The U.S. Wooed India for 30 Years. Trump Blew That Up in a Few Months.

Kapil Komireddi

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For three decades, successive American presidents have invested enormous diplomatic capital to cultivate a friendship with India.

Bill Clinton, who laid the foundation of the modern U.S.-India partnership, called the two democracies “natural allies.” George W. Bush described them as “brothers in the cause of human liberty.” Barack Obama and Joe Biden cast the relationship as one of the defining global compacts of this century.

To Washington, India was a vast emerging market, a potential counterweight to China, a key partner in maintaining Indo-Pacific security and a rising power whose democratic identity would bolster a rules-based international order. For its part, India — mistrustful of the West after nearly a century of British colonial rule — shed its Cold War suspicion of Washington, which had armed and financed its archnemesis, Pakistan, for decades, and moved steadily closer to the United States.

It took Donald Trump one summer to obliterate these gains.

In May, he claimed credit for ending a brief military conflict between India and Pakistan. This incensed India, which regards its dispute with Pakistan as strictly bilateral, and humiliated Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who had boasted of his closeness to “my friend Donald Trump.” Mr. Trump proceeded to have lunch at the White House with Gen. Syed Asim Munir, the army chief of Pakistan and a former head of its spy agency, which the United States has accused of supporting international terrorist groups. Mr. Trump also called India’s economy “dead” and imposed punishing 50 percent tariffs on Indian imports to the United States.

This abrupt falling-out has profound implications. Mr. Trump’s insults have, to some degree, united India’s permanently clashing political parties — a striking development in a country where Mr. Modi’s divisive rule has left little political common ground. For the first time in decades, the United States is the common foe of almost every political faction in India.

Trump is alienating America’s friends. Can China win them over?

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The most interesting thing about the big security summit in China this week is the guest list. More than 20 leaders have joined President Xi Jinping at the meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which started yesterday in Tianjin. That’s the most in the organization’s history.

They include Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India (who is still smarting from President Trump’s recent tariff increase) and President Vladimir Putin of Russia. But the list also includes the leaders of American partners like Turkey and Egypt, and their presence speaks to a rapidly changing geopolitical reality. I talked to my colleague David Pierson, who is in Tianjin for the summit.

Katrin: What does this guest list tell us?

David: China has summoned the non-Western-aligned world to this event to tell Washington: “You are no longer calling the shots.”

The thing that’s special about this summit is that geopolitics is at play in a way that we haven’t seen in a very long time. The Trump administration has upended the U.S. alliance system. It’s gifting this incredible opportunity to Xi Jinping to pull friends away from the U.S.

Is Trump losing India to China?

I wouldn’t go that far. Modi was scheduled to come here before the dust-up with Trump. But it has certainly injected a lot of momentum into his trip. Modi is signaling to the U.S. that he has options, that there are consequences for the chaotic foreign policy that’s coming out of Washington.

It’s striking that Trump has used these incredibly different approaches to Russia and India: Red carpet for Putin, tariffs for Modi. But both these approaches seem to help China.

Yes. Xi feels validated for sticking by Putin. He was under so much pressure after the invasion of Ukraine. Now they’re watching Putin show up on American soil, the red-carpet handshake, and they suddenly no longer feel U.S. pressure for this relationship.

In a previous era, stability offered by China might have been worth much less because the U.S. and the West offered stability, too. But in a world where that stability is no longer a given, it comes at a premium.

Mapping India’s Cybersecurity Administration in 2025

Tejas Bharadwaj

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A robust cyber foundation allows a country to ensure the safety, accessibility, and equitability of its cyberspace for its citizens, the responsibility of which falls under its cybersecurity administration.[1] With 971 million internet subscribers, India’s digital landscape is growing rapidly. In 2022–23, India’s digital economy was valued at 11.74 percent of its national income, contributing $402 billion to the gross domestic product (GDP), and is projected to make up a fifth of the GDP by 2030. India also recorded the highest volume of digital payment transactions of 18.3 billion in March 2025. Advancements in AI have contributed to a significant rise in internet-connected smart devices and appliances in the last five years, further increasing India’s digital surface.

A driver of social and economic progress, Indians use cyberspace to exercise their fundamental rights and access public welfare services, placing onus on the government to protect it from attacks and ensure its access. India’s cyberspace is the second most targeted in the world, and is increasingly facing ransomware, phishing, and supply chain attacks, alongside data breaches and AI-powered attacks. Between 2019 and 2023, cyber attacks on the Indian government increased by 138 percent. The Reserve Bank of India reported that data breaches cost India $2.18 million in 2023, a 28 percent increase in three years.

In 2024, India secured Tier 1 status in the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) Global Cybersecurity Index. The Index termed legal, technical, capacity development, and cooperation measures as its areas of relative strength. It also noted India’s organizational measures as an area for potential growth, placing an onus on India’s cybersecurity administration to handle cyber threats around the clock due to its’s growing digital surface and evolving cyber threat matrices.

