The India–China Boundary Incidents Database is compiled exclusively from open-source intelligence, and is provided solely for academic and research purposes. All mapped locations are indicative only: the approximate area associated with an incident is shown (e.g., by an encircled zone) solely for contextualisation and analysis. These depictions must not be interpreted, cited, or relied upon as precise incident coordinates, definitive site locations, or authoritative determinations of where an incident occurred. Incident details are compiled from published, open-domain sources and are not attributable to the authors.
28 February 2026
Frustrating the Fait Accompli: How Rocket Artillery Changes the Taiwan Situation
Brennan Deveraux and Kyle Marcrum
Prior to 2022, Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense boasted of its Overall Defense Concept, a plan for “force protection, decisive battle in littoral zone, and destruction of enemy at landing beach.”3 Taiwan claimed the concept applied “ ‘innovative/asymmetric’ operational thinking,” but the concept was a symmetric plan to fight the People’s Liberation Army head-to-head in a final, decisive battle at the beach on which Chinese forces landed.4 Despite talk about reforming the defense concept, and against the recommendations of retired admirals, Taiwan seemed to make little progress.5
The progress on reforms accelerated after a few key events. The 2019–20 deployment of the People’s Armed Police in Hong Kong signaled the end of “one country-two systems” and the viability of this concept for Taiwan.6 The deployment was followed by Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine and China’s reaction to the former speaker of the US House of Representatives’ 2022 visit to Taiwan. Taiwan realized major theater combat had not gone away, and China was readying for a cross-strait invasion.
China’s J-10 Fighter Jet Could Reshape the Indo-Pacific
Harrison Kass
The Chengdu J-10 represents a turning point in Chinese military aviation: the first truly modern, domestically designed multirole fighter fielded at scale. Often compared to the American F-16 or the Swedish Gripen, the J-10 symbolizes China’s transition from Soviet-derived platforms to indigenous design capability. And while the J-10 lacks stealth capabilities, it still serves as a central platform to the PLAAF’s force structure.
The J-10’s Origins and Development
Development of the J-10 began in the 1980s with the intent of replacing Beijing’s aging J-6 and J-7 fleets. The influences of the design are debated, with some suggesting that Israeli’s Lavi program provided technical inputs. The finished product entered service in the early 2000s, and was initially powered with the Russian AL-31FN engines, before being upgraded to Chinese WS-10s. The aircraft’s rollout (and the eventual engine upgrade) represented Chinese industrial maturation—and a stepping stone toward its eventual successor, the fifth-generation J-20.
China’s Military AI Wish List
Emelia Probasco, Sam Bresnick, and Cole McFaul
In analyzing these requests for proposal (RFPs), the authors find that the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is pursuing AI-enabled capabilities across all domains. The applications include decision support systems (AI-DSS), sensor enhancement tools, data fusion algorithms, and much more.
The RFPs reflect China’s desire to generate, augment, and fuse increasing quantities of data to speed military decision-making and improve the precision and efficacy of the PLA’s operations. Specifically, the authors found requests for AI-DSS that can leverage open-source data for strategic decision-making. They also came across requests for AI-DSS to support tactical decisions, such as for targeting. While many militaries are investing in AI-DSS, these systems are of particular importance to the PLA, which views them as a means of compensating for perceived weaknesses in its officer corps.
How Trump’s Beijing bargaining could derail Taiwan’s multibillion-dollar defence budget
Lawrence Chung
Taiwan’s parliament is set to prioritise review of a disputed NT$1.25 trillion (US$40 billion) special defence budget bill when its new session begins on Tuesday, as pressure mounts from Washington. But US President Donald Trump’s recent remarks about consulting Chinese President Xi Jinping on arms sales could complicate the debate, potentially giving Taipei’s opposition parties greater room to manoeuvre and reshape the final version of the bill, according to analysts.
The renewed push follows an unusual bipartisan letter from 37 US lawmakers on February 12 urging Taiwan’s legislature to fully fund the eight-year package. The lawmakers warned that Beijing’s “military pressure is intensifying” and that approving only part of the budget proposed by Taiwanese leader William Lai Ching-te in November “could weaken deterrence”.
Orbital geopolitics: China's dual-use space internet
Altynay Junusova
China is investing massive resources into satellite internet infrastructure as part of a state-led vision for an integrated network linking land, sea, air, and space. This has been a priority since 2016, but high-bandwidth connections have come to the fore since the ascension of US Starlink.
As a strategic, dual-use civilian and military infrastructure, satellite internet has become a focal point in global competition. China’s military was surprised by Starlink’s extensive use in the war in Ukraine, heightening the urgency to develop its own constellation.
China’s massive investments have so far underdelivered, which explains its renewed support for private space companies. One key challenge is the high cost of launching satellites due to the lack of reusable rockets, which private firms are working to overcome. In the past, including private companies in China’s strategic technology development has sped up progress significantly.
What Would War With Iran Look Like?
Nancy A. Youssef
During President Trump’s first term, Pentagon officials took a highly unusual step to diminish the likelihood of war: They shared their plans for a large-scale conflict with Iran with top White House officials. They reasoned that if advisers saw the risks that the plan entailed, they would choose another path, people familiar with the matter told me.
The gambit was successful. At least twice, the president weighed ordering an attack on Iran, only to be dissuaded by aides from moving forward. But America now appears to be on the brink of war with Iran again. And this time, instead of acting as a deterrent, the Pentagon’s war plans are being used to draw up options for the president to consider.
The Supreme Court’s IEEPA Tariff Ruling and What Comes Next
William Alan Reinsch
Well, it’s finally here. The moment trade wonks everywhere have been waiting for—the Supreme Court’s decision on the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) tariffs. There is still a lot of dust to settle, but this column will get into the middle of it and look at three things: the decision itself, what might happen next domestically, and how foreign governments might react.
