Bangladesh’s Next Generation of Leaders and the Future of Strategic Hedging

National Bureau of Asian Research | Geoffrey Macdonald

Bangladesh's newly elected parliament and Prime Minister Tarique Rahman are reorienting the nation's foreign policy away from its historical pro-India tilt toward a balanced strategic hedging posture. Following the collapse of Sheikh Hasina's government in August 2024, the emerging leadership is distancing Dhaka from New Delhi while prioritizing engagement with China, Pakistan, and the United States.

This transition reflects deep domestic resentment over India's long-standing political backing of the previous regime and unresolved bilateral disputes regarding border killings and water sharing. Furthermore, severe economic strains, including foreign currency shortages and rising debt, compel the trade-dependent nation to preserve access to Western export markets while securing Chinese infrastructure investments. The electoral surge of Jamaat-e-Islami, which secured 68 seats in the February 2026 elections, has further empowered political factions skeptical of Indian influence. Concurrently, unpredictable trade and tariff policies under the Trump administration since January 2026 reinforce Dhaka's drive to diversify its regional partnerships. Strategic autonomy remains the ultimate objective.

Pakistan says airstrikes in Afghanistan kill 28 militants; Kabul reports 3 civilians killed

Apnews | Munir Ahmed, Abdul Qahar Afghan

Pakistani fighter jets carried out airstrikes in eastern Afghanistan on Monday, killing 28 suspected militants according to Islamabad, while Afghan authorities and the United Nations confirmed that three civilians died in the attacks. The cross-border strikes in Kunar and Paktika provinces follow deadly militant assaults on Pakistani security forces in Hangu and Kohat districts, intensifying bilateral friction between Islamabad and the Afghan Taliban government.

Pakistan has repeatedly accused Kabul of harboring the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, a charge the Afghan administration denies. The escalating hostilities threaten to undermine regional mediation efforts led by actors including China. Afghan government spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid condemned the operation as a violation of sovereignty and vowed a direct response. UNAMA reported documenting over 1,100 civilian casualties from cross-border violence this year, urging compliance with international humanitarian law as tensions along the shared border continue to mount.

Review: Shadows Over Kabul by Hamdullah Mohib and Tam Hussein

Small Wars Journal | Gillian MacIntosh

Shadows Over Kabul: An Insider’s Account of the Fall of the Afghan Republic, authored by former Afghan National Security Advisor Hamdullah Mohib and investigative journalist Tam Hussein, offers a retrospective study spanning Afghanistan's modern history from the 1979 Soviet invasion to the 2021 government collapse. The 248-page memoir published by Bloomsbury Publishing traces Mohib's trajectory from refugee to politician, detailing his tenure as ambassador to the United States and National Security Advisor while examining foreign intervention, internal political discord, and the Pashtunwali cultural framework.

The work chronicles pivotal moments including the U.S.-Taliban Deal, the exclusion of the Afghan government from negotiations, the release of five thousand Taliban prisoners, and the rapid U.S. troop withdrawal. The text contrasts the Soviet-Afghan War with the multi-front pressures that fractured the Afghan Republic through disinformation and eroding trust. Ultimately, the publication provides an insider account illuminating how external forces and internal decisions shaped the fate of the Afghan state over forty-five years.

U.S. and China Discuss System to Warn of A.I. National Security Issues

New York Times | Alan Rappeport, Lauren Hirsch, Ana Swanson

The United States and China discussed the creation of a bilateral notification system on Sunday to alert each other regarding national security threats stemming from artificial intelligence. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng met in New York ahead of President Xi Jinping's upcoming state visit to lay groundwork for agreements on trade, the war in Iran, and emerging technology.

The proposed mechanism, termed the U.S.-China A.I. dialogue, aims to establish transparency between the world's two leading artificial intelligence powers as rapid industry developments stoke global concerns over autonomous weapons and cyber threats. Both nations are racing for technological dominance while grappling with mounting regulatory pressures to prevent algorithms from spiraling out of human control. The discussions highlight efforts to manage strategic risks across cross-border applications before critical thresholds are breached.