India’s cybersecurity administration comprises agencies and departments across ministries that work together to safeguard India’s cyberspace. These include the National Security Council Secretariat (NSCS) under the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), the Indian Cybercrime Coordination Centre (I4C) under the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), the Defence Cyber Agency (DCyA) under the Ministry of Defence (MoD), and the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-IN) under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY). The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), through its Cyber Diplomacy Division (CDD), also facilitates international partnerships and navigates multilateral cyber engagements. With multiple actors involved, India’s cybersecurity administration structure lacked clarity over which agency would deal with which aspect of cybersecurity.

Google says China-linked cyber operations targeted Southeast Asia diplomats

John Liu

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Diplomats in Southeast Asia were among global entities targeted by a China-linked cyber espionage group earlier this year, Google has announced, adding the group “likely aligned with the strategic interests” of the Chinese government.

Google Threat Intelligence Group found that the campaign in March hijacked target web traffic, downloaded malware, and ultimately deployed a backdoor, it said in a Tuesday blog post detailing the findings.

Google said it sent alerts to all users impacted by this campaign. The scope of impact and which Southeast Asian countries were targeted were not disclosed in the post. CNN has reached out to Google for further details.

Asked about the Google findings on Tuesday, a spokesperson for China’s foreign ministry said it was unaware of the specific situation, while accusing Google of spreading “false information about so called ‘Chinese hacker attacks’ more than once.”

For years, US officials across Republican and Democratic administrations have tried to come to grips with China’s formidable cyber capabilities. The FBI has said that China has a bigger hacking program than all other foreign governments combined.

Multiple recent hacks have been highlighted by the US government, including at least two major incidents this year.

Tech companies are also becoming more open in publicly naming when they detect state sponsored or state-aligned hacking campaigns.

Google’s findings came after recent Microsoft reports of hacking attempts that also involved Chinese state-linked actors. Last month, Microsoft found that vulnerabilities of its servers for SharePoint, its online collaborative platform, were exploited by some Chinese state actors.

That incident prompted the United States government’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency to issue a notice, saying it notified “critical infrastructure organizations impacted,” as many US government agencies and companies use its service.

Access Denied? The Sino-American Contest for Military Primacy in Asia Free

Nicholas D. Anderson, Daryl G. Press

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How has the balance of power shifted in maritime East Asia, and what does this change mean for the U.S.-China military competition in the region? We examine these questions by focusing on a central pillar of U.S. military might—land-based air power—in the context of a war over Taiwan. We create a new, unclassified, and transparent model of a Taiwan conflict, which allows users to explore multiple scenarios, alternative U.S. basing options, various People's Liberation Army attack strategies, and a range of potential U.S. defensive enhancements to see how those alternatives influence outcomes. We find that: (1) the United States' current approach to defend Taiwan exposes U.S. forces to significant risk of catastrophic defeat; (2) the U.S. Air Force's answer to this problem is both unlikely to work and escalatory; and (3) a combination of hardening air bases and enhancing missile defenses and local jamming at U.S. facilities is a better option. More broadly, U.S. national security policy toward China approaches an inflection point. The United States can lean in and significantly enhance the resilience of its forces in East Asia; lean back and rely more on instruments of military power that are less vulnerable to China's regional defense systems; or reconsider its broader geopolitical goals in the region. The current path, seeking to deter Chinese attacks with a vulnerable forward-based military posture, courts disaster.

The United States and China are engaged in an intense competition in maritime East Asia. For decades, the United States enjoyed military preeminence in the region, using naval forces and land-based aircraft to dominate the sky and key waterways. But China is eroding Washington's regional military advantage. Over the past two decades, Beijing has launched dozens of new satellites and other sensors to locate U.S. forces and hundreds of increasingly accurate missiles—ballistic, cruise, and hypersonic—to strike airfields and ships throughout the region. Washington has countered by improving U.S. missile defenses, expanding its regional base access, modernizing key military facilities, and developing an ambitious new doctrine based on dispersion and maneuver to blunt China's expanding anti-access capabilities.1

Where does the military balance stand today, and where do the trend lines point? What options, if any, would allow the United States to retain its conventional superiority in the western Pacific? And, perhaps most importantly, what does the shifting military balance mean for key U.S. foreign policy objectives, such as deterring a war over Taiwan, preventing catastrophic escalation should such a war occur,2 and maintaining credible commitments to its allies in East Asia?3

Map Shows Range of Japan's Missiles Targeting China and North Korea

Ryan Chan

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A Newsweek map illustrates Japan's planned deployment of its new long-range missiles to deter and defend against potential attacks from its main adversaries, China and North Korea.

The deployment is part of Japan's effort to strengthen its standoff defense capabilities, the ability of a military force to engage and defeat an enemy from a significant distance, outside the range of the attacker's radar defences or missiles. The Defense Ministry in Tokyo previously told Newsweek that such capabilities are intended to target naval and landing forces attempting to invade the country.

Newsweek has reached out to the Chinese Foreign Ministry for comment via email. North Korea's Embassy in Beijing did not immediately respond to a written request for comment.