The court’s decision was clear, although the justices’ reasoning differed—the argument over which rationale to use to come to the same conclusion took up many of the 170 pages in opinions by seven justices. That probably explains the delay in issuing the decision. Justice Neil Gorsuch’s 46-page concurrence, for example, was longer than the majority’s opinion. In the end, six justices agreed on a relatively simple outcome: IEEPA does not permit tariffs.
Have Drones Replaced Artillery in the Ukraine War?
Stavros Atlamazoglou
The Ukraine War has gone on for so long that one can draw important lessons about modern warfare. One of those lessons is about the ongoing utility of artillery in the 21st Century, even in the face of rapid technological advances in kamikaze drones.
Why Ukraine Relies So Heavily on Kamikaze Drones
Artillery is probably the most lethal weapon in Ukraine, but drones are quickly catching up. One-way attack unmanned aerial systems, also known as loitering munitions or kamikaze drones, account for an increasingly larger number of casualties on the battlefield.
Casualties from kamikaze drones are now as high as 80 percent for both sides, according to Latvia’s intelligence services. Moreover, in the past five months, Ukrainian kamikaze drones have hit 44,610 Russian troops, killing 24,731 and wounding 19,879, per official Ukrainian military data.
Trump renews attack on Taiwan’s chip sector after US Supreme Court tariff ruling
Ben Jiang
US President Donald Trump lashed out at Taiwan for undermining the US chip sector, sparking renewed unease in the global semiconductor industry despite the island’s earlier pledge to invest heavily in the US. “Taiwan came [into the chip sector and] they stole our chip business,” Trump said in a press conference on Saturday following the US Supreme Court’s ruling that he had exceeded his authority by imposing sweeping tariffs under a law designated for national emergencies.
Trump directed his ire at Taiwan’s chip industry after the Supreme Court ruled in a 6-3 decision that his import tariffs violated the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act, invalidating many of his tariffs. Trump has repeatedly claimed in the past that Taiwan stole the US’ chip business. Earlier this year, Taiwan committed to invest US$500 billion in return for lower tariffs of 15 per cent from 20 per cent.
Clausewitz on the Very Bad Ideas to Reform the War Colleges
Kiran Pfitzner
These come from the pictured article by a pseudonymous author, with the risible title “Making the War Colleges Great Again.” The author is apparently a retired officer who attended one of these institutions. Amongst his criticisms and suggestions, he calls for the purging of civilian faculty, at least partly on the basis of their “visceral and vocal hatred for the current administration.” This advocacy for Soviet-style “political correctness” from war college faculty is a view unfit for any American, let alone an officer, and gives you some idea of the tenor of the article.
The piece is banally shallow and incompetent, only worth reading in full if you have a sense of morbid curiosity. Nevertheless, we can still make use of it by following Clausewitz’s example of using the shoddy work of others to illustrate a better way to study war. Throughout this article, I will be juxtaposing arguments made in the essay with quotes from On War to elucidate Clausewitz’s concept of military education.
Maneuver Under a Lying Sky: Russia Tests NATO on the Baltic-Nordic Front
James J. Torrence
The first warning does not come from an intelligence summary. It comes from a missed approach over Vilnius. On the operations floor of the new Multi-Corps Land Component Command Northwest in Mikkeli, Finland, Captain Henrik Nyman watches a civil aviation display he is not supposed to care about. It lives in the corner of his screen as context, a way to judge how commercial traffic is flowing around military transit routes.
A Boeing on final approach to Vilnius drops through one thousand feet, hesitates, then claws its way back into the sky and bends west. A few seconds later the Lithuanian aviation authority pushes an advisory into the Eurocontrol feed. Suspected GNSS (global navigation satellite system) interference on final approach. Aircraft diverting to Warsaw. Nyman tags the incident in the ever-growing PNT log—the staff has a whole column for disruptions to positioning, navigation, and timing systems now. His cursor slides to another window, a heat map that overlays the Baltic Sea and the Gulf of Finland.
When the Fiction Ends: Lessons from “Maneuver Under a Lying Sky”
James J. Torrence
“Maneuver Under a Lying Sky” is a work of fiction. But the details the story weaves together are not. FICINT—fictional intelligence—offers a powerful means of anticipating and understanding threats because it blends imagination and reality. It secures our understanding of potential threats to ground truths while simultaneously freeing us to consider how those threats might present themselves before we face them in the real world. So what lessons emerge from the story?
1. Russia’s Existing Theater PNT Campaign
The pattern of Russian activity “Maneuver Under a Lying Sky” portrays is already visible in open sources. In April 2024, Finnair temporarily suspended flights to Tartu, Estonia after repeated GPS interference prevented safe landings, prompting Estonian officials to blame deliberate jamming from Russia. Later that year and into 2025, Baltic and Nordic authorities continued to report widespread disturbances to satellite navigation, particularly near Kaliningrad and the Gulf of Finland. A Ryanair flight to Vilnius, Lithuania was diverted to Poland in January 2025 because of GPS interference on approach, underscoring how safety margins for civil aviation can erode when position, navigation, and timing (PNT) are contested in peacetime.
Our Network Can’t Be the First Obstacle in the Fight
James Mingus, Berline Marcelin and Zak Daker
Cold light spills across a European plain, sixty-five kilometers of flat terrain that spans the territory of multiple nations. As the lead platoon moves forward, the squad leader scans the horizon while distant artillery zeroes in, guided by multiple drones stalking out front. He looks to his device for the picture that weaves together US and allied unit locations, overhead sensors, munitions stocks, and national-level intelligence, all in real time. Instead, the feed glitches, data lags, and systems refuse to speak to one another. In that fragile moment, trust breaks, the formation slows, and the enemy gains the upper hand. In modern warfare, where information and shared understanding rules, the network cannot be our opening obstacle.
