues to draw international attention, including from the White House, Russian President Vladimir Putin has seized on the opportunity to fuel new momentum for his ongoing war in Ukraine.

As with the conflict in the Middle East, battlefield reports from Europe's deadliest conflict since World War II are notoriously difficult to verify independently. Yet news from the frontlines indicates recent Russian advances into new regions in central Ukraine, as well as a sizeable buildup of forces near the northeastern regional capital of Sumy.

An analysis conducted by the Agence France-Presse news agency, citing data from the Institute for the Study of War, found that Russian forces had seized more land in June than in any month since last November. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian military faced Sunday what it called the largest-scale aerial assault since Russia first launched the war in February 2022.

A torchlit ceremony is held as new recruits are inducted into Ukraine's '144th Special Operations Center' on June 29, 2025, at an undisclosed location in Ukraine. Kostiantyn Liberov/Libkos/Getty Images

Though Moscow's gains remain relatively limited and incremental, they are persistent. And Putin's decision to step up the offensive at a time when the White House's foreign policy focus remains on the Middle East — with President Donald Trump now doubling down on efforts to capitalize on the Iran-Israel ceasefire to seek a truce in Gaza — may indicate a concerted effort to strengthen the Kremlin's position should U.S.-mediated talks ultimately manifest over Ukraine.

"You might expect some small offensives while the U.S.' strategic attention is focused yet again on the Middle East," Amos Fox, retired U.S. Army Colonel serving as fellow at Arizona State University's Future Security Initiative, told Newsweek.

"Putin might use this perceived distraction as an opportunity to obtain further territory that will prove advantageous for Russia at the negotiating table," he added.

Iran Strike Was a Triumph That Showed American Weakness

Hal Brands

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It’s useful to be reminded, occasionally, that there’s only one superpower. Operation Midnight Hammer, the globe-spanning strike against Iran’s nuclear program, was a demonstration of power projection that America’s rivals can only envy. Unfortunately, the operation is also testament to how badly US military power is being strained, and how unserious the nation’s debate on defense strategy has become.

That debate has featured, in recent years, two warring camps. In the first are those who warn that the threat of war with China is rising and that interventions elsewhere make it harder to prepare for that fight. In the second are those who argue that the US has vital stakes outside the western Pacific and that a global power can’t simply quit crucial regions such as the Middle East and Eastern Europe. Oddly, recent events show that both groups have a point.

President Donald Trump may style himself a peacemaker. But in just five months, he managed to fight two Middle Eastern wars. In the spring, he ordered a vicious bombing campaign to halt Houthi attacks in the Red Sea. Last month, the US supported, and ultimately joined, Israel’s war against Iran.

Those decisions caused controversy within a Make America Great Again movement that is often skeptical of Middle Eastern interventions. Yet the attacks nonetheless occurred because the US does have important interests there — preventing an Iranian bomb, beating back grievous challenges to global trade — and no other country can vindicate them when they are challenged.

Trump thus joins that long, bipartisan line of presidents who tried and failed to deprioritize the Middle East. This probably isn’t the last time he’ll send forces surging there. If Iran quickly reconstitutes its nuclear program, the next crisis could be just weeks or months away. But if it’s foolish to think that the Middle East will leave the US alone, it’s also foolish to think that American interventions there come cheap.

Hezbollah’s Hybrid Model Under Strain: Relative Decline and the Evolving Dynamics of Irregular Warfare in Lebanon

Kristian P. Alexander 

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Since its founding in 1985, Hezbollah has stood out as a prototype of the modern hybrid actor. Hezbollah seamlessly blended irregular warfare tactics, conventional capabilities, political participation, and a deep-rooted social service network. In irregular warfare theory, such actors derive their strength from asymmetry, population control, and strategically using legitimacy to rival or undermine state authority. Hezbollah exemplified this model by operating as both a resistance movement and a parallel state, while also enjoying the patronage of powerful regional allies like Iran and Syria.

