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4 March 2026

Modi: India Leads the Way to Human-Centric AI Future

Narendra Modi

At a defining moment in human history, the world gathered at the AI Impact Summit 2026 in New Delhi last week. For us in India, it was a moment of immense pride and joy to welcome heads of state, heads of government, delegates and innovators from across the world.

India brings scale and energy to everything it does and this summit was no exception. Representatives from over 100 nations came together. Innovators showcased cutting-edge AI products and services. Thousands of young people could be seen in the exhibition halls, asking questions and imagining possibilities. Their curiosity made this the largest and most democratized AI summit in the world. I see this as an important moment in India’s development journey, because a mass movement for AI innovation and adoption has truly taken off.

SCSP Trip Report: India AI IMPACT Summit


SCSP’s Rama Elluru and Nandita Balakrishnan recently returned from New Delhi, where they attended the AI Impact Summit in order to socialize SCSP’s and ORF America’s U.S.-India AI and Emerging Technology Compact, which we had released the week before the Summit, and participated in discussions on how AI is reshaping national security, how governments are building workable governance frameworks, and how countries are competing for and developing technical talent. Read more about their key takeaways from the trip, upcoming podcasts, and events below.

By focusing on AI for impact at the core of its Summit agenda, India displayed itself as an AI player in the global ecosystem, rather than a mere adopter of technology, and made a decisive pivot in the global discourse on AI. India anchored the event in three foundational pillars: People (equitable access), Planet (climate resilience), and Progress (inclusive growth). With over 300 exhibitors and 300,000 attendees, the Summit functioned as a high-stakes showcase for how AI can solve systemic challenges in healthcare, education, agriculture, and more.

The Walls Close In How India, Israel and the UAE Are Building an Architecture Around Pakistan


“Modi, Modi.” They rolled through the Knesset chamber in Jerusalem on Wednesday evening as Narendra Modi became the first Indian Prime Minister in history to address Israel’s parliament. The night before, the building had been lit in the colors of the Indian tricolour. The Knesset Speaker welcomed the visitor in Hindi. Benjamin Netanyahu, seated in the chamber, watched and applauded. When Modi rose and declared that “India stands with Israel firmly, with full conviction, in this moment and beyond,” the hall stood.

Thirteen hundred kilometers east, across the Arabian Sea, Pakistan’s government said nothing. There was no statement from the Foreign Office. No press briefing from GHQ. The Finance Minister was busy telling reporters there was “absolutely no issue” with the UAE’s $2 billion loan rollover, whose maturity had come and gone without public confirmation from Pakistan’s central bank.

Escalation Dynamics Under the Nuclear Shadow—India’s Approach

Rakesh Sood

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.

Pakistan–Afghanistan Escalation Signals Shift from Proxy Conflict to Open Hostilities


Tensions between Pakistan and Afghanistan turned into open hostilities on Friday after a prolonged period of escalating cross-border violence that is rooted in decades of unresolved disputes and militant activity. The latest phase began when Pakistani forces launched airstrikes against what this France24 report describes as “key military installations of the Afghan Taliban regime,” marking a shift from proxy conflict to direct confrontation. The DW News video below provides expert discussion on the background that led to the current conflict.

France24 also reports that Pakistani Defense Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif framed the action in severe terms, declaring that “now it is open war between us and you,” and also accused Kabul of turning Afghanistan into a hub that “gathered all the terrorists of the world in Afghanistan and began exporting terrorism.” Pakistan justified the escalation by citing a surge of militant attacks that it has linked to actors operating from Afghan territory. Analysts speaking to DW News assessed the shift as “decisive,” noting that when one country attacks another’s armed forces inside its borders, “that’s a war”.

Pakistan declares 'open war' with Afghanistan as they trade deadly strikes

Mushtaq Yusufzai and Jennifer Jett

Both sides claimed to inflict heavy damage in the renewed fighting, which threatens to further destabilize a region where terrorist groups such as the Islamic State and Al Qaeda are trying to remobilize. Tensions between the two countries, which share a 1,600-mile border, have been simmering for months as they struggle to maintain a Qatar-mediated ceasefire they reached in October, with occasional cross-border skirmishes.