Why The Need for Change
The current state of Army command and control (C2) reflects decades of incremental additions rather than deliberate design. Tactical networks grew in isolation, producing seventeen distinct battle command systems. Each new capability became a box within a box: One tool solved a specific problem while creating interoperability gaps, redundant data entry, increased maintenance demands, and heavier training loads. This complexity causes leaders to spend a majority of their time reconciling disparate feeds, troubleshooting links, or manually bridging systems instead of focusing on the fight, which results in slower decision cycles, eroded confidence in shared information, and unnecessary cognitive burden on every soldier. Our adversaries are operating on integrated, streamlined C2 architectures that enable swift and decisive action, which is why we are rapidly transforming our fragmented networks to ensure we maintain decision dominance.
Russia in the High North
Michelle Grisรฉ, Yuliya Shokh, Stephanie Pezard, Alexandra T. Evans, Joe Haberman, Miriam Pasternak Joergensen, Mark Cozad
In recent decades, the High North has played an increasingly important role in Russian strategic thinking. The region hosts an array of Russian military capabilities, including many of the country’s nuclear assets; provides a rich resource base for the Russian economy; and offers a gateway to strategically important sea lines of communication and transit routes that Russia expects will become increasingly contested because of the effects of climate change. Meanwhile, the accession of Finland and Sweden to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)—on April 4, 2023, and March 7, 2024, respectively—has more than doubled Russia’s land border with the NATO alliance. This has contributed to changes in Russian perceptions of the risk of escalation and military confrontation in the High North, prompting shifts in Russia’s stated strategic objectives and military posture in the region.
In light of these changes in the security environment, RAND researchers examined Russian perspectives of the High North and considered the risk of escalation in the region in the coming years. They identified a variety of escalation scenarios involving a conflict between Russia and the West in the High North and conducted virtual workshops with experts on Russian foreign policy and Arctic affairs to analyze these scenarios and identify factors that could escalate or mitigate the situation.
Creating Conspiracy Theories: What Information Warriors Need to Know
Douglas Wilbur
Conspiracy theories play a growing role in modern conflict by shaping how audiences interpret threat, trust, and authority before overt action occurs. This essay examines conspiracy theories as cognitive environments rather than collections of false claims. Drawing on the Existential Threat Model and a political-psychological model of conspiracy belief formation, it explains how such beliefs are cultivated, why counter-messaging often fails, and what strategic risks weaponized conspiracy narratives pose for information warriors.
During the Algerian War of Independence, French counterinsurgency forces exploited a psychological vulnerability within the ranks of the National Liberation Front (FLN) by creating a conspiracy theory. Through a deception operation known as La Bleuite, the French generated the fear of betrayal and increased risk amongst the Algerian revolutionaries. The conspiracy held that French intelligence had deeply infiltrated the FLN movement. Suspicion spread through the ranks, causing trust and cohesion to collapse in some cases. The perceived threat was existential. If traitors were everywhere, the movement’s identity and moral authority were at risk. This resulted in purging of the ranks in an effort to sift out traitors. Many otherwise loyal revolutionaries were persecuted and murdered. This weakened the FLN more effectively than direct military action. It succeeded because it leveraged existing fears, redefined uncertainty as hostile intent, and imposed social and operational costs on disbelief.
America Needs Cognitive Civil Defense
David Maxwell
Thucydides showed that fear, honor, and interest move states. Clausewitz taught that war is a continuation of politics by other means. Mao described politics as war without bloodshed and war as politics with bloodshed. Sun Tzu wrote what is of supreme importance is to attack the enemy’s strategy. These were not ancient observations. They are field manuals for today. The battlefield has expanded. It now sits inside the mind.
A democracy stands on what its citizens believe is true. If they cannot judge truth, they cannot judge policy. If they cannot judge policy, they cannot guide power. An adversary does not need to win elections or battles. He only needs to erode trust. Russia proved this. Its operations did not seek one vote or one law. They sought doubt. Doubt in media. Doubt in institutions. Doubt in each other.
Staff Processes in LSCO Part III: Division Planning
John R. Harrell, James Villanueva,Joe Hammond
On June 10, 1944, the U.S. Army’s 9th Infantry Division (ID), veterans of earlier campaigns in North Africa and Sicily, arrived on Utah Beach in Normandy, France. After the division assembled several miles inland, the 9th ID conducted a forward passage of lines through the 90th Infantry Division on June 14. Moving through difficult hedgerow terrain, the 9th, along with the 82nd Airborne Division to its south, attacked across the Douve River and seized crucial bridgeheads on June 16. The 9th ID continued to advance west and reached Barneville on the western coast of the Cotentin Peninsula by June 18, effectively cutting off German forces in the peninsula.
Quickly moving north, the 9th ID began an attack to seize the port city of Cherbourg on June 19 in concert with other units of the VII Corps. VII Corps seized Cherbourg on June 27 after a series of deliberate attacks with extensive air and artillery support. The 9th ID turned over control of its sector of Cherbourg to the 4th ID to allow it to continue clearing German forces to the west of the city.
Genocide in the New Geopolitics
Martin Shaw
In the late 2020s, we hear increasingly of the demise of international law and “the rules-based international order.” Donald Trump’s use of force against Iran and Venezuela and threat to use it against Greenland, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, are widely seen as representing a turning point in international relations, linked to the rise of authoritarianism in domestic politics. No episode in the new world disorder speaks more to this sense of change than Israel’s genocide in Gaza, in which Trump has also played a major role. It is over Gaza that the USA has most definitively rejected international law, even sanctioning the International Criminal Court (ICC) and its judges.
Yet many IR commentators, like Western political leaders, see Trump’s threat to the transatlantic alliance as the key dimension of international change, and increasingly argue for an alternative to Trump’s USA without confronting it over Gaza. Indeed, most of the leaders who are being forced to confront the need for such an alternative are themselves complicit in the Israeli-US genocide. Gaza therefore appears to be the Achilles’ heel of the idea that the liberal order can be salvaged from the Trumpian onslaught. The reason for this is that although international order and international law both have broader foundations than the norms and laws around genocide, the public international morality of the West has come to centre on them.