However, recent developments in late 2024 and early 2025 suggest an emerging, albeit relative, decline in its influence, viewed through the analytical lens of irregular warfare theory. Hezbollah’s operational model, as a hybrid actor, has traditionally enabled it to integrate conventional military capabilities with unconventional tactics, leveraging both state-like functions and clandestine operations. This unique characteristic, once a source of its strength, is now being tested by a confluence of internal and external pressures.

Hybrid Actors and the Theory of Irregular Warfare

As defined by the US Department of Defense, irregular warfare is “a violent struggle among state and non-state actors for legitimacy and influence over the relevant population.” This encompasses a range of activities including insurgency, terrorism, sabotage, subversion, and influence operations. Hybrid actors like Hezbollah complicate this further by incorporating both irregular and conventional elements: they engage in kinetic operations, field military units, control territory, and simultaneously participate in political systems and governance.

Hezbollah’s operational advantage has historically stemmed from its ability to function across these domains. It built local legitimacy through social services, ideological messaging, and armed resistance, all while maintaining deep vertical integration with regional networks. Irregular warfare theory also suggests that such dominance is fragile: the legitimacy, mobility, and sustainability of hybrid actors are vulnerable to internal fracturing, external pressure, and evolving political contexts.

S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies

Counter Terrorist Trends and Analysis (CTTA), June 2025, v. 17, no. 4 

The Reactions of Militant Groups in Afghanistan and Pakistan to Hayat Tahrir al-Sham’s Takeover of Syria

'Operation Sindoor’: Will India’s Military Strikes in Pakistan Curb Cross-Border Terrorism?

The Remaking of Sectarian Fault-lines in Pakistan: Why Violence in Kurram Tribal District Matters?

Bangladesh's Evolving Security Crisis: The Rise of Religious Extremism Amid Political Transition

Russia Pounds Kyiv with Largest Aerial Attack Since Ukraine War Began

Callum Sutherland

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Russia has bombarded Kyiv with the largest aerial attack since the beginning of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Overnight on Thursday, Moscow launched 539 drone and 11 missile strikes that struck nearly every district of the Ukrainian capital, injuring at least 23 people. Air raid sirens rung out continuously for eight hours, coming to an end at around 5 a.m. local time.

“It was a brutal, sleepless night,” Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky said on X.

Some 478 Russian airstrike “devices” were damaged or shot down during the attack, according to a statement from the Ukrainian Air Force released on Telegram.

A Ukrainian drone on Friday targeted a power substation near Moscow. Two people were injured in the attack, according to local governor Andrei Vorobyov.

The Russian strikes came hours after President Donald Trump held a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday night. “I’m very disappointed with the conversation I had today with President Putin, because I don't think he’s there… I'm just saying I don’t think he’s looking to stop, and that’s too bad,” the President told reporters early Friday.

The U.S. President is scheduled to hold a call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky today.

Zelensky added in his Friday post on X that the regions of Dnipro, Sumy, Kharkiv, and Chernihiv were also targeted in the overnight attacks. “All of this is clear evidence that without truly large-scale pressure, Russia will not change its dumb, destructive behavior,” he said.

How Trump Can Finish the Job in Iran—and the Middle East

James Jeffrey

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Since taking office, U.S. President Donald Trump has gone for gold in the Middle East. He launched a dramatic military operation against Iran’s nuclear program, building on the broader dismantling of the country’s regional power. He then brokered a cease-fire between Israel and Iran and indicated a willingness to talk with the Iranian government. These outcomes have provided hope that if the United States can focus on the essential—the continued containment and further weakening of Iran—and avoid overcommitment to myriad other regional policy objectives, the Middle East might finally have the stability and normalcy it has long lacked.

But the region has seen similar optimism: after the Yom Kippur War in 1974, the defeat of Iran and then Iraq from 1988 to 1991, and after the takedown of the Taliban in 2001. In each case, the Middle East had reached a critical point of danger, prompting successful American intervention, followed by diplomatic campaigns to lock in these moments of stability. The Camp David accords, for instance, normalized relations between Egypt and Israel, and Israel and Jordan later signed a peace treaty of their own.