Pakistan, which is struggling with a surge in militant attacks since the United States withdrew from Afghanistan in 2021, says the attackers are using Afghanistan as a base. The Taliban, which seized power as the U.S. withdrew, denies harboring militants.

What we know after latest escalation in Pakistan-Afghanistan tensions

Mahfouz Zubaide

Taliban soldiers carry weapons in a vehicle, near Torkham border in Afghanistan Pakistan has bombed areas in Afghanistan on Friday, after the Afghan Taliban earlier announced a major offensive against Pakistani military posts near the border. It is the latest escalation of tensions between the neighbouring countries. Afghanistan's Taliban government said it had launched an offensive on Pakistani military bases near the border on Thursday night.

Pakistan responded within hours, bombing targets in the Afghan capital, Kabul, and the provinces of Kandahar and Paktika - Afghan provinces close to its 2,600km (1,615 miles) border. Details are still emerging and the BBC has yet to confirm whether there are casualties on either side.

A Chinese official’s use of ChatGPT accidentally revealed a global intimidation operation

Sean Lyngaas,

The Chinese law enforcement official used ChatGPT like a diary to document the alleged covert campaign of suppression, OpenAI said. In one instance, Chinese operators allegedly disguised themselves as US immigration officials to warn a US-based Chinese dissident that their public statements had supposedly broken the law, according to the ChatGPT user. In another case, they describe an effort to use forged documents from a US county court to try to get a Chinese dissident’s social media account taken down.

The report offers one of the most vivid examples yet of how authoritarian regimes can use AI tools to document their censorship efforts. The influence operation appeared to involve hundreds of Chinese operators and thousands of fake online accounts on various social media platforms, according to OpenAI.

Assessing Xi’s Unprecedented Purges of China’s Military: Key Developments and Potential Implications

Bonny Lin, Brian Hart, Thomas J. Christensen

On January 24, 2026, China’s Ministry of National Defense announced that the military’s top general, Zhang Youxia, and the chief of the Joint Staff Department, Liu Zhenli, had been placed under investigation for serious disciplinary and legal violations. The downfall of these two senior generals marks the most dramatic move yet in Xi Jinping’s years-long campaign to gut the leadership of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). The removal of Zhang, Liu, and several other generals from the Central Military Commission (CMC) has left only one general, Zhang Shengmin, serving on China’s top military decisionmaking body alongside Xi. However, the purges within the CMC are only the tip of the iceberg. Since 2022, over 100 senior PLA officers from across virtually all areas of the armed forces have been swept aside or gone missing, amounting to an unprecedented purge of China’s military.

The scope and depth of these purges showcase Xi’s resolve to renovate the PLA, root out corruption, eliminate obstacles to his ambitious military modernization objectives, and ensure absolute political loyalty. The purges raise serious questions regarding the current state of PLA readiness and what the future might hold for the force. This report brings together leading experts on the PLA to address some of these most critical questions, with the recognition that our understanding of what is unfolding is at best partial. The analyses in this report draw on a groundbreaking 2026 CSIS Database of Chinese Military Purges developed by the CSIS China Power Project with significant contributions from Suyash Desai and support from Jonathan A. Czin, Allie Matthias, and John Culver from the Brookings Institution.

US to keep China trade tariffs steady ahead of key Trump-Xi meeting: Greer

Xinmei Shen

Washington will keep China tariffs at their current level as the Trump administration seeks “continuity” after the Supreme Court struck down the levies it imposed last year, according to US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, weeks ahead of a high-stakes meeting between the two countries’ leaders.

The US will keep in place current China tariffs, which have varied from 35 per cent to 50 per cent depending on the product, since the countries “de-escalated” the trade war last year, Greer said on Wednesday in an interview with Fox Business.


Is China flexing its intelligence muscle by tracking US military moves near Iran?

Yuanyue Dangin and Amber Wangi

A Chinese private company has drawn the attention of security watchers after detailing US military deployments near Iran, a move experts say underlines Beijing’s intelligence abilities.
MizarVision, a Chinese commercial intelligence analysis firm, has consistently published monitoring posts regarding American military movements on social media over the past two years.