The Munich Security Conference marks the end of the US-led order
Carol Schaeffer
The future of “Davos with guns” has never been more in doubt since its founding 1963 by the national-conservative publisher and World War II German resistance member, Ewald-Heinrich von Kleist. President Donald Trump’s repeated claims that he would invade Greenland and Vice President JD Vance’s antagonistic speech last year have made the transatlantic alliance feel more uncertain than ever. According to the headline of the official security report released by the conference, “the world has entered a period of wrecking-ball politics.”
This did not stop US lawmakers from making an appearance, especially Democrats, including several 2028 presidential contenders, who were eager to signal an alternative foreign policy to the one promoted by Trump. At one point, a panel attendee quipped, “It seems that Munich is the new Iowa.”
America's Blind Spot: Ignore Africa, and Cede the 21st Century to China
Andrea Peters
Africa is no longer a peripheral theater but the decisive arena where the United States will either reset a broken relationship and reclaim strategic relevance—or cede the future to China's entrenched, long-game presence on the continent. America's diplomatic engagements with Africa have historically been characterized as episodic and self-serving, although Africa is one of the world's last frontiers of critical development with significant strategic implications. This tacit relationship developed during the Transatlantic Slave Trade in the 16th century and remains relevant today.
Behavior gives credence to the underlying unresolved racial tensions and misunderstood political and cultural complexities of the continent. Policymakers have historically prioritized other regions of the world based on confirmed pacing threats, while largely ignoring Africa, which created a power vacuum for rogue actors and known adversaries. The United States' inconsistent diplomatic engagement with Africa continues to reflect enduring racial tensions and a persistent misreading of the continent's political and cultural complexity, contributing to a steady decline in America's strategic influence as China consolidates a more structured and durable presence across the continent.
Ai and the future
Three years since ChatGPT launched, a combination of hype and fear has made it hard to think clearly about our new age of artificial intelligence (AI). But AI has the potential to change the world—from energy to geopolitics to the global economy to the very production and application of human knowledge. If ever we needed clear-eyed analysis, it’s now.
At the Atlantic Council, our experts in the Atlantic Council Technology Programs spend a lot of their time thinking about how AI will shape our future—and they have the technical literacy essential to the task. So, as part of our annual Global Foresight report on the decade to come, we asked them our most pressing questions: How will AI evolve over the next ten years and beyond? How can we use AI to forecast global affairs? And—let’s be real—will this thing replace us?
Is AI sovereignty possible? Balancing autonomy and interdependence
Brooke Tanner, Cameron F. Kerry, Andrew W. Wyckoff, Nicoleta Kyosovska, Andrea Renda, and Elham Tabassi
The concept of artificial intelligence (AI) sovereignty has entered policy discussions as governments confront the strategic importance of AI infrastructure, data, and models amid rising dependence on a small number of firms and jurisdictions. This report defines AI sovereignty as a spectrum of strategies to enhance a country’s capacity to make independent decisions about critical AI infrastructure deployment, use, and adoption, rather than literal autarky. Motivations vary— from protecting national security and resilience and supporting economic competitiveness, to ensuring cultural and linguistic inclusion in model training and datasets and strengthening influence in global governance. These aims are often legitimate, but “sovereign AI” can also become a vehicle for protectionism, fragmented markets and standards, and duplicative or stranded public investment.
The central finding is that full-stack AI sovereignty is structurally infeasible for almost any country because AI is a transnational stack with concentrated choke points across minerals, energy, compute hardware, networks, digital infrastructure, data assets, models, applications, and the crosscutting enablers of talent and governance. The practical alternative is “managed interdependence,” an approach that relies on strategic alliances and partnerships to reduce risks throughout the AI stack. Countries can operationalize managed interdependence by mapping dependencies by layer, prioritizing feasible interventions, diversifying suppliers and partners, and embedding interoperability and portability through technical standards, procurement, and governance. Done well, managed interdependence can strengthen resiliency and agency while preserving the benefits of open markets and cross-border collaboration.
Congress—Not the Pentagon or Anthropic—Should Set Military AI Rules
Alan Z. Rozenshtein
The Department of Defense is threatening to designate Anthropic, the maker of Claude, a "supply chain risk," which would not only bar Anthropic from government contracts but also force Pentagon contractors to cut ties with the company. That's a crippling penalty reserved normally for foreign adversaries such as the Chinese telecom company Huawei and the Russian cybersecurity company Kaspersky. Anthropic's offense is insisting that any military use of its artificial intelligence (AI) adhere to Anthropic’s two red lines: no mass surveillance of Americans and no fully autonomous weapons. In response, a senior Pentagon official told Axios, the Defense Department will "make sure they pay a price."
Both sides have real claims here—though the way the government is pressing its position is, to put it mildly, disproportionate. But the deeper problem isn't who's right in this negotiation; it's that the negotiation is happening at all. The terms governing how the military uses the most transformative technology of the century are being set through bilateral haggling between a defense secretary and a startup CEO, with no democratic input and no durable constraints. Congress should be setting these rules. And it should do so in a hurry.
Batteries Are the Next Fault Line in the Defense Supply Chain
Saurabh Ullal
When China announced export controls on rare earth materials last October, Washington reacted with appropriate alarm. Editorial boards warned of supply disruptions, defense analysts warned of national security implications, and automakers throttled production lines.
What received far less attention: China simultaneously imposed export controls on lithium-ion batteries, cathode materials, and graphite anode materials. Those battery controls, which were temporarily suspended for one year alongside the rare earth curbs as part of a negotiated truce between the two countries, threaten an equally critical supply chain.
27 February 2026
Urgent research needed to tackle AI threats, says Google AI boss
Zoe Kleinman, Philippa Wain
More research on the threats of artificial intelligence (AI) "needs to be done urgently", the boss of Google DeepMind has told BBC News. In an exclusive interview at the AI Impact Summit in Delhi, Sir Demis Hassabis said the industry wanted "smart regulation" for "the real risks" posed by the tech. Many tech leaders and politicians at the Summit have called for more global governance of AI, ahead of an expected joint statement as the event draws to a close.