Yet after brief periods of peace, the region has always devolved back into chaos. First came the Iranian revolution and Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. The Oslo accords, which set up a peace process between the Israelis and the Palestinians, ultimately collapsed after 2000. The American invasion of Afghanistan after the September 11 attacks, like the Soviet one before it, stretched on for years, and it ultimately ended with the Taliban back in power. The invasion of Iraq heralded two decades of conflict, including indirect fighting with Iran and direct combat against the al-Qaeda offshoot the Islamic State, or ISIS.

This history represents decades-long American policy failures. For years, the United States has managed to secure the Middle East from hostile dominance, but containment policy there differed dramatically from that in Asia and Europe. Asian and European states eventually established stable domestic institutions and regional cooperation systems, leaving the United States to focus on organizing collective security against China and Russia. In the Middle East, however, the United States has had to intervene repeatedly in internal and regional conflicts that undercut stability and containment—even after the Soviet Union passed from the scene.

The U.S. Is Switching Sides

Anne Applebaum

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The American president wrote, “Vladimir, STOP!” on his Truth Social account in April, but the Russian president did not halt his offensive in eastern Ukraine. The Ukrainian president called for an unconditional cease-fire in May, but the Russians did not agree to stop attacking Ukrainian civilians from the air. Donald Trump repeatedly promised, during his campaign, that he would end the war “in one day,” but the war is not over. He spoke to Vladimir Putin yesterday, and Putin responded with more drones and missiles than ever before. This morning, parts of Kyiv are burning.

The invasion of Ukraine does not merely continue. It accelerates. Almost every night, the Russians destroy more of Ukraine from the air: apartment buildings, factories, infrastructure, and people. On the ground, Ukraine’s top commander has said that the Russians are preparing a new summer offensive, with 695,000 troops spread across the front line.

Russian soldiers also continue to be wounded or killed at extraordinary rates, with between 35,000 and 45,000 casualties every month, while billions of dollars’ worth of Russian equipment are destroyed every week by Ukrainian drones. The Russian economy suffers from high inflation and is heading for a recession. But Putin is not looking for a cease-fire, and he does not want to negotiate. Why? Because he believes that he can win. Thanks to the actions of the U.S. government, he still thinks that he can conquer all of Ukraine.

Putin sees what everyone else sees: Slowly, the U.S. is switching sides. True, Trump occasionally berates Putin, or makes sympathetic noises toward Ukrainians, as he did last week when he seemed to express interest in a Ukrainian journalist who said that her husband was in the military. Trump also appeared to enjoy being flattered at the NATO summit, where European leaders made a decision, hailed as historic, to further raise defense spending. But thanks to quieter decisions by members of his own administration, people whom he has appointed, the American realignment with Russia and against Ukraine and Europe is gathering pace—not merely in rhetoric but in reality.

Trump Is Breaking American Intelligence

David V. Gioe and Michael V. Hayden

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“Speak plainly!” Russian President Vladimir Putin snapped at his foreign intelligence chief, Sergei Naryshkin, at a televised security council meeting on the eve of his shambolic full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Naryshkin was visibly nervous. Once he had finally stammered out his support for recognizing the Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk as independent states—the words Putin was waiting for—he was abruptly told to sit down, like an unprepared pupil flubbing an oral exam. Naryshkin’s apparent ambivalence about embracing Putin’s pretext for the war was likely due to the lack of solid intelligence that Putin’s “special military operation” would return Kyiv to Moscow’s imperial orbit. But rather than air any misgivings, Naryshkin chose compliance and conformity. The intelligence may have been hazy, but the risks of contradicting Putin were clear.

Putin’s unwavering belief that Ukraine would swiftly capitulate represents the greatest intelligence failure of his quarter-century tenure in power. He was furious when his invasion did not unfold as he envisioned, casting blame on and even arresting some senior security officials. But Putin had laid his own trap. Like many authoritarians, he had fostered conditions in which subordinates told him only what he wanted to hear. Intelligence, in its best form, encourages political leaders to ask the right questions, challenge their assumptions, and consider what might go wrong. Although intelligence officers have a professional responsibility to adapt to the interests, foreign policy priorities, and preferred briefing style of the leaders they serve, sometimes the highest form of service an intelligence agency can provide is to disabuse its political masters of a strongly held but false idea.

