Indian Strategic Studies: 11/27/25

27 November 2025

As Chinese AI cyberattack rings global alarm, is India ready?

Pradip R. Sagar

weaponisation of artificial intelligence (AI) reached a disturbing level in September when Anthropic, a leading US AI company, revealed the first-ever large-scale cyberattack executed almost entirely by an autonomous AI system.

According to Anthropic, Chinese state-linked hackers had used the company’s Claude AI to automate a sophisticated global espionage campaign that targeted nearly 30 top-tier organisations, ranging from technology giants and financial institutions to chemical manufacturers and government agencies.

The attack marked an alarming moment in cybersecurity as the perpetrators had moved beyond using AI solely as an assistant, enabling Claude’s agentic capabilities to operate independently through clever manipulation of its safety protocols. Experts in New Delhi believe that this raises serious national security concerns for India, as critical infrastructure, such as power grids, financial networks, defence installations and government databases, could be targeted in ways that conventional cybersecurity measures may struggle to detect.

The experts pointed out that the strategic and defence implications were equally significant. “State-backed AI-driven operations could enable adversaries to gather intelligence on Indian military technology, missile programmes or strategic initiatives, undermining India’s technological advantage and increasing the risk of information warfare,” cautioned a China watcher, adding that the economic and industrial sectors, including semiconductors, pharmaceuticals, advanced manufacturing and AI research, were particularly vulnerable since autonomous AI can rapidly exfiltrate research and intellectual property, threatening competitiveness and forcing companies to invest heavily in internal cybersecurity measures.

Don’t Call it a Comeback: Why US-India Relations are Due for a Rebound

A Bilateral Defense Breakthrough

On October 31, U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and Indian Defence Minister Rajnath Singh met in Kuala Lumpur to sign the “2025 Framework for the U.S.-India Major Defense Partnership,” a landmark agreement outlining defense cooperation for the next decade. This agreement builds on significant progress on defense operational and industrial cooperation over the past year, despite being overshadowed at times by some political friction. In spite of the tensions over tariffs, Russian oil, and the aftermath of the India-Pakistan war in 2025, the deal proves that over the past years, U.S.-India defense cooperation has matured into the steadiest part of the strategic partnership, partly due to China’s aggression on India’s borders, and in part owing to the mutual trust built over two decades of accelerating military-to-military capability transfer, interoperability, and trust.

A fact sheet laying out the ambitions of the agreement revealed several notable details and milestones.

Prioritization. First, the language of the agreement elevates defense as a top priority. In contrast to past 10-year agreements, defense has moved to center stage from “an important part” (1995) to “an element” (2005) to “a key component” (2015) to now “the major pillar” (2025) in the U.S.-India relationship.

Mission. Second, for the first time in three decades, a U.S.-India defense framework uses the word “deterrence” as a primary goal of the relationship. Deterrence requires a target (or adversary) whose behavior we intend to shape, implying a shared mission. Combined with the first mention of the geography of this partnership – “a pillar of peace and security and an anchor of stability in the Indo-Pacific region”– this makes it very clear who the shared adversary is without explicit naming. This language provides a level of specificity that warrants deeper operational, technological, supply-chain, and defense trade cooperation sought by both sides.

Paul Kennedy in conversation on the rise of a new era of great power competition

Engelsberg Ideas

When it was first published in 1987, your magnum opus, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, made the central argument that a great power’s relative military and strategic position is inextricably linked to its productive and economic power. Given that, and drawing on your analysis of global geopolitics since then, who do you think will be the great powers by the middle of the 21st century?

I was intrigued by a future chart projection of the share of world total economic output by the year 2050, which would see three very large economies at the top of the pile, namely, the United States, the People’s Republic of China, and, because of a vastly higher rate of growth between the 2000s and 2050, India.

Now those three countries, the US, China and India, would have GDPs approximately six to eight times bigger than any of the ones directly beneath them – the middle-ranking powers such as Japan, Britain, Russia, and France. That would be the rough and ready order of the world in the year 2050. So the world of the nation states and national economies has not altered, just the nation states. And those three, if they wanted to, in total defence spending, would be way above anyone else

Chinese use of Claude AI for hacking will drive demand for AI cyber defense, say experts

Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.

