Water has surrounded us’: The slow death of Pakistan’s Indus delta

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Salt crusts crackle underfoot as Habibullah Khatti walks to his mother’s grave to say a final goodbye before he abandons his parched island village on Pakistan’s Indus delta. Seawater intrusion into the delta, where the Indus River meets the Arabian Sea in the south of the country, has triggered the collapse of farming and fishing communities. The saline water has surrounded us from all four sides,” said Khatti from Abdullah Mirbahar village in the town of Kharo Chan, about 15km (9 miles) from where the river empties into the sea.

As fish stocks fell, the 54-year-old turned to tailoring, until that too became impossible, with only four of the 150 households remaining. In the evening, an eerie silence takes over the area,” he said, as stray dogs wandered through the deserted wooden and bamboo houses. Kharo Chan once comprised about 40 villages, but most have disappeared under rising seawater. The town’s population fell from 26,000 in 1981 to 11,000 in 2023, according to census data.

Khatti is preparing to move his family to nearby Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city, which is swelling with economic migrants, including people from the Indus delta. The Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum, which advocates for fishing communities, estimates that tens of thousands of people have been displaced from the delta’s coastal districts. However, more than 1.2 million people have been displaced from the overall Indus delta region in the last two decades, according to a study published in March by the Jinnah Institute, a think tank led by a former climate change minister.

The downstream flow of water into the delta has decreased by 80 percent since the 1950s, as a result of irrigation canals, hydropower dams and the effects of climate change on glacial and snow melt, according to a 2018 study by the US-Pakistan Center for Advanced Studies in Water. That has led to devastating seawater intrusion. The salinity of the water has risen by about 70 percent since 1990, making it impossible to grow crops and severely affecting the shrimp and crab populations.

Hackers, secret cables and security fears: The explosive fight over China's new embassy in the UK

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The sheet of paper says "Wanted Person" at the top. Below is a photo of a young woman, a headshot that might have been taken in a studio. She looks directly at the camera, smiling with her teeth showing, and her dark, shoulder-length hair is neatly brushed. At the bottom, in red, are the words: "A reward of one million Hong Kong dollars," together with a UK phone number. To earn the money, about £95,000, there is a simple instruction: "Provide information on this wanted person and the related crime or take her to Chinese embassy". The woman from the photo is standing in front of me. She shudders when she looks at the building.

We are outside an imposing structure that was once home to the Royal Mint and which China hopes it can develop into a new mega-embassy in London, replacing the far smaller premises it has occupied since 1877. The new premises, opposite the Tower of London, is already being patrolled by Chinese security guards. The building is ringed with CCTV cameras too. Carmen, who is 30, fled Hong Kong in 2021 as pro-democracy activists in the territory were being arrested. She argues that the UK should not allow China's "authoritarian regime" to have its new embassy in such a symbolic location. 

One of her fears is that China, with such a huge embassy, could harass political opponents and could even hold them in the building. There are also worries, among some dissidents, that its location - very near London's financial district - could be an espionage risk. Then there is the opposition from residents who say it would pose a security risk to them. The plans had previously been rejected by the local council, but the decision now lies with the government, and senior ministers have signalled they are in favour if minor adjustments are made to the plan.

The site is sprawling, at 20,000 square metres, and if it goes ahead it would mark the biggest embassy in Europe. But would it also really bring the dangers that its opponents fear? The biggest embassy in Europe China bought the old Royal Mint Court for £255m in 2018. The area has layer upon layer of history: across the road is the Tower, parts of it were built by William the Conqueror. For centuries kings and queens lived there. The plan itself involves a cultural centre and housing for 200 staff, but in the basement, behind security doors, there are also rooms with no identified use on the plans.

China's PLA celebrates 98th anniversary amid President Xi's modernisation push, anti-graft drive

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China's PLA, the world's largest and rapidly modernising military with a unique status of functioning under the command of the ruling Communist Party, Friday celebrated its 98th anniversary, amid continuing anti-corruption drive by President Xi Jinping. Founded on August 1, 1927, as the military arm of the Communist Party of China (CPC) during an armed resistance against the then-ruling nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) continues to function under the leadership of the party. The "Party commands the gun" remained the recurring theme under successive leaders.

The party's grip over the PLA became more pronounced after Xi took over the leadership in 2012, emphasising complete control of the military under the party leadership. As military budgets expanded at a massive scale, corruption emerged as a major issue for the world's largest military, with over two million troops. China has emerged as the second-largest defence spender after the US, with its defence budget this year amounting to USD 250 billion. Xi, who heads the party, the military, and the Presidency, has carried out anti-corruption campaign, purging, punishing and sacking scores of generals since 2013.

In June, Miao Hua, a top general who oversaw the PLA's ideology, was sacked as a member of the Central Military Commission (CMC), the overall high command of the military headed by Xi. Miao was removed as a member of the national legislature. His dismissal was preceded by the removal of two defence ministers - Li Shangfu and Wei Fenghe. Also, He Weidong, the second-ranking vice-chairman of the CMC and one of the 24 members of the Communist Party's Politburo, has not been seen in public since the end of the annual legislative session in March.

In June, it was announced that Vice Admiral Li Hanjun, the navy's chief of staff, had been expelled from the national legislature, a sign that he is also facing disciplinary action. At least 16 military lawmakers have been removed from the National People's Congress (NPC). Under Xi's leadership, the PLA has deepened its reforms to emerge as a leaner military.A decade ago, Xi ordered the reorganisation of the military administration structure and military command system, and the building of an efficient, modern military capable of succeeding in information-age warfare.

Going Soft on China Could Be a Hard Lesson

Hal Brands

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In his first term as president, Donald Trump made the new cold war consensus on China — the broad bipartisan agreement that Beijing is America’s most dangerous competitor and must be dealt with as such. He seems bent on breaking it in his second. Trump is barreling toward a bad bargain with Beijing. He’s weakening the US position in the fight for global primacy. And he’s using his dominance of the Republican Party to mute opposition to this dangerous course. China policy was perhaps the most historic achievement of Trump’s first term. For a quarter-century, US officials had argued that Beijing could be made a responsible stakeholder in the American-led order. 