Why It Matters

Japan plays a key role in the United States' strategy to contain China's rapid military buildup, helping form a north-south defensive line of islands along with Taiwan and the Philippines.

While Tokyo is deeply concerned about the impact of potential Chinese aggression against Taiwan it also has territorial and maritime disputes with Beijing in the nearby East China Sea.

Taiwan, a self-ruled island and U.S. security partner, lies close to Japan's outlying southwestern islands,

Nuclear-armed North Korea often threatens Japan by firing missiles into waters near the U.S. ally. Tokyo is developing counterstrike missiles for self-defense, capable of hitting enemy bases—a move Pyongyang has accused of stoking "war fever."

What To Know

Can TV Help Prepare for Invasion?

Elisabeth Braw

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Imagine a fleet of Chinese ships suddenly appearing in the Taiwan Strait, tasked with inspecting all vessels traveling through the busy thoroughfare—including on the Taiwanese side. Or a Chinese fighter jet crashing off the Taiwanese coast and Chinese warships blockading the island to look for it.

One of these events actually happened, the other is part of a new Taiwanese television show, but the events feel equally real. “A Chinese Y-8 reconnaissance aircraft entered the South China Sea at 10 a.m. today and crashed into the Pacific, right off Taiwan’s east coast. In the name of search and rescue, the Chinese army deployed its navy and air force. … Taiwan is now under a de facto blockade,” a news anchor announces on Taiwanese TV.

From Shield to Spear: How Golden Dome Points the Way toward Breaking China’s Kill Web

Matthew Smokovitz

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If the United States fights China on China’s terms, it may risk collapse in the opening hours. Such a war would not begin with a slow exchange of fire—it would be a race between the two sides to sever the other’s ability to think and act as a single, coordinated force. Beijing has spent decades forging its warfighting system into a tightly integrated brain and nervous system. Theater commanders fuse data from satellites, over-the-horizon radars, airborne sensors, and undersea arrays into a shared real-time picture. From this picture, precisely timed orders flow to air, sea, and missile forces. That operational coherence—seeing, deciding, and striking as one—is what turns scattered operational assets into a lethal, synchronized kill web.

That coherence is China’s greatest strength and its most brittle hinge. When missile salvos arrive just as bombers spring in from their launch points, when submarines maneuver without orders because their neural network tells them the enemy’s retreat path—this is operational synchronization in action. But when data flows stall, when timing errors creep in, that neural network misfires. Missiles still launch, radars still receive—but the system fights as a collection of disjointed parts. Strikes fizzle. Orders lag. Reflexes fail.

Traditionally, the United States has attacked such integrated systems by methodically rolling them back—destroying radars, missile batteries, and command centers one by one. In Desert Storm, in the Balkans, that worked. But against China’s kill web? It is a slow, costly path to disaster. Mobile launchers reposition before they are struck. Redundant sensors light back up. Alternate comms routes reroute data. The brain and nervous system remain intact even as its limbs are wounded.

This is where Golden Dome enters the discussion. Conceived as a homeland missile shield, Golden Dome envisions a multilayered architecture—with one layer even space-based—using both sensors and interceptors in orbit. This space layer is vital for defense—it is a vantage point above the battlefield no terrestrial platform can match. But as the concept takes shape, it makes clear that such a layer will possibly be necessary to countering China’s kill web. Space-based interceptors are not just tools to strike incoming missiles targeting the US homeland and its interests; they can also hold the enemy’s neural infrastructure at risk.

International coalition calls out three Chinese companies over hacking campaign

Raphael Satter

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WASHINGTON, Aug 27 (Reuters) - An unusually broad coalition composed of the United States, its traditional English-speaking allies and other nations including Germany, Italy and Japan is calling out three Chinese companies over alleged hacking activity.

In a 37-page advisory, opens new tab published on Wednesday, the countries accused the firms - Sichuan Juxinhe Network Technology, Beijing Huanyu Tianqiong Information Technology and Sichuan Zhixin Ruijie Network Technology - of providing "cyber-related products and services to China's intelligence services, including multiple units in the People’s Liberation Army and Ministry of State Security."

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Sichuan Juxinhe has already been sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury over its alleged ties to the hacking group nicknamed "Salt Typhoon," which has been accused of gobbling up vast amounts of Americans' call records, including communications from senior leadership in Washington. Beijing Huanyu Tianqiong and Sichuan Zhixin Ruijie were both allegedly hit by recent, so far unexplained data leaks, opens new tab.

Previous attempts to reach Sichuan Juxinhe have been unsuccessful. Reuters could not immediately locate contact information for the other two firms.

China's foreign ministry said it opposed dissemination of false information based on political motives and that it was strongly dissatisfied with what it said was a move by the United States to enlist other countries to "smear and frame" China on cybersecurity issues.

Although U.S. officials have been complaining of China-linked hacking activity for decades, the breaches attributed to Salt Typhoon have stood out as particularly sweeping. One senator last year described its scope as "mind-boggling." Another said it likely represented "the largest telecommunications hack in our nation's history."

The Front Line | How will advanced drones and robobeasts share the stage with China’s military personnel?