Japan’s New ‘Railgun’ Summed Up in 4 Words

Georgia Gilholy

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DAHLGREN, Va. (Jan. 31, 2008) Photograph taken from a high-speed video camera during a record-setting firing of an electromagnetic railgun (EMRG) at Naval Surface Warfare Center, Dahlgren, Va., on January 31, 2008, firing at 10.64MJ (megajoules) with a muzzle velocity of 2520 meters per second. The Office of Naval Research’s EMRG program is part of the Department of the Navy’s Science and Technology investments, focused on developing new technologies to support Navy and Marine Corps war fighting needs. This photograph is a frame taken from a high-speed video camera. U.S. Navy Photograph (Released)

Key Points and Summary on Japan’s New Railgun – Japan has unveiled a ship-mounted prototype of an electromagnetic railgun, marking a significant step in developing a counter to China’s growing hypersonic missile arsenal.

-The new weapon, spotted on the test vessel JS Asuka, is capable of firing projectiles at Mach 6.5. This development comes as Japan faces dwindling stockpiles of expensive traditional interceptor missiles, like the SM-6 and Patriot, and delays in US programs.

-By pursuing a railgun, which fires rounds at a fraction of the cost of a missile, Tokyo is investing in a high-volume, sustainable defense system designed to counter saturation attacks from regional adversaries.

-Summed up in 4 Words: A Possible Game Changer?

Japan’s Railgun Leap Sends Strategic Warning Shot at China’s Hypersonic Edge

Japan’s investment in new weapons technology is pricey, but it could be a vital counter to China’s growing hypersonic missile arsenal.

Model Replaces Scrapped U.S. Version

The US Can’t Fight Two Wars in East Asia — and Should Stop Planning Like It Can

Ju Hyung Kim

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The US and its allies aren’t ready for a war on two fronts, but we’re acting like we are.

A recent Atlantic Council report, A Rising Nuclear Double-Threat in East Asia, has rightly sparked debate on how to prepare for simultaneous conflicts with China and North Korea.

Based on tabletop exercises known as Guardian Tiger I and II, the report urges a sweeping overhaul of US command arrangements and alliance coordination. These are welcome discussions.

But as someone who’s interviewed more than 60 Japanese, American, and South Korean defense officials during my doctoral research, I believe the report’s prescriptions often rest on overly optimistic assumptions — about industrial capacity, alliance cohesion, and the feasibility of truly “integrated” responses.

Wishful Planning Meets Wartime Reality

Chief among the report’s recommendations is a call to revise the Unified Command Plan so the US can effectively coordinate simultaneous wars in Korea and around Taiwan.

But this assumes a level of military readiness that simply does not exist.

The US defense industrial base cannot currently replenish critical munitions — such as JASSMs, GMLRS, and Patriot interceptors — at rates needed to sustain even one prolonged, high-intensity conflict.

In a war with North Korea alone, stocks would be depleted rapidly. Add China to the equation, and the US risks an operational collapse.

Rather than assuming we can fight and win two wars at once, the US should adopt a more realistic strategy of sequenced escalation dominance: prioritizing one theater for immediate, full-spectrum support, while holding the line in the other until reinforcements or coalition partners can surge.

The End of the Age of NGOs?

Sarah Bush and Jennifer Hadden

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The 1990s were a golden age for nongovernmental organizations. It was a time when well-known groups such as Amnesty International, Greenpeace, and Oxfam grew their budgets and expanded their global reach. Between 1990 and 2000, the number of international NGOs—not-for-profit groups that are largely independent from government and work in multiple countries in pursuit of the public good—increased by 42 percent. Thousands of organizations were founded. Many of these organizations championed liberal causes, such as LGBTQ rights and gun control. Conservative groups emerged, too, with rival policy agendas.

The Fantasy of a Grand Bargain Between America and China

William Hurst and Peter Trubowitz

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Hope springs eternal in the world of great-power diplomacy. Even today, in the throes of a norm-busting trade war with China, there is talk of some kind of leader-to-leader grand bargain between U.S. President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping. Trump says he “would love to get a deal with China.” Xi, who has responded to Trump’s tariff broadside in a measured and targeted way, has left the door open for a negotiated settlement. Such a breakthrough in U.S.-Chinese relations might sound alluring at this particularly fraught moment, but the history of the strategic rivalry between China and the United States and each country’s internal politics make the likelihood of reaching one remote.