Trump and his aides overturned that shopworn assumption, recognizing that an increasingly autocratic, assertive China sought to “shape a world antithetical to US values and interests.” They enacted policies — chip curbs on Huawei, increased arms sales to Taiwan, and the revival of the Quad and investment in other US partnerships — that laid the foundation for President Joe Biden’s subsequent approach to Beijing. Yet Trump himself was an ambivalent cold warrior, principally because of his transactional ethos and his desire to get along personally with Chinese leader Xi Jinping. 

So Trump oscillated, from 2017 to early 2020, between waging great-power competition and chasing a Sino-American bargain. Only with Covid, the presidency-killing pandemic for which Trump blamed Beijing, did the China hawks in his administration conclusively gain the upper hand. Trump’s second term started promisingly, with the appointment of “super hawks” like Secretary of State Marco Rubio and National Security Adviser Mike Waltz. It has been bad news ever since. Trump overplayed his hand, in April, by imposing tariffs that spiraled into a de facto trade embargo.

Gone are the super hawks: Trump removed Waltz, as well as a key National Security Council official overseeing the technology portfolio. Rubio has distinguished himself with his utter fealty to Trump. An unconstrained president began rolling back new export controls and other curbs on the tech relationship. In mid-July, Trump approved the export of Nvidia’s high-powered H20 chips. That unilateral concession will boost China’s AI innovation, intelligence and military capabilities. It has already sent the signal that America’s export control architecture is up for negotiation.

Thailand-Cambodia conflict: legacy politics and premeditated escalation

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The eruption of fighting between Thailand and Cambodia on 24 July may appear to have been sudden, but it was neither abrupt nor unforeseen. It was the product of a calculated build-up and was shaped as much by domestic politics and legacy ambitions as by maps and military strategy. On 28 July, the two countries agreed to a ceasefire, with breaches reported on 29 July. Throughout late 2024, Cambodia had been quietly upgrading access routes near disputed or strategically important border areas. In improving access, Cambodia was repeating its earlier tactics of shifting facts on the ground under the pretence of civilian or infrastructure development.

At the heart of the escalation are two entrenched political dynasties, Thailand’s Shinawatras and Cambodia’s Hun family. Once bound by personal and economic ties, the relationship has since fractured, with both parties using the border standoff to consolidate power and project strength. While a Cambodian protest in February at Prasat Ta Muen Thom is often cited as the spark of recent tensions, signs of escalation appeared months earlier. Military posturing has intensified on both sides, with Thai intelligence reportedly flagging increased Cambodian troop activity near Chong Bok, suggesting the confrontation may be not merely reactive but part of a longer-term strategy.

Data collected by ASPI analysts based on open-source intelligence identified 33 escalatory events attributed to Cambodia, compared with 14 attributed to Thailand, alongside nine joint de-escalatory efforts. While this article tracks military mobilisation on both sides, the limited availability of Cambodian reporting has restricted a comprehensive assessment of the conflict’s full dynamics. While Cambodia has been actively framing the transformation of Preah Vihear province—a border province home to the Preah Vihear temple, the subject of longstanding disputes—as economic revival through infrastructure, field observations suggest a dual-purpose shift. 

Roadworks within or adjacent to Preah Vihear and troop movements near key areas coincide with major road upgrades—linking Phnom Penh to border flashpoints once considered remote. The locations that have been improved in recent years are directly tied to military positioning and strategic hilltops or access routes and drastically expand fortified Cambodian positions atop the plateau. These positions allow the Cambodian army to operate on level ground and, in some cases, from above the Thai army—a drastic tactical shift along much of the border.

America Must Prepare for Chinese “Space Stalking”

Brian Chow

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When General B. Chance Saltzman, US Space Force Chief of Space Operations, unveiled the Competitive Endurance theory on May 7, 2023, he made a prescient statement: “We’ve seen a demonstration of a satellite grabbed by another satellite’s robotic arm and pulled out of its mission orbit, and it doesn’t stop at tests.” That warning resonates even more today. Over the past decade, I have studied this so-called space stalking threat—focusing on how China and Russia have advanced this anti-satellite (ASAT) capability under the guise of dual-use rendezvous spacecraft, and how the United States must counter it.

Currently, these space stalkers can follow US satellites at uncomfortably close ranges during peacetime. With a command from the ground, they could disable or relocate American satellites with minimal debris and limited international outcry. Under Gen. Saltzman’s leadership, the Space Force has commendably began to take long-neglected critical steps to confront this threat. But the reality is sobering: US preparedness in space has been outpaced for many years. As a result, late readiness remains the Achilles’ heel in countering space stalking.

Given that Gen. Saltzman is America’s strongest asset in deterring and defending against the space stalking threat, I propose a set of corrective measures for his consideration and that of other senior leaders—building on his foundational and ongoing work—to ensure timely readiness. Four years ago, then–Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley testified that Chinese President Xi Jinping had challenged the People’s Liberation Army to accelerate plans to seize Taiwan from 2035 to 2027. 

Based on public data, we estimated that within several years, China could deploy approximately 200 space stalkers capable of disabling around 100 of the West’s most critical satellites—severely degrading the space architecture that supports US military, civil, and commercial functions in both wartime and peacetime. Such an attack would seriously undermine any credible US intervention in a Taiwan crisis by neutralizing key satellite capabilities for early warning, communications, navigation, and surveillance.

Peace Negotiations in Ukraine Haven’t Failed. They Haven’t Really Started.