But it has attracted fresh attention in the past month with an increase in the frequency and granularity of its posts and by including detailed deployments of various US military assets across Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Greece and Qatar.

Can China find a market for its fifth-generation J-35 warplanes?

Seong Hyeon Choi

China’s push to sell its J-35 fifth generation fighter jet in the Asia-Pacific was likely to face stiff competition from US rival the F-35 as well as cheaper alternatives, military analysts said after the plane featured at this year’s Singapore Airshow.

They said political and economic considerations apart from performance would weigh on potential buyers, and questioned how many countries would want to buy the Chinese plane.
In Singapore this month, the booth operated by China National Aero-Technology Import & Export Corporation, representing the Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC), the country’s largest military aerospace company, featured a half-size model of the J-35A, the air force variant of the plane.

Reshaping the State Chinese Political Institutions under Xi Jinping

Wen-Hsuan Tsai

‘Based on extensive fieldwork and impressive analytic skills, Wen-Hsuan Tsai has produced the most detailed and informative account of the evolving political system in Xi Jinping’s China that I have ever read. It is essential reading for everyone seeking to understand the management and deployment of political power in contemporary China. The book convincingly shows that even though Xi Jinping may have centralized power in his own hands, institutions still matter. Indeed, they are holding China together.’

‘This engaging and thought-provoking academic work reflects the scholar’s dedication to enhancing our understanding of Chinese governance. It blends institutional resonance with leadership dynamics, addressing the knowledge gap in the West about the complexities of the Chinese Communist Party’s resilience and institutions. By examining the idiosyncrasies, risks and challenges of contemporary China—both a major global influence and the world’s second-largest economy—it encourages readers to reflect deeply on its governance and implications.’

PLA Reorganizes Space Information Support and Assurance Mission

Kristin Burke

The People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) restructuring of its space information support and assurance forces further deepens its reliance on space for communications, navigation, and reconnaissance. The PLA is transitioning most—but not yet all—of the battlefield space information support and assurance mission to the Information Support Force (ISF) and the growing Chinese commercial space sector, freeing up the Aerospace Force (ASF) to build specialized capabilities and plans for offensive and defensive ground and space-based operations.

The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) approval for a new civilian university to support communications, navigation, and reconnaissance ground-to-space integration not only helps smooth the handoff between the ASF and the ISF, but also demonstrates progress towards the PRC’s national plan for “air-space-ground integration.”

How Would Iran Respond to a U.S. Attack?

Benjamin Jensen

With the prospect of war in the Middle East again on the horizon, it is important to assess how Iran might respond to a U.S. attack. This installment of Critical Questions looks back to look ahead, using the history of how Iran has attacked the United States and its allies since 1980 as a baseline for predicting how Iran might retaliate and what it says about the potential for an escalation spiral that pulls the region, if not the world, into a broader war.

Both the history of Iran’s attacks and core insights from international relations theory suggest near-term limits on a larger conflict. The underlying assumption is that any military response is part of a larger bargaining strategy. States talk and fight at the same time, using coercion alongside diplomacy to achieve their interests. This implies that both the United States and Iran will seek to initially keep violence to a minimum to preserve space for ongoing talks and avoid a larger spiral that leads to a protracted regional conflict. Iran is likely to prefer a proportional response that limits regional escalation. The more the regime can do to limit sustained U.S. strikes, especially while it is confronting a second round of protests, and ensure that aircraft from other Gulf states don’t join, the better.

Russia-Ukraine War in 10 Charts

Seth G. Jones

Four years ago, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, resulting in the largest armed conflict in Europe since World War II. Initially conceived as a rapid operation to overthrow Kyiv, the conflict has evolved into a prolonged, high-intensity war that is reshaping European security. Despite substantial human and economic costs, Ukraine has maintained its defense with sustained Western support, while Russia has mobilized its economy and society for an extended confrontation. Although the war remains unresolved and significant uncertainties persist, its fourth anniversary provides a moment to reflect on its profound impacts on regional security, transatlantic cohesion, military technology, and the global balance of power.

