Indian Strategic Studies: 08/22/25

22 August 2025

Can India Survive the Trade War?

Eleanor Hume and Kyle Rutter

New Delhi has been blindsided by U.S. President Donald Trump’s recent tariff temper tantrums. While Indian policymakers anticipated some trade tensions with the United States during Trump’s second term, they hoped that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s strong rapport with Trump, along with the geostrategic importance of the India-U.S. partnership, would spare them from the worst of Washington’s protectionist impulses.

Indeed, until recently, India-U.S. trade ties seemed to be heading in a positive direction. Trump and Modi agreed to increase bilateral trade to $500 billion by 2030 during their meeting in February. Earlier this summer, India and the United States seemed on the verge of clinching a trade deal.

In a dizzying reversal, on August 7, India found itself with a 25 percent tariff on most products it sells to the U.S., its largest export market. This tariff rate is set to increase by an additional 25 percent on August 27, a punishment for India’s purchases of Russian oil and gas. India also faces the looming threats of indirect tariffs, including steep tariffs on pharmaceuticals and semiconductors and a 10 percent tariff on goods from countries that are members of the “anti-American” BRICS organization.

Trump’s tariff onslaught has forced India into a precarious position, and New Delhi is employing three strategies in tandem to get out of it.

First, New Delhi is confronted with the daunting task of securing a deal with Washington, without violating any key redlines that would jeopardize Modi’s domestic support. India is also attempting to delicately manage its geoeconomic relationship with China, cooling tensions with Beijing without ignoring preexisting military and economic security concerns. While hedging between the two great powers, India is also seeking to advance its geopolitical ambitions of assuming great power status by diversifying its economy to alternative partners.

Managing Trump’s Tariff Pressures

Will the Next China-Afghanistan-Pakistan Trilateral Meeting Be a Win for All Sides?

Muhammad Murad

China, Afghanistan, and Pakistan are scheduled to hold an informal meeting in Kabul on August 20. The foreign ministers of Pakistan and China – Ishaq Dar and Wang Yi, respectively – along with the Taliban’s Acting Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi will convene to discuss trilateral issues.

Muttaqi had been scheduled to travel to Pakistan earlier this month, on August 5, but his visit was canceled, with both countries citing technical reasons. Sources suggest that the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) prevented Muttaqi from traveling because he is still on the list of U.N.-designated Taliban members. This might have added extra motivation to hold the upcoming trilateral meeting in Kabul, although it was already planned for that location.

A previous meeting of the three foreign ministers was held in Beijing on May 21. According to China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, during that meeting, “the three foreign ministers spoke positively about the outcomes of the China-Afghanistan-Pakistan Foreign Ministers’ Dialogue and engaged in a friendly and in-depth exchange of views on further utilizing the potential of the trilateral mechanism to advance mutually beneficial cooperation.”

During the last trilateral meeting both, “Afghanistan and Pakistan expressed clear willingness to elevate diplomatic relations and agreed in principle to exchange ambassadors as soon as possible” in order “to strengthen exchanges and diplomatic contacts.” This expression of interest by both countries resulted in Pakistan upgrading its diplomatic relations with the Taliban. This move can be partly attributed to the Taliban’s growing closeness to India. However, Dar also explicitly stated that the upgrade in Pakistan’s ties with the Taliban was made at Beijing’s request.

China has played a significant role in de-escalating tensions between Pakistan and the Taliban regime. This upcoming trilateral meeting is thus expected to strengthen not only the ties between Pakistan and Afghanistan but also the overall cooperation among the three countries. The informal meeting in Kabul will focus on efforts to combat terrorism and the expansion of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) into Afghanistan through the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).

Silicon Valley Is Drifting Out of Touch With the Rest of America

Eric Schmidt and Selina Xu

Mr. Schmidt is the chief executive of Relativity Space and a former chief executive of Google. Ms. Xu is a China and technology analyst.

Building a machine more intelligent than ourselves. It’s a centuries-old theme, inspiring equal amounts of awe and dread, from the agents in “The Matrix” to the operating system in “Her.”

To many in Silicon Valley, this compelling fictional motif is on the verge of becoming reality. Reaching artificial general intelligence, or A.G.I. (or going a step further, superintelligence), is now the singular aim of America’s tech giants, which are investing tens of billions of dollars in a fevered race. And while some experts warn of disastrous consequences from the advent of A.G.I., many also argue that this breakthrough, perhaps just years away, will lead to a productivity explosion, with the nation and company that get there first reaping all the benefits.

This frenzy gives us pause.

It is uncertain how soon artificial general intelligence can be achieved. We worry that Silicon Valley has grown so enamored with accomplishing this goal that it’s alienating the general public and, worse, bypassing crucial opportunities to use the technology that already exists. In being solely fixated on this objective, our nation risks falling behind China, which is far less concerned with creating A.I. powerful enough to surpass humans and much more focused on using the technology we have now.

