Escalation Dynamics Under the Nuclear Shadow—India’s Approach

Rakesh Sood

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The May 2025 conflict was only the most recent in a series of wars, conflicts, skirmishes, and crises that have afflicted India-Pakistan relations since 1947, when India emerged as an independent nation, and a part of it, Pakistan, was carved out as a separate homeland for Muslims in the Indian sub-continent.

Three wars in 1947–48, 1965, and 1971 failed to yield a decisive outcome over the territorial dispute of Kashmir, though the 1971 war did lead to the eastern wing of Pakistan seceding and emerging as an independent Bangladesh. In 1998, both countries undertook a series of nuclear tests to emerge as nuclear weapon states, adding another dimension to their rivalry. The Kargil conflict came one year later, and then militarised crises in 2001–02, 2008, 2016, 2019, and 2025.

Can Elections Secure Nepal’s Youth Revolution?

Bibek Bhandari

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For the past 10 years, Nepal’s prime ministerial role has cycled from aging leader to aging leader. From communist strongmen Khadga Prasad Sharma Oli and Pushpa Kamal Dahal to the centrist Sher Bahadur Deuba, the trio of leaders strategically took turns to guard the position. In 2026, after the country was convulsed by protests last year, many Nepalis want a decisive shift—and a new generation of leadership.

That resolve will be tested at the ballot box on March 5, when Nepal heads into a snap election triggered by the originally peaceful, youth-led anti-corruption protest movement that began in September. The demonstration turned deadly after security forces opened fire on unarmed students, killing around 77 people during the course of two days and leading Oli to resign. Former Chief Justice Sushila Karki was sworn in to lead the interim government—becoming Nepal’s first female prime minister—on Sept. 12, and the election was called nearly two years ahead of schedule.

Japan’s National Security Reckoning

Masataka Okano

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For decades, U.S. allies operated within an international system built and maintained by the United States. Washington was committed to keeping global trade flowing, to the benefit of countries around the world. The multilateral institutions formed in the wake of World War II did not prevent war altogether, but they reinforced a norm against outright conquest. And the United States’ vested interest in its allies’ security offered assurance to Japan and other countries that they would be protected if conflict came to their shores.

National security leaders around the world knew that this system was not guaranteed to last forever. Already, in the past several years, the outbreak of deadly wars in Europe and the Middle East, escalating Chinese military activities around Taiwan and the South China Sea, the reemergence of trade wars and breakdown of global governance, and the dizzying pace of change in modern warfare—especially when it comes to drones and artificial intelligence—all required countries to adjust their expectations. The world was becoming a more dangerous, more unpredictable place. Yet Japan and its partners believed that the rules-based international order, upheld at the initiative of the United States, was still the best remedy to these problems.

Cognitive Deterrence: How Taiwan Is Learning to Govern Resistance

Erika Lafrennie

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Modern conflict no longer begins with force. It begins with cognition—with the shaping of perception, the conditioning of expectations, and the quiet management of what populations come to regard as normal, inevitable, or futile. This reality is now broadly acknowledged across defense, intelligence, and policy communities. The cognitive domain is recognized as contested terrain. Influence, narrative, and sensemaking are understood as strategic tools rather than peripheral effects.

What remains unresolved is how deterrence works in this domain. In Taiwan, that question is answered not in mobilization orders or troop movements, but in civic education programs, civil defense normalization, and public messaging designed to condition expectations long before a crisis.

China’s Fragile Future

Andrew J. Nathan

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For many years, predicting the downfall of the Chinese Communist Party was something of a sport among China watchers. But few serious observers today suggest that China looks unstable. Despite facing numerous challenges, including the implosion of the country’s real estate sector since 2021 and high debt loads that have bogged down local government finances, China’s political system appears strong. Chinese leader Xi Jinping has a firm hold on all the levers of power, and the country is proving to be competitive, or even dominant, in a growing number of twenty-first-century technologies, such as electric vehicles and biotechnology. Moreover, scholars consistently find overwhelmingly high levels of public support for the CCP. In comparison to the growing fragility and divisiveness of political systems elsewhere, including in the United States, the Chinese regime appears to the outside world as competent and stable—an image that Beijing is eager to project.