Since 1950, China and the United States have pivoted from cooperation to confrontation and back again, several times. They have done so for geopolitical and domestic political reasons. As a rule, they have been able to cooperate on security only when facing a clear and present danger from a common enemy. U.S. President Richard Nixon’s historic visit to China in 1972, for example, led to a series of agreements aimed at containing the Soviet Union. And the two countries have managed economic cooperation only when both were governed by domestic coalitions that supported the expansion of international trade, as during the 1990s and early 2000s. Cooperation across both security and economic affairs, meanwhile, has always been elusive.

Today, there is nothing—internationally or domestically—that would suggest this is a propitious moment for China and the United States to transcend their differences in either the security or economic realm. Both countries are currently governed by strident nationalist coalitions, with an antiglobalization backlash dominating domestic politics. There is also no common security threat drawing the two countries together. Indeed, they are more likely to find themselves on opposite sides (or at least at orthogonal purposes) regarding international conflicts, such as those between Russia and Ukraine and between Israel and Iran. Only once in the past hundred years, at the height of the Cold War in the 1950s and 1960s, did China and the United States find themselves completely at loggerheads on both dimensions of statecraft. With today’s environment becoming more like that one, it is hard to imagine either leader meaningfully resetting relations or addressing any of the major issues dividing them.

Pentagon Is Reviewing Which Countries Receive U.S. Weapons

Eric Schmitt

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The Trump administration’s decision to pause the delivery of some air defense interceptors and precision-guided munitions to Ukraine is part of a broader global review of where the Pentagon is sending such weapons, the Defense Department said on Wednesday.

Pentagon officials said on Tuesday that the administration was withholding Patriot air defense systems, precision artillery rounds and missiles that the Ukrainian Air Force fires from American-made F-16 jets, citing concerns that U.S. weapons stocks were dwindling.

On Wednesday, Sean Parnell, the Pentagon’s chief spokesman, explained that the review extends to all countries the United States sends weapons, not just Ukraine, but he declined to say whether the military had paused the delivery of weapons to other countries.

“What we’ve done here at the Department of Defense is create a framework to analyze what munitions we’re sending where to help the president and secretary of defense make decisions,” Mr. Parnell said at his first news conference in nearly four months.

“We can’t give weapons to everybody all around the world,” Mr. Parnell said. “We have to look out for America and defending our homeland and our troops around the world.”

Pentagon officials said on Wednesday that President Trump could ultimately order all or some of the paused munitions to be sent to Ukraine, depending on the results of the department’s review.

American bombs, missiles and artillery shells have been critical in Ukraine’s efforts to hold off increasingly intense attacks from Russia, at a particularly perilous moment in the three years and four months since Russia’s army invaded.

Only last week, after meeting with President Volodymyr Zelensky on the sidelines of a NATO meeting in The Hague, Mr. Trump said he was open to selling more weapons to Ukraine. But by that time, the Pentagon was already planning the pause.

Earth, Sun, and Water: The Elements that Fuel Hamas’s Tunnels

Daphné Richemond-Barak

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How did Hamas manage the longest underground warfare campaign in history? A lawsuit recently filed in the District Court for the District of Columbia tells the untold story of how Hamas’s tunnels were sustained by and intertwined with civilian infrastructure — enabling the survivability and continuity of the chain of command even under significant military pressure.

Given Israel’s ongoing military operation in the Gaza Strip, Hamas’s tunnel complex and sophisticated infrastructure continues to be in the limelight.

Any discussion of Gaza’s future is woefully incomplete without addressing Hamas’s longtime underground, cross-border network of tunnels. This tunnel system has enabled Hamas to sustain its longest-ever war with Israel.

While the Israel Defense Forces was able to destroy cross-border tunnels dug between Gaza and Israel during the 2014 Gaza war, tunnel systems inside Gaza continued to expand and improve. These underground systems crisscross Gaza, reach hundreds of miles long and several floors down, and host all types of military equipment – from rocket launching pads to command-and-control centers, weapon manufacturing infrastructure, ammunition caches, and living quarters.

