Protests, Violence Erupt in Pakistan-Administered Kashmir

Syed Mushahid Hussain Naqvi

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Pakistan-administered Kashmir, or AJK, is undergoing one of its most serious crises in recent times. A shutter-down and wheel-jam strike, led by the Jammu and Kashmir Joint Awami Action Committee (JAAC), has paralyzed daily life across the region. Markets, shops, and transport remain shuttered, rallies continue under heavy security, and mobile and internet services have been suspended, severing residents from the outside world at a critical moment. The unrest has already claimed nine lives and left dozens injured – a tragic reminder that coercion cannot substitute for governance.

At the heart of the unrest lies JAAC’s 38-point charter of demands, which channels public anger over soaring electricity tariffs, rising food prices, and entrenched elite privileges. Despite multiple rounds of talks with federal and local authorities, the deadlock persists. What began as issue-based agitation has evolved into one of the most widespread protest movements the region has witnessed in years, exposing a deepening crisis of representation and legitimacy.

In the backdrop, faced with mounting dissent, the political leadership in AJK has resorted to theatrics rather than offering meaningful solutions. The alleged “cipher document” linking the protests to India first surfaced on September 16, when former AJK Prime Minister Raja Farooq Haider Khan unveiled it during an all-parties conference of Kashmiri political leaders in Islamabad. Several participants quickly dismissed the cipher as a conspiracy, warning that such distractions were designed to undermine and derail the ongoing popular protest movement.

Coupled with plans for pro-state rallies under the banner of Pakistan Zindabad, the move was clearly intended to redirect popular anger outward and recast domestic dissent in AJK as a foreign conspiracy. But the gambit failed. Far from instilling public confidence, it underscored the fragility of governance in the region.

By framing demands for economic relief and political accountability as externally orchestrated, leaders revealed their unwillingness – or inability – to engage substantively with the grievances fueling mass mobilization. For ordinary citizens, the cipher drama was less proof of foreign meddling than confirmation of elite deflection and denial.

The West’s Perception of the Lashkar-e-Taiba as a South Asian Problem Is Deeply Flawed

Aishwaria Sonavane and Anand Arni

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The arrest of a Pakistani national linked to the U.N. proscribed Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) in Itaewon, a district in Seoul, by South Korean police in August underscores the spread of the terror group’s global tentacles — both in terms of its ambitions and operations. The LeT has been generally viewed through the prism of its anti-India militancy in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K). However, the group’s ideological architecture also embodies a pan-Islamist and anti-Western worldview that has occasionally spilled into transnational plots.

The Pakistani national was arrested under the Counter-Terrorism Act and the Immigration Act. He reportedly joined the LeT in 2020 and received training in arms and infiltration tactics in Pakistan. While he has not been accused of plotting terrorist attacks in South Korea, his alleged affiliation is reflective of the LeT’s expansive network beyond Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the Kashmir Valley.

From its inception, the LeT articulated an expansive vision stemming from the Ahl-e-Hadith sect. It sought both regional influence and relevance within the jihadist landscape. The group’s transnational intentions are not merely theoretical, but have manifested in networks across Asia, Europe, and North America, and in attacks and propaganda campaigns designed to target Western and Jewish targets as much as Indians.

A Pakistani Proxy

The LeT was formed as the militant wing of Markaz al-Dawa wal-Irshad (MDI) during the Afghan jihad of the 1980s against the erstwhile Soviet Union. Nurtured systematically by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), the group became a crucial instrument in Islamabad’s strategic toolkit to check a far larger India, expand influence in Afghanistan, and maintain plausible deniability.

In India, the LeT has a deadly record with fingerprints on some of the most lethal urban terrorist attacks over the past three decades, including the 2000 Red Fort attack in Delhi, the 2005 Delhi bombings, the 2006 Mumbai train blasts that killed over 200, the 2008 Mumbai siege — a three-day operation that targeted Western and Jewish civilians, and the attack on tourists at Pahalgam this April. In 2019, the LeT rebranded itself under fronts such as The Resistance Front (TRF), which claimed responsibility and then distanced itself from the Pahalgam attack.

Saudi-Pakistan defence pact poses nuclear dilemma for China

Zhao Ziwen

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Saudi Arabia’s recent mutual defence pact with nuclear-armed Pakistan is widely seen as a strategic move by the kingdom as it seeks alternatives to its traditional security guarantees from the United States.

However, it also poses a dilemma for China, which has strong relations with both countries, including a long-standing collaboration with Riyadh on its civilian nuclear programme.

Analysts suggested Beijing would not wish this nuclear partnership to develop further to avoid provoking the US or giving the impression it was encouraging nuclear proliferation.

When asked whether the pact would place Saudi Arabia under Pakistan’s nuclear umbrella, a senior Saudi official replied that it would “encompass all military means”.

The deal comes amid growing Saudi unease over American security guarantees, particularly following Israel’s recent missile strikes targeting the Hamas leadership in Qatar, another key US ally in the Middle East.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has since apologised to Qatar for the attack, but Sun Degang, director of the Centre for Middle Eastern Studies at Fudan University, said the widespread belief that Israel had a “nuclear monopoly” in the region was fuelling concern.

Sun added that “as America shows reluctance to protect its ally [Qatar], it directly triggered Riyadh’s unease”.

Will economic policy win China friends in the Global South?

David Lubin

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If China hopes to cultivate closer economic and political links in the Global South by capitalizing, perhaps, on a backlash against US protectionism and foreign aid cuts, the task may be harder than it seems. In theory, the detrimental economic effects of Trumpism on trade- and aid-reliant countries create a void that China is well placed to fill. But China’s export-focused macroeconomic strategy is also unpopular in developing countries, many of which are launching punitive trade measures against China.