Two new books challenge this view. In Political Trust in China, the political scientist Lianjiang Li digs deep into survey methodology to question the way that most scholars have measured public support for leaders in Beijing. He concludes that citizens’ trust in the regime is weaker than other researchers believe. In Institutional Genes, the economist Chenggang Xu uses a sweeping comparative and historical analysis of China’s political institutions to argue that the country’s inability to reform them will condemn it to economic stagnation. In Xu’s view, the kind of authoritarian rule that worked for China’s imperial dynasties is strangling its modern economy.

China building a different AI future than the West

Jan Krikke

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The headlines are predictable by now. The United States restricts chip exports. Chinese labs release competitive models. Pundits declare who is “winning” the artificial intelligence race. The language borrows from sport and war: sprints, breakthroughs and supremacy.

It makes for compelling drama. It also misses the point.

A key issue in the AI era is not who builds the most powerful model. It is what different societies want intelligence to do. And on that metric, China is not merely competing in a Western-defined race. It is redefining the destination.

In Silicon Valley, AI is framed as frontier exploration. What are the implications of general intelligence that rivals or exceeds human cognition? Should it be regulated? The US government largely maintains a hands-off posture, funding research while allowing private firms to lead.

Big Brother Is Here, and It’s China

Russ Walker and Shay Khatiri

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Over the past decade, many Americans have voluntarily shared their private lives and personal information with the Chinese government through digital platforms and connected devices. They do so through cloud computing, mobile applications, and internet-connected security cameras, which create unprecedented volumes of sensitive personal data, some of which fall under the jurisdiction of the Chinese government.

TikTok is the most widely known example. Policymakers and experts have warned that its data practices and ownership structure create risks that user information could be accessed under Chinese law. The U.S. government has restricted its use on government phones and mandated divestment. Danielle Pletka of the American Enterprise Institute warns that large-scale personal data collection can create vulnerabilities for blackmail or coercion if such data is accessed by a hostile foreign government. Even lawful but private behavior could potentially be exploited.

Laboratories of Autocracy: Centralized Versus Decentralized Policymaking in China

Kaicheng Luo, Shaoda Wang, and David Y. Yang

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Afundamental question in governance concerns the merits of centralized versus decentralized policymaking. While top-down, centralized policymaking may streamline adoption, enhance efficiency, and improve coordination between regions, it often sacrifices the local suitability of bottom-up, decentralized policy initiatives. This tension is especially relevant when governing large nations with many regional differences. However, measuring centralization in policymaking is difficult because it requires tracing the origin and spread of all policies across layers of government hierarchy; as a result, most studies of centralization and decentralization focus on only one policy. Assessing centralization’s impact on policy outcomes is even more demanding because it involves linking policies to both local conditions and intended outcomes.

Our research examines the centralization of policymaking in China and how it has affected the local suitability of policies across all domains over the past two decades. We investigated two questions: First, what share of local governments’ policy portfolios is shaped by the central government’s direct involvement? Second, does the central government’s direct involvement undermine policy suitability and effectiveness at the local level?

US build-up of warships and fighter jets tracked near Iran

Richard Irvine-Brownand, Alex Murray

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The world's largest warship appears to be heading towards the Middle East as Washington continues to pressure Iran over its military program and recent deadly crackdown on protesters.

BBC Verify confirmed the USS Gerald R Ford passed through the Strait of Gibraltar towards the Mediterranean on Friday. Verified photographs taken from land in Gibraltar show the aircraft carrier in the Strait with a Moroccan mountain range in the distance.

Ship-tracking data also confirmed the USS Mahan, one of the destroyers in the warship's strike group, passed through the Strait. The Gerald R Ford had briefly broadcast its location off Morocco's Atlantic coast on Wednesday and is believed to be travelling to the Middle East where another US aircraft carrier, the USS Abraham Lincoln, was tracked earlier this week.

Trump Says Top General Predicts Easy Victory Over Iran; He Says Otherwise in Private

Eric Schmitt

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President Trump said on Monday that Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, believed that any eventual military action ordered against Iran would be “something easily won.”

But that is not what General Caine has told Mr. Trump and other senior advisers in recent high-level White House meetings on Iran, people briefed on internal administration deliberations said.

Instead, General Caine has said that the United States has amassed forces in the Middle East to carry out a small or medium strike, but that there would be a potentially high risk of American casualties and that such an operation would have a negative effect on U.S. weapon stockpiles. General Caine has also underscored that the operations under consideration in Iran would be much more difficult than the successful capture last month of President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela.