Samuel Charap

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Donald Trump is disappointed with Vladimir Putin. “The talk doesn’t mean anything,” Mr. Trump has said of his phone calls with Russia’s president about ending the war on Ukraine. “We’ll have a great conversation,” he told the BBC. “I’ll say: ‘That’s good, I think we’re close to getting it done,’ and then he’ll knock down a building in Kyiv.” This frustration has translated into additional support for Ukraine and vows of more pressure on Russia. Mr. Trump announced last week that the United States would sell weapons to European nations, which would ship them to Ukraine, and threatened to impose “very severe” tariffs if Russia does not agree to a cease-fire within 50 days.

Mr. Trump seems to have come to the conclusion that Mr. Putin is the barrier to the peace in Ukraine that Mr. Trump has promised he will deliver. That despite visits to Moscow by Mr. Trump’s special envoy, exchanges of terse proposals and several phone calls between Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin, the Russian president has not merely continued his invasion, he has accelerated it. Mr. Trump may be right: Mr. Putin may indeed think that he does not need to compromise, that he can still have his way in Ukraine if he keeps fighting. But if Mr. Trump believes that diplomacy has been tried and has failed, he is mistaken. 

A few phone calls and a couple of visits are not enough to end a war. And no one — maybe not even Mr. Putin himself — knows what he would accept if he were presented with a real negotiation process that required compromises from all sides. Until we test him with such a process, we cannot be sure that he is determined to fight on in any circumstances. Historically, negotiations to resolve major conflicts have been painstaking and protracted. The Good Friday Agreement in 1998, which ended the bloodshed known as the Troubles in Northern Ireland, took almost two years of direct negotiations — and those negotiations took place only after years of groundwork and preparatory discussions. 

After the Arab-Israel war of 1973, Henry Kissinger spent months flying back and forth from Egypt to Israel, and Israel to Syria, in order to narrow the gaps between countries that had fought two wars in less than six years. The term “shuttle diplomacy” was coined to describe his dogged approach. The armistice to end the Korean War took 575 meetings over two years to finalise. These examples underscore the need for Mr. Trump to empower a professional team of negotiators to engage the parties regularly. American mediators could use Mr. Kissinger’s shuttle model, or they could lead talks in a third country with Russian and Ukrainian delegations permanently stationed there.

Managing Multiple Multipolarities: Evolving interstate relations in the Asia-Pacific

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The international system will be neither unipolar nor bipolar in the foreseeable future. Nowhere is this fact truer than in the Asia-Pacific. While the United States would, of course, remain central to world affairs given its military, economic, and technological preponderance, it is unlikely to have the same desire or the capacity to be the singular pole with the strongest footprint in every regional theatre. The vacuum created by a relatively reduced American role is likely to be filled by China to some extent. It certainly has the ambition and the financial capability to step up its game. Through mostly economic bilateral and multilateral arrangements, China is increasing its presence across the world, and the subregions of the Asia-Pacific in particular. 

Meanwhile, several other regional countries are also rising to prominence, making the contemporary international order multipolar. Every pole or contender to that position, however, visualises different benefits of multipolarity. This report is an attempt at understanding the multiple views of multipolarity in three important players in the Asia-Pacific – China, India, and Indonesia. These three countries have been chosen for their demographic, geographical, economic, military, and political clout, as well as their potential to exert major influence on the region and the global order.

While the United States sees it as a way of unburdening itself of its financial commitments to the security of European and Asian allies, China sees it as an opportunity to position itself (together with Russia) as “stabilizing forces in a complex and turbulent world,” stabilizing forces in a complex and turbulent world,” to enhance its global standing and counterbalance US containment. In fact, by framing multipolarity in language of interdependence, autonomy and mutual respect, China seeks to create solidarity with the countries of the Global South, who support multipolarity because they want to ensure that no single superpower dominates the international discourse and their interests are not marginalised by the more powerful.

It offers them freedom of choice and a flexibility in the pursuit of their multi-faceted interests which was not available in the binary world of the Cold War era. Such a conceptualisation of multipolarity emanates from India’s own experience and search for strategic autonomy in a polarised world. As an individual player in Southeast Asia, and as a major member of ASEAN, Indonesia perceives itself as a country that can play a significant role in a multipolar world, even if it is not in itself a pole. Since its independence the country has shown a sharp streak to steer clear of falling into the lure of joining any bloc. 

The radicalisation spiral

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Over the last few years, I’ve watched a disturbing number of people I used to know fall victim to the radicalisation spiral. It’s unnerving watching acquaintances who seemed relatively normal suddenly become obsessed with antivaxxer propaganda or start retweeting Tommy Robinson. I suspect many readers know someone, even if only tangentially, who’s disappeared down an online rabbit hole. Obviously, radicalisation is not a new phenomenon. There have always been people prone to extreme ideological movements and cults. But social media has made it easier for those becoming radicalised to find like-minded people and for the rest of us to watch it happen in real time.

It’s also having a massive impact on politics. In an attention economy, people willing to say extreme things are a valuable commodity with increasing access to power. In the US, a radicalised former Democrat, Tulsi Gabbard, is Director of National Intelligence, conspiracist podcasters are in charge of the FBI, and a leading antivaxxer is Secretary of Health. And it can’t help but have an impact on the unradicalised who are spending more and more of their time trying to rebut nonsensical claims, using up energy that could be spent solving real problems.  

As a result I’ve become fascinated with the question of why certain people seem more susceptible to the spiral than others. Some possibilities can be ruled out. It’s not about intelligence or education. Very smart and qualified people can spiral and indeed are often better at the cherry-picking required for convincing conspiracism. Nor is it about mental illness: we might talk colloquially about people “going crazy” or “losing their marbles” but there’s no correlation between actual medical conditions and radicalisation. It’s certaintly not about economic deprivation – it’s happened to the world’s richest man and plenty of others who are well off.

A few years ago Naomi Klein published an excellent book called “Doppelganger” about Naomi Wolf, who Klein got confused with so often it became a meme. Wolf went through a dramatic radicalisation spiral, going from leading feminist author to endorsing bizarre health-related conspiracies to becoming an antivaxxer and regular guest on Steve Bannon’s podcast. Klein offers an equation for the process: Narcissism(Grandiosity) + social media addiction + midlife crisis ÷ public shaming = Right-wing meltdown While she was being somewhat tongue-in-cheek, there is, as she says, “some truth to that bit of math”. But it needs broadening out. 

