Indian Strategic Studies: 11/13/25

13 November 2025

After India war lessons, Pakistan plans a unified command. More power for Munir?

Months after its mini-war with India, Pakistan is planning to introduce the designation of Commander of Defence Forces in its attempt at a unified command and better coordination among the three armed services. The defence reforms are "inspired by lessons" from Pakistan's war with India in May, reported Pakistani media outlets. There's more to it. The change, which will be brought through a constitutional amendment, is likely to give a boost to army chief Asim Munir vis-a-vis the civilian government.

The new title of Commander of Defence Forces (CDF) is under consideration "under the proposed amendment to Article 243, aimed at ensuring greater coordination and unified command among the three armed services," Pakistani daily The News reported, quoting sources.

The move, it said, was said to "have been inspired by lessons drawn from recent Pakistan-India war scenarios and the evolving nature of modern warfare that demands an integrated operational response."

On May 28, India notified new rules for unified command across the three services—Army, Navy and Air Force—to bolster effective command, control, and efficient functioning of Inter-Services Organisations (ISOs). The rules were notified amid the military tensions between India and Pakistan.

In December 2019, the Union Cabinet approved the creation of the Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), a four-star General. Key roles of the CDS include overseeing the Army, Navy, Air Force, and the Territorial Army, and promoting jointness in procurement, training, staffing, and command restructuring. India is aiming for better coordination among the armed forces through the establishment of Integrated Theatre Commands and Integrated Battle Groups.

Beijing’s Latest Global Leadership Bid

W.Y. Kwok

The Global Governance Initiative (GGI), which General Secretary Xi Jinping unveiled in September, aims to provide “Chinese solutions” (中国方案) to what Xi describes as a “global governance deficit” (全球治理赤字). It uses inclusive rhetoric of improving existing governance mechanisms obscures a parallel institution building effort, which follows Xi’s articulated vision of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as leader—not merely participant or advocate—in global governance.

It seeks to confront three perceived weaknesses in contemporary global governance, including the underrepresentation of Global South countries in international institutions, the erosion of authority within existing governance frameworks, and what Beijing terms the “effectiveness deficit” (有效性赤字) in addressing transnational challenges. The GGI operates through five core principles: sovereign equality, international rule of law, multilateralism, people-centric governance, and action-oriented results. In his explanation of the initiative, Xi urged the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to become a “participant, advocate, and leader” (参与者、推动者、引领者) during this period of “revolutionary” (革命性) change in international power, and to actively participate in the formulation of international rules (PLA Daily, September 13; People’s Daily, September 26).

Taiwan contingency’ could prompt Japanese armed reaction: Japan PMStaff writer with CNA

Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said yesterday that China using armed force against Taiwan could constitute a "survival-threatening situation" for Japan, allowing the country to mobilize the Japanese armed forces under its security laws.

Takaichi made the remarks during a parliamentary session yesterday while responding to a question about whether a "Taiwan contingency" involving a Chinese naval blockade would qualify as a "survival-threatening situation" for Japan, according to a report by Japan’s Asahi Shimbun.

"If warships are used and other armed actions are involved, I believe this could constitute a survival-threatening situation," Takaichi was quoted as saying in the report.

Japan’s Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi is pictured at the House of Representatives of the National Diet in Tokyo on Tuesday.Photo: AFP

Under Japan’s security legislation, such a situation allows the country to exercise "collective self-defense" if an attack on an ally -- such as the United States -- or a country closely related to Japan is deemed to threaten Japan’s survival, even without a direct attack on Japan.

"The situation regarding Taiwan has become serious. We must assume the worst-case scenario," Takaichi was quoted by Kyodo News as saying during yesterday’s parliamentary session.

However, she noted that not all disruptions in the Taiwan Strait would meet the threshold, saying that civilian vessels forming a line to block passage would not qualify.

Her statement echoed that of former Japanese prime minister and fellow Liberal Democratic Party member Taro Aso, who has said on multiple occasions that Japan would likely consider a conflict across the Taiwan Strait as a survival-threatening situation.

In 2021, former prime minister Shinzo Abe warned Beijing against invading Taiwan, saying in a speech on Taiwan-Japan relations: "A Taiwan contingency is a contingency for Japan."

"In other words, it is also a contingency for the Japan- U.S. alliance," Abe added, urging China’s leadership not to misjudge the situation.