The Russian economy has held up better than some expected following Western economic sanctions, which the United States and other Western countries imposed after Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022. But Russia’s economy is increasingly showing signs of strain, and long-term productivity looks bleak. The country receives limited foreign investment and is unable to borrow on international markets. To finance the war in Ukraine, the Kremlin has borrowed at home and raised taxes. It spends roughly half its budget on the armed forces, the military-industrial complex, domestic security, and debt servicing.

‘We don’t have infantry’: Ukraine’s war machine evolves into machine war

Katie Livingstone

Outmanned and outgunned by a nuclear power in the largest land war in Europe since 1945, Ukraine’s front line is increasingly held not by soldiers, but by machines and the skeleton crews that control them. Commanders describe brigades hollowed out to half strength or worse. Frontline units often operate at 50% to 60% of authorized manning, some as low as 30%.

In some sectors, a maximum of 12 fighters hold 5 to 10 kilometers of front, far below what Cold War-era NATO planning assumed for high-intensity defense. The numbers tell the story of an army running out of people. The average frontline soldier is 43 to 45 years old, according to BloombergRoughly 200,000 troops are absent without leave, and around 2 million men are evading mobilization, Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov told CNN in January, with Western and Ukrainian analysts estimating the overall shortfall at 300,000 personnel.

Scoop: Pentagon takes first step toward blacklisting Anthropic

Dave Lawler, Colin Demarest, Maria Curi

The Pentagon asked two major defense contractors on Wednesday to provide an assessment of their reliance on Anthropic's AI model, Claude — a first step toward a potential designation of Anthropic as a "supply chain risk," Axios has learned.

Why it matters: That penalty is usually reserved for companies from adversarial countries, such as Chinese tech giant Huawei.

Paradigm Change in the 2025 National Security Strategy

Lawrence Dressler

U.S. Coast Guard Cmdr. Karl Mueller, right, Coast Guard advisor to South East Asia, speaks during an Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated Fishing (IUUF) exchange at Cam Ranh International Port, Vietnam, July 10, 2024. Coast Guardsmen and U.S. Navy Sailors, assigned to Coast Guard Legend-class cutter USCGC Waesche (WMSL 751), came together to discuss issues caused by IUUF with their Vietnamese partners, and how to counteract them. The Coast Guard has operated in the Indo-Pacific for more than 150 years, and the service is increasing efforts through targeted patrols with our national security cutters, fast response cutters and other activities in support of Coast Guard missions to enhance our partnership.

The essay “The Missing War: Why the 2025 NSS Needs a Political Warfare Strategy to Defeat the CRInK in the Gray Zone” by Col. David Maxwell advocates for a more explicit political strategy to confront China as was done in the Cold War against the Soviet Union. But China presents an economic challenge as our peer that the Soviet Union never did. Our economies and supply chains are interdependent, and China has weaponized rare earth and pharmaceutical choke points for negotiating leverage. As shown by President Trump’s recent compromise to allow the export of Nvidia H200 AI chips in exchange for China loosening restrictions on rare earth elements our economies are still too interdependent to fully duplicate the confrontation with the Soviets. The challenge now is to align our gray zone activities with the economic focus of the new National Security Strategy (NSS) to strengthen the homeland, both territorially and economically, increase support from our allies, and shift the focus to maritime domains and great-power competition in the Indo-Pacific and Western Hemisphere.

U.S. Army Drone Dominance Vision Meets Reality In Training Exercises

Steve Trimble 

Sprawling across the northeast rim of California’s Mojave Desert, the scrubby landscape of the Fort Irwin National Training Center is far from the fertile, rolling steppe of eastern Ukraine. But observers of recent exercises could be forgiven for noticing a similar obsession with militarized drones.

The Pentagon’s six-month-old Drone Dominance Program is intended to field more than 340,000 small uncrewed aircraft systems (UAS) by the end of next year, and U.S. Army units are scrambling.September exercise exposed gaps in drone readiness
Power generation, battery supply and interference presented hurdles

Regiment-size units, which seldom possess more than a handful of small UAS at any time, are racing to prepare for the logistical and operational realities of fighting with hundreds—if not thousands—of drones, as they train during the large-scale exercises staged annually at Fort Irwin.

