From Rivalry to Indifference: India’s New Pakistan Strategy

Arijit Mazumdar

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For decades, Pakistan was the fixed axis of India’s strategic world. From the first war in 1948 through repeated crises and major terrorist attacks, New Delhi defined its regional posture almost exclusively in relation to Islamabad. That era has ended – not because the disputes have been resolved, but because India has concluded that Pakistan no longer merits sustained strategic engagement.

What has replaced rivalry is strategic indifference: a deliberate choice to deter, punish, and disengage rather than negotiate. This shift is evident in recent crises, most notably the February 2019 Pulwama attack and the April 2025 terrorist attack near Pahalgam – both in Jammu and Kashmir – and the brief India-Pakistan confrontations that followed. Together, these episodes show how India now seeks to manage confrontation while avoiding diplomacy and mediation.

Why India doesn’t need a digital kill switch but smarter, risk-based friction in paymen

Lt. Gen. M. U. Nair

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As India confronts a sharp rise in cyber fraud— particularly socially engineered “digital arrest” and impersonation scams— there is growing discussion around introducing a digital “kill switch” to halt fraudulent transactions.

What India needs instead is not an emergency brake, but intelligent friction: a calibrated, risk-based intervention that slows down high-risk transactions just enough to disrupt fraud, without undermining trust, efficiency, or the credibility of digital payments.

The fundamental weakness of a kill-switch approach lies in how most cyber fraud actually occurs. Contemporary scams rarely exploit system vulnerabilities. They exploit human psychology. Victims are coerced through fear, authority, urgency, or greed, and are often manipulated into acting against their own instincts.

RATs in the Machine: Inside a Pakistan-Linked Three-Pronged Cyber Assault on India

Kevin Townsend

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Indian government and defense organizations are being targeted by multiple espionage campaigns delivered by the Pakistan-attributed Transparent Tribe (aka APT36), according to a newly released threat report.

These campaigns target both Windows and Linux. One active campaign employs GETA RAT (often specifically attributed to the SideCopy subgroup of Transparent Tribe). It is a dot-NET RAT that abuses legitimate Windows components (including mshta.exe, XAML deserialization, and in-memory payload execution) to avoid signature based detection.

Persistence is achieved by layered startup mechanisms that ensure continued access. “The result,” writes Aditya Sood, VP of security engineering and AI strategy at Aryaka in a report-accompanying blog, “is a lightweight but durable foothold, well-suited for extended reconnaissance and intelligence gathering.”

After Gen Z Protests, Bangladesh and Nepal Head to the Polls

Clara Fong

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Citizens in Bangladesh and Nepal head to the polls on February 12 and March 5, respectively, for the first general elections since youth-led uprisings toppled both countries’ governments. The two countries are seeking to rebuild their government institutions, but the elections could reflect the political headwinds in the region. Despite similar reform sentiments appearing in Japan and Thailand over the past few years, voters in those recent elections chose to back pro-establishment, conservative parties.

In August 2024, students in Bangladesh protested job quotas favoring those with ties to the previous political party in power, while in September 2025, protests against nepotism erupted in Nepal after social media posts by the children of political elites appeared to flaunt lavish lifestyles.

Bangladesh Goes To The Polls In Unprecedented Conditions

P. K. Balachandran

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The 13th parliamentary elections in Bangladesh, scheduled for Thursday, February 12, are taking place under unprecedented conditions. The old warhorse, the Awami League, is absent, disqualified on charges of misrule. The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) has emerged from the doghouse and is poised to capture power. The previously banned Jamaat-i-Islami has teamed up with the new student-led outfit, the National Citizens Party (NCP), in a bid to surpass the BNP.

The Bangladeshi parliament is a unicameral legislature consisting of 350 Members of which 300 are elected from 300 territorial constituencies. The remaining 50 seats are reserved for women who are elected by the aforesaid elected Members of Parliament.

Hong Kong’s Freedoms: What China Promised and How It’s Cracking Down

Clara Fong

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China pledged to preserve much of what makes Hong Kong unique when the former British colony was handed over in 1997. Beijing said it would give Hong Kong fifty years to keep its capitalist system and enjoy many freedoms not found in mainland Chinese cities.