Hundreds of Israeli ex-officials appeal to Trump to help end Gaza war

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A group of some 600 retired Israeli security officials, including former heads of intelligence agencies, have written to US President Donald Trump to pressure Israel to immediately end the war in Gaza. It is our professional judgement that Hamas no longer poses a strategic threat to Israel," the officials said. Your credibility with the vast majority of Israelis augments your ability to steer Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu and his government in the right direction: End the war, return the hostages, stop the suffering," they wrote.

Their appeal comes amid reports that Netanyahu is pushing to expand military operations in Gaza as indirect ceasefire talks with Hamas have stalled. Israel launched a devastating war in Gaza following Hamas's attack in southern Israel on 7 October 2023 in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken into Gaza as hostages. More than 60,000 people have been killed as a result of Israel's military campaign in Gaza since then, the Hamas-run health ministry says.

On Monday, the ministry reported that at least 94 people had been killed in Gaza in the past day, including dozens it said had died in Israeli strikes. At least 24 people had been killed while seeking aid, it added. Such reports have become almost daily in recent months but are hard to verify as international journalists, including the BBC, are blocked by Israel from entering Gaza independently. The territory is also experiencing mass deprivation as a result of heavy restrictions imposed by Israel on what is allowed into Gaza. 

UN-backed agencies have said the "worst-case scenario of famine is currently playing out" in Gaza. The latest intervention by the top former Israeli officials came after videos of two emaciated Israeli hostages were released by Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants. The videos were widely condemned by Israeli and Western leaders. After the videos were released, Netanyahu spoke with the two hostage families, telling them that efforts to return all the hostages "will continue constantly and relentlessly".

Meta changes course on open-source AI as China pushes ahead with advanced models

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Zuckerberg's latest AI musing is a backslide from just a year ago, when he published an essay titled 'Open Source AI is the Path Forward' Facebook parent Meta Platforms, a major proponent of open-source artificial intelligence (AI) models with its Llama family, has indicated it would be more "careful" going down the open-source road, a move that contrasts with China's embrace of open-source. In fact, China has probably found the path to "surpass the US in AI" thanks to the momentum in the country's vibrant open-source AI ecosystem, according to Andrew Ng, a renowned computer scientist known for his work in AI and the field of deep learning.

Wu, an adjunct professor at Stanford University's computer science department, praised China's open AI ecosystem, where companies compete against each other in a "Darwinian life-or-death struggle" to advance foundational models. In a post published on DeepLearning.AI, the education platform he co-founded, Wu noted that the world's top proprietary models were still from frontier US labs, while the top open models were mostly from China. Do you have questions about the biggest topics and trends from around the world? 

Get the answers with SCMP Knowledge, our new platform of curated content with explainers, FAQs, analyses and infographics brought to you by our award-winning team. Chinese companies have been launching open-source models in quick succession in recent weeks. Alibaba Group Holding and Zhipu AI rolled out their latest reasoning and video models this past week. Alibaba claimed its Wan 2.2 video tool was the industry's "first open-source video generation models incorporating the Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) architecture" to help users unleash film-level creativity. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.

Crowds seen in front of the Zhipu AI booth during the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai. Photo: Handout Zhipu boasted its GLM-4.5 as China's "most advanced open-source MoE model", as it secured third place globally and first place among both domestic and open-source models based on the average score across "12 representative benchmarks". Wu wrote in his post that US labs' more secretive approach to developing foundational models, including poaching talent through hefty pay cheques, meant that knowledge spread within the industry slowly and at a high cost.

Has Zelensky lost the West?He is becoming a liability

Thomas Fazi

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As uneventful diplomatic talks in Istanbul wrapped up with little more than discussions of a prisoners-of-war swap and vague promises of further meetings, Volodymyr Zelensky found himself facing a crisis much closer to home: unprecedented protests erupting across major Ukrainian cities. Thousands took to the streets to denounce a controversial law that, according to Zelensky, was designed to “curtail Russian influence” — but which would, in reality, compromise the independence of the country’s two leading anti-corruption agencies at a time when both were reportedly closing in on senior members of Zelensky’s own administration.

The law’s passage sparked not only mass protests within Ukraine but also widespread condemnation in Western capitals. Ursula von der Leyen was quick to issue a sharp rebuke: the legislation conflicted with Europe’s “respect for the rule of law”, and could jeopardise Ukraine’s EU accession prospects. The US government even went so far as to order Zelensky to withdraw the legislation. Meanwhile, Western media gave the protests ample coverage. For the first time since the Russian invasion, Zelensky’s domestic policies were openly criticised by outlets that had previously lionised him as a heroic defender of democracy. 

Reeling from the backlash, Zelensky has sought to calm the storm by introducing a new anti-corruption bill that would re-establish the agencies’ independence. But several questions remain. Why did Ukrainians, who have tolerated far more unpopular government actions since the start of the war, choose to protest now? Why did the Western establishment so energetically back the demonstrations? And why did Zelensky even move against the agencies in the first place? The scale and intensity of the protests were surprising in many respects. 

Since February 2022, Zelensky’s government has implemented deeply unpopular measures — from extending martial law to shuttering opposition parties and media outlets — without triggering comparable public unrest. These measures have been used not only to centralise power but also to neutralise any dissenting voices that might challenge his government’s “war‑at‑all‑costs” policy, by framing any questioning of the latter as unpatriotic or even treasonous. In this way, measures initially justified as temporary wartime necessities have been instrumentalised to entrench executive authority and suppress alternative perspectives on Ukraine’s future.