The roots of Silicon Valley’s fascination with artificial general intelligence go back decades. In 1950 the computing pioneer Alan Turing proposed the imitation game, a test in which a machine proves its intelligence by how well it can fool human interrogators into believing it’s human. In the years since, the idea has evolved, but the goal has stayed constant: to match the power of a human brain. A.G.I. is simply the latest iteration.

China's growing nuclear arsenal

David Lague

HONG KONG, Aug 20 (Reuters) - Alongside a massive build-up in conventional military firepower, China has embarked on a rapid and sustained increase in the size and capability of its nuclear forces, according to the U.S. military and arms control experts.

The commander of the U.S. Strategic Command, General Anthony Cotton, told Congress in March that the directive from Chinese leader Xi Jinping that China’s military be ready to seize Taiwan by 2027 was driving a build-up of nuclear weapons that could be launched from land, air and sea.

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In its 2023 national defense policy, China renewed its longstanding pledge that it would not be the first to use nuclear weapons under any circumstances. The so-called “no first use” policy also includes a promise that China will not use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear armed state.

In response to questions, the defense ministry in Beijing said “a nuclear war cannot be won and must not be waged.” China, it said, adhered to a “nuclear strategy of self-defense and pursues a no-first-use policy.”

[Read the special report on Japan and South Korea's shifting nuclear policies.]

In its annual report on Chinese military power, the Pentagon said despite China’s public stance, its strategy probably includes a possible first use in response to conventional attacks that threaten the viability of its nuclear forces, command and control or that approximates the effect of a nuclear strike. Beijing would also probably consider nuclear first use if a conventional military defeat in Taiwan “gravely threatened” the Communist regime’s survival, the Pentagon said in the report published late last year.

China’s 5G-Powered Unmanned Army! PLA Bets On 1st Mobile 5G Station To Power Its Robots & UAVs In Warzone

Shubhangi Palve

China’s military and telecommunications industries are moving closer together as technology becomes a central part of modern warfare.

What was once the domain of tanks, aircraft, and missiles is now increasingly shaped by networks, data, and digital connectivity.

For Beijing, the expansion of fifth-generation (5G) wireless systems is not only an economic driver but also a foundation for future combat operations.

A New Tool For The Battlefield

In late 2024, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), working with the ‘China Mobile Communications’ group, introduced what they described as the world’s first mobile 5G base station designed specifically for battlefield use.

According to ‘South China Morning Post’, the unit is built to operate under combat conditions and can serve up to 10,000 users within a three-kilometre radius. It delivers fast, secure, and stable connections even in challenging environments where communications are often most vulnerable.

This military grade system reflects a broader shift. China is building digital infrastructure at a speed and scale unmatched by any other country.

By August 2025, the country had deployed about 4.49 million 5G base stations, meaning more than one-third of all its mobile sites now run on 5G.

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) has set a target of 4.5 million base stations by the end of 2025 and aims for 85% user penetration by 2027.

China Unveils Next Generation Main Battle Tank: How it Succeeded Where Russia’s T-14 Failed

Chinese Next Generation Main Battle Tank

The Chinese People’s Liberation Army Ground Force has unveiled a next generation main battle tank, with footage published on social media showing both the new vehicle and a new infantry fighting vehicle based on the same chassis. Both vehicles are expected to be formally unveiled at an upcoming military parade on Long Peace Street in Beijing on September 3, with the tank standing out for its use of reinforced dynamic protection across its hull and turret. The design appears to have a layered defensive capability and to prioritise crew survivability, with its weapons station being remotely operated, while it appears to use the new GL6 active protection system which continuously monitors the surrounding by radar to automatically deploy protective munitions for interception of any incoming threats. Although Russia was the first to unveil similarly ambitious next generation tank and armoured fighting vehicle designs in 2015, namely the T-14 tank and T-15 fighting vehicle, the limitations of the county’s defence sector and industrial base in the post-Soviet era have prevented these from becoming operational, leaving their futures in serious question. With the Western world having similarly failed to operationalise a post-Cold War tank design, this has allowed China and neighbouring South Korea to gain a lead.

Chinese Next Generation Main Battle Tank

Chinese tanks were notably years ahead of their Russian and Western counterparts in introducing active protection systems, while the country’s defence sector has brought four clean sheet post-Cold War tank designs into service over the last three decades, compared to none at all in Russia or the West. This has placed it in a strong position to widen its lead with the latest tank program. Although China’s ground forces have received less funding for equipment modernisation than the Navy or Air Force, due to the geographic nature of the primary threats posed to Chinese security by the country’s Western adversaries, the rate of modernisation has nevertheless been among the fastest in the world.

