Indian Strategic Studies: 03/05/26

5 March 2026

U.S.-India Insight: Indian States China + 1 Strategy: Aim Lower to go Bigger

Richard M. Rossow

State governments have critical roles to play in helping India build a better business environment. In 2025, most state policies focus on specific sectors like electronics or data centers. In rarer cases, reforms are more broad-based, easing the business environment across industries around topics like land and labor. More states are “getting in the game” to grab a share of global investment in emerging technologies. But China+1 should not exclusively focus on emerging technology. To create employment and exports, Indian states should spend 2026 focused on building investments in basic industries like textiles, paper mills, food processing, and chemicals.

A little over a decade ago, our team began preparing and sending a weekly digest of significant state-level business reforms. You can find the back editions here. Our team reported on 114 significant reforms by state governments in India in 2025. Rajasthan led the pack with 12 significant reforms, followed by Madhya Pradesh (10), Assam and Odisha (9 each), and Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Karnataka, and Uttar Pradesh (8 apiece).

How Chinese Cyber Espionage Is Powering Its Cognitive Warfare Program

Emilio Iasiello

How Chinese Cyber Espionage Is Powering Its Cognitive Warfare Program

In 2026, the contours of conflict have changed. China’s cyber espionage apparatus is no longer a mere data-theft machine—it has become a foundational engine for cognitive warfare. Beijing’s strategic design integrates the extraction of massive datasets and clandestine access to foreign communications with the capacity to shape perceptions and influence behaviors across entire societies.

The end game isn’t just collecting secrets and sensitive information for decision makers, it’s narrative advantage. Chinese cyber espionage now feeds psychological operations, influence campaigns, and anticipatory manipulation. These efforts are not peripheral; they are central to the People’s Republic of China’s evolving doctrine of “intelligentized warfare,” where data, artificial intelligence (AI), and perception management are fused to achieve strategic ends. Cyber espionage is no longer the end state. It is the supply chain.

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.

Chinese Online Influence Operation Spreads Anti-American Conspiracy Claims

Maria Riofrio

President Donald Trump is to blame for the worsening fentanyl crisis in the United States. The U.S. manipulated the elections in Honduras last November. Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi is a corrupt militarist.

All of these false claims have been pushed by a previously unreported influence operation likely connected to China uncovered by FDD’s Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation (CCTI). The network consists of more than 330 inauthentic social media accounts and is designed to connect false assertions to audiences in the United States and in U.S. partner nations. Between December 2025 and February 2026, the coordinated network posted material across X, Tumblr, Blogspot, Quora, and YouTube, manipulating each platform’s algorithms to push its content to real users.

China's Response to Operation Midnight Hammer: Caution or Paralysis?

On 22 June 2025, the U.S. military carried out Operation Midnight Hammer, conducting night strikes on Iran’s three main nuclear facilities with submarine-launched Tomahawk cruise missiles and B-2 bombers carrying GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrators (MOP), or “bunker-buster,” bombs. The operation, which occurred nine days into the Iran-Israel war, inflicted significant damage on the Fordo, Natanz, and Isfahan nuclear sites. Following intensive U.S. diplomacy, Iran and Israel agreed to a ceasefire on June 24. Although the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is Iran’s most consequential economic partner and the two countries have a comprehensive strategic partnership, Beijing’s response to the attacks was relatively muted.

The US-Israel campaign in Iran

Sascha Bruchmann and Air Marshal (Retd) Martin ‘Sammy’ Sampson

In the early hours of 28 February 2026, Israel and the United States launched the first stage of their military campaign on Iran targeting key leadership, air defence capabilities, missile sites and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Navy.

As the opening salvo, Israel and US strikes attacked a leadership meeting in Tehran that included Supreme Leader Sayyid Ali Khamenei, Iran’s defence minister, the chief of staff of the armed forces and the commander of the IRGC. All were killed in the attack.

Prioritising surprise, the first attack wave used long-range munitions, such as Israeli air-launched ballistic missiles and US Tomahawks. The timely Iranian response – via missile and uninhabited aerial vehicles (UAVs) – suggests strike authorities were approved in advance and indicates IRGC commanders remain loyal to their mission, and the interim leadership coalescing around senior official Ali Larijani.

Here’s how cyber could have been used to target Iran in Operation Epic Fury

Mark Pomerleau

WASHINGTON — The opening of Operation Epic Fury, the joint US-Israel operation to topple Iran’s government, has been defined by surprise kinetic strikes and Iran’s retaliation to its neighbors. But underneath the visible attacks, there may have been invisible strikes brought about through cyber operations.

To be clear, there has been no official word from the US or Israel that cyber effects were brought to bear in the first 48 hours of the conflict, though there have been reports of cyber activities inside Iran having taken place. However, given the reality of modern day warfare, as well as the long history of cyber war specifically around Iran, it seems implausible that cyber capabilities have not played a role so far.