Takaichi, who was elected Japan’s 104th prime minister last month, is widely regarded as "Taiwan-friendly" and aligned with the policy direction of the late Abe.

Kremlin Shifts Focus to Information Warfare

Yuri Lapaiev

Executive Summary:Russia’s draft 2026 budget cuts military spending by $2.4 billion compared to 2025 while boosting funding for state-run media by 54 percent, signaling a potential pivot toward intensified information warfare.

The Kremlin’s informational tactics are tailored to domestic, Western, and Ukrainian audiences, seeking to sustain public support at home, undermine Western aid to Ukraine, and erode Ukrainian morale.

Facing limited battlefield gains and economic strain, Moscow increasingly relies on propaganda to achieve its aims, exaggerating weapon tests, spreading false narratives, and combining disinformation with physical attacks to influence perceptions and sustain its war against Ukraine.

Russian President Vladimir Putin shows no sign of giving up on his war against Ukraine despite limited battlefield gains. As Russia begins to experience a shortage of certain types of military equipment, its propaganda machine continues unabated and may have even expanded. Ukraine’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Andrii Sybiha, stated that Russia’s draft budget for 2026 would reduce military spending by approximately $2.4 billion compared to 2025, while increasing funding for state-run media by 54 percent, an additional $458 million. In Sybiha’s opinion, this draft budget realignment shows that the Kremlin is prioritizing informational warfare going forward (The New Voice of Ukraine, September 30; Telegram/@Ukraine_MFA, October 19). The target audience—including the population of the Russian Federation, citizens of Ukraine, and residents of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) countries and allies—dictates Moscow’s strategy.

The U.S. Army Is In 'Crisis'

Andrew Latham

Key Points and Summary – The U.S. Army is not in “terminal decline” but at a “classical crisis”—a decisive turning point.

-Critics see an “obsolete” force, but the author points to historical parallels (post-WWI, post-WWII, and the post-Vietnam “Hollow Army”) where the Army successfully renewed itself.

U.S. Army Soldiers assigned to 2nd Squadron, 278th Armored Cavalry Regiment, Task Force Reaper, conduct movement procedures with M2 Bradley Fighting Vehicles during the Jade Cobra VI exercise in the U.S. Central Command’s area of responsibility, Feb. 19, 2025. Jade Cobra VI strengthens military-to-military partnerships, increases readiness, and facilitates security cooperation between the United States and Jordan. (U.S. Army photo by Staff Sgt. Hector Tinoco)

-Signs of this “metamorphosis,” like the SkyFoundry drone initiative (aiming for 10,000/month by 2026), show the Army is adapting, not collapsing, and will emerge smaller but more lethal.

The U.S. Army at an Inflection Point

To some, that looks like a crisis—but only in the modern, sensational sense of the word, as a synonym for impending collapse or terminal decline.In truth, the Army faces a crisis in the classical sense: a decisive turning point in a long struggle when the patient either recovers or dies. And this time, the signs point toward recovery.The Army has stood at this threshold before, worn down yet ready to renew itself.

The Best Birthday Present for the Marine Corps

Gary Anderson

As the Marine Corps approaches its 250th birthday, the best gift the administration and Congress could give it would be a brand, new commandant. The current one is not worthy of the office. General Eric Smith lied to the press — and thus the American people — regarding the Marine Corps involvement in DEI. This is the following statement to the press pool on January 15th of this year: “As far as DEI, the Marine Corps has not had DEI programs … We don’t do DEI in the Marine Corps, we never have.”

Many active and retired marines disagree strongly with Smith’s continued support of his predecessor’s failing strategic Force Design program.

General Smith made this statement even as his staff was frantically dismantling the Corps’ diversity office and wiping its websites clean of directives such as Talent Management 2030 which had an entire section devoted to DEI, stressing: reinforcing diversity, promoting equity, and encouraging a culture of inclusion. His was a bare-faced lie that represented the equivalent of making a false official statement which is a court martial offense under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

At a minimum, he should have been relieved of his duties. He could have avoided this by telling the reporters: We obeyed the orders of the Obama and Biden administrations out of respect for civilian control and will comply with the new administration to remove those policies. That would have been the end of the issue, but no-one has ever accused Smith of being the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree.

The West’s Three Options in a Multipolar World

Peter Slezkine

According to the “global majority” (as the Russians call it), the sun is finally setting on the West. After 500 years of dominance, the West is showing signs of relative decline across almost every dimension. A protracted period of historical anomaly is passing, and the world is entering an age defined by a reassertion of sovereign interests and a resurgence of ancient civilizations.