Chinese Next Generation Main Battle Tank

Stop Saying “Uncrewed” Vehicles

Zachary Kallenborn

Following a November 2022 Pentagon report on China’s military build-up that used the term “uncrewed aerial systems,” the “uncrewed” adjective has become an increasingly fashionable alternative to the previously dominant “unmanned” descriptor. The term has been used in DoD, NATO, and congressional defense publications, by defense contractors like Lockheed Martin, and among popular defense intellectual authors—one well-respected analyst declaring, “Its official—now its ‘uncrewed,’ not ‘unmanned’ vehicles.” The concern appears to be that the déclassé “unmanned” terminology is problematic in today’s gender-integrated force. Representation matters, and unmanned vehicles excludes.

Although searching for more gender-neutral and precise alternatives to “unmanned” is not a bad thing—and “unmanned” definitely has its own flaws—replacing it with “uncrewed” does more harm than good. The problem is “uncrewed” vehicles have crews, and sometimes quite extensive ones. Failing to recognize the crewed nature of drones risks distorting the way we conceptualize them—and consequently risks inhibiting the way we plan for their employment and integration into military operations—while being needlessly confusing. Conversely, thinking about how the composition of drone crews changes over time is quite critical to understanding their long-term security implications.

In Ukraine, a first-person view (FPV) drone team typically consists of three to four people: not just a pilot, but intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance specialists, maintainers, and observers. These teams also maintain significant electronic warfare capability, both to ensure friendly drones keep flying and to provide countermeasures against Russian drones. In this respect, despite FPV drones like quadcopters often being thought of differently than much larger and more expensive, fixed-wing drones, they are not dissimilar. The US Air Force states that for the MQ-9A Reaper, “the basic crew consists of a rated pilot to control the aircraft and command the mission, and an enlisted aircrew member to operate sensors and guide weapons.” Likewise, in the United Kingdom, the Reaper requires “a crew comprising a pilot, sensor operator and mission intelligence co-ordinator.” Teams of intelligence analysts may also provide support, analyzing the reams of data the drones collect. So, if the Air Force adopted the new, in vogue terminology, it would find itself describing “the basic crew” of the “uncrewed” MQ-9A Reaper”—which makes little sense.

China To Reveal New Weapons To Sink US Ships

Ryan Chan

China is expected to officially reveal four new missiles designed to sink enemy warships during an upcoming military parade, as part of its efforts to challenge the United States' naval dominance.

The military parade is scheduled for September 3 in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, marking the 80th anniversary of what China calls the "victory in the Chinese People's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the World Anti-Fascist War," its term for World War II.

China, undergoing a rapid military buildup and modernization, has built a large long-range missile arsenal capable of targeting U.S. forces and bases across the Western Pacific region.

Missiles are central to China's anti-access and area denial strategy, which seeks to prevent or restrict an enemy from entering and operating in a given area, serving as a countermeasure against possible U.S. intervention in a potential conflict over Taiwan or the South China Sea.

What To Know

The second "comprehensive rehearsal" for the upcoming Chinese military parade—expected to reveal new weapons—was held from Saturday evening to early Sunday morning local time, the state-run Xinhua News Agency reported, and involved about 40,000 participants.

Photos circulated on social media show new missiles marked YJ-15, YJ-17, YJ-19, and YJ-20 being carried by vehicles during the rehearsal. "YJ" is the abbreviation of Ying Ji, meaning "Eagle Strike" in Chinese, and is used for a range of Chinese anti-ship missiles, which can be launched from ships or aircraft.

Rick Joe, a longtime observer of Chinese military developments, suggested that the YJ-15 could be a supersonic missile, flying faster than the speed of sound—768 miles per hour.

The YJ-17 and YJ-19 could be hypersonic missiles, capable of flying over five times the speed of sound and maneuvering in flight, making them difficult to intercept.

New hypersonic missiles and drones: what’s been rolling through Beijing’s streets?

Liu Zhen

New hypersonic anti-ship missiles and a road-mobile intercontinental ballistic missile system were among a line-up of advanced Chinese weaponry seen on the streets of Beijing over the weekend.

Photos and videos circulating online reveal some of the People’s Liberation Army’s latest hardware that was spotted by residents during a second rehearsal for next month’s military parade.

The images and footage show unmanned underwater vehicles, a gigantic laser weapon, a fleet of drones and unmanned ground vehicles being transported, as well as next-generation tanks and armoured vehicles.

This could be a new or upgraded road-mobile intercontinental ballistic missile system. Photo: Handout

Preparations are in full swing for the military parade to be held in the heart of the Chinese capital on September 3, to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II.