The War Is Coming Home to Russia

John Tefft

Russian President Vladimir Putin has sought from the very start of his “special military operation” in Ukraine to prevent the conflict from intruding into the lives of Russian citizens, particularly those who live in Moscow and St. Petersburg. As the war enters its fifth year, this effort is increasingly failing.

Ukraine is attacking military facilities and refineries around Russia, causing significant damage and producing shortages in gasoline. Western sanctions are biting harder into the fragile Russian economy. Along with huge expenditures on the military (which now receives 8 percent of GDP), sanctions are restricting the flow of long-term capital for the civilian economy. Russia's energy revenues dropped by about a fifth in 2025. Fiscal problems are growing, and the country may be on the verge of a serious recession. The budget deficit in 2025 was 2.5 percent of GDP, five times higher than was predicted at the beginning of the year. To raise revenue, VAT taxes have been raised, and a “technological fee” will be assessed on imported electronics and household appliances.

US, Iran To Meet For Nuclear Talks Amid Fears Of Military Conflict


US and Iranian officials are set to hold a fresh round of nuclear talks in Geneva on February 26 for what is seen as a last-ditch attempt to avoid a major military conflict between the foes. The third round of discussions come as President Donald Trump weighs options for US military action if no deal is secured to curb Iran’s nuclear program, with two American carrier groups deployed within striking distance of the Islamic republic.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi left Tehran for the Swiss city on February 25, and is expected to hold talks with White House envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. Omani representatives will act as mediators, as they have in previous rounds. The sides held indirect talks earlier this month in Oman, the first since Israel and the United States bombed Iran’s key nuclear sites during a brief conflict in June. A second round of talks was held in Geneva on February 17.

Trump Should Take the U.S. Military’s Warning on Iran Seriously

Max Boot

President Donald Trump likely feels that the U.S. military is invincible after the success of various operations he has ordered during his time in office, including the killing of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani in 2020, the bombing of the Iranian nuclear program in June 2025, and the abduction of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro in January. But those were all “one and done” strikes. The military operation that Trump has threatened against Iran is potentially much larger and lengthier—and thus much riskier.

Various news outlets have published articles in recent days reporting that General Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is concerned about the risks of strikes on Iran. This looks very much like a concerted messaging campaign by the U.S. military to surface their concerns before Trump orders them into action. In response, Trump took to Truth Social to denounce “the Fake News Media” for stating that Caine “is against us going to War with Iran,” calling that “100% incorrect.” But, in fact, all of these news stories state that Caine has not expressed either support or opposition to the strikes; he is merely raising concerns about how a military campaign would unfold, as he is legally obligated to do in his role as the president’s senior military adviser.

Russia Is Catching Up to Ukraine in the Drone War

Stavros Atlamazoglou

In January, the Russian forces launched approximately 4,400 kamikaze drones against Ukraine. This was a slight decrease from December, when the Russian forces launched approximately 5,100 loitering munitions—but that was largely due to the poor weather conditions of last month, which make it difficult for propeller-powered drones to fly. Judging from the daily launches in the first half of February (approximately 190 kamikaze drones per day), there will likely be an increase from last month.

The Russian forces utilize four main types of kamikaze drones: the Shahed 136, Shahed 131, Geran-2, and Geran-3. The drones are all based on the same fundamental design, a warhead with two wings on either side and a rear propeller. The Shahed drones are designed by Iran, while the Gerans are the Russian version of the Iranian drones. Drones are the “hottest” weapon in the war in Ukraine. Both the Ukrainians and Russians use unmanned aerial systems profusely for a wide range of mission sets, including kinetic strikes, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR), artillery spotting, and even resupply of troops on the frontline.

Russia–Ukraine War: escalation, not stalemate

Nigel Gould-Davies

The fifth year of Russia’s full-scale war in Ukraine has begun. It is Russia’s longest continuous major war since the 18th century (the 1979–89 Soviet war in Afghanistan was a sideshow in tempo and casualties by comparison). It is also one of the longest wars between neighbours globally since 1945. In 2025, Russia gained less than 1% of Ukrainian territory and lost over 416,000 troops. Given the length, cost and stasis of the war, how likely is it to end soon?