The Real Reason Chinese AI Is Winning the Global South

Foreign Policy | Lizzi C. Lee, Zhuoning Li

Chinese open-weight artificial intelligence models are gaining widespread adoption across the global south due to low costs, high flexibility, and local hardware compatibility. Alibaba’s Qwen leads this expansion, driving millions of downloads and serving as the foundation for sovereign initiatives from Southeast Asia to South America. Unlike U.S.

proprietary models anchored to walled-garden application programming interfaces, Chinese architectures offer customizable digital infrastructure that operates under tight computing constraints and supports non-Latin scripts. Singapore utilizes Qwen for its SEA-LION project, while Malaysia and Brazil incorporate Chinese technology into sovereign AI and supercomputing programs despite U.S. semiconductor export controls. Driven by organic developer demand rather than direct government mandates, this adoption pattern mirrors China's electric vehicle strategy of supplying modular components. As emerging markets integrate these foundational blocks into their digital pipelines, practical choices risk hardening into structural technological dependencies.

How does Xi Jinping’s ‘special plane’ compare with Air Force One?

South China Morning Post | Meredith Chen

Chinese President Xi Jinping travels to Washington for an anticipated bilateral summit with US President Donald Trump, drawing scrutiny toward the specialized aircraft transporting the Chinese leader and its operational comparison to America’s Air Force One. The aircraft serves as an integral element of the diplomatic choreography framing high-level bilateral engagements between Beijing and Washington.

Public attention centers on how China's head-of-state transport stacks up against the US presidential plane during official diplomatic travel. Chinese state visits, including Xi's earlier transit through Cairo, Egypt, with Peng Liyuan, routinely bring the operational profile of the leadership aircraft into public view. Symbolism matters here. The visual juxtaposition of the two premier official aircraft underscores broader diplomatic optics defining contemporary US-China relations and competitive head-of-state diplomacy. As Washington prepares to host the 2026 summit, the comparative logistics and symbolic presence of both presidential transports remain central to the visual and ceremonial presentation of the state visit.

Shrink the UN

Foreign Affairs | Richard Gowan

The United Nations faces a critical leadership transition as Secretary-General António Guterres prepares to step down amid deep geopolitical paralysis, budget cuts, and widespread member state skepticism. China, Russia, and the United States have repeatedly sidelined the organization on major conflicts, while U.S. funding freezes and broader donor fatigue have forced severe financial retrenchment.

Candidates including Rebeca Grynspan, Rafael Grossi, and Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett vie to succeed Guterres in an era defined by great-power competition and austerity. The next leader must abandon expansive, paperwork-heavy ambitions and instead streamline bloated bureaucracies, consolidate overlapping agencies, and prioritize core missions such as crisis prevention, conflict resolution, and efficient humanitarian aid. While large-scale peace operations remain unfeasible amidst Security Council vetoes and middle-power interference, the organization can regain credibility through quieter, cost-effective shuttle diplomacy and backchannel mediation, ensuring institutional survival and renewed utility without overextending scarce resources.

Balancing Development and Security in Global AI Governance

Jamestown Foundation | Arran Hope

The People's Republic of China is aggressively pursuing artificial intelligence supremacy as a core pillar of comprehensive national power while simultaneously navigating severe political and security risks. Beijing's recent push for a global artificial intelligence governance framework prioritises Party leadership and the expansion of non-Western influence over cooperation with the United States.

Prominent Chinese officials and academics emphasize that rapid technological progress presents transnational and systemic vulnerabilities that require stringent legal, technical, and regulatory supervision. Theoretical commentaries published in state media outline an ambitious agenda to position Beijing as the primary rule-maker in international standard-setting bodies. These initiatives aim to establish alternative multilateral frameworks that challenge Western technological hegemony and unify negotiating positions across the Global South. International cooperation consistently ranks at the bottom of official policy priorities, confirming that strategic autonomy and domestic political security remain paramount objectives for the Chinese Communist Party.