The rehearsal – which took place from Saturday evening to early Sunday morning near Tiananmen Square and involved about 40,000 personnel – included much of the equipment that will be on show during the Victory Day parade. It followed a smaller rehearsal the previous weekend.

New anti-ship missiles from the YJ series were among the weaponry seen in the photos. They showed the YJ-15 missile as well as three that appeared to be hypersonic missiles: the YJ-17, YJ-19 and YJ-20.

Why Xi Still Doesn’t Have the Military He Wants

Jonathan A. Czin and John Culver

For the high command of the People’s Liberation Army, Xi Jinping’s third term as China’s president has been a period of almost operatic tumult. Altogether, at least 21 senior officers have been removed since Xi started his third term in 2022, including three of the seven members of the Central Military Commission, the supreme military body of the Chinese Communist Party. Many of the members of the PLA’s most senior ranks, including the defense minister and the officer who oversaw just about every general officer promotion for over a decade, have been disgraced. By the end of his tenure, Xi could well exceed the mercurial Mao Zedong in his body count of officers who have been purged.

Although Xi oversaw military purges earlier in his career and even imposed a sweeping overhaul of the PLA’s command structure in 2015, this recent shakeup has raised eyebrows since many of the affected men were Xi’s putative allies rather than potential political rivals. The ousting of senior officers who were once considered untouchable has fed a flurry of rumors that Xi is losing his grip over the PLA—and even prompted more extreme claims that Xi’s own political demise might be imminent.

But rather than Xi’s diminution, the recent moves more likely reflect Xi’s continued dominance of the military. Much like a Mafia don, Xi has shown that he considers even his associates to be disposable. More important, the staggering political casualties reflect that he is losing patience with his military rather than his control over it. The moves demonstrate his continued dissatisfaction with the PLA’s high command and can be seen as part of an ongoing process of achieving his larger goals of bending the military to his will. Indeed, Xi wants to ensure he can employ violence with confidence, but Xi’s confidence seems to be the rarest and most precious commodity for an otherwise well-resourced military.

Xi sees his military agenda as a centerpiece of his legacy. Whereas Xi’s predecessors focused their political firepower primarily on advancing major economic reforms, some of the most dramatic reforms of the Xi era have occurred in the military. Two goals have driven his unforgiving management of the PLA. His paramount aim is ensuring the military is thoroughly politicized and thus willing to fulfill its role as the ultimate guarantor of the party’s rule should it be challenged by internal unrest. And Xi also wants a military that can fight if he needs it to do so, including against the U.S. military.

Russia is experimenting in Ukraine's robot war with uncrewed rocket launchers, hoverboards, and a box on wheels

Matthew Loh

Russia has increasingly been trialing new types of ground drones as Ukraine's robot war heats up.

Designs include a "dronobus" for fiber optic drones, a chair on a buggy, and a box on wheels.

Russian officials say they want to exponentially scale up ground combat drone production.

Ukraine's drone industry has developed a wide array of new uncrewed ground vehicles, but Russian forces are innovating with their own designs, too.

While Moscow has been testing remote ground-based weapons since the early years of the war, a wider variety of rudimentary — and sometimes unusual — designs have been emerging this summer.

Take, for example, a remote-controlled four-wheel buggy that pro-Russian Telegram channels called an "assault" Termit drone from a battalion of the 58th Guards Combined Arms Army.

Instead of a weapons system, it's fitted with a chair that can accommodate a single soldier. Its rear can stow weapons, food, and water containers, the popular Russian Telegram channel Military Informant wrote in a post on Wednesday.

Notably, this Termit drone variant leaves the soldier completely exposed.

Another unique type of Russian logistics ground drone was recently filmed by a Ukrainian first-person-view drone. A clip published on Sunday by Ukrainian drone crowdfunding activist Serhii Sternenko shows that the Russian design essentially featured an open box on wheels.

Sternenko wrote that the ground drone was destroyed and was transporting provisions near the front lines.

The Weaponized World Economy

Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman

When Washington announced a “framework deal” with China in June, it marked a silent shifting of gears in the global political economy. This was not the beginning of U.S. President Donald Trump’s imagined epoch of “liberation” under unilateral American greatness or a return to the Biden administration’s dream of managed great-power rivalry. Instead, it was the true opening of the age of weaponized interdependence, in which the United States is discovering what it is like to have others do unto it as it has eagerly done unto others.

This new era will be shaped by weapons of economic and technological coercion—sanctions, supply chain attacks, and export measures—that repurpose the many points of control in the infrastructure that underpins the interdependent global economy. For over two decades, the United States has unilaterally weaponized these chokepoints in finance, information flows, and technology for strategic advantage. But market exchange has become hopelessly entangled with national security, and the United States must now defend its interests in a world in which other powers can leverage chokepoints of their own.