WASHINGTON — In the wake of a report accusing China of using publicly available AI tech to launch cyberattacks, experts are warning cyber defenders they’re going to need some AI help of their own.

“Last week, we had the first revelation that there is a capability here that our adversaries can use that can get us to a speed and a scale [of attacks] we haven’t seen before,” said Paul Nakasone, the former four-star chief of the NSA and Cyber Command, at Tuesday’s Aspen Cyber Summit here in Washington. “The question becomes, what are we going to do about it?

“I think what we are going to do about it, and what you will see in the next six months, truly, is how does AI come on the cyber defense [side],” Nakasone continued. “I think we’re going to see tremendous, tremendous advances with regards to what we can do with artificial intelligence in a defensive mindset.”

A “Chinese state-sponsored group,” posing as legitimate cybersecurity testers, recently tricked Anthropic’s Claude Code AI into hacking roughly 30 government and industry targets on their behalf, the company reported.

While AI isn’t replacing human hackers, yet, it can multiply the number and speed of attacks one moderately well-trained human can conduct, experts agreed. In essence, it’s the cyberspace equivalent of unmanned “loyal wingmen” drones directed by a single fighter pilot. But there is, so far, no matching force multiplier for defense.

“We’re now going to see agentic cyber defenses deployed against agentic cyber attacks,” said Jack Shanahan, founder of the Pentagon’s Joint Artificial Intelligence Center.

Pitting algorithm against algorithm at superhuman speeds, however, could lead to results no human on either side expected, let alone desired.

Force Design for the Twenty-First Century Fight: U.S. Cyber Force Lessons from China’s Strategic Support Forces

Lauryn Williams

In 2018, Vice President and National Space Council Chair Mike Pence heralded a new era of “American dominance in space,” which would be led by a new U.S. Space Force. The service, eventually established in late 2019, would be a manifestation of the U.S. government’s heightened awareness that space was a domain of “national security significance,” as opposed to simply scientific exploration. This development acknowledged that the old, decentralized way of doing things—dispersing space professionals across the existing services—was no longer sufficient. Advocates argued that consolidating forces within a single service, led by empowered Pentagon leadership, was necessary to effectively recruit and organize, train, and equip personnel to meet the adversary space threats of a new day.

Enter 2025, and discussions are actively underway among U.S. experts about the need for a U.S. Cyber Force to own force generation for offensive, defensive, and cyber intelligence personnel. Advocates argue that a standalone Cyber Force, like the Space Force, would address acute challenges today in “recruiting, training, and retaining personnel for key cyber work roles and missions.” Skeptics question whether a new bureaucratic structure will resolve them. They argue that cyberspace operations are unique to each service and existing forces should remain integrated.

Today, the United States is debating taking another step toward a significant force design transformation to tackle twenty-first-century multi-domain challenges. Yet, China has been making moves of its own since 2015 to shape the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) for modern warfare. The Pentagon’s 2016 annual report on Chinese military power first mentioned these changes: In late 2015, a then-new Strategic Support Force (SSF) was established under the Central Military Commission (CMC). Importantly, the SSF included space systems, network systems, and information warfare departments, which demonstrated the PLA’s desire for a single command structure dedicated to multi-domain warfare. The network systems department served as the hub for cyber forces pulled together from previously disparate parts of the PLA. Then, in April 2024, less than nine years after it began, the PLA abruptly dissolved the SSF. With the SSF structure eliminated, the newly renamed Aerospace (ASF), Cyberspace (CSF), and Information Support Forces (ISF) were shifted directly under the CMC.

China’s new military muscle

JOE GOULD

The Pentagon's annual China report will have fresh fodder. | Lintao Zhang/Getty Images

WELCOME TO GLOBAL SECURITY. We’re breaking down which of Beijing’s new weapons are troubling China watchers, the weak links in drone supply chains and Taiwan’s dependence on foreign energy.