At a certain remove, this image seems a reasonable enough representation of new realities. But as a roadmap for navigating international politics, it is far too rough a sketch.

First, “decline” does not mean “displacement.” The West may lose its power to rule by diktat. Its institutions, culture, and moral fashions may lose their charm. But we will continue to live in a profoundly modern and globalized world of Western origin. Our systems of education and science, our forms of government, our legal and financial mechanisms, and our built environment will continue to rest on a Western foundation. A weakening West is unlikely to find itself in a post-Western world.

Second, “the West” is a fluid concept. It has shifted shape before, and may reconfigure itself once more. Before considering what the West might become going forward, we need to figure out what sort of power is passing from the scene.

The history of Western hegemony can be split into two separate eras. Until 1945, the West may have ruled the world, but it did so as a collection of competing states rather than a single entity. In fact, it was precisely competition within a fractured West that provided a major impetus for outward expansion.

Guns and Ammo: The Ukraine War and NATO’s Ammunition Interoperability Problem

Eric Johnson

If the war in Ukraine has reinforced one truism of modern warfare, it is that artillery remains the king of battle. Its central role in Ukrainian combat operations has been sustained by the commitment of Ukraine’s international supporters. The extensive provision of artillery shells from the United States and other NATO members led to serious concerns about the depth of ammunition stockpiles and shell manufacturing capacity in both the United States and Europe. A production surge has at least partly mitigated concerns this year, but there remains a separate issue that has received far less public attention and yet is a critical one for NATO: ammunition interoperability.

Interoperability is a central tenet of NATO, and the key to interoperability is standardization. The alliance’s method of choice for achieving this is a set of standardization agreements, or STANAGs. Moreover, in 2009, the United States and four other major NATO members—France, Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom, signed the Joint Ballistics Memorandum of Understanding (JBMoU), intended to “maximize the potential for the achievement of Interchangeability of the Participants’ 155MM Weapon and Ammunition Systems.” The war in Ukraine, however, has been a unique test of NATO 155-millimeter ammunition compatibility in a way that was not foreseen when STANAGS and the JBMoU were written. Instead of a national army using a supply of ammunition from another alliance nation in an emergency situation, Ukraine is continuously operating a vast array of howitzers and ammunition from across (and beyond) NATO within its own single national army. And Ukraine’s experience has made clear that NATO and JBMoU 155-millimeter howitzers and munitions are not truly interoperable. While they are physically compatible, in the sense that they will safely fire with approved shell, propellant, and fuze combinations, they are not truly technically interoperable until a howitzer battery can achieve accurate first-round effects with munitions from another nation or nations.

Will Trump Lose the World or Reshape It?

Francis P. Sempa

Where is President Donald Trump’s foreign policy taking us? Two prominent observers of the international scene look at the same facts yet come to very different conclusions. Hal Brands, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, penned a piece in Bloomberg that contends that Trump’s focus on the Western Hemisphere risks stripping American resources from Europe and the Middle East. Walter Russell Mead in the Wall Street Journal argues that far from being a hemispheric isolationist, Trump is reshaping the globe. Who is right?

Brands has a history of demeaning Trump’s approach to the world. He is an Atlanticist and a Eurasianist who believes that the United States must continue to take the lead in defending Europe, our allies in the Middle East and in Asia. Brands is fond of invoking Sir Halford Mackinder’s geopolitical concepts, but he does so selectively by omitting Mackinder’s last iteration of those concepts made during the Second World War. Brands seems to believe that America’s interests in the geopolitical pluralism of Eurasia means that we must be equally strong and equally committed to Europe, the Middle East, and the Indo-Pacific. But that is a recipe for imperial overstretch, as Walter Lippmann warned in his small but important book The Cold War in 1947.

Brands surprisingly praises Trump’s reinvigoration of the Monroe Doctrine, though he criticizes Trump’s “meddling” in Brazilian politics, his threatening messages to Greenland and Panama, his mass deportations of illegal aliens to Latin American nations, his attacks on narco-terrorists in the Caribbean, and his aggressiveness toward Venezuela. Apparently, Brands wants Trump to be kindler and gentler in his approach to our hemispheric neighbors. But Brands mainly worries that Trump’s America First policies are weakening our position in Eurasia.