Starmer’s posturing is a gift to HamasAny leverage is lost

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Hamas could stop this war tomorrow and so end the horrendous suffering of the people of Gaza. Lest we forget: on October 7, following the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, Hamas kidnapped 251 men, women and children and hid them away in tunnels as human bargaining chips. Some 50 of them are still being held in Gaza — though over half of these are probably now dead. For Israelis, this war is about two things: destroying Hamas and returning the hostages. They won’t fully achieve the first objective because this most brutal of wars is only fuelling the kind of burning resentment against Israel that recruits for terrorism, for Hamas or its eventual successors. 

But until the hostages are released, Israel will continue to fight to get them back, and rightly so. Peace cannot come without the hostages being freed. And nothing Keir Starmer can do will change this logic. He can make things worse, though — and he just has. Like Starmer, I support a two-state solution. And by the way, if you do too, that makes you a Zionist, because to be a Zionist is simply to believe in a state for the Jewish people in their historic homeland. But Hamas has never believed in a two-state solution. 

It wants to destroy Israel and eradicate it “from the river to the sea”. These are not just cheap words on a protest poster. In 2017, Hamas revised its original charter (though it did not revoke it) to take away references to the fight against Jews. Instead, it re-described the policy as a national liberation struggle to establish a state of Palestine “which extends from the River Jordan in the east to the Mediterranean in the west and from Ras Al-Naquarah in the north to Umm al-Rashrash in the south”. That is: the entirety of Israel. This is a blueprint for the total annihilation of a country.

Into this mix, and following President Macron, comes Keir Starmer. The two men, safe behind their pontificating lecterns, are reminiscent of Mark Sykes and François Georges-Picot, those English and French diplomats who back in 1915/6 drew lines on the map of the Middle East with little concern for the reality of what was happening over there. If their moralising didn’t create such perverse incentives for Hamas, it would be laughably pompous — two former colonial powers pretending they still had the Imperial clout to impose their will on a part of the world that long since gave up caring about what the British and the French thought.

Commercial and Military Space Must Advance Together

Col. Jennifer Reeves, USAF (Ret.)

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In the race to out-innovate adversaries, the U.S. Space Force has one key advantage over its international rivals: a robust, dynamic commercial space industry. America’s booming private space industry provides launch, sensing, communications and other space-based capabilities to commercial customers—as well as the government—and many of those capabilities could have valuable military applications.

But as good as these commercial offerings are, they were not designed or intended to answer military requirements. Many military space functions are inherently governmental in nature. Missile warning, missile tracking, and missile defense, for example, as well as targeting targets on the ground, at sea, in the air or in space, are jobs we wouldn’t want to contract out. We want our government to provide for our collective defense, not hired hands.

To ensure American space superiority—that is, the ability to achieve desired effects in space when and where required, even in the face of adversaries’ countermeasures—the United States cannot expect to rely solely on commercial systems. The nation must pursue a balanced, hybrid approach that integrates commercial capabilities into a bespoke military space architecture.

Space Systems Command adopted this strategy a few years ago when Gen. Michael Guetlein, now the director of President Trump’s Golden Dome initiative, coined the motto “exploit what we have, buy what we can, and build only what we must.” As the U.S. builds its future national security space architecture, leaders must assess when commercial solutions are sufficient and when assured government capabilities are necessary. Many motivations drive this approach—the need for assured government control.

Russia’s Artillery War in Ukraine: Challenges and Innovations

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While Russia has experienced difficulties elsewhere on the battlefield, artillery has been central to its ability to hold Ukrainian forces at bay. This article explores how the Russian armed forces have adapted traditional artillery practices to overcome challenges and achieve greater efficacy. Artillery is central to the Russian way of war, so it is beholden upon Western forces to properly understand how it has been applied in Ukraine. Russia’s artillery war is best analysed through two mechanisms: artillery doctrine – which provides the foundation for how artillery use has changed – and what artillery practitioners refer to as the gunnery problem.

The gunnery problem is the same regardless of country, and describes the technical challenges involved in hitting a target with indirect fires. These challenges include accurate acquisition and use of meteorological data, which will impact flight path and speed; and survey data, which is critical to identifying where the firing gun is located and where it is pointing, as well as accurate location of the target. An additional element of the gunnery problem is calibration of the gun and ammunition. This involves measuring the temperature of the ammunition, the barrel wear, and the velocity of each shot if possible. 

If this information can be paired with sufficiently accurate target coordinates, an artillery battery will be able to fire for effect from its first rounds and will require fewer adjustments. The traditional approach without this is to fire rounds from a single battery and observe their deviation from the target. Corrections are made using forward observers, laser targeting systems and uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs). Artillery rounds will disperse along the range of fire as well as the line. The range refers to accuracy in front of or behind the target. Line refers to dispersion on either side of the target, as a result of which tube artillery produces a beaten zone that is approximately cigar-shaped. 

It is important to understand the gunnery problem because it dictates what artillery forces must do to affect a target. The willingness of users to understand the gunnery problem, as well as doctrine, dictates efficacy. Because of this, the ability of the Russians to account for these technical limitations and achieve the commander’s desired effect provides a useful benchmark for Russian artillery efficacy in Ukraine. Russian forces manoeuvre to fire, Western forces fire to manoeuvre’ is a neat encapsulation of Russian doctrine compared with the West. Put simply, Russia uses artillery as its primary form of lethality in the deep and close battles.

Brutality over precision’ — What the Army is learning from Russia in Ukraine

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Russian forces in Ukraine are learning that tactics based on “brutality” and quantity over quality can improve their fortunes, according to a 170-page report put out by the U.S. Army this month. Published last week, “How Russia Fights” lays out a series of hard lessons the U.S. troops are learning from Russia as its full-scale invasion of Ukraine steams towards its fourth year. The Russians have already reverted to Soviet form on the battlefield, favoring mass over maneuver, quantity over quality, capacity over capability, brutality over precision, and mobilization over readiness,” the report says.