The driver of the war has not changed over the past four years. Russia seeks to subordinate Ukraine, and Ukraine is determined to resist this. These positions remain incompatible. Both states are materially capable of continuing to fight and judge the costs politically tolerable. The war will end only if Russia wins it or accepts that it cannot win. It cannot currently do the first and refuses to do the second. Since it will not scale back its goals, it must scale up the resources it commits to them. This is a strategy of attrition: generating sustained, superior mass and firepower to grind down an enemy. It is the opposite strategy to the initial invasion plan to seize Kyiv in days. Mass has replaced speed.

The American Frontier: A Trillion-Dollar Race For Technological Superiority

Ethan Batraski

Each frontier followed the same pattern: a technological inflection unlocked new productive capacity, reshaped the economy, and reinforced America’s ability to build, defend, and lead.

Energy, materials, manufacturing, logistics, and defense together account for roughly 80% of global GDP. They are the physical economy—the capabilities on which modern life, security, and prosperity rest.

Over the last thirty years, venture capital rationally followed what was easiest to scale. Software abstracted complexity, margins expanded without factories, and returns compounded without touching the physical world. Empires were built on screens while the harder work of building factories, infrastructure, and industrial systems quietly fell out of favor.

It would take the Pentagon months to replace Anthropic’s AI tools: sources

PATRICK TUCKER

If the Pentagon carries out its threat to blacklist Anthropic’s Claude AI platform, it could be three months or even longer before the U.S. military regains access to such a powerful tool on its classified networks, according to multiple sources familiar with the fight between the Defense Department and the AI maker.

On Thursday, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei reiterated his refusal to allow Claude to be used for mass surveillance of U.S. citizens or to guide fully autonomous weapons, rejecting Pentagon requests to make unfettered use of the model.

Breaking encryption with a quantum computer just got 10 times easier

Karmela Padavic-Callaghan

The amount of quantum computing power needed to crack a common data encryption technique has been reduced tenfold. This makes the encryption method even more vulnerable to quantum computers, which may be able to reach the reduced size within the decade.

The RSA algorithm is one of the most widely used encryption algorithms, used for things like online banking and secure communication. It is based on the mathematical difficulty of finding which two prime numbers were multiplied together to create a very large number. Since the 1990s researchers have known that this difficulty can be side-stepped by using a quantum computer, but the possibility was considered theoretical because the size needed for such a quantum computer was much larger than could be built.

Army issues broad appeal to industry for electromagnetic spectrum solutions

Mark Pomerleau

WASHINGTON — In the latest in a strategic shift, the Army has issued a call to industry, broadly soliciting solutions for the electromagnetic spectrum rather than outlining specific needs as usual.

Documents posted alongside a the request for information note that currently the Army “lacks the ability to sense, locate, attack, and protect in and through the EMS across competition and geographic continuums in order to generate necessary effects against targets of interest at range.” But rather than think up a singular solution and request specifically that thing, the service’s requests aims to see a range of solutions from across industry — the more ideas, the better.

Shattering the Software Stovepipes: How to Close the US Military’s Technology Integration Gap

Ryan McLean

In the 1950s, American strategists warned of a bomber gap. By the end of that decade, the fear had shifted to a missile gap. In both cases, the perception of a gap drove enormous defense investments that ultimately formed the backbone of a credible nuclear deterrent. Today, the joint force faces a different kind of gap. It is not a deficit in capability relative to an adversary. It is a failure to connect the capabilities it already owns. A true modular open systems approach is itself a strategic deterrent—a force that can reconfigure, integrate, and adapt faster than an adversary can target it is a force that deters conflict. But the Department of Defense has not yet closed this integration gap.

The money is flowing. The tools are arriving. Integration, however, is stuck several decades in the past. Absent marked change in how it makes integration a shared government-commercial responsibility, the department faces an integration gap that risks handicapping today’s commercial modernization push as merely experimentation. Warfighters require fielded and sustained combat capability—not science projects.