But the US has rejected this stance, with White House technology adviser Michael Kratsios saying: "AI adoption cannot lead to a brighter future if it is subject to bureaucracies and centralised control."Sir Demis said it was important to build "robust guardrails" against the most serious threats from the rise of autonomous systems. He said the two main threats were the technology being used by "bad actors", and the risk of losing control of systems as they become more powerful.
From Islamabad to Nangarhar, the Dead Keep Multiplying
At the Khadija Tul Kubra mosque in Islamabad’s Tarlai Kalan neighbourhood, on the afternoon of 6 February, worshippers had gathered for Friday prayers. A man fought past the security guards at the entrance, opened fire, and detonated. The Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences received the injured in waves through the afternoon. At least thirty-two people were killed and 170 wounded, confirmed by the UN Security Council in formal session, though some Pakistani media sources reported the toll rising toward forty in subsequent days as the critically injured died. It was the deadliest attack in Pakistan’s capital since a truck bomb took apart the Marriott Hotel in 2008.
Sixteen days later, at midnight on 22 February, Pakistani warplanes found Girdi Kas village in Nangarhar’s Bihsud district. A farmer named Nezakat, thirty-five years old, was in his room with his wife when the bombs landed. He came out and carried his aunt from the debris. Then his son called to him from under the rubble, injured. Thirteen members of Nezakat’s family were found dead. Five more were missing when he spoke to Radio Free Europe’s Radio Azadi. The youngest person killed in the strike was one year old. The oldest was eighty. Eighteen members of a single family were buried together in a mass grave in the village while neighbours who had run toward the sound stood in the early morning and dug.
China’s 155mm naval gun seen on test vessel, signalling boost to amphibious landing power
Liu Zhen
Beijing appears to be testing its 155mm (6.1-inch) naval gun to boost the PLA Navy’s land-attack firepower. The weapon would be the biggest in the People’s Liberation Army’s naval arsenal and could be useful in an amphibious operation against Taiwan.
Photos of the massive weapon mounted on the bow of a test vessel have recently emerged on Chinese social media. The location was identified as the Liaonan shipyard in Dalian, in China’s northeastern Liaoning province. The estimated barrel length and turret shape both match previous photos of the 155mm naval gun under development by China North Industries Group Corporation (Norinco), as seen being transported by road early last year.
Ten Predictions for the Potential U.S. Strikes on Iran
William F. Wechsler
WASHINGTON—Experienced foreign-policy observers in the U.S. capital have long learned never to make public predictions. The world is far too uncertain and the downside risks to your reputation are far too high if you end up well off the mark. It’s clearly advisable to wait until events have already transpired and then claim afterward that you saw them coming all along. This is especially the case when it comes to decisions to go to war.
Yet those who carry the burden of policymaking are forced to make predictions to inform their policies. So even as negotiations continue between the United States and Iran, U.S. President Donald Trump and his advisers are undoubtedly trying to assess what Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei will do in the face of the “massive armada” that is in the final stages of being assembled in the Middle East, and Iranian leaders are doing the same.
Trump curious why Iran has not 'capitulated', US envoy Witkoff says
Jaroslav Lukivand
US President Donald Trump is questioning why Iran has not yet "capitulated" in the face of Washington's military build-up in the Middle East, the US president's special envoy has said. Steve Witkoff told Fox News on Saturday that Trump was "curious" about Iran's position after he had warned of a limited military strike if a deal could not be reached on Tehran's nuclear programme.
The US and its European allies suspect Iran of moving towards making a nuclear weapon, which it denies. Within Iran, anti-government protests were staged at several universities over the weekend - the first rallies on such a scale since January's deadly crackdown by the authorities, which saw thousands killed.
The United States Is Misreading Iran
Ali Hashem
When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, most people outside the global military community had never heard of the Iranian Shahed drone. The world learned about it from the low hum in social media videos of the swarms of the inexpensive drones over the Ukrainian battlefield. They were not very accurate or advanced, but their strength was in wearing down defenses over time. Ukrainian officials called them a “flying nuisance,” a weapon meant to exhaust defenses rather than deliver a decisive strike.
For Western capitals, particularly Washington, Iran’s decision to provide thousands of these drones to Russia marked a turning point in Iranian grand strategy. During nuclear talks in Vienna in 2022, several Western diplomats confided in me that Tehran had crossed an invisible line, demonstrating its readiness to shape events in conflicts far beyond its own borders. But for Iran, the conflict provided a different result. Ukraine became a testing ground. Russian battlefield improvements, developed through hard-won combat experience, enhanced drones’ effectiveness, extending their reach and impact.
Europe’s desire for strategic autonomy is a ‘fait accompli.’ It just needs to decide what that means
Franรงois Diaz-Maurin
At the Munich Security Conference last week, Europeans focused on meeting their own security needs in the face of continued threats from Moscow and rapidly eroding trust with Washington. Among the discussions, nuclear deterrence was high on the agenda, with several countries announcing bilateral talks on the issue.
But to achieve a credible deterrent to Russia that is no longer—or at least less—dependent on the United States capabilities, European countries will have to work out their different strategic visions. This process will include attempts to find common ground between two proposals for a strategic posture that would rely entirely on either conventional or nuclear deterrence to counter Russia’s threats. Those proposals, however, are insufficient. A European deterrence strategy will need to offer an integrated and holistic approach to the security of the continent.
Kremlin Struggles to Project Global Relevance Amid Peace Talks
Pavel K. Baev
After inconclusive U.S.–Ukraine–Russia talks on February 17–18 in Geneva, Moscow is scrambling to keep U.S. attention. Washington extended sanctions on Russia for another year after the Kremlin offered frozen Russian assets to the “Board of Peace” and reportedly pitched $12 trillion in economic projects with the United States.
Facing economic strain at home and battlefield setbacks in Donbas, the Kremlin is trying to project global relevance, including rhetorically supporting Cuba amid U.S. sanctions and joining naval exercises with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and Iran in the Strait of Hormuz.