Here is China’s main weakness on AI. Exploit it.

Washington Post | Thomas J. Duesterberg

President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s summit presents an opportunity to derail Beijing’s artificial intelligence strategy by exploiting its weak financial pillars. China’s aggressive attempt to capture global AI markets through state subsidies and open-weight models undercuts American investment returns, yet Chinese firms remain largely unprofitable and dependent on government support.

Domestic crackdowns on entrepreneurs and foreign investors have further dampened private funding, forcing flagship firms like DeepSeek to struggle for foreign capital and computing power. Meanwhile, Alibaba’s open-weight Qwen models achieved over 3 billion downloads in 2026, outpacing Meta’s Llama. The White House should ban Chinese models from U.S. markets until reciprocal access is established and renew limits on U.S. financing of AI infrastructure IPOs. If Trump deploys these economic tools, the United States can undermine Beijing’s advance.

Zhu Feng: The Core Meaning of and Pathways Towards a Constructive China-U.S. Relationship of Strategic Stability

The East Is Read | Yuxuan Jia, Yixin Guo

Zhu Feng examines the strategic framework of a constructive China-U.S. relationship of strategic stability following leadership discussions in May 2026. The traditional Cold War model of strategic stability, built on mutually assured destruction and arms control agreements like the INF Treaty and New START, is inadequate for bilateral ties due to China's minimum nuclear deterrent and no-first-use policy.

U.S. Indo-Pacific military expansion and containment strategies threaten regional security. Escaping the Thucydides Trap requires grounding relations in interdependence, rejecting bloc confrontation, and establishing four dimensions of stability: cooperation as the mainstay, moderate competition, manageable differences, and enduring peace. Practical implementation demands concrete rules and a long-term approach to preserve global order.

Welcome to the great AI freakout

Asiatimes | Noah Smith

Americans are increasingly worried about artificial intelligence risk, with a bipartisan majority concerned that the technology is advancing too rapidly and posing potential existential threats. Despite President Trump aligning with an anti-slowdown coalition of investors, libertarians, and China hawks, public opinion and prominent figures like Barack Obama favor safety regulations.

Meanwhile, a public debate persists between AI researchers predicting explosive economic growth rates and skeptical economists who cite structural adoption hurdles and labor barriers. Concurrently, artificial intelligence has failed to disrupt Software as a Service companies, with SaaS revenue and stock prices actually rising as AI acts as a complement rather than a substitute. In other domestic developments, economists Eric Zwick and Owen Zidar highlight the policy impact of privately held pass-through business owners, while conservative commentator Erick Erickson exposes neo-Nazi influence networks attempting to shape the American political right.

Riyadh Under Fire: How Iran and the Houthis Turned Saudi Arabia’s Security Crisis Against It

The Washington Outsider | Irina Tsukerman

Saudi Arabia turned to China for diplomatic intervention after President Donald Trump refused direct military assistance against Houthi forces that seized territory along Yemen's Red Sea coastline and Bab el-Mandeb chokepoint. Houthi forces launched a rapid September offensive, capturing Mokha, Perim Island, and the Hanish islands to threaten vital Saudi infrastructure and the East-West pipeline while Riyadh struggled with declining interceptor stocks.

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman appealed to Beijing to leverage its relationship with Tehran, prompting Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi to meet Chinese officials while maintaining regional pressure. Beijing secured a diplomatic victory by posing as a mediator without assuming defense responsibilities, while Iran and the Houthis preserved their strategic leverage over global energy flows. Washington's refusal to intervene reinforced Houthi incentives to separate American security from Saudi security, leaving Riyadh vulnerable to ongoing attacks despite Chinese diplomatic engagement.

Trump and Xi Can’t Stop the U.S.-China Spiral

Foreign Affairs | Orville Schell

Historical U.S. diplomatic successes, including Harry Truman creating NATO in 1949 and John F. Kennedy resolving the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, established unrealistic expectations that personalist summitry can resolve intractable geopolitical rivalries. This reliance on high-level leader engagement fosters dangerous delusions among China watchers regarding bilateral stability. Such diplomatic approaches ignore structural pressures driving the current competitive spiral between Washington and Beijing.