Enoch Wong

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Some 16 years after China first showcased drones in a military parade, there is keen interest in how the People’s Liberation Army has developed its uncrewed systems, and how they will be displayed during Beijing’s military parade on Wednesday.

Analysts say the breadth and variety of drone systems expected at China’s coming military parade could underscore the PLA’s rapid advances in integrating autonomous technologies across air, land and sea, signalling a shift towards AI-enabled, multi-domain operations.

While previously unseen models might be revealed, and could be presented in mixed formations to reflect combat scenarios, including their AI-assisted abilities, experts tend to believe the systems will still be shown in static displays instead of in motion for security reasons.

On Wednesday, September 3, China is set to hold its largest military parade, marking the 80th anniversary of victory in World War II, with officials last month pledging to unveil “new-domain forces and new-quality combat capabilities” that include advanced uncrewed systems.

For three consecutive weekends in August, Beijing staged large-scale rehearsals near Tiananmen Square. Although authorities have disclosed no equipment details, leaked photos of previously unseen systems have been circulating widely on social media, fuelling speculation among military observers.

Implications of Chinese Nuclear Weapons Modernization for the United States and Regional Allies

John Lee & Lavina Lee

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Based on current trends, China will become a quantitative and qualitative nuclear weapons peer of the United States by the early to mid-2030s with a diversified, accurate, and survivable force that will rival America’s. Rather than having only high-yield nuclear missiles as a strategic deterrent against nuclear attack, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is developing a range of strategic and tactical nuclear weapons, the latter being lower-yield weapons usable in a conflict theater.

Why is China seemingly going beyond its long-standing nuclear weapons approach of maintaining only a minimal deterrent or assured retaliation? Why has it chosen to rapidly develop its nuclear arsenal and related delivery system in a deliberately opaque manner?

This report argues that Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) decided to embark on such a rapid nuclear modernization not primarily because China wants to “win” a nuclear exchange against the US. Rather, Beijing wants to create political and psychological effects that lead to enormously important strategic and military effects.

As the report explains, the CCP and PLA are using the rapid development of nuclear capability and related delivery systems to subdue the adversary and win without fighting. The following are components of achieving this:Degrade the adversary’s decision-making.

Weaken the adversary’s will to fight.

Undermine the adversary’s public support for war.

Undermine the resolve of the adversary’s government from within.

Support and enhance deterrence.

The report assesses that there are three ways in which China uses nuclear modernization to change the material and psychological environment with important strategic effects that work to its advantage.

Special Report: Observations on Taiwan’s Military Force Adjustments in 2025

Tai-yuan Yang, K. Tristan Tang, & B. Rex Chang

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The 2025 Han Kuang 41 exercise introduced several notable changes from previous iterations, including the integration of grayzone harassment scenarios, full-brigade recall training for the 206th Infantry Brigade (Reserve Force), and urban warfare exercises. Importantly, many of the exercise’s key implications are not readily apparent from the Ministry of National Defense’s press releases or media coverage of the drills. This year’s exercise revealed three notable observations regarding the strike brigades. 

First, the Taiwanese Armed Forces now appear to treat gray-zone harassment as part of the pre-war phase. Second, efforts to secure maritime supply lines and the security of eastern air and sea space have been significantly strengthened. Third, the 99th Marine Brigade may be reassigned to northern Taiwan in the future.

New Ukrainian Missile Threat: Another Empty Hype-Train?

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In the aftermath of the negotiations shuffle, Ukraine has intensified a new campaign of infrastructure strikes against Russia. This has come amidst a spate of announcements about various new Ukrainian long-range weapons systems reportedly nearing introduction into the AFU’s arsenal. This includes the so-called ‘Flamingo’ and the new ERAM missiles promised by the US—but we’ll get to those later.

The intensified strikes Ukraine has already been conducting with its own standard arsenal of drones has included faraway Russian refineries, and the Druzbha pipeline which brings oil to Europe, and particularly Hungary and Slovakia. The latter make it obvious why the strikes were organized, as Hungary’s Orban and Slovakia’s Fico represent two of the biggest thorns in Ukraine’s side when it comes to Zelensky’s various EU-related pipe dreams and assorted anti-Russian initiatives.

As a tangential note, let us mention something about the effects of these strikes. As most know, doomers and concern-trolls alike constantly try to play up these attacks as somehow devastating to Russia, ignoring how quickly most of them are repaired, and how inconsequential they are in the grand scheme of things. As poignant example of this, here is Hungarian FM Peter Szijjarto’s statement regarding the Druzbha strikes—take note of the first sentence:

It was confirmed a couple days later that the pipeline was quickly restored and put back into operation:

BUDAPEST, August 28. /TASS/. Oil supplies from Russia to Hungary and Slovakia through the Druzhba pipeline, which had come under attack by the Ukrainian armed forces, have been restored, according to Hungarian company MOL, which receives crude oil through this route for its refineries.