The Sad Suicide of the UN

Rafael Pinto Borges

The United Nations weighed in once more—and, once more, the world rolled its eyes. Immediately after a police raid in Rio de Janeiro that claimed the lives of over one hundred, the UN’s Human Rights Office vehemently denounced Rio de Janeiro’s conservative governor, Cláudio Castro, for what it called a “deadly operation” of “extreme, lethal consequences”. What it left out is that all of the victims were policemen or narcoterrorists. There were no civilian casualties. Not one.

It didn’t make any difference. This is an institution that has long lost its taste for facts. What drives it now is theatre—ritual condemnation on the altar of human rights, the last moral capital of a useless and toothless bureaucratic colossus with very little discernible use. The UN has its preferential villains: strong states asserting their sovereignty, governments that boldly police their own streets, and leaders that still believe law and order are the lifeblood of civilisation. The Brazilian federal government of left-wing President Lula da Silva, of course, had nothing to do with it; the raid was wholly the brainchild of Rio de Janeiro’s conservative leadership. And that is why, like Hungary when it strives to defend its borders or Poland under the previous PiS government when it tried to shield its sovereignty from wanton, undue EU interference, so too was Rio de Janeiro immediately badmouthed by these faux harbingers of virtue. One hopes that Castro will ignore the UN’s calls to surrender his city to criminal gangs and, instead, continue to hit them hard.

This latest, shameful episode comes to confirm, once again, the moral bankruptcy of the United Nations. The UN has—deservedly—become what it was meant not to become: a pulpit. It is now an international moral church of sorts whose priests sit in Geneva and New York and whose scripture is dictated by the bien-pensant Left. It makes a charade of the very notion of impartiality.

Milei’s Tightrope Act

María Victoria Murillo

Before Argentina’s midterm legislative elections last month, many believed that President Javier Milei’s party, La Libertad Avanza (LLA), was bound for electoral defeat. After nearly two years in office, Milei faced a shortage of the foreign currency reserves needed to halt a run on the Argentine peso, raising fears of yet another debt crisis in a country that has repeatedly defaulted. His economic adjustment program, which entailed massive spending cuts and layoffs, had brought hardship to many Argentines. And in September his party had lost by a 13-point margin in the provincial election for mayors and legislators in

The False Promise of the Gaza Ceasefire

Mohammed Ayoob

After less than a month, the ceasefire in Gaza is already under immense pressure. In fact, one wonders if it is already irremediable. The trio of American mediators—Vice President JD Vance, Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, and Jared Kushner—have not been able to restrain Israeli prime minister Netanyahu from attacking Gaza twice in the past weeks. Dozens of Palestinians have been killed in retaliation for rogue Hamas and Islamic Jihad elements’ attacks on IDF targets that have killed and injured a handful of Israeli soldiers.

Moreover, it will be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to persuade Arab and Muslim countries to contribute troops to the International Stabilization Force in the present circumstances, especially if they have to fight Hamas cadres to disarm them. Therefore, the second phase of the truce, which includes the disarmament of Hamas and setting up some sort of governing authority in Gaza to replace it, already seems a non-starter. There are both short- and long-term reasons for this pessimistic conclusion.

First, it will be impossible to persuade Hamas to surrender all its arms and recede into political oblivion, which is a key Israeli demand that the United States endorses. Giving up arms would undermine its self-proclaimed raison d’être as a national resistance organization committed to fighting Israeli occupation. Hamas would be signing its death warrant if it complied. Moreover, in the unlikely event that Hamas agrees to this demand, other more radical organizations (like Palestinian Islamic Jihad) would likely emerge to replace it.

Secondly, as its recent disproportionate military response demonstrates, the Israeli government is chomping at the bit to restart its military campaign in Gaza. Netanyahu only accepted the ceasefire because of immense pressure from President Trump. A sizable number of his cabinet members oppose the ceasefire short of the complete destruction of Palestinian armed resistance and the full reoccupation of Gaza. The Israeli government will be perpetually looking for an opportunity to resume the military campaign in Gaza to achieve the maximalist ends that Netanyahu has clearly articulated at the beginning of the war. In fact, many in the government, including the military, will find this option attractive now that Hamas has released all living Israeli hostages.