Produced by the Army’s Foreign Military Studies Office at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, it’s a rare look at how one part of the U.S. military is studying this war and what lessons can be taken from it. Based on events between Feb. 24, 2022, and June 30, 2024, it shows how Russia, despite sanctions, isolation, and battlefield losses, is rapidly adapting and refining a model of warfare that leverages mass, improvisation, and emerging technologies to sustain operations far longer than many expected.

One of the strongest themes in the report is how drones have become central to nearly every part of the Russian way of war. Quadcopter drones, often rigged with improvised explosives or thermobaric payloads, are used at every level of the Russian military. These systems are produced at scale, often through informal networks, and treated as expendable munitions. Russia is reportedly going through tens of thousands of drones per month, according to analysts and open-source tracking.

Drones are now directly tied into command and fire support. Fixed-wing systems like the Orlan-10 conduct intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, or ISR. Targets are passed to artillery batteries or FPV drone teams that engage the target. Another drone confirms damage. In many cases, drones have replaced manned forward observers entirely. In contrast, Army units below the battalion level often don’t have their own drones, though efforts to fix that are underway.

Precision Strike Missile Moves Forward

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The Precision Strike Missile (PrSM), the United States’ newest conventional ballistic missile capability, recently reached key testing milestones. On 2 July 2025, PrSM Increment 1 received Milestone C approval, which authorizes the program to enter the production and deployment phase. On 25 July 2025, Australia conducted its first PrSM live fire during Exercise Talisman Sabre. Together, these developments mark a significant step toward full-rate production and broader fielding.

This post examines the current status of the missile program, potential exports and deployment among U.S. allies, and its implications in the Indo-Pacific and Europe.Thanks for reading Missile Matters — with Fabian Hoffmann! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. The missile is the successor to the MGM-140 ATACMS short-range ballistic missile, which can be launched from the M142A1 HIMARS or the M270 MLRS rocket artillery system. ATACMS has been used by Ukrainian forces against Russian targets with several successful strikes, though Russian air defences have claimed – and in some cases shown – intercepts of ATACMS.

In addition, ATACMS appears to have limited resilience to Russian electronic warfare. This is not entirely surprising, as Russian electronic warfare is known to have disrupted several GPS-aided or guided Western munitions, including some that are more modern than ATACMS and equipped with more robust electronics. However, this has also not always posed a problem, since many of the ATACMS supplied to Ukraine are of the M39/M39A1-type, which are equipped with cluster munition warheads that do not rely on accuracy beyond what the missile’s inertial navigation system can provide.

The Precision Strike Missile offers an extended range of 500 kilometers compared to ATACMS’ 165 to 300 kilometers (100 to 180 miles). In addition, the U.S. Army procurement specification for the missile have required electromagnetic-spectrum survivability, suggesting the incorporation of upgraded electronics, including a hardened GPS receiver to improve resistance to Russian electronic countermeasures. However, specific anti-jamming or spoofing features have not been publicly disclosed.

Drone Hype and Airpower Amnesia

Lt. Col. Grant Georgulis, USAF

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The proliferation of small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) has shaken up the military world, fueling concern that UAVs could revolutionise airpower concepts and even negate the need for air superiority as a fundamental objective of airpower strategy. Dr. Kelly A. Grieco and Col. Maximillian K. Bremer’s “air littoral” concept—defining the airspace from the coordinating altitude to the Earth’s surface—argues that increasing numbers of UAVs and one-way attack “drones” have shifted the importance of air control to low altitudes, altering the doctrine of air superiority. Retired Army Lt. Gen. 

David Barno and Nora Bensahel assert that “drones” have displaced manned aircraft and are now threatening the U.S. Air Force’s relevance with “an almost-existential crisis.” These perspectives all share another commonality: They suffer from a collective airpower amnesia acquired over a 30-year period in which American airpower reigned supreme against a series of nonpeer rivals. Absent the challenge of air-to-air combat and without the context to understand what could happen in a peer fight, these observers are overstating the impact of UAVs and misinterpreting their tactical role.

The biggest lesson from the Russia-Ukraine war is not how small UAVs are reshaping air warfare, but rather how they are reshaping ground combat. The term “drone” lies at the heart of the problem. It is, at best, a lazy catchall, covering everything from an out-of-the-box commercial quadcopter to the YFQ-42 and YFQ-44 Collaborative Combat Aircraft autonomous fighters now under development for the U.S. Air Force. Lumping all these aircraft into a single, oversimplified category obscures their unique capabilities and fuels misguided hype. Breaking down UAVs into distinct groups based on weight, operating altitude, and speed as their defining characteristics can help clarify the diversity of this category of aircraft. Groups 1-3 represent small UAVs. 

which are the aerial weapons employed abundantly in the Russia-Ukraine conflict, causing some to shift airpower assumptions prematurely. These small UAVs frustrate ground operations and excel in reconnaissance, precision strike, and electronic warfare roles. But they do not challenge air superiority, which is defined as the degree of control of the air domain necessary to “enable successful execution of joint operations such as strategic attack, interdiction, and close air support (CAS),” according to Air Force doctrine. 

Wargaming is having its ‘Moneyball’ moment

Andrew Mara, Kelly Diaz and Kevin Mather

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Twenty years ago, an explosion occurred in professional baseball as traditional baseball scouts — relying on decades of personal experience — collided with data scientists bringing new approaches and technology into the evaluation of baseball players. There were raucous debates on which approach would reign supreme: human expertise or numbers and statistics? We now know that neither approach would win out; the best baseball teams across the major leagues rely on a mix of human expertise and advanced statistics to provide the most complete assessment of talent.

Fast forward to today and a similar tension has formed in the field of defense wargaming, where traditional wargamers — relying on years of expertise and bespoke game designs — are coming to grips with rapid advances in modeling and simulation and artificial intelligence. At the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, we have been living and breathing that tension as we have worked to incorporate generative AI and modeling and simulation into defense wargaming. The results of that work? We don’t think we need a 20-year debate. 