Why Iran Will Escalate

Nate Swanson

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As foreign policy luminaries rush to warn about the perils of a U.S. attack on Iran, there is widespread confidence in the White House that President Donald Trump can manage a strike’s fallout. This confidence reflects a years-long pattern that has shaped Trump’s thinking. Washington’s foreign policy establishment warns the president against some norm-breaking act. He ignores their advice and plows forward. And he faces no apparent repercussions. In 2018, when Trump broke with U.S. policy to move the American embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, I was serving in the State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs. Our own bureaucratic experts predicted that the move would prompt widespread protests and violence against U.S. personnel, and we set up task forces and evacuation plans for a doomsday that never came. This dynamic repeated itself last June, when Trump joined Israel’s strikes on Iran’s nuclear program. Analysts warned that the decision would trigger a broader war and hasten Iran’s nuclear breakout. Once again, little happened. When the administration ousted Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in January, pundits insisted that his country and even the region would plunge into chaos, but nothing of the sort has yet occurred.

Russia-Ukraine War Enters Fifth Year

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Top of the Agenda

Russia’s war in Ukraine enters its fifth year today, as top EU officials visit Kyiv to show support. The anniversary of Russia’s invasion comes amid slow-moving territorial shifts, stalled U.S.-backed peace talks, and a steady Russian aerial campaign on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. No senior U.S. official is joining the delegation in Kyiv. French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer are convening a meeting today of a so-called Coalition of the Willing to support Ukraine, a reflection of Europe’s increased support over the past year. Yet the bloc is not fully unified—just yesterday, Hungary blocked a fresh slate of EU sanctions on Russia and a $106 billion loan for Ukraine.

What both sides are saying. In a social media post today, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy praised his country’s success in maintaining its independence and statehood in the face of war, vowing “we will do everything to secure peace and justice.” A Kremlin spokesperson said today that Russia is continuing its peacemaking efforts and argued that other countries’ interventions in the war had expanded its scope into that of a broader confrontation with the West.

Inside the Secret Briefings That Pushed Apple to Move Chip Production to the US [Report]

Shalom Levytam

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Washington has spent years urging Silicon Valley to reduce its reliance on Taiwan for high-end semiconductor manufacturing. Despite repeated classified briefings and billions of dollars in federal incentives, the tech industry has hesitated to shift supply chains, citing cost concerns and the unmatched efficiency of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. The island currently produces roughly 90 percent of the world's most advanced computer chips, creating a single point of failure that federal officials view as a national security vulnerability. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent recently warned that as much as 97 percent of leading-edge chips are made in Taiwan, calling it the single biggest point of failure in the global economy.

The New York Times has published an extensive investigation detailing the behind-the-scenes friction between the U.S. government and companies like Apple, Nvidia, and Intel. The stakes are immense. A confidential 2022 report commissioned by the Semiconductor Industry Association found that a blockade of Taiwan would trigger a historic economic crisis. If the supply of chips from the island were severed, U.S. economic output could fall by 11 percent, causing twice the economic damage of the 2008 recession. China's economy would contract even more sharply, and global losses could exceed $10 trillion, according to separate economic estimates. Most major tech companies currently hold only enough semiconductor inventory to maintain operations for a few months if shipments suddenly halt.

Defending the Homeland: Pentagon Shifts Strategy on Drone Threats

Walter Pincus

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OPINION — “This memorandum consolidates approximately ten separate outdated memoranda that were inadequate to address the current, complex unmanned aircraft system (UAS) threat environment. The new guidance affects a culture shift by empowering commanders to unambiguously apply their authority to mitigate threat UAS. Our message is clear, Department of War (DoW) airspace is off limits, and our commanders on the ground have the discretion to defend our airspace against all manner of UAS threats…Expanding the Defensive Perimeter : Grants commanders the authority to extend defensive actions beyond the physical ‘fence line’ of an installation; allows for the adequate protection of covered facilities, fixed assets, and mobile assets; placing trust in the commander and maximizing their flexibility to defend facilities and assets.”

That’s a quote from last Tuesday’s Defense Department (DoD) press release, Fact Sheet: C-UAS [counter unmanned aircraft systems] Policy in the U.S. Homeland. It was issued just hours before the Federal Aviation Agency (FAA) temporarily closed airspace within an 11-mile radius of El Paso International Airport, but after Customs and Border Protection (CBP) personnel on the day before [Monday, February 9] used a classified Pentagon laser system on nearby Fort Bliss Air Base, to shoot down what they thought were drug cartel UAS systems [drones], but turned out to be metallic party balloons.