Russia’s attempts to project global reach may expose its limited leverage beyond Ukraine, weakening Putin’s hand ahead of further peace talks. Moscow’s ability to delay or reshape diplomatic outcomes could narrow significantly as sanctions continue to impact Russia’s economy and military gains stall.
Trump’s Vision for Greenland and the Emerging World Order
Erdem Lamazhapov
President Donald Trump’s renewed bid to acquire Kalaallit Nunaat, also known as Greenland, is not adequately explained by the immediate benefits that possession of this country would give to the United States. Instead, this crisis is better explained in terms of the Trump administration’s political project, which seeks to reinvent the United States’ identity as a great power in an emerging post-rules-based international order. During his Davos speech, US President Donald Trump reaffirmed his desire to acquire Kalaallit Nunaat, citing that the US is a “great power, much greater than people even understand”. Trump also underscored that the US needed Greenland because it is a “part of North America, on the northern frontier of the Western Hemisphere,” which is a “core national security interest of the United States of America”.
Trump reaffirmed the same security logic that was presented several months earlier, in the Trump administration’s November 2025 National Security Strategy which proclaimed the entire Western Hemisphere as the US sphere of influence under a “‘Trump Corollary’ to the Monroe Doctrine” (White House 2025, 5). Just several weeks later, the Trump administration intervened in Venezuela. The Trump administration’s sphere of influence discourse is not an epiphenomenon but the driver of the US’ newfound expansionism in the Arctic.
How NATO is Surviving Donald J. Trump
Martin A. Smith
By the end of the first year of President Donald Trump’s second term in the White House, descriptions of systemic crisis in – or even predictions of the end of – the transatlantic security alliance were commonplace. And yet NATO had not only survived, but by January 2026 was taking on new roles and responsibilities – playing a more important role in facilitating continuing western (including US) military assistance to Ukraine, and potentially also with regard to Greenland, and perhaps wider Arctic security. It was certainly true that Trump’s brusque and unpredictable approach to international diplomacy led to some bruising encounters with allies and partners. These proved short-lived, however, and were managed short of inflicting serious or durable damage on the core NATO institution. The analysis here seeks to explain how and why.
The 1949 North Atlantic Treaty (NAT) places no automatic obligation on its signatories to offer military assistance to allies under attack. Article 5 merely requires each signatory to take “such action as it deems necessary”, leaving the door open in theory for them to take no enforcement action. Its content nevertheless suggested that signatories wanted something more solid and permanent than a traditional military alliance.
Myanmar: The ‘In-Between Space’ and Its Implications
K. Yhome
Myanmar presents a perplexing case of a state that played a prominent role in global and regional affairs soon after its independence from colonial rule, but today it is mired in protracted internal conflicts and struggles to remain visible internationally. There is no dearth of literature elucidating the entrenched nature of Myanmar’s complex conflict dynamics and its ties with the outside world.
Despite the rich body of work on Myanmar’s prolonged conflicts and its external role and engagements, a dimension that has not received much attention in existing literature is: How the emergence of regions impacted Myanmar’s identity and its internal conflict dynamics? This article views Myanmar through the lens of ‘in-between space’ and explores the process of regionalism in the making of ‘in-between space’ and the impacts of ‘in-betweenness.’ The notion of ‘in-between space’ is employed in various disciplines such as in the field of architecture, where ‘in-between spaces’ are viewed as ‘transitional spaces’ (Tzortzi 2024, 6685-6686) that lie on the boundary of two spaces, where the edge blurs the boundary between spaces. Similarly, in anthropology, the term ‘liminality’ describes an ‘in-between state’ of an entity that transforms into a new entity. In International Relations, the notion of ‘in-between space’ is used in the context of borderlands and frontiers between nation-states where sovereignty is contested and the line dividing role and responsibility blurs (Meier 2019, 3-4).
NATO Chief Says Europe Is ‘Dreaming’ if It Thinks It Can Defend Itself Without U.S.
Jeffrey Gettleman
Mark Rutte, the secretary general of NATO, warned Europe on Monday that it could not defend itself without the United States in remarks aimed to address the growing worries that the United States and Europe are pulling apart over President Trump’s ambitions for Greenland.
“If anyone thinks here again that the European Union, or Europe as a whole, can defend itself without the U.S., keep on dreaming,” Mr. Rutte told members of the European Parliament in Brussels. “You can’t. We can’t. We need each other.”
Drones ‘change everything’ about combined arms combat, US Army aviation chief says
Zita Ballinger Fletcher
HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — Drones are profoundly changing the Army’s approach to aviation and combined arms training, Maj. Gen. Clair A. Gill, commanding general of the U.S. Army Aviation Center of Excellence, told Military Times in an interview. During the Army’s first annual Best Drone Warfighter Competition in Huntsville, Alabama, the Fort Rucker-based aviation chief shared his insights about the impact of drones on military doctrine.
“The application of drone technology is only limited by your creativity,” he said. “It’s this constantly evolving game of technology and craftsmanship to create the desired effect that you want on the other end.” While Army aviators are no strangers to unmanned systems, drones being fielded today are immensely different from those developed over the last two decades, many of which tended to be larger and required more manpower to operate, Gill said.
Flipping the Script: Redesigning the US Air Force for Decisive Advantage
Timothy A. Walton & Dan Patt
Despite the United States Air Force’s (USAF) stellar performance in recent operations, a geriatric fleet of aircraft, low readiness rates, and dismal prospects in a potential future conflict with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) mean the service could decline within a decade from invaluable to incapable. More importantly, a weak Air Force would face major challenges defending the homeland, maintaining strategic deterrence, and projecting power in support of the nation, which could increase the likelihood the PRC starts a war and defeats the United States and its allies.