This paper examines how China’s trade and financial links with fellow countries in the Global South have evolved in recent years, what this means for Beijing’s economic diplomacy, and which policy changes might establish more balanced trading relationships. To ease some of the pressures and imbalances that shifting trade and financial flows are creating in Beijing’s economic relationships, this paper argues, China needs to boost domestic demand and import more from the Global South. Above all, this means allowing the renminbi to strengthen.

China’s Closing Window: Strategic Compression and the Risk of Crisis

Ryan Agee 

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When Beijing dispatched a relatively unknown rear admiral from its National Defense University to the 2025 Shangri-La Dialogue, bypassing its own defense minister and forfeiting its plenary address, it did more than snub Asia’s premier security forum. It signaled a regime shifting from dialogue to confrontation. China has traditionally used the Singapore gathering to engage regional counterparts and frame its strategic intentions. By refusing the platform at a moment of rising tensions, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) revealed its preference for manufacturing crisis rather than managing competition.

This posture reflects more than diplomatic pique. It is the manifestation of what can be called strategic compression,[1] a condition in which a state’s decision space narrows even as the timeline for action accelerates. For China, compression arises from converging demographic decline, economic stagnation, and political rigidity. These forces produce a closing window in which Beijing perceives a diminishing opportunity to achieve its central project: the “national rejuvenation” with the main marker of absorbing Taiwan.

Washington must recognize both the danger and the opportunity this moment presents. The danger is that compression can drive Beijing toward reckless escalation, gambling that crisis or even conflict will preserve regime legitimacy. The opportunity is that deterrence, strategic friction, and off-ramp architecture can be leveraged to hold China in stasis, denying both a war of choice and a war of necessity.

Strategic Compression: A Closing Window

Compression is the pressure Beijing places upon itself; friction is the pressure others apply upon Beijing. Strategic compression is best understood as the simultaneous narrowing of options and acceleration of timelines that confront states when long-term ambitions collide with structural constraints. The concept is related to the classic “windows of vulnerability” debate in strategic studies. Lebow argued that leaders exploit perceived openings when adversaries are temporarily weak. Later scholars extended the idea: Doeser and Eidenfalk posited that foreign policy change often requires leaders to perceive a fleeting “window of opportunity” as both real and urgent. More recently, Hal Brands has tied these windows directly to great-power competition, warning that compressed states may lunge an advantage before their window of opportunity closes.

Expert: China turns tanks into combat systems

Dylan Malyasov

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At Defence Blog, we asked armored vehicle expert and lead analyst Serhiy Berezutskiy, an analyst at the Ukrainian Strategic Initiative Center, to share his view on China’s newest tank concept and the future of armored warfare.

The Russian-Ukrainian war has convincingly shown that the classical tank paradigm, which has dominated military thought since the Second World War, is coming to an end. We are now witnessing attempts by several countries to develop a new concept of the tank of the future. German projects such as the EMBT (Enhanced Main Battle Tank), KF51U Panther Evo Upgrade, Leopard-2 A-RC 3.0, the British Challenger 3 (CR3) and MODIFIER (Mobile Direct Fire Equipment Requirement), as well as the American M10 Booker and Abrams M-1A3 — all of them, to varying degrees of innovation, are attempts to break out of the rigid framework of traditional tank design.

China is not standing aside either — at a grand parade in Beijing, it unveiled a tank designated Type 100 (ZTZ-100). It should be noted that in terms of innovation, the Chinese design is far ahead of its Western counterparts.

Type 100 differs radically from its predecessors, which evolved iteratively from the Type 59 medium tank (a copy of the Soviet T-55) to the Type 99 main battle tank (MBT). The first thing that stands out is its weight and size. One of the latest Chinese MBTs — the Type 99A2 — depending on configuration, has a combat weight of 54 to 58 tons. The Type 100, depending on the level of modular protection, weighs between 35 and 40 tons, thus returning to the medium tank weight class.

The most likely reason for this transformation is a shift in China’s expected main adversary — and thus the theater of operations where this new combat vehicle is intended to be used. All previous Chinese tanks were designed to counter the Soviet Union, meaning they were built for operations in the steppes of Mongolia and Transbaikal. Today, the USSR’s successor — Russia — is not only rapidly losing the capability to confront China militarily but is becoming increasingly dependent on Beijing. Chinese strategic planning is characterized by a long horizon, so regaining the territories seized by Russia under the Treaty of Aigun and the Peking Conventions may eventually be achieved without the use of military force (and without tanks). China only needs to patiently wait for Russia’s eventual decline.

Chinese military’s new underwater unmanned systems are ‘disruptive’, intelligent: journal

Yuanyue Dang

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A Chinese military journal has described the People’s Liberation Army’s latest underwater unmanned systems as “disruptive” and highlighted their intelligent capabilities.

According to Ordnance Industry Science Technology, the unmanned submersibles showcased during the large-scale military parade held in Beijing on September 3 possessed “zero-radius turning manoeuvrability”, enabling them to “operate with ease in complex maritime environments”.

An author writing in the journal’s latest issue identified only as Tang Yi stated that the unmanned systems operated below 90 decibels to evade enemy sonar detection.

In addition, the equipment can be integrated with “submarine-launched missiles, smart mines and even mother-daughter unmanned underwater vehicles”, according to the article, “forming a multilayered strike network”.

Last month’s parade commemorating the 80th anniversary of China’s victory over Japan in World War II saw the PLA showcase a range of cutting-edge weaponry, including intercontinental ballistic missiles, anti-ship missiles, drones and carrier-based aircraft.