But more than halfway through the transition, Beijing has taken increasingly brazen steps to encroach on Hong Kong’s political system and crack down on dissent. In 2020, Beijing imposed a sweeping national security law on Hong Kong. In the years since, authorities have arrested dozens of pro-democracy activists, lawmakers, and journalists; curbed voting rights; and limited freedoms of press and speech. In March 2024, Hong Kong lawmakers passed Article 23, an expansion of the 2020 security law that broadens the definition of external interference and espionage, further cementing China’s rule on the city’s rights and freedom.

America losing the cognitive war with China

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Beijing’s power, influence and reach have expanded exponentially over the past five decades. It has outmaneuvered us on multiple fronts (economic, political, military, social, etc.). Unfortunately, this fact remains true despite multiple warnings over a decade. But why?

The recent discovery of a second illegal bioweapons lab in California with ties to China, some three years after the first, gives us a clue. A first step to winning this war is to acknowledge that our national security leaders remain unaware, unprepared and unarmed to fight it. It is ill-defined by many analysts and functional experts who wrongly link the definition of cognitive war to a specific function, when, in fact, it crosses any and all functions. This lack of clarity is captured in the Senate Armed Services Committee report for fiscal year 2026 National Defense Authorization Act.

China’s AI industry looks unstoppable in the race to best US rivals. But is it?

John Liu

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When China’s biggest artificial intelligence players gathered for a landmark meeting in Beijing in January, one question was in the spotlight: What are the chances of a Chinese AI firm overtaking US frontrunners in the next three to five years?

The answer from a top AI scientist present at the gathering was surprisingly blunt: “Below 20 percent,” said Justin Lin, technical lead for Chinese tech giant Alibaba’s Qwen AI models. “And I think 20 percent is already very optimistic.”

The sobering assessment stood in stark contrast to a year of headlines celebrating China’s AI boom. Since little-known startup DeepSeek shocked the world with a powerful AI model it said was built at a fraction of the cost of American equivalents, Chinese companies have topped global downloads for freely-available-to-use models and raised huge sums in market debuts.

Offsetting Without Oversight: The Wrong War with China

Erika Lafrennie

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US defense strategy is converging around the China challenge with a level of clarity not seen since the Cold War. Precision strike investments are accelerating. Unmanned systems are transitioning from development to deployment. Force posture across the Indo-Pacific is being reshaped to support sustained strategic competition. The effort is deliberate, resourced, and institutionally coordinated, but the operational focus is misaligned with the nature of the conflict.

Offset thinking anchored in traditional warfighting domains cannot account for the terrain where strategic outcomes are already being shaped. Disruption requires domain awareness. Competitive advantage depends on recognizing where systems are being contested and how control is being exercised.

Is Iran Weaponizing ISIS-K Against Azerbaijan?

Joseph Epstein

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Iran may have a new weapon in its shadow war against the West—and it’s one that Tehran spent decades fighting: Sunni jihadists.

Last week, Azerbaijani security forces arrested three men planning to attack the Israeli embassy in Baku. The suspects claimed allegiance to ISIS-K, the Afghan branch of the Islamic State responsible for the devastating Crocus City Hall massacre in Moscow that killed 145 people in 2024. On its face, this looks like another data point in ISIS-K’s expanding campaign of global terror.

But look closer, and a more troubling picture emerges—one that should concern policymakers in Washington. The South Caucasus is becoming a new front in the shadow war between Iran and its enemies, and the Islamic Republic may be using Sunni extremists as a cover for its own malign activities.

In the Next Pacific War, America Will Be Imperial Japan

James Holmes

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Talk about an acute case of role reversal: the US Navy in 2026 has taken the place of the Imperial Japanese Navy in 1941.

During the lead-up to Pearl Harbor, Japan fielded the best marine fighting force in the world on a ship-for-ship, plane-for-plane, munition-for-munition basis. After demolishing the US Pacific Fleet battle line at Pearl Harbor, it rampaged across the Indo-Pacific for six months, conquering a vast swath of the earth’s surface. But Japan had meager industrial capacity to manufacture new or repair damaged ships and planes. The differential equation was ruthless: Japan lost shipping—much of it to American submarine warfare—at a far faster rate than its domestic industry could produce replacements.