And keep in mind, this Bryansk pumping station point of the pipeline was hit not once, but three times in the span between August 12th and 23rd, and even the damage from this score of strikes was able to be restored in six days. Granted, those six days reportedly still left Hungary and Slovakia critically low on oil, but it simply goes to show how ultimately inconsequential and fleeting many of these strikes are, producing little more than brief PR moments.

Europe Is Still Defenseless Without America

Franz-Stefan Gady

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Europe’s enduring dependency on U.S. military capabilities is not an accidental flaw but a fundamental feature of the trans-Atlantic security architecture. Since the inception of NATO in the late 1940s, the United States has served as the primary integrator—the strategic glue that sustains the cohesion of Europe’s collective defense. This U.S. role as NATO’s strategic, operational, and technological backbone has created a deep and intricate dependency, making European efforts to bolster their own defenses inherently limited unless this core support is addressed.

The debate over defense budgets, which will feature prominently at next week’s NATO summit, suggests that Europe can defend itself simply by recruiting more soldiers and accumulating aircraft, tanks, artillery, drones, and other hardware. However, counting troops and weapons is a flawed exercise. The real challenge is that Europe lacks the critical capabilities necessary for integrating and sustaining combat operations over a long time—the so-called “strategic enablers” that are almost entirely provided by the United States.

NATO’s Dutch Disease: Can a Wartime Mindset Survive an Injection of Resources?

Benjamin Day and Roderick Parkes

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At the recent summit in The Hague, NATO reaffirmed its commitment to a “new war of production.” With fresh funding, heightened urgency, and rising expectations, the Alliance is cultivating a mindset that is focused, specialized, and execution-driven. But war rarely conforms to that kind of conveyor-belt thinking.

Take something as seemingly straightforward as securing artillery supply. Shells are seen as NATO’s most predictable wartime need. Yet the next war may not resemble Ukraine’s grinding attrition — and if it does, it could upend NATO’s core approach to warfare. Even here, therefore, the Alliance must decide what to produce, what to stockpile, and what to forgo, without knowing which bets will pay off.

While many writers have applauded NATO’s new posture, praising its discipline and urgency as hallmarks of a wartime mentality, what they’re really praising is the kind of clarity and energy we wish existed in peacetime, when priorities can be set, plans followed, and outcomes measured. War is not so cooperative.

A true wartime mindset is in many ways the opposite. Conflict demands thinking that is often undirected, contradictory, and redundant. Since no plan survives first contact with the enemy, supple thinking becomes the reserve that absorbs crisis and enables paradoxical action.

The coming weeks will be critical in determining whether NATO can cultivate the cognitive flexibility it needs. Organizational reforms are underway that promise to give individual divisions in HQ more autonomy in policy planning, shifting responsibility away from the secretary-general’s private office. Responsibility for external engagement — long a source of innovation within the Alliance — is being relocated to the divisions best positioned to integrate it into daily work. These are promising developments.

But they may be incidental to a larger institutional momentum: a drive toward efficiency and a cultural tendency toward busyness.

Russia’s reckoning is coming

Peter Caddick-Adams

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Beyond the bluster of his meeting with President Trump, Vladimir Putin is in trouble. Isolated, outmanoeuvred, and stalled on the battlefield, Russia is tottering financially and militarily, while Zelensky's Ukraine continues to hold the upper hand.

Summits have become the common currency of international diplomacy. Think of Kennedy and Khrushchev at Vienna in 1961; Nixon and Mao Zedong in China, 1972; Reagan and Gorbachev in Reykjavik, 1986; or Trump and Kim Jong-Un at Singapore in 2018. In between, key meetings of NATO, the G7, EU, WEF, OPEC, the Commonwealth, or of BRICS Western-sceptic nations have also rejoiced under the moniker of summits.

The ease of long-haul air travel means there are many more gatherings of these alphabet soups than there used to be, but Winston Churchill, with his sense of history, was aware they were nothing new. He wrote about the Congress of Vienna, that ran from September 1814 to June 1815, attended in person the January to June 1919 peace negotiations at Versailles, and organised key encounters with Roosevelt and Stalin between 1941 and 1945.

The more significant they are to the world, the more summits require huge stage-management, massive preparation, and exhaustive face-time, still making them relatively rare beasts. Like London buses, none are witnessed for ages, then suddenly three appear. Recently, the world was treated to a Trump-Putin encounter to ‘solve the Ukraine question’ at the Elmendorf-Richardson US military base in Anchorage, Alaska, on 15 August. This was followed rapidly by a gathering of six NATO, EU and European leaders, plus Prime Minister Starmer and President Zelensky at the White House on 18 August to ‘correct Trump’s perceived pro-Moscow tilt’.

To thrash out the desires of their political masters, on 20 August, Italian Admiral Cavo Dragone, chair of NATO’s Military Committee, summoned the alliance’s 32 defence chiefs to a digital summit to consider America’s initiatives to end the Moscow-Kyiv antagonism and possibly put boots on the ground in Ukraine. The jury is out on the wisdom of a peacekeeping force. Back in the 1990s, NATO’s Bosnian commitment, with which I served, required at its height more than 60,000 personnel from 32 nations. Generals reckon that Ukraine, a much larger entity, could absorb 500,000, and with risks of an armed showdown with Russia, it would be a mission too far.