The complaint alleges that the construction of this enormous underground military system was made possible via energy projects financed by international and U.S.-taxpayer funded institutions, including the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation and the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency.

This jarring reality is brought to light by nearly two hundred families of American victims of the October 7th attacks, who accuse Palestinian-American billionaire Bashar Masri of knowingly providing substantial assistance to Hamas’s terror infrastructure in Gaza that carried out the deadliest attack in Israel’s history.

The US Aimed at Iran But Might Have Hit Central Asia

James Durso

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The U.S. and Israeli attacks last month on Iran to “obliterate” its nuclear program may have hit another target: Central Asia’s interests in accessing the large Iranian market and using Iran’s transport links to trade with the wider world.

Iran’s “Look East” policy was launched by then-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2005 to improve relations with Russia, China, and India to counter Western pressure over Iran’s nuclear program and improve the economy. It was continued by Ahmadinejad’s successors and now includes Central Asia, a region with which Iran has had numerous recent engagements.

On May 15, 2025, a free trade agreement between Iran and the Eurasian Economic Union (Russia, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Armenia, and Kyrgyzstan) came into force.

In June 2023, Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev met Iran’s then-President Ebrahim Raisi and Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The 2023 meeting netted cooperation pacts in agriculture, energy, customs affairs, sports, science, technology and innovation, cultural exchanges, health care, Chabahar port, the environment, industry, and tourism.

The June 2023 meetings followed a March 2023 visit by Uzbekistan’s foreign minister, who met Iran’s minister of foreign affairs and minister of industry, mines, and trade. Afterward, the parties announced efforts to increase trade turnover, and to foster business links and people-to-people ties. The ministerial meetings built on the September 2022 visit by Raisi to Uzbekistan that produced 17 agreements in areas such as energy, transport, and agriculture, and discussed how to increase trade.

In September 2022, Raisi had declared that improving relations with Central Asia was “one of the first priorities of the foreign policy of the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

Molten Visions, Broken Blades: The Challenge of Forecasting the Character of Future Combat

Antonio Salinas

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Intelligence professionals, military officers, and historians alike have often proven to be poor prophets. Our predictions of future wars are rarely accurate, our expectations of those wars breaking on the anvil of combat. However, we have no choice but to continue trying to imagine and forecast what the future character of war may hold on those battlefields that have yet to bear a name.

In the intellectual pursuit of forecasting the character of future combat, there is a tendency to be influenced by subjective biases stemming from operational experiences and fear. Academics and security practitioners alike craft and shape conceptual molds influenced by experience, observation, and doctrine. This mold is then cast and made ready to pour in the molten steel of ideas, theories, and simulations. There is then a hope that the hardened weapon that emerges will match the reality of future combat. Many envision casting a blade: sharp, sleek, and suited for the wars to come.

However, the furnace of battle seldom conforms to our preconceived molds.

When a war comes, its character is not carefully poured—it is struck. Hammered by terrain, chaos, fear, and friction, it shatters the carefully crafted forms. Instead, the furnaces of war splash the molten metal from our chosen molds, spilling onto the floor of reality in combat. These drops of molten steel then shape themselves into blades of their own choosing. They are not the meticulously crafted blades our molds predicted. Instead, they take on deadly, jagged shapes formed by chance and contact.

Past Attempts at Military Forecasting

The history of the United States’ failed forecasts persists in the remnants of past overly optimistic military thinking. Consider General William Westmoreland’s confident prediction in the late 1960s:

Army Creating New Artificial Intelligence-Focused Occupational Specialty and Officer Field

Steve Beynon

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The Army is laying the groundwork for a sweeping expansion of its artificial intelligence capabilities, creating new career fields as the service races to prepare for what top officials see as a tech-driven future fight.

Service planners are moving to establish a new enlisted military occupational specialty focused on artificial intelligence and machine learning, designated 49B, according to internal service documents. A parallel track for warrant officers is also in the works, aimed at building out a cadre of technical experts embedded across formations.