The PLA Navy displayed new unmanned submersibles, unmanned surface vessels and unmanned minelaying systems.

According to the Ordnance Industry Science Technology article, these underwater unmanned vehicles could form networks for coordinated operations and were “capable of covertly deploying to blockade critical shipping lanes, autonomously identifying targets and launching saturation attacks”.

The article also stated that the equipment would possess “exceptionally long endurance” and be paired with “underwater charging station technology”.

Media reports last year indicated that the Russian navy was developing underwater charging stations for unmanned submersibles. China has yet to disclose similar plans.

China’s Closing Window: Strategic Compression And The Risk Of Crisis – Analysis

Ryan Agee

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(FPRI) — When Beijing dispatched a relatively unknown rear admiral from its National Defense University to the 2025 Shangri-La Dialogue, bypassing its own defense minister and forfeiting its plenary address, it did more than snub Asia’s premier security forum. It signaled a regime shifting from dialogue to confrontation.

China has traditionally used the Singapore gathering to engage regional counterparts and frame its strategic intentions. By refusing the platform at a moment of rising tensions, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) revealed its preference for manufacturing crisis rather than managing competition.

This posture reflects more than diplomatic pique. It is the manifestation of what can be called strategic compression,[1] a condition in which a state’s decision space narrows even as the timeline for action accelerates. For China, compression arises from converging demographic decline, economic stagnation, and political rigidity. These forces produce a closing window in which Beijing perceives a diminishing opportunity to achieve its central project: the “national rejuvenation” with the main marker of absorbing Taiwan.

Washington must recognize both the danger and the opportunity this moment presents. The danger is that compression can drive Beijing toward reckless escalation, gambling that crisis or even conflict will preserve regime legitimacy. The opportunity is that deterrence, strategic friction, and off-ramp architecture can be leveraged to hold China in stasis, denying both a war of choice and a war of necessity.

Strategic Compression: A Closing Window

Compression is the pressure Beijing places upon itself; friction is the pressure others apply upon Beijing. Strategic compression is best understood as the simultaneous narrowing of options and acceleration of timelines that confront states when long-term ambitions collide with structural constraints. The concept is related to the classic “windows of vulnerability” debate in strategic studies. Lebow argued that leaders exploit perceived openings when adversaries are temporarily weak. Later scholars extended the idea: Doeser and Eidenfalk posited that foreign policy change often requires leaders to perceive a fleeting “window of opportunity” as both real and urgent. More recently, Hal Brands has tied these windows directly to great-power competition, warning that compressed states may lunge an advantage before their window of opportunity closes.

Inside the Battle of Shusha: An Urban Warfare Project Case Study

Liam Collins, Jayson Geroux and John Spencer 

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In the summer of 2020, when Azerbaijan and Armenia went to war over the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, few observers predicted that the war’s decisive battle would be for the city of Shusha. It wasn’t the region’s capital, an economic hub, or home to a significant military garrison. But looking beyond its small size—its prewar population was just over four thousand—indicators of its significance were there. Its location along a key transportation corridor and cultural symbolism elevated its strategic value. So when Azerbaijani forces emerged from the battle having taken control of the city, it was quickly followed by an end to the conflict as the warring sides agreed to a ceasefire.

The manner in which Azerbaijan approached the battle—task-organizing special operations forces with conventional units, maintaining flexibility when unmanned systems were grounded by weather, and making effective use of urban terrain—contrasted sharply with Armenian failures in command cohesion and urban defense preparation. These factors ultimately combined to leave Azerbaijani forces in control of the city and the war ended on terms heavily favorable to the victors.

The fifteenth installment in MWI’s Urban Warfare Project Case Study Series explores the 2020 Battle of Shusha, identifying its tactical, operational, and strategic lessons—from the importance of sustainment in urban operations to the battle’s reminder that wars are won or lost not only through firepower and maneuver, but also through leadership, cohesion, and will. You can read it here, and be sure to follow the Urban Warfare Project for future case studies and continuing exploration of the challenges faced by military forces operating in cities.

Liam Collins, PhD is the director of Madison Policy Forum and a distinguished military fellow with the Middle East Institute. He is a retired Special Forces colonel with deployments to Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia, the Horn of Africa, and South America, with multiple combat operations in Fallujah in 2004. He is coauthor of Understanding Urban Warfare and author of Leadership & Innovation During Crisis: Lessons from the Iraq War.

Major Jayson Geroux is an infantry officer with The Royal Canadian Regiment and is currently with the Canadian Army Doctrine and Training Centre. He has been a fervent student of and has been involved in urban operations training for over two decades. He is an equally passionate military historian and has participated in, planned, executed, and intensively instructed on urban operations and urban warfare history for the past twelve years. He has served thirty years in the Canadian Armed Forces, which included operational tours to the former Yugoslavia (Bosnia-Herzegovina) and Afghanistan.

A Rare Alignment: The World Stands Ready, Are The Palestinians? – OpEd

Alon Ben-Meir

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The international community has rallied behind the Palestinians in support of their aspiration for statehood. The question is, will the Palestinians seize this rare opportunity and adopt a new strategy critical to realizing their national goal?

I do not recall a period since the 1967 Six-Day War when the international community has expressed such overwhelming support for the Palestinian cause. This global coalescence and outpouring of support represent an unparalleled precedent, which they cannot afford to miss, compounded by Trump’s just-announced peace plan.

Ironically, it is Hamas’s heinous October 2023 attack and Israel’s devastating retaliatory war in Gaza that have injected new life into the two-state solution, bringing it back into focus on the global stage.