Russia’s New War of Attrition

George Friedman

A battle is raging in Pokrovsk, located in the eastern Ukrainian region of Donetsk. It is part of Russia’s attempt to encircle Ukrainian forces stationed there. The intent is to take control of a strategic area near the Black Sea, outside the region that Russia occupied during the more stable phases of the war.

What’s more interesting than the strategy is the tactics Russia is employing – far different from what it has used in the past. The initial invasion in 2022 consisted of several separate and relatively narrow thrusts designed to achieve a rapid victory. One was meant to seize the capital of Kyiv, while the others were meant to penetrate central Ukraine. The strategy was designed to shatter and sever Ukrainian forces and, ultimately, occupy the country. Though the central thrust failed, the eastern thrust yielded the 20 percent or so of Ukraine that Russia had already occupied in recent years.

These failures forced Moscow to adopt a new strategy of massed forces in an attempt to overrun and destroy Ukrainian defenders along the front held by the eastern thrust. In other words, what began as rapid movement on multiple fronts became a battle of mass warfare that stalled in equal parts because of effective Ukrainian defenses, drone strikes against Russian forces and logistics problems that halted advances.

The battle that is now raging is different. The intent here is to systematically destroy Ukrainian forces in smaller, multiple engagements consisting of commensurately smaller forces.

The goal is not to break through Ukrainian forces but to disperse them. The operational logic is that Ukraine cannot absorb the casualties imposed in the smaller engagements due to the smaller size of its army. Moscow means to engage at close range, accept the casualties it has incurred, and inflict casualties on the Ukrainians. This is a tactic often used in wars of attrition. It is based on the strategic reality that Russia’s large army can take more losses than Ukraine’s can. A war fought on this basis becomes a matter of arithmetic.

Spheres of Influence in the 21st Century: Outdated or Needed?

Francis P. Sempa

President Donald Trump’s foreign policy appears to be based on the idea of spheres of influence and an even balance of power across said spheres. Each has a rich historical pedigree. Trump has reinvigorated the Monroe Doctrine by prioritizing Western Hemispheric security and recognizing that Russia and the nations of Western and Central Europe have a greater interest in Ukraine and Eastern Europe as a whole than does the United States. He also recognizes that in the 21st century, given the shifting global balance of power, the Indo-Pacific is more important to U.S. security than Europe or the Middle East.

The shifting global balance of power is most evident with the rise of China and India, a development that the Atlanticists in the United States and Europe refuse to recognize. The Trump administration has rightfully discarded Wilsonian doctrine—which emphasizes abstract values—in favor of foreign policy realism, which focuses on concrete national interests. American blood should be reluctantly spilled, and American treasure should be expended sparingly, only in the service of concrete American interests. That is what an America First foreign policy is all about.

In his last major iteration of his global geopolitical concept, Sir Halford Mackinder wrote in 1943 in Foreign Affairs about the rise of what he called the “Monsoon powers” of China and India, which he hoped would create a balanced globe of human beings based on spheres of influence. More than two decades earlier, Mackinder wrote Democratic Ideals and Reality (1919) to guide the statesmen at Versailles in their efforts to establish a lasting peace after the cataclysm of the First World War. Mackinder’s advice to the statesmen of the West was to temper their democratic ideals with an understanding of geopolitical realities. His advice, needless to say, was not heeded, and twenty years later an even more destructive global war was fought.

US power utilities must prepare for a crisis in the Indo-Pacific. Here’s how they can start.

Victor Atkins and Markus Garlauskas

As the last US National Security Agency director warned in alarming comments last month, China is hacking into American electrical infrastructure. Public reporting and government advisories also point to China pre-positioning backdoors in power grid control systems and electrical power supply chains. Through these means, China is establishing leverage over critical infrastructure, and it could use this leverage to threaten, disrupt, or degrade services in a crisis, especially if Beijing seeks to block US involvement if it moves against Taiwan.

This kind of access gives China options for coercion, deterrence, and signaling, pursued through temporary and targeted effects in a “gray zone” crisis, as well as for conducting larger-scale attacks in the event of a major conflict. With this in mind, it is essential that the private sector—not just the US government and military—better prepare for attacks on the US electrical grid resulting from a geopolitical crisis or conflict in the Indo-Pacific. Importantly, this preparation should include both assessing the geopolitical risks and practicing what to do in a crisis.