Read more about our mission. We’ll publish daily for free during major industry events, and put our otherwise weekly newsletter behind the paywall for U.S. and EU Pro subscribers starting in 2026.

Read our coverage of the Halifax International Security Forum on Saturday and Sunday, after which the newsletter resumes Dec. 3.

Should the U.S. go ahead with F-35 fighter sales to Saudi Arabia? Email me at jgould@politico.com with tips, pitches and feedback, and find me on X at @reporterjoe.

EYE ON CHINA

China spent the past year pairing cutting-edge battlefield technology with traditional military hardware — all at a pace that risks outstripping the U.S.

The Pentagon will zero in on this buildup in next month’s annual China military power report. The administration’s upcoming National Security Strategy and National Defense Strategy will offer an additional picture of America’s response.

Look ahead: The China report is expected to lay out how the People’s Liberation Army is projecting force, moving troops and equipment and operating in regions where the U.S. once assumed it held uncontested advantages. It also arrives amid intensifying questions about whether the Pentagon is keeping its focus on China as it shifts more attention and resources toward the Western Hemisphere.

China’s naval expansion includes new amphibious ships with landing decks for drones and fielded a drone-specific carrier, enabling deployments far afield.

China’s power play: MI5 warns of relentless espionage attempts in Britain

Dan Sabbagh

An unexpected connection on LinkedIn. An offer of work from a headhunter, most likely a young woman, based in China. The chance to earn perhaps £20,000 part-time writing a handful of geopolitical reports for a Chinese company peppered with “non-public” or “insider” insights. Payment in cryptocurrency or cash preferred.

It may seem obvious, on this telling, that something about this approach would be amiss. Nevertheless, China’s powerful ministry of state security (MSS) still considers it worthwhile to deploy recruitment consultants to try it – leading MI5 to warn repeatedly about their activity online.

In 2023, the MI5 chief, Ken McCallum, said Chinese agents were approaching Britons on LinkedIn on an extraordinary scale, 10,000 over the preceding two and a half years, seeking political, industrial, military and technological secrets.

A fresh campaign aimed at politicians and parliament has led the spy agency to act again. An espionage alert was issued on Tuesday via the offices of Lindsay Hoyle, the Commons speaker, and his Lords equivalent: a single slide, after the repeated efforts of Shirly Shen and Amanda Qiu to contact MPs, peers, their staffers, economists, thinktankers – anybody who might become a source.

In the curious manner of British intelligence, there was no publication of the security advice from MI5 or the Home Office. But the agency knew its briefing note would leak once it was emailed out to parliament. Republishing it in the media helps the wider public better identify interactions with a fraudulent intent.

The alert will have the effect of flushing out more information from in and around Westminster, though that is not MI5’s primary purpose. The agency wants people in public life to recognise that just because interactions on LinkedIn are not as toxic as on X or Facebook, it does not mean they are without risk.

China’s innovation paradox

George Magnus

On the day of Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration, a small Chinese tech company founded in only 2023, DeepSeek, shocked the AI industry, rattled US financial markets, and created a truly global stir. Notwithstanding controversies about cost and intellectual property surrounding what is still a genuine and significant accomplishment, it is fair to say that DeepSeek’s commoditisation of AI is exactly how transformational technology happens. Innovation and competition drive down costs, leading to the technology becoming embedded in the whole economy, not just the narrower, innovative parts.

These AI industry implications are centre-stage for now. It has also been argued that DeepSeek’s model represents not so much a ‘Sputnik’ moment as a case of hyperbole, and that the consequences of the AI arms race will throw up many surprises. Not the least of these is China’s persistent dependency on semiconductor technology developed by the US and its close allies, heightened by tariffs and export controls, which Trump’s administration looks set to tighten. American tech companies will want to exploit this in developing artificial general intelligence themselves.