Personal diplomacy between U.S. and Chinese leaders remains inherently limited against deep-seated systemic friction. These structural divergences continue to constrain bilateral relations regardless of presidential interventions. Future engagements between Washington and Beijing will likely fail to arrest this broader competitive trajectory.

When Xi Comes to Washington

Council on Foreign Relations | Rush Doshi

Chinese President Xi Jinping arrives in Washington on September 23, 2026, for a high-stakes state visit with U.S. President Donald Trump amid asymmetrical economic leverage and lingering structural trade tensions. Washington offered unprecedented ceremonial honors—including fighter jet flyovers and tarmac greetings—despite Beijing throttling rare earth exports and expanding economic pressure.

Beijing previously leveraged supply chain controls to roll back U.S. tariffs in the October 2025 "Busan deal," cementing China's status as an equal peer competitor. Washington holds unexecuted retaliatory measures, such as the September 18 Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act authorizing 100 percent tariffs on importers of Russian energy. However, the Trump administration has repeatedly prioritized short-term stability by postponing Section 301 tariff findings and delaying Taiwan arms packages. Strategic competition remains frozen. The bilateral summit is expected to yield minimal substantive deliverables beyond a temporary extension of the November 10 trade truce, limited agricultural purchase commitments, and a preliminary artificial intelligence safety dialogue.

Xi Jinping’s Return to Washington: A State Visit to Build Stability

Center for Strategic and International Studies | Edgard D. Kagan

Chinese leader Xi Jinping will conduct a state visit to Washington, D.C., on September 24, 2026, aimed at stabilizing U.S.-China strategic relations alongside U.S. President Donald J. Trump. The summit follows a trade truce established in Busan in October 2025 that exchanged relief from new American tariffs for uninterrupted Chinese rare earth and critical mineral exports.

Beijing seeks to extend this arrangement beyond six months, obtain tariff relief on $30 billion in exports, and ease U.S. semiconductor export restrictions. Conversely, Washington demands accelerated American agricultural sales prior to its midterm elections, enhanced fentanyl precursor interdiction, and Chinese assistance in opening the Strait of Hormuz. Time favors both nations. Indo-Pacific partners worry this bilateral deal-making will erode regional security along the Line of Actual Control, the South China Sea, and the Taiwan Strait while Beijing pursues expanded investment approvals for electric vehicles and battery technology.

China expels two top ‘disloyal’ military leaders from Communist Party

Al Jazeera

China expelled two top military generals from the Chinese Communist Party on corruption and disloyalty charges as part of an ongoing anti-corruption purge led by President Xi Jinping. Zhang Youxia, the Central Military Commission vice chairman and Xi’s close ally, along with CMC member and Joint Staff Department chief of staff Liu Zhenli, were investigated starting in January and removed from the military in late August.

State media reported that both officials formed cliques and factions while violating political discipline. These expulsions leave only two active members on the formerly seven-member Central Military Commission. The purge coincides with preparations for a key Communist Party assembly on internal governance and precedes a scheduled meeting between Xi and US President Donald Trump in Washington. Previous high-profile military removals include former Defence Minister Li Shangfu in June 2024, reflecting an unprecedented crackdown that has investigated millions of bureaucrats.

China Still Has What America Needs

Foreign Affairs | Adam S. Posen

The Trump administration must shift its economic strategy toward China by prioritizing strategic stockpiling and foreign direct investment rather than relying on ineffective tariff threats. Despite years of efforts under the Trump and Biden administrations to decouple from China, the United States remains heavily dependent on Chinese rare earths, specialized magnets, and critical components.