That is why the Trump administration had to make a deal with China. Administration officials now acknowledge that they made concessions on semiconductor export controls in return for China’s easing restrictions on rare-earth minerals that were crippling the United States’ auto industry. U.S. companies that provide chip design software, such as Synopsys and Cadence, can once again sell their technology in China. This concession will help the Chinese semiconductor industry wriggle out of the bind it found itself in when the Biden administration started limiting China’s ability to build advanced semiconductors. And the U.S. firm Nvidia can again sell H20 chips for training artificial intelligence to Chinese customers.

In a little-noticed speech in June, Secretary of State Marco Rubio hinted at the administration’s reasoning. China had “cornered the market” for rare earths, putting the United States and the world in a “crunch,” he said. The administration had come to realize “that our industrial capability is deeply dependent on a number of potential adversary nation-states, including China, who can hold it over our head,” shifting the “nature of geopolitics,” in “one of the great challenges of the new century.”

How Much of Ukraine Does Russia Control?

John Haltiwanger

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump in Washington on Monday alongside a large cohort of European leaders. This comes after Trump met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday as part of an ongoing push for a deal to end the war in Ukraine.

After the Alaska summit, Trump has been accused of aligning with Putin by abandoning previous calls for a cease-fire. Trump over the weekend said that instead of pursuing a “mere ceasefire,” the warring parties should “go directly” to a peace agreement.

Key Takeaways From Trump’s Meeting With Zelensky

Rishi Iyengar

The scene was familiar—U.S. President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky sitting in the Oval Office, with U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio on the couch to Trump’s left. But unlike the last time this particular scene unfolded, there was no shouting match and even a few moments of levity.

Trump’s security guarantees: key to a Ukraine settlement

Stephen Bryen

US President Donald Trump has offered Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky security guarantees that Trump describes as “like Article V” of the NATO Treaty. Zelensky has apparently signed onto the Trump offer and potentially has agreed that some “territorial swaps” will be needed to make a deal with Russia.

Trump has reported to his European interlocutors who came to the White House to back up Zelensky. He told them more or less the same thing, according to reports, and told German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who pushed for an immediate ceasefire, that a ceasefire ahead of a deal was off the table.

We don’t know what security guarantees mean or how they would be implemented. The Russians will be asking a lot of questions about the idea, if they have not already done so. Trump said he would be calling Russian President Vladimir Putin as soon as today, July 18, 2025, where it is already after midnight as this is written.

Here are the likely questions about security guarantees.

(1) Will the US send troops to Ukraine (as the European so-called “coalition of the willing” wants to do) or will the assurances to Kyiv be political in nature?

(2) Will the US set up any kind of infrastructure in Ukraine as part of the assurances to Ukraine?

(3) While Trump has ruled out any NATO membership for Ukraine, will the Europeans, or some of then, be part of the Trump guarantee?

Ukraine's electronic warfare fight against Russian drones is so chaotic that its own are getting caught in the crossfire

Sinéad Baker

Russia and Ukraine are desperately trying to stop each others' drones using electronic warfare.

Soldiers sometimes accidentally jam their own sides' drones if they're on the same frequency.

There are so many drones that soldiers can be confused about which side they belong to.

With too many drones in the air and only so many radio frequencies, Ukrainian soldiers sometimes accidentally jam their own drones trying to stop Russian ones, Business Insider learned.

Dimko Zhluktenko, a drone operator with Ukraine's Unmanned Systems Forces who has operated strike and reconnaissance drones, told Business Insider that his unit was recently the victim of friendly electronic warfare, or just EW.

He said it's something that often happens with the big reconnaissance drones that both sides use because many of Ukraine's drones "use the same frequencies that enemy drones use." That's been the case, for instance, with Russia's Zala recon and strike drones and Ukraine's Shark reconnaissance drones.

"When friendly EW tries to jam Zala, it also jams Shark," he said.

Ukraine uses the Shark to identify targets that other Ukrainian weaponry can then destroy, including Russian artillery convoys, and Russia uses its Zala to identify Ukrainian targets and attack Ukrainian assets like tanks and artillery.

The Shark drone is developed by Ukrainian company Ukrspecsystems, and its newest version has a range of 260 miles, while the Zala is made by Russia's Zala Aero.

The huge volume of drones used in Russia's invasion of Ukraine has resulted in an electronic warfare battle, with jamming and more flooding frequencies with noise, cutting connections, and confusing enemy drones, frustrating operators attempting to use them for strikes and surveillance. It's fueled new developments in EW, as well as efforts to get around electronic warfare, such as fiber-optic drones and AI-enabled systems.

Trump's Russia-Ukraine Talks Raise Two Conditions Key to Ending War

Tom O'Connor

The fast-moving developments in President Donald Trump's near-back-to-back summits with the heads of Russia, Ukraine and European powers have raised two items increasingly positioned as critical to ending the war between Moscow and Kyiv: territorial exchanges and security guarantees.