Georgian Rhetoric Attempts Connectivity Without Political Change

Nino Lezhava

The opening session of the 2025 Silk Road Forum in Tbilisi featured the Prime Ministers of Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Armenia, reflecting the momentum of regional cooperation (Balcani Caucaso, November 3, 2023; Tbilisi Silk Road Forum, October 22). This marked the fifth Silk Road Forum since it began in 2015 and was only the second time that prime ministers from all three states appeared in the same session. Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze’s remarks, in which he named Georgia’s free trade agreement with the European Union as the key advantage of the country’s investment profile, attracted significant attention in contrast to the ruling Georgian Dream party’s largely anti-EU sentiments from the past few years. Kobakhidze claimed that Georgia’s strategic location, peace, and stability make the country a reliable economic partner (Business Media, October 22). The operationalization of Georgia’s infrastructure projects, including the Middle Corridor, Anaklia Port, and Black Sea Cable, will depend on credible partnerships with the West.

Georgia is currently only nominally a candidate for EU accession due to its autocratization and increased alignment with Russia and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) (Civil.ge, June 11; see Strategic Snapshot, October 9). Georgia has more political prisoners per capita than Russia and is far from both stability and EU accession (1TV, October 20). Since 2024, Georgian Dream has held elections marred by voter pressure and Russian manipulation, violently suppressed pro-democracy protests, enacted illiberal laws, and suspended EU accession talks. During the Silk Road Forum, amid Western sanctions on Georgia and the threat of losing a visa-free regime with the European Union, Kobakhidze expressed high hopes for future joint projects with Brussels, such as the Black Sea Undersea Electric Cable initiative (Civil Georgia, July 10; Business Media, October 22).

An Unusual Election in Iraq Offers the U.S. an Unusual Opportunity

Bobby Ghosh

Americans who haven’t been following Iraq for the past decade might be surprised to learn that the country just conducted a reasonably free, fair, and peaceful election. On Nov. 11, nearly 7,750 candidates competed for 329 parliamentary seats in a contest that, by the troubled standards of the region, went remarkably smoothly. There was no major violence and relatively few allegations of fraud. Despite predictions of record-low participation, election turnout reached 56 percent—comparable to many U.S. presidential elections over the past century.

Iraq, for so long a shorthand for everything that can go wrong with U.S. foreign policy, just demonstrated more democratic resilience than its critics give it credit for. Squint hard enough, and you might even see it as the closest thing to a stable, peaceful, and genuinely democratic Arab state.

The tragedy of Zelensky’s Ukraine

Owen Matthews

Volodymyr Zelensky’s transformation from a much-loved television comedian to Ukraine’s president and wartime leader is one of the strangest political journeys of our times. It began in 2015 with Servant of the People, a television comedy written by and starring Zelensky, who plays a young high-school teacher launching into a foul-mouthed rant against the corruption and venality of his country’s political class. ‘Why are all the honest people fools and the clever ones are thieves?’ shouts Zelensky’s character, a nerdy but honest history master. ‘What kind of people are we, that we keep voting for these mother–f***ing liars knowing that they are crooks?’ A pupil secretly films the rant through a window, the video goes viral and millions of Ukrainians crowdfund the honest teacher to stand in an upcoming presidential election, which he unexpectedly wins. Cue a two-season long comedy of errors wherein the fictional President Holoborodko struggles to take on entrenched corruption and break the stranglehold of shadowy oligarchs – with the help of his old schoolmates, whom he appoints as his ministers.

The idea of the then 41-year-old Zelensky actually standing for president went from a joke to deadly earnest reality in 2018, when the influential oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky threw his financial backing behind a real-world political run. Zelensky’s billboard campaign slogan, launched on New Year’s 2019, was ‘I’m not kidding!’

Zelensky’s inexperience was, paradoxically, the key to his popularity on the campaign trail. Then-incumbent President Petro Poroshenko was, in common with every one of his predecessors, mired in corruption scandals. Ukrainian voters were fed up with generations of lies and of seeing the same old faces on the political carousel. Zelensky was, in many ways, a liberal mirror-image of Donald Trump – a radical outsider with no political experience, familiar from the world of television, who vowed to drain the political swamp.