In other words, the Imperial Japanese Navy was excellent, yet brittle. And when confronted with an antagonist whose factories had started turning out mountains of good-enough armaments, it could not keep up. Quantity had a quality all its own in the Pacific War.

Drone Warfare in Ukraine: Myths and Reality

Olga R. Chiriac, Armenak Ohanesian 

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The European Programme of the Irregular Warfare Initiative is proud to present another episode of the Notes from the Eastern Front: Lessons from the Russo-Ukrainian War series. The discussion is hosted by Ukraine Hub Lead, Armenak Ohanesian, and Dr Olga R. Chiriac, Europe Programme Director. Our guest is Ivan Grys, a Staff Sergeant in the Ukrainian Armed Forces and co-founder of Resist Labs.

The Ukraine Hub of the IWI Europe Program brings forth discussions grounded in battlefield reality., exchanges with operators and practitioners of IW in Ukraine, it explores what separates ideas that survive combat from those that collapse under pressure.

This episode explores how drone warfare has evolved under real combat pressure and why Ukraine’s experience is reshaping modern military thinking. Rather than focusing on theory or future concepts, the discussion is grounded in what has worked, what has failed, and what has survived on an active battlefield since 2022.

Leapfrogging China’s Critical Minerals Dominance

Heidi E. Crebo-Rediker, Mahnaz Khan

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The Trump administration is pursuing ambitious policies to counter China’s dominance in and weaponization of critical minerals—essential inputs for advanced technologies, energy infrastructure, and defense systems. Current executive actions focus largely on expanding traditional mining and processing capacity. That is a necessary approach, but one that takes years, often decades, and is insufficient to address potential escalation of tensions with China in the present. Beyond the timing challenge, expanding traditional mining and processing is unlikely to overcome the scale of China’s dominance, which spans the entire critical minerals ecosystem.

The United States should therefore pursue a complementary approach that plays to its main strength: innovation. Rather than attempting to out-mine, out-process, and outspend China, the United States should seek to leapfrog China’s dominance by scaling disruptive innovation, recovery, and recycling, which is cheaper, cleaner, and faster to deploy today and could help insulate the United States from future supply shocks.

Russian Hybrid Warfare Backfiring

Pavel K. Baev

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Admiral Giuseppe Cavo Dragone, the Chair of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Military Committee, stated in December 2025 that the organization is considering more proactive countermeasures and aggressive responses to Russia’s hybrid warfare.

A significant majority of Russians want to see an end to the war, which proves that the Kremlin is losing its information war. Russia’s diminished Olympic presence highlights its loss of international legitimacy, reinforcing a broader narrative of decline.

Russian military gains in Ukraine come at a high human cost, while hybrid warfare tactics increasingly provoke stronger EU and NATO responses, suggesting that the Kremlin’s confrontational choices are accelerating Russia’s degradation rather than securing military victory.

The US wants these critical minerals, but militants with American weapons stand in the way

Sophia Saifi

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In the sienna-colored curves of Pakistan’s Hindu Kush mountains, one of the most rugged and lawless regions in the world, a cavernous, grooved crater gouged out from a hillside shines in the winter sun, just ten miles from the border with Afghanistan.

Hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of copper, 22,000 tons, was last year dug out of this crater –– the Muhammad Khel Copper Mine –– and hauled off to China; a nation with a seemingly insatiable appetite for metals and minerals.

In a neighboring province lies another copper mine that Pakistan says can yield almost ten times as much, equivalent to a fifth of the copper America uses every year. The prospect is so appealing to a Washington administration also hungry for resources that it has put up more than a billion dollars to get things moving.

A ‘shooter’ as CYBERCOM chief: Former officials see risks, opportunity in Rudd’s nomination

Mark Pomerleau

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WASHINGTON — Lt. Gen. Joshua Rudd may be confirmed as soon as this week to lead US Cyber Command and the National Security Agency. And when that happens, the US military and intelligence community’s premier cyber offices will be led by a relative outsider — for better or worse. Over the last month, Breaking Defense spoke to nine former US officials who dealt closely with cyber operations or policy, to understand how the cyber community is viewing the three-star with no specific cyber experience but a long special operations pedigree stepping into the role.