Because China holds escalation dominance in bilateral trade, Washington cannot easily force supply chain separation without inflicting severe domestic pain. Instead of demanding concessions on nonstrategic goods, the U.S. government should negotiate multiyear purchasing agreements for critical inputs and court Chinese direct investment in sectors such as electric vehicles and batteries. Historical precedents from the Cold War and pre-World War II eras demonstrate that strategic rivals can successfully maintain trade and interdependence. Ultimately, welcoming Chinese corporate presence and building reserves will buy time for the United States to develop domestic and allied alternatives.

Iranian proxies put Saudi Arabia on its heels in Yemen

The Week | Rafi Schwartz

Yemen’s Houthi rebels have launched a series of military offensives, capturing the port city of Mokha and destroying an overland pipeline that serves as a critical fuel node for the Red Sea. These coordinated actions have severely rattled Saudi Arabia, plunging Saudi oil exports to Asia from approximately 3.4 million barrels a day in June to 128,000 barrels a day in August.

As Houthi forces press toward Marib, the internationally recognized government’s last major stronghold, regional diplomacy between Gulf states and Iran has stalled. The escalation tests Riyadh's decade-long strategy to subdue the rebel movement through patient leverage, while an unpredictable United States remains reluctant to expand an already stalemated Middle East conflict ahead of congressional elections. Meanwhile, Israeli offers of military intervention create severe political dilemmas for kingdom officials wary of damaging their standing across the wider Arab world.

CNN, MS NOW and Politico file lawsuit against Trump's White House ban

BBC | Alicia Curry, Bernd Debusmann

CNN, Politico and MS NOW filed a lawsuit in US District Court in Washington against the Trump administration after reporters were barred from the White House. President Donald Trump announced the ban accusing the outlets of writing fiction or lies. In response, major US networks suspended pooled coverage ahead of the United Nations General Assembly in New York.

The First Amendment protects press freedom from government interference based on coverage content. This escalating conflict follows previous administration actions restricting media access, including barring Associated Press reporters over terminology and ongoing legal disputes with major news organisations. Major television networks emphasized the public interest in independent reporting as the dispute intensified across national media operations.

No Ideology Required: Drones and the New Domestic Extremist Threat

Small Wars Journal | Yassine el-Jamil

Domestic violent extremists across the ideological spectrum are increasingly adopting weaponized drones to execute attacks within the United States. Since late 2024, foiled plots targeting a Phoenix Pride parade, a Nashville power grid, and the White House have demonstrated that unmanned aircraft systems serve as a shared tactical choice for jihadists, accelerationists, and anti-government cells alike.

This domestic adoption mirrors tactics pioneered by international non-state actors such as Hezbollah, Hamas, the Islamic State, and the Houthis. While historical plots like Rezwan Ferdaus's 2011 plan show early aspirations, contemporary networks benefit from expanded online radicalization models and readily available technological knowledge. In response, policymakers and defense agencies have advanced counter-unmanned aircraft systems initiatives, including the Safer Skies Act of 2025 and the establishment of Joint Interagency Task Force 401 to streamline federal and local drone defense coordination across the homeland.

“The Enemy of My Enemy Is My Friend”: How American Pressure United Iran

Sofrep | Donald Bolduc

The Trump administration misjudged Iranian national pride by treating relentless hostility as a substitute for real strategy, driving the population back into the arms of the regime. Prior to renewed hostilities, Iran faced unprecedented protests driven by economic strife that presented an opportunity to support democratic reform. Instead, external coercion and declared regime change stoked nationalistic fervor, culminating in a reported 30 million Iranians pledging to defend the theocracy against foreign threats.

Regional security dynamics likewise shifted as Iran demonstrated its military capabilities through tanker attacks in the Strait of Hormuz and confrontations with surrounding states and U.S. bases. This coercive approach isolated the United States, hardened regime positions, and proved that unwavering hostility misunderstands cultural identity. Mindful diplomacy and a deeper understanding of local aspirations remain essential prerequisites for fostering genuine internal change rather than inadvertently reinforcing authoritarian governments during foreign crises.

The End of American Exceptionalism?