Paradoxically, given subsequent events, Zelensky was elected as the candidate most likely to reconcile with Russia and bridge some of the bitter divides that had split Ukraine since the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the Russian-backed secession of Donetsk and Luhansk. Like many Ukrainian citizens, Zelensky spoke Russian at home rather than Ukrainian. Indeed, Servant of the People was made almost entirely in Russian on the grounds that almost all Ukrainian speakers know Russian but many Russian speakers don’t know Ukrainian. The imposition of Ukrainian as a national language, including in schools and universities, had been a major cause of resentment in the Russophone east of the country. And as far back as 2015, Zelensky spoke out against nationalists’ calls to ban Russian artists from performing in Ukraine – and though he supported Ukraine’s ambition to join Nato and the EU, he resisted Poroshenko’s inflammatory anti-Russian rhetoric.

AQ Podcast | Understanding Trump’s Military Buildup in Latin America

The recent deployment of the USS Gerald R. Ford, the U.S. Navy’s largest aircraft carrier, has intensified speculation about Washington’s true objectives in the Southern Caribbean. In this episode of the Americas Quarterly Podcast, we examine what’s really behind the Trump administration’s escalating military activity. Is it a hardline campaign against drug cartels, or the opening moves of a broader effort to pressure Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro? What do we know about dynamics within the Venezuelan military? And to what extent could this impact Washington’s relations with Colombia and other countries in the region? Our guest is Ryan Berg, director of the Americas Program and head of the Future of Venezuela Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

I’m in Venezuela. This Is the True Cost of Trump’s Gunboat Diplomacy.

Phil Gunson

Caracas, Venezuela’s neglected but beautiful capital, sits behind a forested, over 9,000-foot tall mountain that obscures the city’s proximity to the sea. From the summit, on a clear day, the Caribbean looks close enough to touch. Out there, over the horizon, like a scattering of toys in a bathtub, floats a good portion of the U.S. Fourth Fleet, packing enough lethal hardware in Tomahawk missiles alone to level large parts of the city. B-52H strategic bombers and supersonic F-35 stealth fighters have prowled the edge of the country’s territorial waters.

There are also signs of President Nicolás Maduro’s response to the American military buildup. Along the highway that winds up to the capital from the coast, the Venezuelan military has placed concrete tank traps beside the tarmac, presumably at the ready in case the amphibious assault group onboard the U.S.S. Iwo Jima should attempt a landing.

Perhaps it’s the mountain that stands in the way of the American military swarm, or maybe it’s their feeling that there’s so little to be done about it, but caraqueños are, for now, going about their normal business. If the traffic is less snarled than it once was, if the restaurants aren’t as full, it has less to do with the specter of war than with Venezuela’s hyperinflation and a repressive security apparatus. Even down at the coast, the American military menace is treated mostly with typical Venezuelan ribaldry, rather than dread. “Have you heard?” people ask each other, jokingly. “The Marines have arrived!”

For all the deadly weapons floating off the coast, it seems increasingly clear that all the Trump administration’s push for regime change in Venezuela has done so far is create a potentially disastrous political trap. If the administration fails to oust Mr. Maduro, as is its apparent goal, that will almost certainly grant the dictator a political victory and deal a lasting blow to the Venezuelan opposition. If it succeeds, and Mr. Maduro finally falls, it may plunge the nation, already in crisis, into a potentially violent breakdown. No matter what happens, everyone loses.

Checklist of Ukrainian Failures

Sarcastosaurus

Hello everybody!

For those who might have missed it: Zele has decided he’s not going to sack anybody. Read: he remains out of touch with reality, and determined to continue blundering around - with the consequence that Ukraine is going to continue losing this war.

Now, irrespectively how much have Donald and me published about failures of Ukrainian political- and military leadership over the last 1,5 years, there are still lots of readers asking where are the probelms. Thus, have asked Frank to ready something like a checklist.