During a recent industry forum in California, we heard from senior utility executives, grid operators, market strategists, and other experts about the range of complex challenges that the energy sector faces. Utilities must, for example, keep costs in check, meet regulatory standards, manage load growth, and advance the energy transition. At the same time, we contend that they need to treat Chinese cyber and supply-chain exposure as a standing threat—part of the context of overall strategic planning and risk mitigation—given the geopolitical risks the United States faces. During the forum, we discussed a pressing question on a panel with an unusual focus for industry: how to protect the mission to deliver reliable, safe, and affordable power as geopolitical risks rise, particularly the threat China could pose to US electrical infrastructure in the context of a regional crisis or conflict. Based on our discussions, we came to three overall takeaways.

The expert conversation: What’s Trump’s endgame in Venezuela?

Matthew Kroenig and Jason Marczak

US President Donald Trump has steadily accelerated his campaign of attacks on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and Pacific Ocean, while building up US military forces in the region. Aside from the anti-drug mission, the US president and his allies have indicated that they intend to force out Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro, though the administration reportedly told Congress this week that it doesn’t have the legal justifications for strikes inside the country right now.

To shed light on what’s going on and what to expect next, we spoke earlier this week with Matt Kroenig, vice president and senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, and Jason Marczak, vice president and senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center. This expert conversation has been lightly edited and condensed below.

Explainer: What caused the global cyber outage?

Martin Coulter and James Pearson

WHAT HAPPENED?

CrowdStrike (CRWD.O), opens new tab, a U.S. cybersecurity company with a market value of about $83 billion, is among the most popular in the world, counting more than 20,000 subscribers around the world, the company's website shows.

The Reuters Daily Briefing newsletter provides all the news you need to start your day. According to an alert sent by CrowdStrike to its clients at 0530 GMT on Friday and reviewed by Reuters, its widely used "Falcon Sensor" software is causing Microsoft Windows to crash and display a blue screen, known informally as the “Blue Screen of Death”.

George Kurtz, CrowdStrike's CEO, said in a post on X that CrowdStrike had deployed a fix for the issue. "This is not a security incident or cyberattack," he wrote.

However, it is not clear how easily the affected systems can be fixed remotely, as the "Blue Screen of Death" is causing computers to crash on reboot before they can be updated.

"This means in this state, devices can't be updated automatically, meaning manual intervention is required," said Daniel Card, of UK-based cybersecurity consultancy PwnDefend.

Ciaran Martin, former head of the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), part of Britain’s GCHQ intelligence agency, said the scale of the problem was huge.

"This is not unprecedented, but I’m struggling to think of an outage at quite this scale. It has happened over the years, but this is one of the biggest. I think it’ll likely be short-lived because, the nature of the problem is actually quite simple".

Can the Global Economy Be Healed?

John Cassidy

Hours before Donald Trump met with Xi Jinping in South Korea last week, I sat down with Dani Rodrik, an economist at Harvard University, to talk about his new book, “Shared Prosperity in a Fractured World,” in which he discusses ways to create something positive atop the wreckage of the postwar global economic order. Although the U.S. and China have agreed not to escalate their trade war, Trump’s blanket tariffs and the rest of his America First agenda remain in place, and many economists are despairing about the demise of an open trading system that they regard as a key driver of prosperity. But Rodrik, who shot to prominence in the nineteen-nineties as a critic of the untrammelled globalization that helped give Trump his start in Presidential politics, is more upbeat. “There is reason for hope,” he writes. “Ideas and practices in today’s global economy still remain in flux. A progressive alternative to create inclusive, sustainable economies does exist.”

We spoke in Rodrik’s office at the Kennedy School, where he has taught for many years. His optimism is based partly on his conviction that Trump’s policies will fail to restore American manufacturing to its past glory and raise living standards, which will create space for a different approach. But Rodrik also believes there can be no return to the pre-Trump global system, which relied on one-size-fits-all trade rules enforced by transnational agencies such as the World Trade Organization. Far from mourning the demise of this system, Rodrik argues that it creates new space at the domestic level to address what he sees as the three defining economic challenges of our time: restoring the middle class in the U.S. and other Western countries; reducing poverty in countries that are still impoverished; and tackling climate change. “We spend so much time on the global economy and global agreements,” he explained to me. “But there is so much that can be done internally.”

Three tough truths about climate

Bill Gates

There’s a doomsday view of climate change that goes like this:

In a few decades, cataclysmic climate change will decimate civilization. The evidence is all around us—just look at all the heat waves and storms caused by rising global temperatures. Nothing matters more than limiting the rise in temperature.

