Indian Strategic Studies: 02/27/26

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

François 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.

Subscribe to: Comments (Atom)