The Air Force needs to adopt a new approach to shaping its force that addresses the changed character of warfare, most consequentially against the peer threat of the PRC, and creates the capacity and flexibility to address global demands. The US Air Force’s traditional approach, involving expeditionary and serial power projection, is increasingly insolvent against the PRC for a variety of reasons: China can target in mass the gradual deployment of forces to the Indo-Pacific; forces are vulnerable at airfields once they arrive; the PRC could achieve its aims of aggression, such as invading Taiwan or seizing other allied territory, before US forces could roll back enemy defenses to attack the PRC’s center of gravity; and if the conflict continued, the Air Force would struggle to replace its losses, much less grow in size.1 Absent viable shifts, our analysis indicates that within a decade China could defeat the United States and its allies in a major campaign—even if the Air Force received additional funding for aircraft, weapons, or readiness.2 This suggests that more of the same approach to designing and fielding an Air Force will not work well in the future.
USFK Aerial Encounter With China Underlines the Hidden Danger of OPCON Transfer
James JB Park
In the current structure of the Korea-U.S. Combined Forces Command (CFC) and its operational planning architecture, unilateral military actions that risk unnecessary third-party escalation – particularly involving China or Russia – are exceedingly rare. The system is deliberately designed to ensure tight coordination, strategic clarity, and alliance cohesion.
Yet on February 19, an unprecedented exercise unfolded: dozens of United States Forces Korea (USFK) fighter jets patrolled the overlapping zones of South Korea’s and China’s Air Defense Identification Zones (ADIZ) over the West Sea (Yellow Sea). The move, widely interpreted as directed at the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA), led to a China-U.S. aerial standoff.
Four years into its full-scale war in Ukraine, Russia is feeling the effects
Steve Rosenberg
At first glance, Yelets in winter looks like something from a Russian fairy tale.nFrom the embankment I spy the golden domes of Orthodox churches and, down below, ice fishermen dotted along the frozen river. But in this town, 350km (217 miles) south of Moscow, the fairy tale feeling is transient. On the riverbank I spot an army recruitment billboard. It promises a one-off sum equivalent to £15,000 to anyone who'll sign up to fight in Ukraine.
Close by there's a poster of a Russian soldier taking aim with a Kalashnikov. "We're there where we need to be," the accompanying slogan declares. The Kremlin launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022. Outside Russia it was widely seen as an attempt to force Kyiv back into Moscow's orbit and to overturn the entire post-Cold War security architecture in Europe.
The Tragedy of Great-Power Foreign Policy
Stacie E. Goddard
For almost 30 years after the Cold War ended, American foreign policy elites argued that the United States should use its unmatched military and economic power as a force for transformation. For some, this meant working to expand the role of multilateral institutions such as NATO, promoting unfettered free trade, and protecting human rights worldwide, even by using military force. Others believed that the United States should wield its military power as democracy’s spear by subduing violent terrorists, overthrowing tyrannical regimes, and deterring potential revisionist powers. These views, however, were two sides of the same coin: underlying both was a belief that the United States must maintain its dominant position in the world and, when necessary, wield its might to defend liberal rights.
But after the failures of U.S. interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq, the rise of rival great powers, and the weakening of American democracy at home, this era of relative bipartisan consensus has ended. U.S. foreign policy is in disarray, with no obvious vision for what should come next. For Emma Ashford, a senior fellow at the Stimson Center, the path forward lies in what she calls “realist internationalism.” Grounded in a long tradition of realist thought, this strategy places the national interest—not ideology—at the center of foreign-policy making and views the pursuit of democratization abroad as unnecessary, even foolish.
After the rupture: Middle powers and the construction of new order
Anthony Dworkin
The international system is no longer held together by a single dominant vision of order. The norms, institutions and power structures that shaped global governance after the second world war, later broadened and deepened in the post-cold war moment, are eroding without a clear successor. The US is retreating from its role as architect and guarantor of that order—imperfectly exercised in any case—while simultaneously asserting its dominance through unilateral action and displays of force in Greenland, Iran and Venezuela. At the same time, China and Russia are advancing competing models of order.
In this context, rising and middle powers are actively pursuing new strategies to secure their autonomy and expand their influence. They are challenging established hierarchies, reshaping economic and connectivity networks and building alternative forms of cooperation that do not rely on Western leadership and involvement; some formats are in fact specifically built to circumvent or exclude Western structures and stakeholders. From infrastructure corridors to conflict management and development finance, these players and their actions are generating new sources of order in an increasingly entropic system.
Bonus Podcast Episode: Is There an Endgame in Ukraine?
Michael Kofman
February 24 marks the fourth anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. After Moscow’s initial onslaught, Ukrainian counteroffensives, and slow Russian gains since, the war has settled into a brutal pattern of attrition, adaptation, and endurance. Ukrainian cities are rationing electricity, as the Ukrainian military struggles to muster the manpower and munitions needed to gain a decisive edge. Meanwhile, the battlefield has become a hellscape of drones and artillery fire—with no clear breakthrough for either side in sight.
Michael Kofman has been one of the sharpest observers and analysts of the changing nature of the war, from Russia’s troop buildup in late 2021 to the present, in the pages of Foreign Affairs and elsewhere. He has also considered the geopolitical implications of each new phase of fighting—what the continued threat of a belligerent Russia means for the West, and how Ukraine’s allies can prepare it for sustained conflict. Now, as the war enters its fifth year, Kofman, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, argues that “Russia retains battlefield advantages, but they have not proved decisive, and more and more, time is working against Moscow.” “Yet ending the conflict on terms acceptable to Ukraine,” he writes, “will not be an easy feat, either.”
Four years into its full-scale war in Ukraine, Russia is feeling the effects
Steve Rosenberg
Posters offering large sums of money for joining the army are everywhere in Russia At first glance, Yelets in winter looks like something from a Russian fairy tale. From the embankment I spy the golden domes of Orthodox churches and, down below, ice fishermen dotted along the frozen river. But in this town, 350km (217 miles) south of Moscow, the fairy tale feeling is transient. On the riverbank I spot an army recruitment billboard. It promises a one-off sum equivalent to £15,000 to anyone who'll sign up to fight in Ukraine.