The New York Times | Charles A. Kupchan

President Donald Trump is dismantling the traditional foundations of American exceptionalism by weakening domestic representative government while abandoning democracy promotion abroad in favour of pragmatic engagement with autocracies. This shift is highlighted by his upcoming summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping and the administration's 2025 National Security Strategy, which explicitly rejects imposing social change on foreign nations.

Historically, the United States maintained a "city upon a hill" doctrine, first articulated by John Winthrop in 1630, which sought to influence the global order solely by serving as a domestic democratic model. However, the current administration's domestic actions and its support for far-right parties in nations like Germany threaten this legacy. By weaponising the Justice Department and targeting independent institutions, Washington is actively dimming its democratic beacon. Democratic inspiration is fading globally. Consequently, citizens in autocracies like China, Iran, and Russia watch as the American experiment stumbles.

‘The rules have changed’: has Russia begun to order assassinations on US soil?

The Guardian | Daniel Boffey, Andrew Roth

The US Department of Justice unsealed indictments against five individuals allegedly linked to Russian intelligence for conspiring to conduct murders in the United States, challenging long-held assumptions regarding dissidents' safety on American soil. The plot involved a $40,000 contract to eliminate an unnamed dissident in Washington, DC, utilizing a network that included Federal Security Service officers and Latin American nationals.

Former intelligence officials noted that this apparent abandonment of Cold War operating guidelines signals a shift in the Kremlin's calculation regarding international political ramifications and sanctions. Analysts suggest the public attribution serves as a counterintelligence measure amid broader geopolitical frictions, including reported Russian support for Iran. Consequently, exiled dissidents gathering at the Washington Dialogue conference expressed acute concern that traditional geographic protections have eroded, forcing heightened security postures across North America and Europe.

It’s Time to Update the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals

Foreign Policy | David Miliband

United Nations member states face an uncomfortable reckoning as their 2015 Sustainable Development Goals falter amid an escalating era of protracted global conflict. When 17 targets were established to eradicate poverty, hunger, and disease by 2030, the framework presumed functioning state apparatuses, reliable international cooperation, and stable development financing.

Prolonged modern warfare systematically shatters those foundational assumptions across multiple vulnerable regions. International development architectures must urgently account for the realities of chronic state failure and persistent armed conflict rather than operating on outdated assumptions of enduring peace.

What Iran and Ukraine Reveal About OSINT in War

Center for Strategic and International Studies | Justin Sherman

Chinese private firms and foreign adversaries are actively leveraging artificial intelligence and open-source intelligence (OSINT) to track U.S. military troop movements, aircraft, and base positions in the Middle East. Commercial geolocation data and scraped social media accounts allow adversary intelligence services to map operational deployments in real time.

Modern military operations now face an unprecedented level of battlefield transparency. Foreign actors routinely bypass Western regulatory boundaries by purchasing sensitive tracking records from commercial data brokers or deploying non-Western commercial reconnaissance satellites. In response, U.S. defense planners must combine target limits on controllable domestic data streams with deliberate data obfuscation across non-controllable networks. Strict consumer privacy legislation, enhanced operational security training for individual service members, and commercial satellite shutter controls can mitigate exposure. However, countering ubiquitous adversary collection ultimately requires deploying privacy-enhancing technologies, secure communication architectures, and strategic signatures designed to overload foreign analytical processing capabilities during future high-intensity theater conflicts.

Is this how the world ends? Extinction scenarios are taking over the AI debate.

Washington Post | Nitasha Tiku

Elon Musk joined a 2015 San Juan conference hosted by the Future of Life Institute where Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom presented slides arguing artificial intelligence could drive human extinction. Predictions involving species-level destruction have since entered the public imagination, influencing Washington lawmakers seeking to govern the multitrillion-dollar industry.