Iran networks suffer losses amid airstrikes, showing digital evolution of conflicts

Kurt Knutsson

On February 28, 2026, as fighter jets and cruise missiles struck Iranian Revolutionary Guard command centers during Operation Roar of the Lion, a parallel assault reportedly unfolded in cyberspace. Official news sites and key media platforms went offline, government digital services and local apps failed across major cities, and security communications systems reportedly stopped functioning, plunging Iran into a near-total digital blackout.

According to NetBlocks, a global internet monitoring organization that tracks connectivity disruptions, nationwide internet traffic in Iran plunged to just 4 percent of normal levels. That level of collapse suggests either a deliberate state-ordered shutdown or a large-scale cyberattack designed to paralyze critical infrastructure. Western intelligence sources later indicated the digital offensive aimed to disrupt IRGC command and control systems and limit coordination of counterattacks.

Iran attack a ‘wake-up call’ for China on electronic warfare and intelligence

Seong Hyeon Choiin andYuanyue Dang

The US and Israel’s air strikes against Iran, supported by electronic and cyber capabilities, serve as a “wake-up call” for China’s intelligence strategy and its military’s approach to deploying advanced technologies in modern warfare, analysts say.

In weekend air strikes against Iran that killed its supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the US struck over 1,000 targets with an array of advanced weaponry, including Tomahawk cruise missiles, stealth fighters and bombers.

And for the first time in combat, it deployed low-cost one-way attack drones modelled after Iranian designs.

Iran’s Supreme leader Khamenei confirmed dead after US-Israeli strikes

Beyond conventional aerial weapons, the US military operation has underscored the pivotal role of electronic warfare, intelligence gathering, and AI-assisted operations in modern warfare.

Khamenei is dead. Regime change will be much harder.

Robert A. Pape

President Donald Trump triumphantly announced on Saturday that Israeli and US strikes had killed Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. He was the biggest target in a “decapitation” mission that also reportedly killed a significant number of top Iranian regime figures.

When presidents order airstrikes aimed at debilitating an enemy’s leadership and forcing political change, the logic feels compelling: Strike senior figures. Destroy command nodes. Shock the system. Avoid a costly ground invasion. Bend the regime’s behavior from the air.

Three Massive Questions Concerning Trump’s War in Iran

Benjamin Parker

THE UNITED STATES, IN CONJUNCTION with Israel, initiated a series of air attacks against Iran Saturday. Early reports indicate that American forces attacked military targets throughout the country while Israeli forces targeted Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, President Masoud Pazeskhian, and other high-level figures in the regime. The Israeli government and President Donald Trump both announced mid-day Saturday that Khamenei had been killed.

In response, Iran launched missiles at American bases throughout the Middle East and reportedly moved to halt shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. As always, the earliest reports of combat are often confused, sometimes contradictory, and probably wrong, at least in some respects. But there are some questions that we can already answer, provisionally and partially, to gain some clarity on what’s going on.

Iran and Unexpected Long Wars

Mick Ryan

Will America attack Iran this weekend? Or next week?

Update: Well, this question was answered in emphatic style just a couple of hours ago. Israeli and American aircraft and missiles (and probably a few drones too) have commenced what appears to be a large-scale strike campaign against Iran. The questions below - will this be quick or something more protracted (longer than a few days) - remains to be seen.

Will this be a quick intervention or the start of something more protracted?

These are important questions for a couple of reasons. First, the amount of military force that has been deployed into the region around Iran cannot be sustained there forever. Their peak readiness will decline over time. Second, the purpose of such an attack remains unclear, with little strategic communication from the White House about why such an attack is necessary, and why now is the right time. Finally, and perhaps more importantly, might an attack on Iran result in a more extensive and prolonged conflict than expected?

US military base on Diego Garcia: What is its strategic importance?

Nitya Labh

President Donald Trump’s critique of the UK’s 2025 agreement to transfer sovereignty of the Chagos Archipelago to Mauritius triggered a wave of media attention in January 2026. In February, the president appeared to walk back his criticism of the deal, which would see the UK obtain a 99-year lease on Diego Garcia – the largest Chagos island and the site of a major UK/US military base.

But President Trump criticized the deal again on 18 February, linking Diego Garcia to the US military buildup for a possible strike on Iran: ‘Should Iran decide not to make a Deal,’ he said, ‘it may be necessary for the United States to use Diego Garcia… in order to eradicate a potential attack by a highly unstable and dangerous Regime.’

A Guide to Trump’s Second-Term Military Strikes and Actions

Abi McGowan, Molly Carlough, Natalie Caloca
Source Link

Though he was critical of other presidents’ foreign entanglements on the campaign trail, President Donald Trump has demonstrated a willingness to use U.S. military force in his second term.