Brave1 Market: Ukraine’s Catalogue of Defence Solutions

Olena Kryzhanivska

With the start of the full-scale war, Ukraine decentralized its defence procurement system and has since become one of the strongest examples of how this model can quickly supply armed forces with the most up-to-date equipment. Brave1 Market is widely known as an “Amazon for War,” where military units can simply open a webpage and select the products they need. But it is much more than that: it connects different stakeholders and sheds light on a defence-tech sector that was previously closed and siloed.

Brave1 Market is now the largest catalogue of defence innovations in Ukraine, where military units, investors, and even someone like me continue to discover new manufacturers and new products. Its value for strengthening Ukraine’s defence capabilities cannot be overstated.

The Putin-Witkoff Plan Worsens the War

Timothy Snyder

Among all the other things that are happening, we have a US administration trying to bully Ukrainians into accepting Russia’s proposal that their sovereignty be undone. Aside from the naked injustice of this, there are five basic practical reasons why it would make the world far more dangerous. I summarize them here; you will find more writing on this subject elsewhere on my Substack, “Thinking about…”

Why the Time Has Finally Come for Geothermal Energy

Rivka Galchen

When I arrived in Reykjavík, Iceland, last March, a gravel barrier, almost thirty feet at its highest point, had been constructed to keep lava from the Reykjanes volcano from inundating a major geothermal power station not far from downtown. So far, it had worked, but daily volcano forecasts were being broadcast on a small television at the domestic airport where I was waiting to take a short flight to Akureyri, a town on the north coast about an hour’s drive from one of the country’s oldest geothermal plants, the Krafla Geothermal Station. Until the early nineteen-seventies, Iceland relied on imported fossil fuels for nearly three-quarters of its energy. The resources of the country—a landscape of hot springs, lava domes, and bubbling mud pots—were largely untapped. “In the past, people here in the valley lacked most things now considered essential to human life, except for a hundred thousand million tons of boiling-hot water,” the Icelandic Nobelist Halldór Laxness wrote in “A Parish Chronicle,” his 1970 novel. “For a hundred thousand years this water, more valuable than all coal mines, ran in torrents out to sea.” The oil crisis of 1973, when prices more than tripled, proved a useful emergency. Among other efforts to develop local energy, public-investment funds provided loans for geothermal projects, whose upfront costs were considerable. By the early eighties, almost all the country’s homes were heated geothermally; in Reykjavík, a subterranean geothermal-powered system is in place to melt snow and ice off sidewalks and roads. Today, more than a quarter of the country’s electricity comes from geothermal sources, a higher proportion than in almost any other nation. Most of the rest is from hydropower.

C5+1 Summit Elevates U.S. Engagement With Central Asia

Alexander Kim

The C5+1 summit, held on November 6 in Washington, D.C., marked a significant elevation of Central Asia’s profile on the world stage. Leaders from the region received enthusiastic receptions in the U.S. capital, where the summit—initiated by former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry a decade earlier—was upgraded to a presidential-level meeting at the White House.

Central Asian presidents and top officials became the focus of considerable U.S. attention as they participated in multiple high-level meetings. For example, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio welcomed the Central Asian foreign ministers and underscored the importance the United States assigns to its relationship with the region. The summit also featured a dedicated Department of State session, where Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick led a “Deal Zone” and announced nearly twenty agreements between Central Asian countries and U.S. businesses (Times of Central Asia, November 8). The summit culminated in a business dinner at the White House, hosted by U.S. President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance (White House, November 6).

Ukraine at a Crossroads: The Battlefield Stalls, the Politics Shift, and the War Enters a New Phase

Benjamin Reed

Things are not going well for Ukraine. They are not going particularly well for Russia either, but Kyiv carries the harsher burden of attrition. Moscow has absorbed staggering losses while sustaining a steady flow of manpower through mobilization, coerced contract recruitment, penal battalions, and limited contingents of North Korean troops. Ukraine lacks that demographic cushion and must conserve every trained soldier it has.