In addition, the Army plans to formalize an area of concentration for officers, opening the door for troops across branches, such as cyber and signal, to build a full career in AI-related fields without leaving their core communities.

The service aims for the new roles to provide "the needed agility by integrating processes through dedicated [artificial intelligence and machine learning] operations for evolving mission objectives," an internal memo reviewed by Military.com said.

It would be the first time in more than a year that the Army has created a new occupation and formalized career path. In 2023, it created talent acquisition specialists, or 42T, and a parallel warrant officer role to better identify applicants to become recruiters, with the first cohort of soldiers graduating the course for the field last summer.

It's unclear when the new AI roles will be finalized.

The initiative builds on efforts launched in 2018 under then-Army Secretary Mark Esper, when the service stood up the Army AI Task Force. That eventually evolved into the Army Artificial Intelligence Integration Center, which has since been tasked with bridging the service's widening technology gap.

Can You Privatize the Military-Industrial Complex?

Casey Carlisle 

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Though it’s rare to hear someone praise the military-industrial-congressional complex, it is only the latter component that masks a praiseworthy feat. Markets—also known as “people” voluntarily exchanging—have devised the most efficient methods for producing weapons in the United States, but Congress—or the government, in general—is what hampers the sale of these weapons. The U.S. is the world’s largest arms exporter, but the international weapons market would benefit further if the U.S. regime had nothing to do with it. Ensuring the separation of administration and armaments would benefit not only Americans but virtually every person on the planet. When it comes to manufacturing weapons, American industrial prowess is unrivaled, but, as Robert Higgs explains, the level of corruption also appears to be unmatched:

It is regrettable in any event for people to suffer under the weight of a state and its military apparatus, but the present arrangement—a system of military-economic fascism as instantiated in the United States by the [military-industrial-congressional complex]—is worse than full-fledged military-economic socialism. In the latter, people are oppressed by being taxed, conscripted, and regimented, but they are not co-opted and corrupted by joining forces with their rapacious rulers; a clear line separates them from the predators on the “dark side.” In the former, however, the line becomes blurred, and a substantial number of people actively hop back and forth across it…

How can the military-industrial-congressional complex become less loathsome? Make it less fascistic; remove democracy’s corrupting influence by extricating Congress from the complex. When a foreign government wishes to purchase weapons from an American manufacturer, it must first gain approval from the State Department, Congress, the Department of Defense, or even from the president. Why is that? Defenders of the status quo screech the tired refrain of “national security,” but as John Tamny makes clear, there’s no way of guaranteeing a good’s final destination:

It’s too easily forgotten by the deep and not-so-deep in thought that production is all about the getting. Goods and services always flow. Everywhere. Without regard to embargoes and sanctions. To be clear, if you’re producing, you’re getting.

Army experiments with integrating attack drones into artillery formations

MEGHANN MYERS
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The Army has a gap to close between long-range precision weapons and indirect fires at closer ranges, so they’re looking to attack drones to fill in the mid-range capabilities, the service’s vice chief of staff said Wednesday.

The 25th Infantry Division’s artillery command is testing out a new structure that pairs first-person view attack drones with traditional systems, Gen. James Mingus told an audience during an event at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“There's a belief out there that the singular way in which we approach fires, going back to the validity and use of cannon artillery, you know, is still valid,” he said. “We're imagining a future where instead of it just being all tube,” there will be a High Mobility Artillery Rocket System battalion, an M777 howitzer battalion, “and then in that third battalion, it'll be a combination of mortars, 105 mm, launched defects, loitering munitions, first-person drones, that makes up the delta for the longer range and the cannon artillery.”

The Army has been simulating different battlefield scenarios using versions of this configuration, maneuvering as a division or corps, he added.

They’re also simulating how they’ll integrate their forthcoming long-raise precision weapon, Precision Strike Missile, or PrSM.

“That won't be here for another couple years,” Mingus said, as a replacement to the existing Army Tactical Missile System, with a range of 1000 kilometers compared to the ATACM’s 300.

“Think about the difference there. You know, how does that change the battlefield architecture and the battlefield geometry for our war fighters?” he said. “We can do that today under live conditions without actually having to put that stuff in the field.”