To capitalize on this focus, the Palestinians, especially the extremists among them, must reassess their stance on three major psychological and/or strategic self-imposed constraints that have prevented them from realizing their national aspirations over the past several decades:the failure of violent resistance, demanding justice to remedy the 1948 Nakba (catastrophe), and their religious right to the land.

The Strategic Failure of Violent Resistance

Although the temptation for revenge and continued violent resistance against Israel, especially in the wake of the Gaza catastrophe, overshadows the prudence of adopting a new strategy that could better serve the Palestinian cause, Hamas must ask where the strategy of continued violent resistance has led to.

The Palestinians are more despairing and despondent now than any time before. The Palestinians in Gaza are devastated, and those in the West Bank are being choked and suffering under brutal Israeli occupation.

Will there finally be peace in Gaza?

Lawrence Freedman

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One never goes too far wrong by being pessimistic about events in the Middle East. Even when the stars seem aligned and peace is at hand something happens to shatter any residual optimism. There seem to be too many unwilling to abandon their absolutist objectives and habits of violence for common sense to last for long.

When Trump announced his peace plan on 29 September many commentators accepted that it was as much as one could hope for in the circumstances but nonetheless it would probably fail. Certainly, in terms of international support, it had a lot going for it, but there were doubts about the ability of either Israel or Hamas to make the necessary concessions to ensure the plan’s success, and these doubts remain.

Hamas is effectively required to accept defeat while Israel must scale back its objectives and even allow the faintest possibility of an eventual Palestinian state. The transitional arrangements are murky and the timetable uncertain. Any plan promoted by Donald Trump and involving Tony Blair invites scepticism. And so on, and so on. Trump, who can outdo anyone when it comes to rhetorical extravagance, claimed that the day of the announcement was ‘potentially one of the great days ever in civilization,’ but, for those who have seen euphoric days come and go as likely it was just another step on the road to despair.

And yet I want to be optimistic. The only way to bring this horrible war to an end must be a situation in which neither Israel nor Hamas rule Gaza, and the only way to get to this situation first requires the release of hostages and the end to Israel’s military operations. Whatever transitional authority is created must have a strong technocratic element to manage the immense task ahead as well as forces from Arab and Muslim countries to bring a modicum of order to the territory. A prominent Palestinian element will be needed to have any legitimacy among the population. This is what is now on offer and we are close to reaching the first crucial stage.

It is not the best plan, but the best circumstances allow. As the Economist noted, whatever its faults, it is better than ‘today’s unending mass suffering’ and the ‘alternatives of occupation, anarchy or rule by a reconstituted Hamas.’ It is far away from Trump’s previous fantasies about a ‘Gaza Riveria’ or his administration’s less fantastical but more alarming readiness to back the current Israeli government in not only rejecting any idea of a Palestinian state but also in pushing Palestinians out from the West Bank as well as Gaza.

Jamestown Foundation China

Brief, September 20, 2025, v. 25, no. 17 

‘AI +’ Initiatives Multiply After Years of Experimentation

PRC Consolidates Pharmaceutical Supply Chain Dominance

Xi Jinping’s Visit to Lhasa Elevates Tibet in National Policymaking Agenda

Corruptible Connections: CCP Ties and Smart Device Dangers

Decoding Beijing’s ‘Colonization of the Mind’ Narrative

Dissipative Warfare: The PLA’s Potential New Strategy in the AI Era

Hybrid Warfare: Ukraine, Russia and Western Lessons

Anna Romandash

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One of the weapons in Russia’s arsenal against Ukraine is the use of hybrid attacks, which combine informational, trade and conventional warfare. These attacks began before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and have since been used against Western allies of Ukraine, prompting other authoritarian regimes to adopt the same tactics and raising global security concerns as a result. This policy brief looks at what Western countries, including Canada, can learn from Ukraine’s experiences to protect themselves from similar attacks.

Trump’s Approach to Taiwan Is Taking Shape

Emery Yuhang Lai

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On March 4, 2025, Elbridge Colby, the incoming undersecretary of defense for policy, made some comments on Taiwan that raised eyebrows. During his Senate confirmation hearing, Colby asserted that “Taiwan’s fall will be a disaster for American interests,” and that “Taiwan is very important,” but added that “it is not an existential interest” for the United States.

It was not the first time Colby had expressed such a point of view, and he clearly ruffled the feathers of those in Washington who are at pains to “explain to the American people why Taiwan matters and why they should care about its fate.”

Colby was labelled an isolationist due to his position on U.S. support for Ukraine, and he could easily be tarred with the same brush when it comes to Taiwan. However, his position on Taiwan aligns in general with many conservatives who self-identify as “restrainers,” believing that U.S. resources are limited and not everything is a vital U.S. interest. In that context, Colby’s position – and Trump’s changing policy toward Taiwan in general – needs to be situated in a recent debate on whether defending Taiwan is a vital U.S. interest.

For those who lobby the U.S. to play a more proactive role in Taiwan’s defense against China, an unambiguous promise to come to Taiwan’s rescue is necessary. According to this line of thinking, Washington needs a policy of “strategic clarity” rather than the anachronistic “strategic ambiguity.” Proponents argue that Taiwan is worth defending because of its strategically important location, because it serves as a model democracy, and because it is an economic powerhouse capable of producing the world’s most advanced semiconductors.