While the latest talks held Monday between Trump, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and the leaders of the Finland, France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, the European Union and NATO did not produce an agreement to end the three-and-a-half-year war, the gathering laid the groundwork for a long-anticipated trilateral meeting between Trump, Zelensky and Russian President Vladimir Putin, with whom Trump met in Alaska on Friday.

Perhaps most notably, however, the U.S. leader did not walk back from the position of Ukraine needing to offer territorial concessions as part of an eventual settlement, a stance long opposed by Kyiv and its European backers.

"We also need to discuss the possible exchanges of territory, taking into consideration the current line of contact," Trump said during a press engagement alongside Zelensky and European counterparts.

With Ukraine currently not in control over substantial amounts of Russian territory, its limited cross-border offensives having largely been pulled back earlier this year, Jennifer Kavanagh, senior fellow and director of military analysis at the Defense Priorities think tank, said the comments were indicative of a broader reality that has set in over the conflict.

"Ukraine will have to cede some territory to end the war, the question is how much and how," Kavanagh told Newsweek. "At the very least, it will not go back to its pre-2022 borders. Crimea will not be returned to Ukraine."

Inside the US military’s quest for ‘drone dominance’

Mills Hayes

NewsNation traveled to the Muscatatuck Training Center with the U.S. Army and Under Secretary of Defense Emil Michael for an inside look at the Department of Defense’s largest and most realistic training center for the military and law enforcement.

The training area consists of a sunken city, a hospital and crumbling buildings in order to create what the Army calls the “Disneyland of the warfighter.”

And these days, it’s all about drones.

“Usually, you deliver a big weapons system to your troop, they read the manuals, they understand how to use them. Now, we’re going to rely on the warfighters to be part of the innovation loop,” said Michael.

Michael says the military is trying new things when it comes to innovation.

“It has to be modular, or it has to be able to change both software and hardware consistently,” he said.

To do so, the Defense Department is turning to some of the biggest and brightest private companies and innovators from the U.S.

Innovators come to Camp Atterbury in Indiana twice a year to put their technology to the test and potentially earn contracts with the U.S. military.

“Now, we’re up to 7 to 8 people, and we’re continuing to grow, so maybe with this recent order we may have to scale a little bit faster,” said Uzi Ibrahim, vice president of strategic operations at Sentien Robotics.

Practice makes perfect in America’s heartland to stay at the top of the game on the global stage.

Russia’s Imperial Black Sea Strategy

Daniel S. Hamilton and Angela Stent

Russia’s aggression against Ukraine and other neighbors is transforming the Black Sea into Eurasia’s strategic frontier. Russia has disrupted flows of energy, food, and other commodities; generated millions of migrants; and heightened insecurity not just in Ukraine but also across the entire Black Sea region. These efforts constitute part of a much longer and larger strategy. Russia does not merely seek to dominate Ukraine. It wants to render each of the other five states that border the Black Sea—as well as Moldova, which borders Romania and Ukraine and whose waters flow into the sea—subservient to its interests so that it can exercise veto power over choices these countries make. Moscow also aspires to use the Black Sea as a platform from which to project power and influence throughout the Middle East, the Mediterranean, and the Caucasus.

Russia’s quest to become the dominant force in the Black Sea is an essential element in its strategy to reassert itself as a great power. The Kremlin believes that a failure to establish a commanding presence in the region would leave Russia exposed to Western encroachment, render it less able to influence adjoining areas and disrupt commodity exports that are critical to the Russian economy. Turkey poses the greatest obstacle to Russian objectives in the region because it is the only Black Sea state that Russia has not historically dominated and it is a NATO member. But even after the end of the Cold War, the Kremlin retained considerable levers of influence over the former Soviet empire’s Black Sea space in Bulgaria, Georgia, Moldova, Romania, and Ukraine.

In recent decades, Russia has sought to further subordinate these states to Moscow through a combination of persuasion and coercion. Increasing Russia’s Black Sea presence is also at the heart of President Vladimir Putin’s decades-long plan to resurrect the country’s maritime power. He prioritized modernizing the Black Sea Fleet, whose interventions proved critical in supporting Russia’s Mediterranean Squadron and its 2015 intervention in Syria. Putin has ignored internationally recognized borders to seize a great expanse of Black Sea coastline, including Georgia’s territory of Abkhazia in 2008, Ukraine’s Crimea region in 2014, and the Ukrainian part of the Sea of Azov coast in 2022. Although Ukraine has prevented Russia from taking all of its Black Sea coast, Moscow has deployed naval mines as well as blockaded and bombed Ukrainian ports to sever Ukraine’s sea access and minimize the presence of other navies.