Smashing Russia's Oil Industry: Ten Strategic Strike Lessons from Ukraine

Mick Ryan

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Over the past week, Ukraine has continued smashing Russia’s oil industry.

In the latest attacks, Russian oil refineries in Samara and Krasnodar Krai have been hit just in the past day. Last Sunday, Ukraine also attacked a major condensate gas processing site near the Russian Baltic Sea port city St. Petersburg. As journalist Stefan Korshak described the attack in an article published by the Kyiv Post:

Flying wing drones tipped with explosive warheads swooped down on the Ust-Luga facility, Russia’s main processing site for natural gas piped from the Arctic and West Siberia, during the morning work shift. Eyewitnesses reported at least two massive fires following the daylight attack.

In the past 48 hours, the Ukrainians have also struck an oil pipeline supplying Moscow.

This fits the Ukrainian modus operandi. First, it is hitting Russia’s oil industry and hurting the Russian economy. Second, by cutting off oil supplies, it is making the war felt at home by Russian people – without targeting civilians directly like Russia does.

This extensive strike campaign by Ukraine is becoming an increasingly critical vulnerability for the Russian government. The earnings from their energy exports helps to fund Putin’s war, and reducing oil refining capacity impacts on this. Domestically, fuel rationing and shortages also indicate to Russian citizens that all is not well with their war against Ukraine and with how Putin is running their country.

In my previous exploration of Ukraine’s ongoing development and adaptation of a strategic, long-range strike capability, I wrote that:

AI and the Hydra Effect: Securing Outdated OT Before the Threat Swarm Arrives

Kevin W. Nickel 

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Artificial intelligence (AI) is accelerating the pace and scale of cyber-physical threats; outdated operational technology (OT) provides an exposed attack surface that terrorist and criminal networks can exploit faster than defenders can respond. Publicly documented vulnerabilities, coupled with AI-enabled reconnaissance and exploit generation, create a self-reinforcing Hydra of attackers and infection vectors. This article, part of an ongoing examination of AI’s dual-use implications, frames how legacy OT, adversarial innovation, and illicit marketplaces intersect; and outlines actionable steps in AI policy, infrastructure investment, workforce readiness, and systems design to prevent cascading failures in critical infrastructure.

Introduction – Past Systems Are Inadequate to Support a Safe Future

Civilization rests on systems that were designed to be invisible. Elevators, traffic lights, and water treatment plants quietly sustain daily life without fanfare. But they were built decades ago in an era when physical sabotage, not cyber exploitation, was the primary risk.

These systems are stable but brittle. They prioritize uptime over security; in many cases, applying a patch introduces more risk than leaving the vulnerability untouched. For years, this trade-off held because exploiting them required expertise, time, and physical access.

Artificial intelligence changes that balance. It allows bad actors to scale reconnaissance, tailor exploits, and replicate successful attacks faster than defenders can respond. Like the Hydra of mythology, where one severed head grows back as two, AI threatens to multiply both the vulnerabilities and the adversaries who exploit them.

This fragility rests on three compounding truths:Antiquated technology underpins critical infrastructure. Legacy code and outdated hardware assumed ‘security through obscurity’; a philosophy that no longer holds.

The exploit map is already written. Once an OT vulnerability is demonstrated, whether in a single elevator or a piece of localized software, it becomes a template.

Bad actors will always adopt innovation faster than defenders. Terrorist networks and criminal groups have always leveraged emerging tools; AI now supercharges that adoption.

What a hacker attack! Ursula von der Leyen’s plane was the victim of an electronic warfare attack (EW)

Redazione RHC

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A disturbing episode of electronic warfare (EW) directly involved the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen. On approach to Plovdiv Airport in Bulgaria, the jet carrying the European leader suddenly lost all electronic satellite navigation aids, leaving it “in the dark” of GPS signals.Advertisements

According to the Financial Times and confirmed by European officials, the incident is being treated as an operation of deliberate interference, presumably of Russian origin.

The accident and an “old-fashioned” landing

The aircraft, which had departed from Warsaw and was headed to Plovdiv for an official meeting with the Prime Minister, Bulgarian Rosen Zhelyazkov and a visit to a munitions factory, suddenly found himself without any digital references for the approach to the runway. The entire airport area was “blind” to GPS signals, forcing the crew to fly over the airport for about an hour before deciding on a manual landing with the aid of paper maps. One of the officials informed said: “It was undeniable interference. The entire area was blinded. After the visit, von der Leyen left Plovdiv aboard the same plane without further problems.

Electronic War or Cyber Attack?

Experts distinguish between two Scenarios:Cyberattack on GPS management systems: an action that directly targets the positioning system’s digital and software infrastructure, manipulating data or disrupting its operation.

Frequency jamming and spoofing: the obscuring or falsifying of satellite signals through high-power radio emissions that saturate or confuse receivers. This second case falls within the classic definition of Electronic Warfare (EW), which aims to blind, disrupt, or deceive the communications and navigation systems of the enemy.