However, none of these arguments strikes restrainers in Washington as reasonable enough to justify a clear-cut military commitment to the defense of Taiwan. They recognize its importance but warn that Taiwan is also dangerous as a “tinderbox” and a “flashpoint” in East Asia. Therefore, they prefer to enhance Taiwan’s self-defense capabilities, to turn it into a “porcupine” able to deter China on its own.

For the restrainers, the costs caused by the U.S. direct military involvement in the cross-strait conflict outweigh the benefits, and the avoidance of an Armageddon between two great nuclear powers must take precedence over other goals. As Jennifer Kavanagh and Stephen Wertheim argued in an article for Foreign Affairs, the U.S. “should speak frankly about the cost of a war with China and push back against the misguided idea that the United States’ survival and prosperity turn on Taiwan’s political status.”

Hamas Agrees To Release Hostages; Demands Further Negotiations

Sarah Roderick-Fitch

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(The Center Square) – After an ominous warning from President Donald Trump, Hamas has reportedly agreed to release the remaining Israeli hostages; however, they have yet to agree to the president’s proposed 20-point peace plan.

The peace plan announced on Monday during a joint press conference between Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was agreed to by the Jewish State, as well as several Arab and European countries.

In a Truth Social post, Trump told Hamas leaders that they have until 6 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 5, Washington, D.C. time, warning this is their last chance or “all HELL” will break loose.

The president warned Hamas that they will be hunted down, indicating that Israel is waiting for his approval to attack.

“If this LAST CHANCE agreement is not reached, all HELL, like no one has ever seen before, will break out against Hamas,” the president posted.

In response, Hamas responded saying they are keen to “end the aggression and genocide being carried out against our steadfast people” in Gaza.

In a statement from the terror group, it referred to itself as the Islamic Resistance Movement, saying that it has “conducted in-depth consultations within its leadership institutions, broad consultations with Palestinian forces and factions, and consultations with brothers, mediators, and friends, in order to reach a responsible position in dealing with U.S. President Donald Trump’s plan.”

The group “made its decision” and issued a response through its mediators, by thanking the Arab, Islamic, and “international efforts, as well as the efforts” of Trump to bring an end to the war.

Hamas specified the “exchange of prisoners, the immediate entry of aid, the rejection of the occupation” of Gaza and “the rejection of the displacement of our Palestinian people from it.”

How the US and Ukraine Can Redefine Drone Deterrence

Ivan Sascha Sheehan

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The Ukrainian UAV sector’s baptism by fire will make it a strategic asset for NATO defense in the years to come.

Although the Russia-Ukraine war is the most drone-intensive conflict of the twenty-first century, the implications of this reality have only recently spilled beyond its borders. In August, Polish officials confirmed that Russian drones had crossed into their airspace before being shot down near the frontier. Around the same time, Danish and Norwegian airports were reportedly targeted by suspected drone disruptions, which local analysts described as highly likely to be Kremlin-backed.

These incidents are not isolated provocations; they function as stress tests—probing NATO’s defenses against a rapidly evolving form of warfare. With Western military leaders increasingly alarmed about how fast the drone battlefield is changing, the alliance faces a clear imperative: it must integrate Ukraine’s wartime innovations into its own defense planning and production cycles.

Russia’s invasion has triggered a transformation in drone warfare so profound that even the United States—with its vast defense industry and cutting-edge military—has struggled to adapt. Washington excels at building advanced fighter jets, tanks, and precision-guided missiles. However, when it comes to mass-producing inexpensive, expendable systems at a rapid pace, America lags behind. US troops also lack the combat experience in drone operations that Ukrainian soldiers have been forced to acquire.

The Pentagon has acknowledged the gap. In July, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth disseminated a memo to senior officers outlining a plan to accelerate the US military’s adoption of drones. Since then, US troops have begun experimenting with 3D-printed drones and training on simulators. These are important steps, but they also underscore a sobering reality: America is racing to catch up.

Slashing the Training Shackles: Empowering Commanders for Real Warfighting

Donald Vandergriff

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Look, we’ve all seen it—the Army drowning in a sea of mandatory online drivel, ticking boxes for promotions while the troops sit idle in the motor pool, rusting like forgotten gear. That’s the old Second Generation Warfare mindset: top-down dictates from the E-ring, force-feeding everyone the same bland compliance chowder, whether it’s another hour on cybersecurity quizzes or Privacy Act reruns. It’s industrial-age nonsense, straight out of the World War I playbook, where leaders were micromanagers and soldiers were cogs in a machine. No wonder our units feel sluggish, disconnected from the fight.

But here’s the good news: the Department of War is finally swinging the axe. Secretary of War Hegseth’s push, we’re gutting this bureaucratic bloat to unleash the kind of agility that wins wars. Mandatory training? Slashed from 27 soul-crushing courses to a lean 16 essentials. That’s not just paperwork relief—it’s a declaration of trust in our commanders to call the shots on what keeps their units lethal.

Why This Matters—Straight Talk on the Cuts:

Dumping the Digital Deadweight: We’re torching about 350 hours of those promotion-tied online modules. No more staring at screens pretending to learn what you already know. Time saved goes straight to the range, the field, the fight—where it counts.

Tailoring to the Mission, Not the Memo: Cybersecurity and Privacy Act refreshers? Relaxed or axed entirely. Commanders now get the discretion to gauge risks and prioritize. One battalion drilling urban ops in Mosul doesn’t need the same safety seminar as a stateside logistics crew. This is commander-led, unit-specific sharpening for the edge of combat.

Consolidating the Clutter: Redundant stuff like Combat Lifesaver, Law of War, Code of Conduct, SERE, personnel recovery, and chunks of safety/occupational health training? Gone from the must-do list. What’s left gets bundled smartly, cutting the scattershot approach that dilutes focus.