The Rand public policy think tank evaluated AI's capacity for destruction in a 73-page report published last year, concluding that while extinction cannot be ruled out, such assertions cannot be falsified and function better as prophecies than forecasts. Critics argue that extinction narratives underestimate human society's capacity to adapt and foster learned helplessness among policymakers. Meanwhile, physicist Max Tegmark hopes that continued warnings about human extinction will eventually force the United States and China to cooperate in containing superintelligent artificial intelligence, despite the tech industry continuing to race ahead.

Can Donald Trump Build a Middle Eastern Shield?

The National Interest | James Jay Carafano

US President Donald Trump initiated negotiations with Middle Eastern leaders on 22 September 2026 to construct a regional security architecture capable of containing Iranian military capabilities. Modeling by SpearMind AI indicates that only four percent of the forty-three regional security initiatives launched since 1945 succeeded within five years.

Historical precedents demonstrate severe structural barriers to collective defense without long-term American operational guarantees. Developing a functional shield requires regional actors to address projected air and missile defense requirements estimated between $75 billion and $250 billion over five years. Currently, regional defense expenditures average five percent of gross domestic product, with local manufacturing covering a mere 0.3 percent of consumption. Domestic production remains negligible. Furthermore, sustaining active air defense umbrella coverage costs between $8.7 billion and $11.7 billion monthly, while ninety-five percent of sustainment depends on offshore suppliers. Long-term cohesion also hinges on repairing strained diplomatic relations, particularly between Israel and Jordan.

Human Cost of Outdated GPS

Real Clear World | Justin Deifel

Outdated positioning, navigation, and timing systems leave military forces vulnerable to enemy jamming and spoofing in contested environments like Ukraine and Iran. GPS signals travel over 20,000 kilometers and arrive extremely weak, creating critical operational risks when adversary electronic warfare degrades precision weapons and drones. Bureaucratic acquisition processes and outdated policies have historically delayed necessary modernizations, highlighted by the cancellation of the Next Generation Operational Control System after 15 years and $6 billion spent.

Commercial innovation has already produced complementary positioning, navigation, and timing solutions that can be fielded rapidly to eliminate total dependence on a single fragile constellation. Policymakers must immediately integrate these available commercial capabilities to protect service members and eliminate avoidable tactical vulnerabilities. Accelerating the deployment of resilient navigation infrastructure remains essential to preventing further casualties among deployed personnel.

Pete Hegseth declares war — on his own troops

Salon | Gregory A. Daddis

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is waging an unprecedented ideological campaign against U.S. service members by purging military ranks of perceived diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. Representative Thomas Massie, R-Ky., has called for an impeachment vote against Hegseth over the campaign, which has reportedly blocked the advancement of more than 80 generals and admirals while disproportionately impacting Black and female officers.

Historical conflicts like World War II, Vietnam, and the post-9/11 wars subjected armed forces to severe physical and psychological strains, but the current institutional damage is being inflicted from within by civilian leadership. Hegseth's promotion interventions and focus on tactical masculinity threaten force effectiveness and narrow recruitment for the all-volunteer military. While past wars generated internal friction such as combat fragging incidents during Vietnam, the ongoing internal crusade risks weakening national defense through ideologically driven personnel policies.

Hamza bin Laden and What Türkiye and Qatar Were Really Discussing With the Taliban

Sofrep | Sarah Adams

Turkish and Qatari intelligence officials met with senior Taliban leadership in Kabul to discuss managing Afghanistan's terrorist infrastructure rather than dismantling it. The discussions centered on concealing the survival of al-Qaeda emir Hamza bin Laden after his public re-emergence, leveraging the Doha Agreement framework in future negotiations with the United States, and relocating Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan and Baloch Liberation Army fighters deeper into Afghanistan.

Rather than pressing for the removal of militant groups, the intermediaries aimed to help the Taliban lower international pressure through temporary operational pauses while keeping core capabilities intact. The Taliban preserves its militant networks to use as regional leverage, maintaining safe havens across more than twenty terrorist organizations operating within the country. This diplomatic engagement demonstrates that external intermediaries are actively assisting in concealing and managing militant infrastructure rather than dismantling active terrorist networks inside Afghanistan.