The Resilience Series – The West’s Greatest Vulnerability: Amphibious Critical and Defensive Infrastructure (ACADI)

Ian Saunders

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Global instability has increased over the last decade to a level comparable to that of the Cold War. Russia’s kinetic aggression in Eastern Europe through the attempted invasion and partial occupation of Ukraine has driven a significant change in the deployment of conventional warfare. The threat situation has also dramatically increased from a hybrid warfare perspective, with sabotage and deniable attacks on Western critical infrastructure by Russian foreign intelligence agencies using conduit groups and “Gig” operators, perpetrating attacks on both land and below the sea.

In contrast to the Cold War years, the evolution of the Internet across every level of global society has resulted in the most significant cultural shift since the invention of the wheel or the printing press. Individuals, businesses, and governments are now totally dependent on the Internet to a point where its failure has become too catastrophic to contemplate, but not for all.

Creating Conspiracy Theories: What Information Warriors Need to Know

Douglas Wilbur

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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.

For information warriors, the lesson is that conspiracy theories can be weaponized as an information weapon if properly constructed. They emerge when uncertainty is left unresolved, and uncertainty is pervasive in war. Understanding this matters because conspiracy theories can condition how people interpret events before any visible action takes place. They shape what feels plausible. They determine which sources are trusted and which are dismissed. They define enemies in advance and assign moral blame before facts are known. By the time violence, protest or mobilization occurs, the interpretive work has already been created. Actions then feel defensive rather than aggressive. Decisions feel necessary rather than chosen. For information warriors, this means influence is often decided upstream, at the level of belief formation, not at the moment of crisis.

25 Years After 9/11: Former CENTCOM Commander’s Strategic Warning on What America Still Gets Wrong

Robert Billard

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Admiral William J. “Fox” Fallon (Ret.), the only U.S. officer in history to command both U.S. Pacific Command (PACOM) and U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), spent more than four decades at the center of some of America’s most critical military decisions.

From Vietnam, to Beirut, to the Pentagon on 9/11, to steering military strategy across two theaters during the height of the Global War on Terror, Fallon’s new memoir, “Decisions, Discord & Diplomacy: From Cairo to Kabul” offers a rare insider’s view. In an exclusive interview with Military.com, Admiral Fallon delivers a clear strategic warning: America continues to sacrifice long-term stability for short-term political wins.

Cognitive Warfare and the Indo-Pacific

Jon Reisher

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Editor’s Note: This article was submitted as part of the Irregular Warfare Initiative’s 2025 Writing Contest, in which authors were invited to explore how the United States and its partners can use irregular warfare to strengthen security cooperation, build trust, and enhance resilience among Indo-Pacific nations. This article stood out for its innovative framing of cognitive warfare as a tool of deterrence and alliance-building, and for its practical recommendations on how small Indo-Pacific nations can leverage information operations to uphold international norms. We have edited the piece after its selection.

The balance of the modern global information environment has become algorithmically biased, with social media platforms tailoring content to users’ preferences and reinforcing their pre-existing beliefs. By isolating users in personalized filter bubbles, these algorithms amplify confirmation bias and cultivate increasingly polarized online echo chambers, distorting users’ perceptions of reality and fueling societal division—conditions the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has learned to weaponize.

C-UAS Operations: We Need a Single Pane of Glass

Bill Edwards

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The counter unmanned aerial systems (C‑UAS) operator leaned over her workstation, eyes darting between a cluster of windows scattered across her graphical interface. Each pane represented a different data layer, a different sensor, a different fragment of the operational picture she was expected to hold together in real time. This was on one monitor, but several others existed as well. As she toggled and switched her focus between them, the degradation of situational awareness was immediate and unmistakable. What began as a manageable task with a single data stream quickly became cognitive overload when multiplied across six or more independent feeds. 

The operator was no longer fighting the drone; she was fighting the interface. In that moment, the system itself became the adversary. This is not an isolated observation. It is a systemic flaw that has quietly embedded itself into the fabric of modern C-UAS operations, and unless we confront it directly, we will continue to ask operators to perform the impossible. Now, multiply that by potentially six or more data streams in a layered sensor approach, and you have just created operational paralysis. We have given local law enforcement sensors, not solutions. We must do better.

Pentagon Summons Anthropic Chief in Dispute Over A.I. Limits

Julian E. Barnes and Sheera Frenkel

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Amid intense pressure from the Trump administration, Pentagon officials have summoned the chief executive of the artificial intelligence company Anthropic to Washington for a meeting on Tuesday to discuss how its technology is used on classified systems.