The evidence gathered in Plovdiv points to GPS frequency jamming, a typical EW operation, closer to field electronic warfare than a traditional cyber attack.

Six ways AI could cause the next big war, and why it probably won’t

Zachary Burdette, Karl Mueller, Jim Mitre, Lily Hoak 

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Historically, most technological breakthroughs do not fundamentally affect the risk of conflict. There have been notable exceptions. The invention of printing helped fuel the social and religious upheavals in Europe that later contributed to the outbreak of the Thirty Years’ War in 1618. By contrast, nuclear weapons have significantly dampened the risk of great power war since World War II.

Because advanced artificial intelligence (AI) could create far-reaching social, economic, and military disruptions, it could be another exceptional technology with important implications for international security (Kissinger, Schmidt, and Mundie 2024). Analysts need to seriously consider the possibility that AI may cause changes in the international security landscape that could lead to the outbreak of wars that would not otherwise happen (Mitre and Predd 2025).

Drawing on decades of research about what conditions make wars more or less likely throughout history, we examine six hypotheses about how AI might increase the potential for major interstate war (Van Evera 1994). The hypotheses reflect different ways that AI’s effects on militaries, economies, and societies might undermine international stability, with a focus on the pathways that appear most plausible and concerning. We evaluate these hypotheses by identifying what key conditions are needed for them to be valid and then assessing the likelihood that those conditions will align in ways that would make conflict more likely.

Exploring the consequences of advanced artificial intelligence that is much more sophisticated than what exists today, the analysis assumes that AI could eventually become capable of reliably matching human performance across a wide range of cognitive tasks, which some technologists refer to as “artificial general intelligence” (Kahl 2025).

Overall, the risk that AI will directly trigger a major war appears low, especially if governments take steps to manage the technology’s use. But AI could create destabilizing shifts in the balance of power or negatively influence human strategic judgment in ways that fuel misperceptions. Fortunately, prudent government policies can help limit these risks.

Staff Processes in Large-Scale Combat Operations Part 1: The Rhythm of the Battle

John R. Harrell, James Villanueva, Peter Farese, Joe Hammond 

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Imagine a scenario where a division executing a wet gap crossing has just lost 50 percent of its bridging assets. The division commander is with the division’s tactical command post and is trying to pull his brigade commanders and staff up on the net to discuss options. He needs information and a plan now. Glancing at the division battle rhythm, the next division course of action development working group is not for another three hours and the fragmentary order and other fighting products will not be published for another 14 hours. This timeline does not support the commander or the staff.

For the past two decades the operational environment afforded divisions the luxury of not having to move their command posts. An enduring mission allowed large numbers of staff officers and noncommissioned officers to conduct a multitude of meetings, working groups, and boards, along with the time and talent to execute these types of battle rhythms. As the Army continues to shift its focus and adapt to fight and win in multidomain, large-scale combat we must change our processes so that commanders are able to make informed decisions any time of day. A robust, rigid, and highly structured battle rhythm with many boards, bureaus, cells, centers and working groups (B2C2WGs) and other staff events may support staff processes in a static environment. However, operations in competition and large-scale combat demand a battle rhythm less reliant on a full suite of meetings on a rigid schedule. A robust battle rhythm may support staff processes, but a battle has a rhythm of its own that ebbs and flows between offensive and defensive operations, periods of high and low intensity, and a relentlessly changing situation across every domain. Even doctrine acknowledges that battle rhythms change during operations.

The battle rhythm changes during execution as operations progress. For example, early in the operation a commander may require a daily “plans” update briefing. As the situation changes, the commander may only require “plans” update every three days.

Reconnaissance-Strike Battle in the Mojave Desert: How Centaur Squadron Prepares Army Units to Win the First Fight on Tomorrow’s Battlefield

Kevin T. Black, Tarik Fulcher, Ethan Christensen, Daniel Gaston and Joshua Ratta 

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In 1981, the Army created the National Training Center and gave it a critical task: to prepare units to “win the first fight.” Central to that task is an OPFOR—the opposition force—that presents rotational training units with realistic military problems. But doing so is a moving target. The perpetually changing character of warfare demands a dynamic opposition force capable of developments in technology and in tactics, techniques, and procedures. How is the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment “Blackhorse” adapting to meet that imperative? And what can units expect when they encounter Blackhorse OPFOR at the National Training Center?

A few months ago, Major Zackery Spear and Lieutenant Colonel Michael Culler took to the digital pages of the Modern War Institute to call for the US Army to adopt reconnaissance-strike battle as a tactical construct in order to properly implement multidomain operations, as well as for the Army’s combat training centers like the National Training Center (NTC) to create dedicated reconnaissance-strike complex formations to teach rotational training brigades how to survive and win in such an environment. At NTC, this is not some far-off imagined future, but an emerging cornerstone of how the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment gives units their worst day in the desert. It takes the form of the regiment’s Centaur Squadron—a purpose-built reconnaissance and security formation that combines legacy manned and new unmanned platforms to answer priority intelligence requirements, continually challenge brigade combat teams across all nine forms of contact, and preserve Blackhorse combat power for key periods of operations while attritting and shaping a brigade prior to main body contact.