Fortunately for all of us, this view is wrong. Although climate change will have serious consequences—particularly for people in the poorest countries—it will not lead to humanity’s demise. People will be able to live and thrive in most places on Earth for the foreseeable future. Emissions projections have gone down, and with the right policies and investments, innovation will allow us to drive emissions down much further.

Unfortunately, the doomsday outlook is causing much of the climate community to focus too much on near-term emissions goals, and it’s diverting resources from the most effective things we should be doing to improve life in a warming world.

It’s not too late to adopt a different view and adjust our strategies for dealing with climate change. Next month’s global climate summit in Brazil, known as COP30, is an excellent place to begin, especially because the summit’s Brazilian leadership is putting climate adaptation and human development high on the agenda.

This is a chance to refocus on the metric that should count even more than emissions and temperature change: improving lives. Our chief goal should be to prevent suffering, particularly for those in the toughest conditions who live in the world’s poorest countries.

A Complacent Pentagon Needs to Learn From Ukraine

Christian Caryl

In September 1940, a group of British scientists arrived in Washington. Back home, their country was making a heroic stand against Nazi Germany, which had conquered most of the Continent and was now trying to subdue Britain from the air. The members of the delegation were hoping that they could sway the Americans to their side. But rather than resorting to moral or emotional pleas, the scientists—led by Imperial College Rector Henry Tizard—had something more concrete to offer.

There was the resonant cavity magnetron, a remarkable innovation that would soon enable Allied forces to install powerful radars on their planes and ships. One American historian would later refer to it as “the most valuable cargo ever brought to our shores.” There was also the proximity fuse, which improved the accuracy of gunnery by magnitudes. There were advanced designs for jet engines, gyroscopic gunsights, self-sealing fuel tanks, and a whole host of other useful inventions.

Why Climate Finance Is Not Enough

LAURA CARVALHO

SÃO PAULO – With the United Nations Climate Conference (COP30) in Belém, Brazil, approaching, it is clear that the world’s widely shared commitment to a just energy transition is falling by the wayside. In the year since governments signed on to the agreement at COP29 to scale up climate finance – with a goal of mobilizing $1.3 trillion annually by 2035 – wealthy countries have been retreating from their financial pledges. Worse, these signs of bad faith are coming just as the costs of climate adaptation and decarbonization in developing countries are mounting.

This is not an issue that can be deferred. The shift to a green economy is already reproducing the same asymmetries that have long defined global trade. Instead of fostering inclusive development, climate policy is increasingly being shaped by protectionist measures and IP regimes that entrench technological monopolies in the Global North. For example, the European Union’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism may be billed as a safeguard against carbon leakage; but it also illustrates how climate policy can be used to justify protectionist trade measures.

Moreover, China’s recent complaint against India for its electric-vehicle and battery subsidies shows how green industrial policies are increasingly becoming grounds for trade disputes. Together, these developments signal a growing tension between climate goals and World Trade Organization rules. Could measures to address climate change soon become a new impetus for economic exclusion?

The Case That A.I. Is Thinking

Zach Lieberman

Dario Amodei, the C.E.O. of the artificial-intelligence company Anthropic, has been predicting that an A.I. “smarter than a Nobel Prize winner” in such fields as biology, math, engineering, and writing might come online by 2027. He envisions millions of copies of a model whirring away, each conducting its own research: a “country of geniuses in a datacenter.” In June, Sam Altman, of OpenAI, wrote that the industry was on the cusp of building “digital superintelligence.” “The 2030s are likely going to be wildly different from any time that has come before,” he asserted. Meanwhile, the A.I. tools that most people currently interact with on a day-to-day basis are reminiscent of Clippy, the onetime Microsoft Office “assistant” that was actually more of a gadfly. A Zoom A.I. tool suggests that you ask it “What are some meeting icebreakers?” or instruct it to “Write a short message to share gratitude.” Siri is good at setting reminders but not much else. A friend of mine saw a button in Gmail that said “Thank and tell anecdote.” When he clicked it, Google’s A.I. invented a funny story about a trip to Turkey that he never took.