This Isn’t 1991: Why Putin’s Russia is Facing a Different Kind of Collapse

Reuben Johnson

PUBLISHED on August 18, 2025, 9:40 AM EDT, Key Points and Summary – While the theory that Russia could collapse under the strain of the Ukraine war is popular, a direct comparison to the fall of the USSR is flawed.

-Unlike the Soviet Union’s final years, which saw a rapid turnover of leadership and liberalizing reforms under Gorbachev, Putin’s Russia is a stable, repressive regime.

-However, this analysis argues that the current system faces its own unique pressures: major state-owned companies like Gazprom are hemorrhaging money, and a rising tide of violent crime from returning convicts is creating deep social instability that could lead to a different kind of collapse.

The Russia Collapse Theory: What We Know

One of the popular theories connected to Russia’s war in Ukraine is that this could cause the collapse of the regime of Russian President Vladimir Putin—and that Russia as a nation-state could even splinter into numerous, new independent nations.

The theory in this instance is that under the weight of massive military spending that is growing at the expense of scores of vital government services, the economy begins to come apart, and the system no longer functions.

Three times in modern history—1905, 1917, and then again in 1990—Russian governments collapsed due to unsustainable military spending. The current war with Ukraine is creating numerous shocks to the economy that are chipping away at internal stability.

Therefore, there are those who believe that Putin’s regime could fall apart at any moment. These predictions are based on the thesis that “the USSR was a powerful and totalitarian system, no one thought it would collapse.” The difficulty with this scenario is that today’s situation is a far cry from the circumstances that existed in the waning years of the USSR.

Digital Rights in Armed Conflict and the Ukraine v. Russia Decision

Deborah Housen-Couriel, Asaf Lubin

On July 9, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) unanimously found in Ukraine and the Netherlands v. Russia that the Russian Federation was responsible for a broad array of human rights violations committed over more than eight years of armed conflict, beginning with the occupation of parts of Ukraine in 2014 and culminating in the full-scale invasion launched in February 2022.

In communicating the judgment to the public, Court Registrar Marialena Tsirli characterized it as “one of the most consequential judgments in the Court’s history.” Still, the decision comes at a moment when the court’s jurisdiction over Russia has been sharply curtailed. Following its expulsion from the Council of Europe in March 2022, Russia ceased to be a party to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). Accordingly, the court’s jurisdiction extends only to acts attributable to Russia occurring on or before Sept. 16, 2022 —which marks six months from that expulsion in line with ECHR Article 58—even as the war continues with undiminished intensity. Russia, for its part, formally ceased to recognize the court’s authority in June 2022, and has since refused to cooperate with its proceedings. Accordingly, the Russian government has summarily rejected the present judgment, with President Vladimir Putin’s spokesperson declaring it “null and void.” The decision’s immediate and practical effect on the ground, therefore, remains limited.

Still, this ECtHR ruling offers much more than just “symbolic” victory. Out of the ECHR’s 46 parties, 26 intervened as third parties in this case, a development that the judgment notes is without precedent and reflects the intervenors’ “perception of the importance of this case to the Convention system as a whole.” Moreover, the final ruling is a landmark not only in moral terms. Throughout its nearly 500 pages and 1,652 paragraphs, the unanimous judgment provides an important analysis of the application of international human rights law (IHRL) during war, setting doctrinal trajectories that will reverberate for decades to come.

AI will replace most humans, but then what?

Stephen Jen

LONDON, August 19 (Reuters) - Is technology more job augmenting or job replacing? This has been a long-standing debate. But recent academic work suggests that technology has been a net destroyer of jobs for decades.

Artificial intelligence and robotics could rapidly accelerate this trend, with significant implications for inflation, the size of government and U.S.-China relations.

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Over the long arc of history, technological advances have enabled industries to emerge, as workers, released from "older" jobs by machines, have been able to transition into newer ones.

Indeed, 60% of workers today are employed in occupations that did not exist in 1940, or 74 percent if we consider just the professional category, which added the most workers during the past eight decades.

However, recent academic research, opens new tab suggests we may have reached an inflection point in the U.S., whereby technology is now destroying more jobs than it is creating.

David Autor, an economist at MIT and winner of the 2005 John Clark Bates Medal, argues that since 1980, the jobs replaced by automation have not been fully offset by new jobs created.

This reflects the pace of technological change and the fact that advancements are now increasingly focused on “professional, technical, and managerial occupations,” Autor notes, rather than lower-skilled work.

He finds that machines that are more powerful than an average human (e.g., a tractor) are typically labour-augmenting and productivity-enhancing, while machines that are also smarter than the average human tend to be labour-substituting.

And AI is on pace to be a lot smarter than most humans.