Reconnaissance and Strike on the Modern Battlefield

Professional discussions about combat training centers typically focus on how difficult a rotation can be for training units. But making it difficult is itself immensely challenging for the OPFOR unit, which must ingest observations from real-world conflicts and incorporate them rapidly into its own operating procedures.

How Europe’s Future Hinges on Defense

Ravi Agrawal

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No matter how the war in Ukraine ends, one thing is clear: Europe is entering a period of massive investment in defense infrastructure. Facing the reality that they will have to be responsible for their own defense, 10 different European countries increased their defense budgets by 20 percent in 2024 alone. But how will the money get used? Pessimists believe that funds will go toward salaries and procurements without any real boost to European economies, while optimists argue for the possibility of investment-led growth and job creation.

Which will it be? On the latest episode of FP Live, I spoke with Jared Cohen, the president of global affairs at Goldman Sachs and co-head of the Goldman Sachs Global Institute. The discussion is part of a partnership between FP and the institute. Watch the full discussion in video at the top of this page, or in audio by looking for the FP Live podcast. What follows here is a lightly edited transcript.

AbramsX: The New Army Tank That Controls Its Own Drone Swarm

Brent M. Eastwood

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Key Points and Summary – The new AbramsX is the U.S. Army’s answer to the evolving battlefield, designed to bridge the gap to the next generation of armored warfare.

-Responding to the vulnerabilities exposed by drones and anti-tank missiles in Ukraine, the AbramsX is a lighter, faster, and more survivable platform.

Marines with Bravo Company, 4th Tanks Battalion, fire the M1A1 Abrams tank during a live-fire exercise as part of Exercise Arrow 18 in Pohjankangas Training Area near Kankaanpaa, Finland, May 15, 2018. Exercise Arrow is an annual Finnish multi-national exercise with the purpose of training with mechanized infantry, artillery, and mortar field training skills in a live-fire exercise. This is the first year the Marine Corps is participating in this exercise and the first time the M1A1 Abrams tanks have been in Finland. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Staff Sgt. Marcin Platek/Released)

-Key innovations include a fuel-efficient hybrid engine for “silent watch” capability, an unmanned turret, and a hemispheric Active Protection System.

Meet the AbramsX Tank

Most revolutionary is its ability to act as a “drone mothership,” controlling its own unmanned systems to scout ahead and defend itself, aiming to restore the tank’s role as the spearhead of an assault.

New AbramsX Tank Aims to Transform Armored Warfare

The main battle tank has its detractors. The suggestion that the tank is not as dominant as it once was is far from uncommon, and you can thank drones and anti-tank missiles for that growing perception. But a future model is being specifically designed to overcome the new dangers that have emerged on the battlefield.

Key Part of Drone Warfare

I’m referring to the new AbramsX tank. The AbramsX is expected to control its own flight of drones, which means that when an enemy tries to launch loitering munitions, the AbramsX can deploy its own drones to defend the tank’s turret.

Army’s autonomy ‘characteristics of need’ guidance ‘basically complete,’ official says

Carley Welch 

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WASHINGTON — The Army’s autonomy characteristics of need (CoN) statement, designed to involve industry early in the requirements process, streamlining the time it takes to get autonomous capabilities in the hands of soldiers, is “basically complete” pending final signatures, an Army Futures Command official said today.

CoNs are intended to involve vendors from the start so the Army can move at pace with industry, who are typically ahead in technology innovation, David Meyer, director of futures integration for the Futures and Concepts Center within AFC, told reporters on the sidelines of the NDIA Emerging Technologies Conference today.

The idea is for commanders to give constant feedback to industry and acquisition leaders on what is and isn’t working in the field, allowing the CoN to be a “living document” that is updated periodically. For example, the service’s first CoN was for its Next Generation Command and Control (NGC2) initiative, which is updated about every 90 days.

“The whole idea is [to] simplify the way you describe your problem to industry to allow them to innovate alongside of you,” Meyer said, noting the more traditional way of doing requirements was not only rigid, but also didn’t allow the service to move at speed.

“The complaint about the Army, and it’s appropriate, is we take a long time to figure out what we want. Then we take an even longer time to buy it. By the time we actually deliver it, it’s technologically irrelevant. So how do we acquire at the speed of industry, smaller buys, more often, constantly innovating, constantly iterating with industry?”

Importantly, Meyer emphasized, the CoN model doesn’t only bring in industry early, but also has the potential to bring in more non-traditional vendors.

“We want industry to see themselves in the problem. So instead of us having to go to a guy and saying, ‘build this for me,’…. We don’t, we don’t know who does what. We can’t know, especially with the amazing number of small businesses that are popping up who do really, really great work in a narrow field. We can never keep track of that,” Meyer said. “So the idea of a characteristics of need statement is that industry can see themselves in it and come to us and say, ‘you’ve never heard of me, but I can help with this.’”