The Defense Department and Anthropic agreed to a $200 million pilot contract last year. But a Jan. 9 memo by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth calling on A.I. companies to remove restrictions on their technology led the two sides to renegotiate their contract.

The Pentagon has signed an agreement with one company, Elon Musk’s xAI, and is getting close to making a deal with Google, which makes the Gemini model, according to people briefed on the discussions. Defense Department officials hope to use those agreements to pressure Anthropic to allow its model to be used more broadly, they said.

As the US and Israel prepare for war, the EU sinks into irrelevance

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The drums of war are sounding again across the Middle East. The United States and Israel prepare for what appears to be an imminent, decisive military confrontation with the Islamic Republic of Iran. The tectonic plates of global geopolitics are violently shifting. Global powers brace for impact. And the EU? Well, nobody cares about the EU. Because it has simply become insignificant.

This is not a regional skirmish. What the daunting military build-up in the Middle East heralds is a major geopolitical, as well as a cultural clash. On one side stand the US in close coordination with Israel, seen as the solitary outpost of Western democracy in a region historically plagued by despotism and radicalism. On the other side stands a theocratic regime that sponsors terrorism, murders dissidents and actively undermines the West and its allies.

Four Years After Russia’s Invasion, Ukraine Has Become a “Steel Porcupine”

David Kirichenko

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In October 2025, Brandon Weichert wrote that building domestic air defense systems inside Ukraine would “make no difference” in Kyiv’s efforts to defend itself against Russia. His broader critique was that the “Build in Ukraine” initiative would likely “prove to be wholly insufficient to turn the tide of the war.”

This critique reflects a transactional reading of Russia’s war. It assumes Ukraine will eventually scale back its ambitions as costs mount. For Kyiv, however, this is not a limited war over negotiable territory. It is an existential fight for national survival. President Volodymyr Zelensky made that clear in his March 2022 address to the British Parliament, invoking Shakespeare’s “To be, or not to be.”

Why No One Is Winning the Russia-Ukraine War After Four Years

Ellie Cook

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“There is constant activity in the air almost everywhere,” says one Ukrainian soldier on the front line. He declined to provide his name or any details about where he's been deployed, as he was not authorized to speak.

But real-life Star Wars, he says, is “unfolding right now.”

Drones, or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVS), have arguably become the best-known characteristic of the Russia-Ukraine war now entering a fifth year.UAVs are responsible for 80 percent of Ukrainian strikes on Russian targets, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said earlier this year. Most of these drones are made inside Ukraine, with factories working flat out to keep soldiers supplied.

Decisive hours: Progress on a new nuclear deal, or countdown to a US strike?

Amir Bar Shalom

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Ahead of Thursday’s planned round of talks between the United States and Iran in Geneva, and despite the close coordination between the Netanyahu government and the Trump administration, Israel lacks a clear, definitive answer as to where the United States is headed.

The assessment in Israel, from the start of the US-Iran negotiations in early February, was that the talks would not bear fruit. Indeed, the announcement this week of an additional round of negotiations was received in Israel with some surprise.

However, this time the US was more assertive, presenting the Iranians with a pre-talks ultimatum: It required Tehran to deliver a detailed response by Tuesday regarding the concessions it is prepared to offer. The final decision on whether to go ahead with Thursday

The US Army hasn't faced serious threats from above in years. The war in Ukraine is forcing a rethink.

Sinéad Baker

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Learning from Russia's invasion of Ukraine, US Army drone trainers are teaching soldiers to be ready for a threat many US troops haven't faced in decades: a sky they don't control. The US has had control of the air in its recent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, allowing it to move and strike with relatively little fear of enemy aircraft. For most soldiers, what's overhead has usually been friendly.

But the war in Ukraine is showing the US and Western allies that this assumption may not hold in future conflicts. That shift has implications for tactics, training, and even mindset. Maj. Rachel Martin, the director of the Army's new Unmanned Advanced Lethality Course designed to catch the US up on small drone warfare, told Business Insider that "we are used to air supremacy as an Army."

How middle powers can weather US and Chinese AI dominance

Francisco Javier Varela Sandoval, Isabella Wilkinson

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The dominance of the US and China in AI development poses a significant conundrum for the rest of the world. For middle powers, the establishment of ‘sovereign AI’ strategies, which allow a country to influence, develop and deploy AI technology in line with national interests, may hold the key.