The Big Win: Lethality Over Liability: No more one-size-fits-all straitjacket. Leaders assess, adapt, and drill what builds warfighting muscle—maneuver, initiative, combined arms. This frees up bandwidth for the hard yards: live-fire iterations, tactical decision games, the stuff that forges adaptive fighters.

Russian Army Chief Expresses High Satisfaction with New Generation of Armour: T-90M Tank Meets Ground Forces’ Needs

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Russian Ground Forces Commander-in-Chief Colonel General Andrey Mordvichev has expressed a high level of satisfaction with the country’s new armoured vehicles, following three and a half years of intensive combat testing and incremental modernisation. "Advanced armour, such as T-90M tanks, BMP-2M infantry fighting vehicles with the Berezhok combat module, BMP-3 IFVs and BTR-82A armoured personnel carriers demonstrate high efficiency in the special military operation,” he stated, in reference to the ongoing war effort in the Ukrainain theatre against Ukrainain and supporting Western Bloc and international contractor forces. “Various armoured vehicles, such as Typhoon-K, Asteis and Ural-VPK have also proven their worth," Mordvichev added.

The capabilities of the T-90M main battle tank have been particularly singled out by Russian officials for its advanced capabilities, with Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council Dmitry Medvedev previously noting in February 2024 that the vehicles “have proven themselves brilliantly during the special op period.” "Battle commanders that come back from the frontline and order equipment, they asked to help with obtaining the T-90Ms. It is a very good weapon,” he added. Medvedev previously stated in March 2023: “In my opinion, this [T-90M tank] is now the best tank in the world ... It is certainly better than Leopard, Challenger, Abrams [tanks], including in terms of its tactical and technical data, even in terms of such a component as mass.” Similarly strong praise for the tank was given by President Vladimir Putin four months later in July, when he cited a report regarding the T-90M’s durability when hitting a roadside bomb, and referred to it as the best tank in the world.

Introduced into service in April 2020, after the procurement of the first ten vehicles the previous year, some of the T-90M’s most notable features have included a strong base armour, very wide coverage using Relikt explosive reactive armour, use of highly sophisticated new fire controls and thermal sights, and an independent thermal viewer and digital display for the commander. The tank’s firepower also improved significantly on its predecessors, with a new autoloader and main gun allowing it to integrate longer armour piercing fin-stabilised discarding sabot rounds with a much greater penetrative capabilities against enemy armour. Separation of the tank’s ammunition and crew, and a significant increase in the levels of protection surrounding the autoloader carousel, were also major contributors to survivability. The tank has nevertheless maintained the low maintenance requirements characteristic of the T-72 family of vehicles, making it significantly easier to operate than Western tanks or than the T-64 or T-80 that are also currently being used by both sides in Ukraine.

JUST IN: Affordable Mass of Munitions a ‘Necessity’ for Modern Warfare

Josh Luckenbaugh

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FORT WORTH, Texas — The United States needs more munitions — and more production capacity to build those weapons — if it wants to win the conflicts of the present and the future, a Defense Department official said Sept. 30.

Conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East have demonstrated that the consumption of ammunition in modern warfare “defies our expectations,” Boyd Miller, principal deputy director for strategic logistics, J4, the Joint Staff, said during a keynote speech at the National Defense Industrial Association’s Future Force Capabilities Conference and Exhibition.

The modern operating environment is a “very different battlefield” with a “very different rate of consumption” than the past, Miller said. This evolution makes an affordable mass of munitions a “necessity,” he said.

“Deterrence requires both exquisite, high-performance weapons, and it also requires scalable and adaptable systems we can produce by the tens of thousands at cost that will not bankrupt the nation,” he said. On the modern battlefield, “platforms without munitions are glorified paperweights, and without the munitions, we can't do as a joint force what the nation requires in the most difficult circumstances,” he said.

“Make no mistake — the nation that scales first, wins,” he added.

The United States’ “secret weapon” in this race to scale munitions production fastest is its industrial capacity, Miller said.

“The arsenal of democracy has never been a closed club,” he said, and just as “it took the national strength of our industrial base and our economy” to win World War II, “we’ve got to do the same today.”

The future arsenal of democracy “must include startups, innovators, small manufacturers and entrepreneurs; the garage tinkerers, the coder up in a loft, the robotics team at a university lab,” he said.

Validating Claims About AI: A Policymaker’s Guide

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This brief proposes a practical validation framework to help policymakers separate legitimate claims about AI systems from unsupported claims.

Key Takeaways

AI companies often use benchmarks to test their systems on narrow tasks but then make sweeping claims about broad capabilities like “reasoning” or “understanding.” This gap between testing and claims is driving misguided policy decisions and investment choices.

Our systematic, three-step framework helps policymakers separate legitimate AI capabilities from unsupported claims by outlining key questions to ask: What exactly is being claimed? What was actually tested? And do the two match?

Even rigorous benchmarks can mislead: We demonstrate how the respected GPQA science benchmark is often used to support inflated claims about AI reasoning abilities. The issue is not just bad benchmarks; it is how results are interpreted and marketed.

High-stakes decisions about AI regulation, funding, and deployment are already being made based on questionable interpretations of benchmark results. Policymakers should use this framework to demand evidence that actually supports the claims being made.

Executive Summary

When OpenAI claims GPT-4 shows “human-level performance” on graduate exams, or when Anthropic says Claude demonstrates “graduate-level reasoning capabilities,” how can policymakers verify these claims are valid? The impact of these assertions goes far beyond company press releases. Potential claims made on benchmark results are increasingly influencing regulatory decisions, investment flows, and model deployment in critical systems.