Just like in baseball, the future of wargaming lies in a marriage of modeling and simulation, human expertise and AI. To understand why wargaming is having its “Moneyball” moment, you have to first unpack what makes traditional wargaming so valuable. Wargaming is fundamentally about human decision-making, but its magic is in the experiential learning opportunities the games provide. War is never simple. There is no “all-seeing eye” that provides perfect information. Hence, wargaming explores how humans make decisions in imperfect scenarios, and how other humans respond to those decisions.

Armies of psychologists have spent entire careers attempting to understand human decision-making. It’s not easy to boil down to numbers and equations. Moreover, it’s conveyed through conversation, discussion and debate, something that technology has yet to harness or replicate. Wargames have served as an indispensable tool in this exploration. They provide a way to exercise the decision-making process, explore why choices were made and determine what the implications might be. However, being human-centric isn’t always efficient. Wargames often require months of planning by experienced wargamers who deeply understand the defense issues at play. 

AI Beyond the OODA Loop: Matrix Operations and the Future of Special Operations

Duc Duclos 

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The tactical victory that is reshaping modern views on artificial intelligence in warfare didn’t happen in a sterile lab but in the contested airspace over Ukraine and far behind enemy lines deep in Russian territory. In June 2025, a swarm of 117 commercially available drones, each costing about $600–$1,000 and equipped with AI navigation, successfully breached Russian airfield defences. They damaged over 40 strategic aircraft, including Tu-95 bombers valued at billions. This operation, costing less than $120,000, achieved a cost-exchange ratio of over 1:1,000, fundamentally challenging traditional military economics and the use of AI.

This tactical success, named Operation “Spider Web” for its coordinated multi-vector approach, marks a significant step forward in the evolution of AI use by enhancing existing tactical functions through intelligence integration. However, this application only scratches the surface of AI’s transformative potential. The real change isn’t just about making current military tasks more efficient, but about enabling entirely new ways of operational thinking that surpass the cognitive limits that have constrained human warfare for thousands of years.

Since Colonel John Boyd introduced the Observe-Orient-Decide-Act (OODA) loop in the 1960s, military decision-making has been fundamentally sequential. Human cognition requires processing information, developing situational awareness, formulating decisions, and executing actions in a linear framework. Artificial intelligence, however, operates under no such constraint. While humans think in sequential loops, AI can engage in what this paper terms “Matrix Operations” and “Matrix Thinking:” simultaneous optimization across multiple domains, functions, and objectives in real-time.

This represents not merely an incremental improvement, but a fundamental paradigm shift comparable to the introduction of gunpowder or precision-guided munitions. The implications are particularly profound for Special Operations Forces (SOF), irregular warfare, and resistance operations, where small groups historically overcome asymmetric disadvantages through superior tactics and innovative technology. Matrix Operations promise to democratize capabilities previously exclusive to large military organisations, while enabling new forms of coordination that even major powers have not fully realised. 

Sprinters, Marathoners & Skeptics on the Future of AI & Power

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Will AI eat the world and America’s defense budget? I think of those who toil at the intersection of AI and national security as being divided into three camps: Sprinters hold the most aggressive assumptions and believe profound disruption via artificial general intelligence is imminent; marathoners believe the technology will diffuse selectively, sector-by-sector; and skeptics draw analogies to the dot-com bubble.

America’s near-term AI strategy should align with one of these three approaches. If the sprinter scenario holds, the United States should go all-out to rapidly acquire artificial general intelligence — defined here as human-level intelligence. If the skeptics are right, however, then the United States should do virtually the opposite and avoid overbuilding and overextension. If the marathoners are most correct, then the United States will conduct a complicated, long-term technological competition with a country four times its population.

Adopting the skeptic approach is risky: AI is already a powerful tool. In addition to applying best AI competition practices, policymakers should adopt the marathoner approach for now but maintain flexibility. The marathoner approach will allow Washington to adjust AI efforts as conditions warrant, minimizing the risks of both overreach and underinvestment. Trade-offs between AI and other priorities are already necessary: U.S. private sector investment in 2024 totaled $109 billion, and aggressive estimates hold capital spending could reach $2.35 trillion by 2030. 

Mapping the three AI camps helps policymakers determine whether Washington’s $3.3 billion Fiscal Year 2025 spend on AI research and development merits a sharp increase or a cautious pause. This camp believes that AI is on a rapid trajectory toward artificial general intelligence. They foresee world-altering and nearly immediate consequences: initial advantages will unleash enormous and self-reinforcing productivity gains. In this view, the country that first obtains artificial general intelligence will secure enduring — and likely permanent — geopolitical advantages. Similarly, artificial general intelligence’s “inventor” could become the world’s first trillionaire.

Rethinking the Global AI Race

Lt. Gen. (ret.) John (Jack) N.T. Shanahan and Kevin Frazier

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The global competition over artificial intelligence is increasingly framed in stark and dramatic terms, often compared to the Manhattan Project, a new arms race, or a moonshot project requiring incredible resources to attain a difficult, if not impossible, goal. These analogies all suffer from a common flaw: they point us toward the wrong goal. AI is not a discrete project with a clear endpoint, like building a nuclear weapon or landing on the moon. It is a long-term, society-wide effort to develop powerful tools and ensure their benefits reach classrooms, battlefields, factories, and start-ups alike.

The country that leverages advances in AI to establish and maintain substantial economic and military advantages will not necessarily be the one that develops the most advanced models in the shortest amount of time. The United States is not going to win the AI race against China, for example, simply because U.S.-made OpenAI models beat Chinese-made DeepSeek or Kimi K2 models on capability benchmarks. Instead, countries that learn how to bridge the gap between invention and widespread societal adoption will reap the most crucial benefits in the long term.

By taking a longer view, the United States can make smarter decisions about how to align technological progress with national security and public welfare. If it continues to frame AI primarily as a short-term sprint toward technical milestones, it risks falling behind global peers and adversaries. Gaining and maintaining a long-term competitive advantage in AI will require more than technical superiority. It demands reorienting education and workforce training, modernizing institutions, and setting a national vision based on broad public engagement. 