This paper recommends and details four clear approaches that enable middle powers to gain increased control over AI: specializing in a particular part of the global AI supply chain; aligning with one of the AI superpowers; sharing sovereignty with other countries to amplify influence; or hedging against instability by using a range of AI capabilities from different countries.

Global dependencies on US and Chinese technology are unavoidable, but increased sovereignty over the deployment of AI will allow smaller countries to develop their own technological paths that can prioritize the needs of their populations.

The fog of cyber-war: From front lines to invisible battlefields

Millie Marshall Loughran

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Today’s front lines

In the theatre of modern conflict, the battleground has shifted dramatically.

Gone are the muddy trenches of Flanders; today’s front lines run through the fibre-optic cables criss-crossing the Atlantic and beyond.

For the corporate security officer, the old distinctions no longer hold much water.

Whether the attacker is a state-sponsored operative or a teenage extortionist matters less and less.

In 2026, cybersecurity is shaped not just by clever code or sneaky bugs, but by a murky blend of geopolitical ambition, highly organised crime and the deliberate weaponisation of digital identities.

The Cognitive Battlefield is Now Decisive Terrain

Bob Pearson, Austin Branch

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OPINION -- Senior policymakers, military leaders, technologists and narrative strategists had one thing on their minds as they gathered in a Reston conference room last week - how decision advantage, psychological leverage, and narrative dominance are increasingly capable of determining strategic outcomes. Cognitive warfare - once treated as an adjunct to cyber or information operations - is becoming a primary instrument of power and the implications are profound.

Clausewitz wrote that the center of gravity in war is the source of an adversary’s strength. In today’s environment, that center of gravity is increasingly ideological and psychological. Unity and will - both domestic and allied - are strategic assets. Information is not merely a supporting function. It’s a weapon.

The contest unfolding in the gray zone is fundamentally about narrative. Not propaganda in the blunt Cold War sense, but sustained, cumulative influence campaigns that shape how populations interpret reality. These efforts operate across media, social platforms, text messaging networks, gaming environments, and increasingly, AI-driven platforms.

Ukraine’s drone war is also being waged on the ground

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Ukrainians and Russians alike are making massive use of aerial drones in their conflict. But from underground bunkers, the Ukrainians are also piloting terrestrial drones. Wheeled or tracked, these devices have become essential for logistical and rescue missions.

For Ukrainian soldiers, movement around the front line is becoming ever more perilous. The primary threat comes from aerial drones, which Moscow is using with increasing intensity. To try and limit troop movement at the front, companies have developed terrestrial drones – remote-controlled vehicles capable of undertaking logistical missions. These include delivering vital supplies, such as food and ammunition, or evacuating the wounded from the front line to the rear. They are more expensive and rarer than their airborne equivalents, but their use is constantly increasing.

Robotization and occupational mobility

Maria Petrova, Gregor Schubert, Bledi Taska, and Pinar Yildirim

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When policymakers discuss the impact of new technologies on workers, the conversation typically centers on two questions: How many jobs will be lost, and what will happen to wages? While these are useful starting points, a growing body of research suggests that technology’s effects on workers extend well beyond these immediate employment and earnings outcomes. Robotization and AI, in particular, stand to reshape the entire career trajectories of workers.

The economic consequences of technological change on work have been extensively studied: Research has found that computers changed the demand for different skills, with routine tasks particularly vulnerable to displacement. This task displacement due to automation has been shown to increase wage inequality in the U.S. Individual firms that adopt robots have been found to expand their overall employment and to become more productive, but this may come at the expense of competitors or production workers within the adopting firms that are replaced by the technology. As a result, the adoption of industrial robots in particular has been linked to significant job losses and wage declines in U.S. labor markets between 1990 and 2007.

Developing a National Cybersecurity Strategy

Andy Kotz

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Developing a national cybersecurity strategy (NSC) is one of the most important investments a government can make to secure its digital future. As the global digital ecosystem expands, nations that act early to establish a clear, coordinated approach to cybersecurity are far better positioned to safeguard their citizens, economies, and critical infrastructure.

An effective NCS provides a shared vision and roadmap for government, industry, and civil society to manage cyber risks collectively. Without such a framework efforts are often fragmented, leaving critical gaps that adversaries can exploit. By setting priorities, aligning resources, and clarifying responsibilities, a national cybersecurity strategy ensures that cybersecurity is a core pillar of national security, economic resilience, and public trust in the digital age.