The problem is one of overstating claims: Companies test their AI models on narrow tasks (e.g., multiple-choice science questions) but then make sweeping claims about broad capabilities based on these narrow task results (e.g., models exhibiting broader “reasoning” or “understanding” based on Q&A benchmarks). Consequently, policymakers and the public are left with limited, potentially misleading assessments of the capabilities of the AI systems that are increasingly permeating their everyday lives and society’s safety-critical processes. This pattern appears across AI evaluations more broadly. For example, we may incorrectly conclude that if an AI system accurately solves a benchmark of International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) problems, it has reached human-expert-level mathematical reasoning. However, this capability also requires common sense, adaptability, metacognition, and much more beyond the scope of the narrow evaluation based on IMO questions. Yet such overgeneralizations are common.

Cognitive Warfare to Dominate and Redefine

Jeremiah “Lumpy” Lumbaca, PhD

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The battlefield of the future is the human mind, and the very concepts of reality and truth are the target. Cognitive warfare goes far beyond traditional psychological operations; this new form of conflict combines cyber tools, psychological sciences, and neurosciences to alter perceptions and influence decision- making. Source: Image generated using Google Gemini 2.5 Flash, July 2, 2025.

Consider the power to dictate who is perceived as “right” or “wrong” in conflicts like the Russia–Ukraine War or Israeli–Gazan conflict, or to reshape the outcome of a nation’s election in the minds of its citizens. Imagine the U.S. and its allies not merely swaying opinions but reconstructing the very reality in which adversaries like North Korea, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Iran, or violent extremists make judgments, aligning their perceptions with U.S. strategic objectives.

In an era of strategic competition where gray zone conflict and hybrid warfare tactics are now commonplace, the human mind has emerged as a distinct and critical domain of conflict. There are differing definitions of the term cognitive warfare. Bernard Claverie and François du Cluzel define it as “an unconventional form of warfare that uses cyber tools to alter enemy cognitive processes, exploit mental biases or reflexive thinking, provoke thought distortions, influence decision-making and hinder actions, with negative effects, both at the individual and collective levels.”¹ NATO’s strategic warfare development command, known as Allied Command Transformation, notes that cognitive warfare includes “activities conducted in synchronization with other Instruments of Power, to affect attitudes and behaviors, by influencing, protecting, or disrupting individual, group, or population level cognition, to gain an advantage over an adversary.”² Whole-of-society manipulation is a new norm.³

Information Inoculation: Preparing US Warfighters for Cognitive War

Robert “Jake” Bebber

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Sophisticated non-kinetic threats, such as Chinese cognitive domain operations (CDO) and Russian active measures operations, define the contemporary global security landscape and pose significant challenges to national security policymakers in the United States. These adversarial capabilities transcend traditional military engagement, targeting the cognitive processes, beliefs, and unit cohesion of an opponent to achieve military objectives, often as a precursor to the onset of hostilities. By targeting the brain itself, adversaries can potentially alter US service members’ decision-making or behavior, having a detrimental impact on their will to fight. Current understanding of brain sciences, the ubiquity of surveillance technology and big data, and algorithm-based evolving business and marketing models that condition human behavior are converging to shape global power competition in ways that may undermine the efficacy of assumptions about American power. As a result, foreign adversaries could subject the American population to a persistent state of cognitive manipulation and control. To prepare service members for this rapidly evolving environment, the Department of War (DoW), needs to adopt strategies to build critical thinking and individual resistance to persuasive cognitive attacks. This paper proposes a military training program that begins in recruit training and continues as part of regular professional military education based on information inoculation theory, a critical-thinking strategy analogous to medical immunization.

Background

During the Korean War, American social psychologist William McGuire expressed concerns about reports that Communist forces were brainwashing American service members. He suggested that because Americans lacked mental defenses against sophisticated ideological attacks, they would be more susceptible to persuasion. To counter these psychological tactics, McGuire argued for a form of cognitive inoculation that would work much like a vaccine. Conceptually, one may trace information inoculation back to Aristotle’s refutational enthymemes, the idea of preempting an argument beforehand to make one’s case. Just as a body builds resistance to viruses through previous exposure, beliefs can be made resistant to persuasive threats through pre-exposure to weakened forms of persuasion. “Cognitive vaccines” expose individuals to weakened counterarguments or manipulation strategies, prompting them to generate their own supporting arguments. Psychological inoculation can offer broad protection, especially when supplemented with “booster shots” over time, to develop a form of herd immunity.

Virtual Worlds, Real Threats: Violent Extremist Exploitation of Roblox and Wider Gaming Ecosystems

Tore Hamming

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In January 2025, a man named James Wesley Burger used Roblox—a platform designed for creativity and youth engagement—to openly issue threats of ideologically motivated violent extremist attacks. The case illustrates a disturbing trend: extremists appear to exploit Roblox to radicalise, recruit, and mobilise users, raising urgent questions about safety on one of the world’s most popular gaming platforms.

While often described as a game, Roblox is more accurately a platform—a creative ecosystem where developers and users design their own games. Regardless of terminology, it has become one of the most widely used gaming platforms, topping mobile charts and competing with Minecraft and Fortnite for desktop playtime.

Despite being an industry leader in terms of trust and safety and investing considerable resources into platform safety initiatives at a time when most digital platforms otherwise abandon it, Roblox is no longer just a safe creative space for predominantly the youth to enjoy, express, and develop. Recent years have also shown that extremists view Roblox as an attractive platform within the broader gaming universe, likely in part due to its enormous user popularity and design flexibility. Notably, extremists’ preference for Roblox has developed despite the company being one of the most committed gaming companies in terms of trust and safety, highlighting the complex nature of establishing secure and safe social technology platforms.