After returning to office in 2025, Trump approved the expansion of counterterrorism operations that included bombing targets in Iraq, Nigeria, and Somalia. He also ordered the U.S. military to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities, responded to attacks against U.S. service members in Syria, and targeted Houthi militants in Yemen. In early 2026, after months of military buildup in the Caribbean and U.S. attacks on alleged drug boats, the United States bombed Venezuela and captured the country’s leader, Nicolás Maduro. In late February 2026, the United States and Israel launched coordinated strikes on Iran after Trump declared nuclear negotiations a failure.

Decapitation, Epic Fury and the Unknown

Mick Ryan

It is now two days since the beginning of the US-Israel military campaign against Iran. Unlike the other strikes against Iran in the post 7 October 2023 era, the military strikes commenced in broad daylight which appears to have caught the Iranians off guard.

As American and Israeli military strikes continue, and Iran pursues its campaign of retaliatory strikes across the Middle East, I wanted to provide a short update. This will cover the current situation with the military campaign, the context for these provided by Trump’s stated political objectives for the war, and finally, pose some insights and questions about this new war against Iran.

Oil and gas prices jump as conflict escalates

Daniel Thomas,Ben Hatton,Peter Hoskinsand Dearbail Jordan

Oil and gas prices have surged as Iran continues to launch strikes across the Middle East in response to ongoing attacks by the US and Israel. Natural gas prices spiked on Monday after QatarEnergy, one of the world's biggest exporters, halted production following "military attacks" on its facilities. Oil prices also jumped, with the global benchmark Brent crude briefly hitting $82 (£61) a barrel on Monday, after at least three ships were attacked near the Strait of Hormuz at the weekend.

Iran warned vessels not to pass through the crucial waterway in the south of the country, through which about 20% of the world's oil and gas is shipped. In the US, the Nasdaq and S&P 500 stock market indexes opened down but regained those losses during Monday's trading and closed marginally higher. In London, the FTSE 100 share index closed down 1.2%, with the owner of British Airways recording the biggest fall in the index following the disruption to Middle East airspace.

Anthropic and Pentagon Clash

Anthropic rejected an ultimatum from the Pentagon yesterday regarding government use of its technology amid an ongoing dispute about the use of AI by the U.S. military. The company opposes the government using its AI systems for mass domestic surveillance and fully autonomous weapons, deeming them “outside the bounds of what today’s technology can safely or reliably do,” Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei wrote in a statement. A Defense Department spokesperson wrote yesterday that the Pentagon “has no interest” in the two use cases flagged by Amodei, but that it still seeks a broader authorization to use Anthropic’s technology for “all lawful purposes.”

The stakes. The Pentagon has threatened to terminate its $200 million contract with Anthropic and label the company a supply chain risk. That could force any companies that work with the U.S. military to prove they do not use Anthropic products to do so. The government took a step in that direction earlier this week by asking defense contractors to assess their reliance on Anthropic’s AI model, Axios reported. The Pentagon has also indicated that it could use the Defense Production Act to compel Anthropic to accept its terms, which would likely lead to legal challenges.

OpenAI reaches agreement with Pentagon to use AI models

Maria Curi

Sam Altman said late Friday night that his company reached an agreement with the Pentagon to use its AI models, after the Defense Department agreed to its safety red lines that were similar to rival Anthropic's. Why it matters: The Pentagon has blasted Anthropic for days, contending its red lines for AI use in the military — mass surveillance and autonomous weapons — are philosophical and "woke."

Altman's deal with the Pentagon differs from Anthropic's, where there is concern existing law doesn't contemplate AI. "Two of our most important safety principles are prohibitions on domestic mass surveillance and human responsibility for the use of force, including for autonomous weapon systems," Altman said."The DoW agrees with these principles, reflects them in law and policy, and we put them into our agreement."

America’s new unipolar moment

Stuart Gottlieb

According to nearly every hard indicator of global power it certainly appears the case. And while America’s soft power leadership of liberal values and institutions has been set back under Trump, the United States remains the world’s preeminent liberal democracy and the only one capable of shaping the direction of world affairs.

This is America’s third “unipolar moment” since 1945, along with the early post-Cold War. It offers Washington another opportunity to help fashion a world that safeguards America’s interests and values, along with stabilizing leadership. To succeed, it must contain the core elements of the Cold War era—strong U.S. military deterrence matched with global economic primacy—without the neoliberal “end of history” overreach of the 1990s. With the right mix of prudence and pragmatism, the United States is poised to remain the pivotal player of the 21st century

Exclusive: Prior to Iran attacks, CIA assessed Khamenei could be replaced by hardline IRGC elements if killed, sources say

Erin Banco

WASHINGTON, Feb 28 (Reuters) - In the run-up to the U.S. and Israeli attacks on Saturday, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency assessed that even if Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed in the operation, he could be replaced by hardline figures from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), two sources briefed on the intelligence said.