The rushed and uneven rollout of A.I. has created a fog in which it is tempting to conclude that there is nothing to see here—that it’s all hype. There is, to be sure, plenty of hype: Amodei’s timeline is science-fictional. (A.I. models aren’t improving that fast.) But it is another kind of wishful thinking to suppose that large language models are just shuffling words around. I used to be sympathetic to that view. I sought comfort in the idea that A.I. had little to do with real intelligence or understanding. I even celebrated its shortcomings—rooting for the home team. Then I began using A.I. in my work as a programmer, fearing that if I didn’t I would fall behind. (My employer, a trading firm, has several investments in and partnerships with A.I. companies, including Anthropic.) Writing code is, by many accounts, the thing that A.I. is best at; code has more structure than prose does, and it’s often possible to automatically validate that a given program works. My conversion was swift. At first, I consulted A.I. models in lieu of looking something up. Then I gave them small, self-contained problems. Eventually, I gave them real work—the kind I’d trained my whole career to do. I saw these models digest, in seconds, the intricate details of thousands of lines of code. They could spot subtle bugs and orchestrate complex new features. Finally, I was transferred to a fast-growing team that aims to make better use of A.I. tools, and to create our own.

Why human-shaped robots loom large in Musk's Tesla plans

Zoe Kleinman and Liv McMahon

A report released by Morgan Stanley on Friday predicted Apple, which is reportedly looking into the robots, could potentially earn $133bn a year from them by 2040.Foxconn is reported to be deploying them at its Nvidia factory in Texas.The idea of advanced AI within a human-shaped shell is an astonishingly powerful combination in theory. It would let the tech interact with the physical world around it – and yes that includes us.While many companies have sought to develop human-like robots for factory and industrial use - such as UK robotics firm Humanoid - some are already looking to insert the tech in homes.

The highly-publicised Neo from tech firm 1X, slated to launch in 2026, can do menial chores like emptying the dishwasher, folding clothes and fetching you items.It will cost $20,000 but it does come with a caveat - the WSJ reported it was actually controlled by a person wearing a virtual reality headset.Forrester analyst Brian Hopkins said the falling costs of components, combined with improvements to robot dexterity and AI, was helping to make humanoid robots feasible for a variety of different settings.

"From warehouses and restaurants to elder care and security, new use cases are gaining traction fast," he wrote in a blog post."If current trajectories hold, humanoid robots could disrupt many physical-service industries significantly by 2030."Musk previously told investors his robots had "the potential to be more significant than the vehicle business, over time".He went one step further after his pay package deal was approved on Thursday, saying he believed it could be "the biggest product of all time by far, bigger than cell phones, bigger than anything".

A Positive and Forward-Looking Analysis: Evolving Urban Combat in the Shadow of Tomorrow’s Stalingrads

Donald E. Vandergriff

As a longtime advocate for military reform and the infusion of maneuver warfare principles into our armed forces, I applaud the Warfare Mastery Institute’s of Special Tactics Institute and University (STI)’s timely and incisive article, “High Intensity Urban Combat Part 1: How is it Different? Will urban tactics of the GWOT change when we must fight the ‘next Stalingrad?’” published just three days ago on November 3, 2025.

This piece, aligns with several recent releases by a number of experts on this type of warfare to include my series on Substack, as well as a forthcoming military fiction series *Reforging the Sword* (publication TBD) arrives at a pivotal moment for the U.S. military and our Republic. It not only dissects the stark contrasts between the precision-driven close-quarters battle (CQB) tactics honed in the Global War on Terror (GWOT) and the brutal realities of high-intensity conventional urban warfare against peer adversaries like Russia, China, or North Korea.

High Intensity Urban Combat Part 1: How is it Different?

This article is adapted from our High Intensity Military Urban Combat book which we plan to publish here on Substack in serial form. We offer special thanks to the courageous members of our team who have volunteered to deploy overseas to current conflict zones. Their real-time feedback has proven invaluable for our analysis.

How must urban combat tactics change if the United States and its allies find themselves in a high-intensity conventional war against a modern, combined arms force like Russia, China or North Korea? While many tactics and general principles will remain the same, there are some very important differences between high-intensity conventional urban combat and the sort of precision Close Quarters Battle (CQB) that the U.S. military adopted while fighting low-intensity conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Modern military doctrine for CQB and Military Operations in Urban Terrain (MOUT) traces its origin to hostage rescue tactics. Beginning with the British 22nd Special Air Service Regiment (SAS), counterterrorist units became the experts in room clearing and CQB. Because their focus was hostage rescue, their tactics demanded a very high degree of precision and target discrimination.

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