While forms of AI have been around since the 1940s, the immense computing power resulting from advances in semiconductor technologies has now allowed machines to attain multidimensional intelligence.

Democratized Intelligence: How Open-Source Intelligence is Reshaping Asymmetric Advantage

Josh Luberisse

Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 crashed in eastern Ukraine in 2014, killing all 298 passengers. Russian-backed separatists and the Russian government denied involvement despite the world pointing in their direction. Russia promoted multiple alternative explanations, which a small team of online investigators at Bellingcat systematically disproved. Using only publicly available satellite imagery, social media, and digital forensics, Bellingcat analysts identified the Russian missile system responsible, tracked it from Russia to Ukraine, and documented its return with one missile missing. Their investigation, conducted without classified intelligence access, subpoenaed records, or state resources, proved more comprehensive and transparent than many official accounts. Independent analysts clearly demonstrated that they could compete with state powers in intelligence.

This watershed moment fundamentally transformed global intelligence capabilities. States have long monopolized intelligence work through sophisticated collection and analysis techniques. Barriers to entry were high and required states to expend the resources to build satellite networks, deploy human intelligence networks, and develop specialized analytical capabilities. Today, that monopoly has eroded dramatically as open-source intelligence (OSINT) capabilities previously requiring massive state investment are now accessible to non-state actors, researchers, advocacy groups, and individuals of modest means.

This democratization creates unprecedented opportunities in irregular warfare. Less-resourced actors can now develop sophisticated intelligence capabilities without corresponding institutional infrastructure. Understanding this transformation is essential for practitioners confronting an operational environment where information superiority no longer remains a guaranteed advantage, and all actors play on a more level playing field in intelligence.

The OSINT Revolution

The foundation of this intelligence democratization rests on three converging developments: technological accessibility, methodological transparency, and analytical tool democratization. Together, these factors have transformed capabilities once requiring billions in state investment into accessible functions available to any motivated actor with internet access and modest technical skills.

This U.S. Army command post, seen from a drone, is loaded with modern technology but uses a centuries-old structure.

Col. Scott Woodward, U.S. Army

Despite two centuries of evolution, the structure of a modern military staff would be recognizable to Napoleon. At the same time, military organizations have struggled to incorporate new technologies as they adapt to new domains – air, space and information – in modern war.

The sizes of military headquarters have grown to accommodate the expanded information flows and decision points of these new facets of warfare. The result is diminishing marginal returns and a coordination nightmare – too many cooks in the kitchen – that risks jeopardizing mission command.

AI agents – autonomous, goal-oriented software powered by large language models – can automate routine staff tasks, compress decision timelines and enable smaller, more resilient command posts. They can shrink the staff while also making it more effective.

As an international relations scholar and reserve officer in the U.S. Army who studies military strategy, I see both the opportunity afforded by the technology and the acute need for change.

That need stems from the reality that today’s command structures still mirror Napoleon’s field headquarters in both form and function – industrial-age architectures built for massed armies. Over time, these staffs have ballooned in size, making coordination cumbersome. They also result in sprawling command posts that modern precision artillery, missiles and drones can target effectively and electronic warfare can readily disrupt.

Russia’s so-called “Graveyard of Command Posts” in Ukraine vividly illustrates how static headquarters where opponents can mass precision artillery, missiles and drones become liabilities on a modern battlefield.

kraine builds an army where robots die so soldiers don’t have to

DAVID KIRICHENKO

The math is brutal: Russia has three times Ukraine’s population and pays soldiers twice as much. Moscow can afford to send wave after wave of troops to die on Ukrainian soil. Ukraine cannot match those numbers.

So Ukraine is building something else entirely—an army where robots handle the dying.

When Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022, Ukrainians across the globe mobilized to defend their homeland. Some picked up weapons, while others contributed with their technical abilities.

Now well in the fourth year of the war, Ukraine’s resilience endures, thanks in large part to its volunteers and tech pioneers racing to out-innovate Russia on the battlefield.

Among them is Lyuba Shipovich, a software engineer and tech entrepreneur who had been running a tech company in New York City. She left the United States and returned to Ukraine in the beginning of the full-scale invasion to join the resistance.

By 2023, she founded Dignitas, a nonprofit dedicated to training soldiers and integrating cutting-edge technologies into Ukraine’s military operations.

“We’re different from traditional charities as we don’t just fundraise and donate gear,” Shipovich said. “We build and test solutions, prove their value, and then advocate for government adoption.”

Why robots matter more than rockets

After nearly three years of grinding warfare, Ukraine faces a stark mathematical reality. Russia’s oil and gas revenues let it offer higher pay to attract new recruits, giving Moscow a significant advantage in replenishing its ranks. Ukraine must turn to technology—as it’s done throughout the war.

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