The summer offensive season ended without a defining Russian breakthrough. Moscow pushed on several axes—Kupiansk, Pokrovsk, and southern Donetsk—but none became the operational success the Kremlin hoped to frame as a strategic shift. Pokrovsk remains the focal point; Russian forces have entered the city and continue costly infiltration tactics, yet Ukrainian defenses hold the shoulders and prevent encirclement. The front advances in meters, not kilometers, with Russian forces trading lives at unsustainable ratios for modest gains.

Despite the pressure, Ukraine still holds roughly 19 to 21 percent of Donetsk Oblast, including the fortified belt anchoring Sloviansk and Kramatorsk. Those two cities remain the real strategic prizes. Sloviansk, the flashpoint of the 2014 conflict, carries symbolic weight in Moscow’s mythology of “Novorossiya.” As long as Ukraine holds this line, Russia cannot credibly claim to have secured the region.

Donald Trump Can’t Dodge the Costly K-Shaped Economy

Kyle Grillot

As the U.S. economy heads into the holiday spending season, Donald Trump is continuing to insist that all is sunny. “We are doing phenomenally well. This is the greatest economy we’ve ever had,” he told Laura Ingraham, of Fox News, early last week. When Ingraham raised voter concerns about affordability that featured heavily in recent elections in New Jersey, New York, and Virginia, Trump dismissed them as “a con job by the Democrats.” Before flying to his Mar-a-Lago retreat for the weekend, he repeated the “con job” phrase on social media. More tellingly, however, he also signed an executive order eliminating tariffs on imported beef, coffee, and bananas, all of which have risen sharply in price since he imposed his blanket tariffs earlier this year. The change in policy applies to dozens of other foodstuffs, too.

Despite Trump’s bluster, he clearly understands the political danger he’s in, which is reflected in recent opinion polls. In the latest survey from YouGov/The Economist, “inflation/prices” is still voters’ biggest concern, followed by “jobs and the economy.” The same survey shows that just three per cent of respondents think the economy is in “excellent” shape, while forty per cent think it’s “poor.” (Of the rest, twenty-two per cent think it’s “good,” and thirty-two per cent responded “fair.”) Even before his U-turn on food tariffs, Trump had been scrambling to roll out his own affordability proposals. He’s talked about creating fifty-year mortgages, depositing federal money directly into personal health savings accounts, and handing out a two-thousand-dollar tariff “dividend,” using the money raised from his levies on imported goods.

What Works?: America's New No-Nonsense Realism

Pierre Rehov

When US President Ronald Reagan revived the phrase "shining city on a hill," he did so not as a marketing flourish but as a governing ethic: the United States would deter evil by projecting confidence, prosperity and moral clarity.

His message blended optimism with hard power — lower taxes and deregulation to spur growth, rebuilding the military to restore deterrence, and an unapologetic defense of Western civilization. The mix resonated because it tied virtue to results: fewer hostages, a stronger dollar, and an adversary in Moscow forced onto its back foot. This fusion of ideals and outcomes gave the GOP a compass that pointed true north.

Reagan called it "peace through strength." The logic was simple: credible power restrains predators, and free economies outrun "planned" ones. That worldview, articulated in the 1980s and vindicated by the collapse of the Soviet bloc, set a high bar for a new statecraft. This new statecraft, begun by Reagan, was neither isolationist nor utopian. It was positive and pragmatic, based on whatever might work, rather than confined by ideological strictures. Its successes—such as revitalized growth, a revived military and renewed national morale — have given the US a strategic steadiness.

After the Cold War, however, the glue that had held these policies together began to loosen. Without an existential foe, Washington elites seemed to drift toward a missionary impulse: the United States would not only deter threats but also refashion distant societies in terms of national security – both theirs and ours in the West.

The Desperate Search for Gaza Peacekeepers

Anchal Vohra,

About 20 miles from Gaza, the United States has taken over a large and long-vacated industrial complex, where it has set up a civil-military coordination center. At any given time, approximately 200 American soldiers and officials are milling about in the facility in Kiryat Gat, a town in southern Israel. They are the United States’ eyes and ears, monitoring the fragile cease-fire between Israel and Hamas.