This Insight discusses how gaming platforms have become attractive digital spaces for extremists, focusing specifically on Roblox and recent cases of extremist exploitation. This builds on a growing body of research showing that extremists across ideologies are building a presence on gaming and adjacent platforms such as Steam, Discord, and, to a lesser extent, Minecraft. While gaps in data remain, trends point to the use of these spaces for propaganda dissemination, recruitment, mobilisation, and potentially, fundraising.

In recent years, intelligence agencies have warned about extremists’ use of Roblox and that they detect a dynamic of younger and younger people becoming radicalised. Similar dynamics have been evident in my own work on how gaming and gaming-adjacent platforms are exploited by extremists, a theme that the GIFCT’s pool of experts are currently scrutinising to provide the public and the gaming companies with a better understanding of the challenge at hand.

Gen-Zs and Ghost Guns: Trends, Threats and Implications

Rueben Dass

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Ghost guns, in particular 3D-printed guns, have been gaining popularity among youth, with several criminal violent extremist examples in recent years. Just this month, a 13-year-old boy was arrested in Washington for possessing a large cache of weapons and making threats to carry out a school shooting. Among the collection of 23 firearms, several were manufactured with a 3D-printer. This past summer, in July 2025, 18-year-old Felix Winter was tried in court for plotting a mass shooting at his school in Edinburgh. Winter, who was 15 when he committed the offence, was motivated by neo-Nazi ideology and had idolised the 1999 Columbine school shooters. He had intended to use a 3D-printer to manufacture the guns to be used in the shooting.

Further, in March 2024, Italian police apprehended a 23-year-old for attempting to manufacture and build a 3D-printed FGC-9 rifle. He was a proponent of anarchist ideology and had intended to build weapons to be disseminated to the wider anarchist movement. In the same year, Greek police dismantled a firearm manufacturing and trafficking ring comprised of three 19-year-olds and one 20-year-old. The cell was in possession of a cache of weapons, including a 3D-printed Glock frame and an unfinished FGC-9 MKII rifle, and had received information on how to manufacture the firearms from external parties.

These are just a few examples that showcase the alarming and increasing trend of 3DPF cases involving youth below the age of 24. Furthermore, several of these cases are linked to violent extreme right-wing ideology. Between 2018 and August 2025, there were at least 80 cases of youth involved with 3DPFs globally.¹ This Insight aims to shed light on the global trends pertaining to youth involvement with 3DPFs and is an update to the author’s report on global proliferation trends of 3DPFs.

Figure 1: Youth Involvement by Year.

There has been a steady year-on-year increase in youth involvement with 3DPF between 2021 and 2024 (Figure 1). Youth involvement here refers to the activities as mentioned in Figure 4, including the possession, manufacturing, and trafficking of these weapons across the criminal and terrorist spectrum. Fourteen youth cases have been recorded this year (as of August). The increase in the number of cases post-2021 may be a consequence of an increase in media reporting on 3DPFs, as the data analysed here is sourced primarily from media reports. Nevertheless, it does highlight the growing involvement of youth with 3DPFs. This coincides with the proliferation of blueprints and information regarding 3DPFs on the clear web and the increased accessibility of this technology.

Laser-Guided Rockets Are Reshaping Global Air Defense – Analysis

Scott N. Romaniuk and László Csicsmann

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The air war in the Middle East is being quietly re-armed with inexpensive precision. Over the past year, laser-guided 70mm APKWS II rockets — originally designed to turn unguided rockets into pinpoint air-to-surface weapons — have emerged as the US Air Force’s workhorse against small, inexpensive aerial threats. What began as a field expedient is now established doctrine: fighters and attack aircraft are routinely equipped with salvoes of guided rockets to counter drone swarms and slow cruise missiles.

The rationale is straightforward. High-end air-to-air missiles are costly and limited in number. An AIM-120 Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missile (AMRAAM) can cost around a million dollars; and the AIM-9X Sidewinder several hundred thousand. By contrast, the APKWS II guidance section costs only in the mid-five figures — commonly reported at $15,000–$20,000, with some estimates up to $35,000 — and the complete 70 mm round (guidance plus motor and warhead) adds only a few thousand dollars more. This converts an unguided rocket into an inexpensive precision intercept. In skies increasingly saturated with loitering munitions and small UAVs, the cost-exchange decisively favors defenders who can unleash many accurate shots instead of a handful of million-dollar interceptors.

Operational Impact

First deployed on F-16s, APKWS II later expanded to F-15Es, A-10 Thunderbolt IIs, and AH-64 Apaches. While UH-60 and MH-60 variants tested the system for precision strikes over a decade ago, modern integration continues to focus on fixed-wing and attack helicopter platforms. Fired from seven-shot pods that can be stacked on a single pylon, the rockets give platforms like the Strike Eagle the ability to carry dozens of rounds while preserving stations for other missiles. This loadout flexibility enables a single sortie to handle both conventional air combat and mass UAV defense, reducing reliance on scarce, high-value interceptors.

Tactically, APKWS II fills a dangerous capability gap. During the April 2024 Iranian barrage against Israel — when fighters reportedly depleted missile stocks chasing waves of drones — commanders faced a stark dilemma: risk exhausting high-value missiles or attempt improvised strikes with bombs poorly suited to agile aerial targets. Laser-guided rockets provided an intermediate option: precision against small, maneuvering targets at a fraction of the cost, with deeper magazines and simpler logistics.