By adopting this strategy, the United States can accomplish what other countries may struggle to replicate: a whole-of-society approach to AI. When other nations experience widespread “techlash” from rapid job displacement, the U.S. labor force can remain resilient and flexible due to its AI literacy and access to ongoing education. When U.S. peers struggle with rigid, outdated institutions undermining AI diffusion, the United States can point to its schools, small businesses, and civil society organizations as early adopters of the latest models.

Our Military's Innovation Challenge

Douglas Doan

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The great debate regarding the slow pace of innovation in the U.S. military is long overdue and is perhaps the most urgent problem our military faces. Vincent Viola and John Spencer articulate this well in "U.S. Defense Reform Must Match the Speed of Modern War." Historical perspective suggests the need for faster innovation is even more acute. The army led by Alexander the Great in 330 BC conquered the world. That same army, equipped with spears, bows, and cavalry, could have appeared on a battlefield a thousand years later and performed well. 

Despite some progress in metallurgy and the invention of the stirrup making mounted cavalry more effective, Alexander's army from 350 BC would have been a serious match for Robert the Bruce who defeated the English Army in 1314, more than 1,500 years later. However. as the War in Ukraine clearly demonstrates, the pace of military innovation is frighteningly fast and accelerating. The sudden weaponization of drones and the emergence of AI have shown that military technology built just a decade ago is woefully inadequate. Once, it took over 1,500 years for a military to become obsolete, now it takes less than 10.

The need for faster innovation has gained much attention but, to date, there have been few really effective breakthroughs. New defense contractors from Silicon Valley have emerged as competitors to traditional defense contractors, which is positive. However, so far at least, the tech-bros have focused most of their energy on leveraging political support and conducting PR campaigns designed to gain more government contracts. True innovation is lagging. One notable exception is SpaceX, which has been a model of innovation and technical advancement.

While acquisition reform is necessary, my experience running a venture fund suggests the problems our military faces are not primarily about outdated technology or acquisition processes, but rather cultural. The wrong people are too often making the wrong decisions. First, we must recognize that rapid development of combat solutions in Ukraine is primarily being done by active-duty service members operating close to the battlefield. We should move innovation closer to our soldiers and sailors, taking full advantage of their creativity in solving complex problems. 

Stuxnet: The Malware That Introduced Cyberwarfare to the World

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The Stuxnet worm first appeared in the summer of 2010. It is a computer worm weighing only 500 kilobytes that infiltrated numerous computer systems. This worm operated in three phases. First, it scanned and targeted Windows networks and computer systems, and then spread throughout the computer network to attack the systems for which it was designed. Uranium enrichment centrifuges are managed by Programmable logic controllers (PLCs).

The worm, once infiltrated into these machines, began to replicate by infiltrating the Windows-based Siemens Step7 software. This Siemens software system was and continues to be a widespread software within industrial computer networks, such as uranium enrichment plants. By compromising the Step7 software, the worm gained access to the Programmable logic controllers (PLCs), and this final step allowed the worm to manipulate crucial industrial information, as well as gain the ability to operate different machinery at individual industrial sites.

The replication process is what made the worm so widespread. It was so invasive that if a USB stick was plugged into a computer system where it was present inside, the worm would move from the USB device and begin spreading to all subsequent computer systems to which the USB was connected, such as within Air Gap networks, i.e. isolated networks that cannot be reached from the internet. Once the malware was launched, more than fifteen Iranian facilities were attacked and infected by the Stuxnet worm. This attack is believed to have been initiated from a worker’s USB drive inside the plant.

One of the affected industrial facilities was the Natanz nuclear power plant. Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency visited the Natanz plant and observed that a strange number of uranium enrichment centrifuges were breaking down. The cause of these failures was unknown at the time. Later in 2010, Iranian technicians commissioned cybersecurity specialists in Belarus to examine their computer systems. This security firm eventually discovered multiple malicious files on Iranian computer systems. It later revealed that these malicious files were the Stuxnet worm.

Social media is engineering amnesia We’re trapped in Big Tech’s mind maze

Gurwinder Bhogal

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The most common noun in the English language is “time”. We talk obsessively about time because it’s the most important thing in the universe. Without it, nothing can happen. And yet most of us treat it as if it’s of no importance at all. We kick up a fuss when tech giants steal our data, but we’ve been strangely nonchalant as those same companies pilfer our time. One reason for our indifference is that the true scale of the theft has been hidden from us. Social media platforms have for years been speeding up our sense of time — effectively shortening our lives — and yet they do this in such a devious manner that we rarely realise what we’ve lost.

Every social media user has had their time pickpocketed. You may log on to quickly check your notifications, and before you know it, half an hour has gone by and you’re still on the platform, unable to account for where the time went. This phenomenon even has a name: the “30-minute ick factor”. It also has empirical support. Experiments have found that people using apps such as TikTok and Instagram start to underestimate the time they’ve spent on such platforms after just a few minutes of use, even when they’re explicitly told to keep track of time.

This is no accident. Sean Parker, Facebook’s founding president, said: “The thought process that went into building these applications… was all about: ‘How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?’” Unsurprisingly, Parker himself doesn’t use social media, saying it’s “too much of a time sink”. To understand how Big Tech steals our time, we must first get our heads around time perception, or chronoception. Time doesn’t always feel like it’s moving at a constant pace. The weightier an experience is, the slower time will often feel. It’s why people tend to overestimate the duration of earthquakes, accidents, or any other scary situation.

Generally, an event feels longer in the moment if it heightens awareness. But we seldom think of time in the moment; rather, our sense of time tends to be retrospective. And our sense of retrospective time is determined by memory. The more we remember of a certain period, the longer that period feels, and the slower time seems to have passed.Sometimes an experience can seem brief in the moment but long in memory, and vice versa. A classic example of this is the “holiday paradox”: while on vacation, time speeds by because you’re overwhelmed by new experiences.