Close by there's a poster of a Russian soldier taking aim with a Kalashnikov. "We're there where we need to be," the accompanying slogan declares. The Kremlin launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022. Outside Russia it was widely seen as an attempt to force Kyiv back into Moscow's orbit and to overturn the entire post-Cold War security architecture in Europe.
Ukraine in maps: Tracking the war with Russia
Some 55,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, while the BBC has confirmed the names of almost 160,000 people killed fighting on Russia's side.
Four years after Russia's full-scale invasion, here's a look at the situation on the ground in Ukraine.
Russia grinds forward in the east
Analysts at the US-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW), say Russia took about 4,700 sq km (1,800 sq miles) of territory in 2025 - an area about twice the size of the city of Moscow - although Russia claims to have taken 6,000 sq km. In eastern Ukraine, Moscow's war machine has been churning mile by mile through the wide open fields of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions - also known as the Donbas - surrounding and overwhelming villages and towns.
A war foretold:how the CIA and MI6 got hold of Putin’s Ukraine plans and why nobody believed them
Shaun Walker
William Burns had travelled halfway around the world to speak with Vladimir Putin, but in the end he had to make do with a phone call. It was November 2021, and US intelligence agencies had been picking up signals in the preceding weeks that Putin could be planning to invade Ukraine. President Joe Biden dispatched Burns, his CIA director, to warn Putin that the economic and political consequences if he did so would be disastrous.
Fifteen years earlier, when Burns was US ambassador in Moscow, Putin had been relatively accessible. The intervening years had concentrated the Russian leader’s power and deepened his paranoia. Since Covid had emerged, few had been granted face time. Putin was squirrelled away at his lavish residence on the Black Sea coast, Burns and his delegation learned, and only phone contact would be possible.
Musk cuts Starlink access for Russian forces - giving Ukraine an edge at the front
Paul Adams
Evidence is mounting that Elon Musk's decision to deny Russian forces access to his Starlink satellite-based internet service has blunted Moscow's advance, caused confusion among Russian soldiers and handed an advantage to Ukraine's defenders. But for how long? And what can Ukraine's military achieve in the meantime?
"The Russians… lost their ability to control the field," a Ukrainian drone operator who goes by the callsign Giovanni told us. "I think they lost 50% of their capacity for offence," he said. "That's what the numbers show. Fewer assaults, fewer enemy drones, fewer everything." mIt's still early to assess the impact of a change that only came into effect at the beginning of the month, after Ukraine's defence minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, asked Elon Musk's SpaceX company to block Russian access to Starlink.
AI Safety Meets the War Machine
Steven Levy
WhenAnthropic last year became the first major AI company cleared by the US government for classified use—including military applications—the news didn’t make a major splash. But this week a second development hit like a cannonball: The Pentagon is reconsidering its relationship with the company, including a $200 million contract, ostensibly because the safety-conscious AI firm objects to participating in certain deadly operations.
The so-called Department of War might even designate Anthropic as a “supply chain risk,” a scarlet letter usually reserved for companies that do business with countries scrutinized by federal agencies, like China, which means the Pentagon would not do business with firms using Anthropic’s AI in their defense work. In a statement to WIRED, chief Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell confirmed that Anthropic was in the hot seat. “Our nation requires that our partners be willing to help our warfighters win in any fight. Ultimately, this is about our troops and the safety of the American people,” he said. This is a message to other companies as well: OpenAI, xAI and Google, which currently have Department of Defense contracts for unclassified work, are jumping through the requisite hoops to get their own high clearances.
From Seats to Sorties: Why the Pentagon Should Buy Software the Way It Buys (Some) Weapon Systems
Ben Van Roo
That’s Boeing, talking about the C-17 Globemaster III, a plane it hasn’t manufactured since 2015 but still sustains under a $23.8 billion performance-based logistics contract. The Air Force doesn’t buy C-17 spare parts. It doesn’t buy repair actions. It buys readiness. The contract specifies a mission capable rate, a cost per flying hour, and maintenance man-hours per flying hour. Boeing figures out how to deliver. If parts last longer, if predictive maintenance catches failures before they happen, Boeing keeps the margin. If readiness drops, Boeing eats the cost.
This arrangement has been running since 1998. The fleet consistently beats its 82.5% mission capable rate target (87%+ and climbing). When the Air Force needed to evacuate 124,000 people from Kabul in a matter of days, the C-17s delivered. That’s not a PowerPoint metric, it’s a real-world stress test of the readiness PBL purchased, and it passed.
26 February 2026
India is building AI, not just using it: Sam Altman at Express Adda, key takeaways
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, on Friday, February 20, painted a vivid picture of artificial intelligence (AI) and its implications for India and the world. The CEO sat down with Anant Goenka, Executive Director of The Indian Express Group, at Express Adda in New Delhi. In the hour-long interaction, the OpenAI executive touched upon a wide range of topics surrounding AI, from intensifying competition to talent wars to massive infrastructure investments to gargantuan levels of compute deemed necessary for frontier models.
Altman also expressed his views on India. He sees the fourth-largest economy as a rapidly emerging AI powerhouse with remarkable builder energy and the fastest-growing Codex market globally. He believes India should develop the complete AI stack vertically and democratise AI technology. Even though optimistic about India's potential to lead, he acknowledged job displacement challenges that require rapid adaptation.
Attacks on Indians Compromise Moscow’s Ability to Attract New Migrants
Paul Goble
Moscow wants to replace departing migrant workers from Central Asia and the Caucasus with new ones from India. Attacks on Indians studying in Russia, however, make that an unlikely prospect, as Indian workers will hardly want to face such xenophobia. If Moscow cannot attract new migrants, however, many jobs that such workers now perform will go unfilled, adding to popular anger when streets are not cleaned or packages are not delivered and undermining the prospects for economic recovery even further.
This spread of Russian xenophobic attacks on Central Asians to Indians almost certainly presages more xenophobic attacks by Russians on the non-Russian quarter of the population, threatening Russia’s stability and even territorial integrity.
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