The consensus: A lot of trepidation, but with a few voices expressing hope that Rudd’s apparent strengths as a leader, and the presence of deputies with deep stronger technical expertise, will overcome any shortcomings. One former military cyber operator said that the “sentiment [at NSA/CYBERCOM headquarters] at Fort Meade seems to be one of cautious pessimism,” fueled both by Rudd’s thin cyber background and questions over why he was chosen and what he intends to do.

NATO Has Become a Zombie Alliance

Rebecca Lissner

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With dust barely settled from Davos, global leaders will convene again in Europe this week for the Munich Security Conference. On the conference’s main stage and in countless private meetings, the future of the trans-Atlantic alliance will top the agenda. Some leaders, such as NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, may attempt to explain away the recent crisis over Greenland, asserting that any post-American concept for European security is nothing short of delusional. But that perspective, however hopeful, is losing credibility. Worse, it undermines the urgency that this moment of crisis requires.

Rather than lulling themselves into a false sense of security, the United States’ European allies must accept an uncomfortable—and unfortunate—reality: NATO has become a zombie alliance. Formally, its procedural features remain intact. There is a bustling headquarters in Brussels, an empowered American supreme allied commander, and formidable military capabilities deployed across the continent.

Disciplined Autonomy: How AI and sUAS Will Redefine Security, Safety, Emergency Response, and Military Operations

Bill Edwards

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Mature AI systems are not free-thinking actors; they are bounded executors of human intent. Let’s face it, AI is only beginning to take shape, and there is a need for a different lens on the maturing technology. This is especially concerning for drones, also known as Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems (sUAS), used by operators and professionals in the Department of War and the private sector, including those involved in security, safety, and emergency preparedness. The following ideas and concepts are based on how decision-making takes shape in an AI and autonomous world. 

The framing of human-in-the-loop, human-on-the-loop, and human-out-of-the-loop will take on a whole new perspective based on these ideas, a framework that supports proactive action in a governed ecosystem. In the debate over artificial intelligence (AI) and autonomous systems, one statement is far more accurate than the rhetoric suggests: we remain at the very beginning of AI maturity. The capabilities of machine learning and data fusion are impressive; the capabilities of autonomous decision-making remain nascent in serious operational contexts. Nowhere is this truth clearer than in the evolution of sUAS.

Pentagon adding ChatGPT to its enterprise generative AI platform

Jon Harper

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The Defense Department announced Monday that it will incorporate OpenAI’s ChatGPT into the military’s generative AI platform that’s already being used by more than a million personnel. ChatGPT has been wildly popular in the commercial sector since it was widely released in 2022. Now the Pentagon plans to add the tech to its GenAI.mil system, which DOD leadership — including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth — have been pushing hard for the department’s employees to use since it was launched in December.

The Army, Navy, Air Force, Space Force and Marine Corps have already adopted the system as their preferred generative AI platform.

Google’s Gemini products were the first tools to be integrated into GenAI.mil.

Pentagon leaders previously announced that Grok large language models from xAI, led by Elon Musk, would be included in “early 2026.” On Monday, the DOD announced that ChatGPT will be brought into the system, although the announcement did not provide a time frame for when it will be available.

Airpower + Cyber Power: Is Caracas a New Strategic Model

Angelos Giakoumis

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The January 3rd operation to oust President Maduro confirmed the unprecedented primacy of the U.S. military and its unique ability in conducting operations of this scale and magnitude. Apparently, it seemed like a typical U.S. military operation that began with precision airstrikes against command and control nodes, the enemy`s leadership, and significant infrastructure. It looked like the opening night of operation Iraqi Freedom, when two F-117s bombed, what was believed to be the hideout of the Iraqi dictator. The objective of the airstrike back then was to decapitate the enemy’s leadership and cause strategic paralysis. The air raid missed Saddam Hussein, but it set the stage for the shock and awe campaign that followed and brought the Iraqi regime to its knees within a matter of weeks.