The agency's assessments, which were produced over the past two weeks, looked broadly at what could occur in Iran following a U.S. intervention and the extent to which a military operation could trigger regime change in the Islamic Republic -- now a pronounced objective for Washington. IRGC figures taking power was among the multiple different scenarios that emerged, a third source familiar with the matter said.

Nvidia's Jensen Huang Says Agentic AI Has Arrived at an 'Inflection Point'

Blake Stimac

During Nvidia's quarterly earnings call on Wednesday, CEO Jensen Huang said that agentic AI has reached "an inflection point" and that AI agents are "solving real problems." The company's powerful chips have been at the heart of the AI boom over the last few years, especially for use in data centers -- so much so that Nvidia's annual revenue for fiscal 2026 zoomed to $216 billion, up 65% from the previous year.

Huang called Nvidia an AI infrastructure company, a dramatic evolution from the graphics card company it started as. The term agentic AI has been floating around for some time, but now the technology is becoming available for real-world use. Unlike chatbots, which stay within their own boundaries to produce text, images or code, AI agents can take specific actions -- for instance, plan and book a vacation -- without a person constantly giving it commands.

In Wargame Simulations, AI Models Keep Threatening to Nuke Each Other

Peter Suciu

“Shall we play a game?” Readers of a certain age will instantly recognize the line from the classic 1983 movie WarGames, about a computer hacker named David Lightman (played by Matthew Broderick) who nearly initiates a nuclear war with the Soviet Union after accessing a United States military supercomputer. To NORAD’s War Operations Plan Response (WOPR) computer, “Global Thermonuclear War” was a game like chess, checkers, or poker.

In the four decades since the movie, artificial intelligence (AI) has become a reality—yet is still poorly understood and acts in ways that its developers struggle to explain. With that in mind, understanding how AI platforms “think” about using the nuclear option offers a vital glimpse into their capabilities, and to what extent they can be trusted with the future of the human race. According to a recently published white paper, “AI Arms and Influence: Frontier Models Exhibit Sophisticated Reasoning in Simulated Nuclear Crises,” authored by Kenneth Payne of King’s College London, the answers might not be good.

The AI Sovereignty Paradox at Home and Abroad

Michael Froman

First, Washington. Under the second Trump administration, the United States has sought, through a laissez-faire regulatory approach, to ensure that privately owned U.S. firms build the most powerful AI systems in the world. In many respects, this approach is working as designed. Private capital and innovators are doing what they do best in building ever more ingenious U.S.-made mousetraps.

The caveat to this light-touch regulatory environment was always that the government, to enhance its sovereign powers, would demand to become the ultimate power user of AI—co-opting the tools produced by U.S. firms for national security, at scale and on its own terms. In practice, this is proving rather complicated, not least because many in the AI community would like to build products, including those they provide to the military, with built-in safeguards.

New Gmail Account Attack Warning—Hackers Abuse Critical Security Check

Davey Winder

Updated March 1, as hackers take aim at Google’s security check feature, this warning to check your Gmail account has never been more important — but now you need to ensure that you are doing so safely. Here’s how all Google users can stay secure in the face of these ongoing attacks.

Just when you thought things couldn’t get any more critical, in terms of Google account security at least, with warnings of new attack campaigns targeting Gmail users, they do. A lot worse, in fact. How so? Well, my original article recommended using Google’s account security checkup tool as soon as possible, in light of new reports on an ongoing threat campaign aimed squarely at Gmail users. Now, however, it has been reported that hackers are targeting users of that very security check feature with a malicious fake that is “one of the most fully featured browser-based surveillance toolkits” seen by Malwarebytes security researchers. It is imperative, therefore, that you know what to look out for, what not to do and, critically, how to find and use the genuine article to help protect your account.

The billion-dollar infrastructure deals powering the AI boom

Russell Brandom

It takes a lot of computing power to run an AI product — and as the tech industry races to tap the power of AI models, there’s a parallel race underway to build the infrastructure that will power them. On a recent earnings call, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang estimated that between $3 trillion and $4 trillion will be spent on AI infrastructure by the end of the decade — with much of that money coming from AI companies. Along the way, they’re placing immense strain on power grids and pushing the industry’s building capacity to its limit.

Below, we’ve laid out everything we know about the biggest AI infrastructure projects, including major spending from Meta, Oracle, Microsoft, Google, and OpenAI. We’ll keep it updated as the boom continues and the numbers climb even higher.

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