It’s clear that they are not meant to be deployed as a combat team to enforce the next stages of the Trump administration’s peace plan. But neither is anyone else. None of the United States’ allies or Arab partners have signaled any willingness to send troops to police Hamas if it refuses to disarm.

The Perils and Pitfalls of a U.S.-Saudi Defense Pact

Sarah Leah Whitson

The rehabilitation of Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman from global pariah to global patron is one of the most extraordinary political feats of our time. This week, the crown prince will triumphantly return to Washington after nearly a decade of banishment. He is expected to dole out $600 billion in promised investments in U.S. companies and, as part of this exchange, obtain a long-desired security guarantee from the United States. This may well be a great deal for the corporations that stand to benefit from the lavish shopping spree, but it remains a raw and risky deal for the American people, who will be stuck with the bill.

In the aftermath of the 2018 murder of DAWN founder Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi operatives, Mohammed bin Salman faced global sanctions and isolation. Corporate executives pulled out of Riyadh investment conferences, official state visits were suspended, and megadeals with the Saudi government were canceled. The Trump administration sanctioned 17 of those involved in the murder in November 2018.

The State of Digital Transformation in Pacific Island Countries

Shruti Mittal and Adarsh Ranjan

Pacific Island Countries (PICs) are at a pivotal moment in their digital journeys.[1] Across the region, there is growing recognition of digital transformation as a key driver of economic growth, resilience, and global connectivity. This momentum reached a milestone in 2023 when the information and communication technology (ICT) ministers of thirteen PICs signed the Lagatoi Declaration on Digital Transformation of the Pacific, recognizing the importance of a united front in achieving digital goals across six priority areas: digital transformation, innovation and entrepreneurship, digital security and trust, digital capacity building and skills development, and regional cooperation and representation.

Within this agenda, PICs must navigate complex structural restraints and a set of unique challenges, including small populations, limited resources, geographical remoteness, and susceptibility to disasters and external shocks, all of which significantly shape the digital transformation trajectory of the region. Understanding how these realities interact with digital ambitions would require granular, ground-level analysis of policy implementation and stakeholder perspectives.

In August 2025, Carnegie India’s scholars attended the Pacific Cyber Week, organized by the Partners in the Blue Pacific in Nadi, Fiji, and engaged with several government and non-government stakeholders across PICs. Their visit formed part of a knowledge-gathering exercise focused on the state of digital transformation in select islands and across the region as a whole. As part of this effort, they held closed-door meetings with government representatives from the ICT and Digital Transformation departments of Fiji, Tonga, Tuvalu, and the Solomon Islands, and industry stakeholders engaged in cybersecurity and ICT infrastructure development in the Pacific. This article is a collation of the learnings and reflections that emerged from these closed-door interactions.

Microsoft pursues digital intelligence ‘aligned to human values’ in shift from OpenA

Rafi Schwartz

Microsoft has announced an initiative that will pivot the company away from its relationship with entrepreneur Sam Altman’s OpenAI to instead develop its own artificial intelligence system. While the tech giant’s products come embedded with OpenAI software after a 2019 partnership, the company’s push for AI independence is fueled in part by Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman’s efforts to recenter human beings in the search for digital superintelligence. But as AI fever continues to sweep through the halls of industry, education and everyday life, where does Microsoft’s human-centric vision for the technology fit?

‘Very tough tradeoff’ for an AI ‘accelerationist’

A recently renegotiated agreement with OpenAI has allowed Microsoft to establish a new internal “Superintelligence Team” to develop the company’s digital intelligence capacity while putting “human interests and guardrails first,” said The Wall Street Journal. While AI may become “more humanlike,” it will never experience “suffering or pain itself,” Suleyman said to the paper. “Therefore we shouldn’t over-empathize with it.” The goal, Suleyman said, is to create “types of systems that are aligned to human values by default.” By definition, that means those systems are “not designed to exceed and escape human control.”