In Caracas, the purpose was not to shut down the government and certainly not to cause strategic paralysis. Maduro was removed, but the regime and its security apparatus remained intact. The military objective was to eliminate air defenses and create corridors for the helicopters to reach Maduro with minimum friendly and collateral losses. No major fighting was reported and no regular military forces or their headquarters were bombed, possibly suggesting an effort to control escalation and reduce losses.

Cyber Arms Race: Weaponized Artificial Intelligence Expected to Redefine Conflict

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Cybersecurity will converge with wearable technology

Wearables bring their own challenges. Health trackers and the data they collect – such as heart rate, location, sleep patterns – are prime targets. Breaches of fitness platforms or insurer wellness programs could expose deeply personal information…Expect moves toward security certification for consumer IOT health devices, building on Australia’s voluntary IOT Trust Mark and emerging smart device standards.

Smart cities and critical infrastructure will come under siege

Hyper-connected cities will greatly expand the national attack surface, with every connected system becoming a potential point-of-entry for malicious actors…In 2026, expect at least one major city to suffer a coordinated cyber attack with a real possibility of ransomware taking down IT networks and connected services…In 2026, expect attackers to escalate tactics, moving beyond data theft to manipulation, such as altering permit records or health data to sow chaos

Digitizing government services will lead to heightened threats

AI 'fundamentally changing' adversary behavior, leading to force generation reforms

Mark Pomerleau

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WASHINGTON — Fears over how adversary nations use artificial intelligence is one of the aspects driving a Defense Department overhaul of how it provides and trains its cyber warriors, a top Pentagon official told Breaking Defense.

“The other thing that we’re seeing over the last few years is the importance of how technology is shaping this domain and how artificial intelligence is fundamentally changing how our adversaries are behaving in the space and how the domain is operated,” Katherine Sutton, assistant secretary of defense for cyber policy said in one of her first interviews since taking office Feb. 3.

A US Army general says new command tech lets him ditch the 'hourlong staff meeting'

Chris Panella

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New US Army warfighting software is speeding up and simplifying the command job, a commander said recently, sharing that it lets him scrap the "hourlong staff meetings" to make decisions.

The Army, like other services, believes that future wars will be determined by the speed of decision-making. That's where the new Next Generation Command and Control, or NGC2, program is expected to make a substantial impact and modernize how the service fights.

At Fort Carson, Colorado, the Army's 4th Infantry Division has been testing NGC2 in a series of exercises. The most recent one, Ivy Sting 4, added more components to the system, with different types of sensors and weapons on the battlefield feeding into one system that everyone can access.

The New Laser That Can Take Down Aircraft

Simon Shuster

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If you’ve never seen a laser shoot an aircraft out of the sky, the experience can be unsettling. The weapon fits comfortably into the trunk of a car. It makes no noise and emits no light, not even the glowing red beam that’s so familiar from the movies. When a team of Ukrainian soldiers and engineers took me to see their prototype the other day, it seemed easy to use. Almost too easy.

The operator set up the laser cannon on the roof of his pickup truck in the middle of an empty field. It resembles a hobbyist’s telescope with some cameras affixed to the sides. For target practice, one of the engineers launched a small drone, and it flew a few hundred yards away from us, hovering in the gauzy winter sky. The laser swiveled as its cameras followed the target. The operator shouted, “Fire!” Within seconds, the drone began to burn as if struck by invisible lightning, then fell to the ground in a fiery arc.

Best Battalion in the Army - Modern War Institute

George Kalergis

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I wasn’t what you’d call a typical career Army officer. I started as a drafted enlisted soldier, then fought my way through Officer Candidate School. OCS was the hardest thing I had done up to that point, and the fact that I wasn’t a spit-and-polish kind of soldier made it harder. But I did like leadership. And I liked the clean purpose of field artillery: Shoot. Move. Communicate. Put accurate fire where it matters, when it matters, for soldiers who are pinned down and running out of time.

Six months after commissioning, in January 1967, I was on my way to Vietnam having fired only three training artillery missions from a camp stool at Fort Sill. My fourth would be in combat. I was assigned to the 1st Squadron, 9th Cavalry as an aerial forward observer, with the additional duty of right-side M-60 door gunner on a Huey gunship. I’d never been on a Huey and hadn’t even seen an M-60 up close, much less fired one, and now I’m hanging out the door with it.