Exclusive: The Admiral Who Must Prevent War With China

Time | Eric Cortellessa

Admiral Samuel Paparo, who leads the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, is now facing the historic task of preventing a Chinese invasion of Taiwan as Beijing proceeds with its huge military build-up. With some 400,000 personnel and extensive naval resources under his command, Paparo intends to show credible strength by using a policy of deterrence through denial and by threatening to turn the Taiwan Strait into a drone-filled hellscape similar to the situation in modern warfare in Ukraine.

Even though the war games show that the United States and its allies will achieve a victory over an amphibious attack, the possible costs are still extremely high, particularly since other conflicts around the world are using up vital munitions. Paparo has to keep his pre-eminence and state of readiness over a huge area covering half the globe, balancing his classified capabilities with his overt deterrent in order to avoid a catastrophic great-power conflict.

Xi Jinping got the red carpet treatment from Trump - but not everything he wanted

Bbc | Laura Bicker

At the summit in Washington, President Xi Jinping enjoyed a high degree of ceremonial attention, but was unable to reach the main aims of his policy. The bilateral trade truce was extended by only a few months, from November to January, instead of being prolonged for a full year, so that the issues concerning tariffs, rare earth supplies, and advanced American chips were left for future talks.

Beijing is facing a domestic economic slowdown marked by low levels of consumer spending, a slow-moving property market, and high unemployment among young people, which means that protecting exports has become essential. Xi once again stated that U.S. arms sales to Taiwan are a red line after a previously postponed $14 billion arms deal that Trump used as a tool of diplomatic leverage. Regarding artificial intelligence, no specific safety agreements were reached beyond each side asserting its commitment to human control, and panda diplomacy has once again begun with the sending of Ping Ping and Fu Shuang to Atlanta.

China’s artificial intelligence goals and strategic choices for Europe

Bruegel | Reinhardt Crouzet, Giuseppe Porcaro

China has positioned artificial intelligence at the centre of its 15th Five-Year Plan for 2026 to 2030, pursuing technological self-reliance, domestic market safeguards, and global standard-setting. President Xi Jinping outlined this strategy at the July 2026 World AI Conference in Shanghai, promoting the World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization to advance governance.

Beijing leverages state-coordinated industrial policy, including multibillion-dollar semiconductor funds and compute subsidies, to mitigate economic deceleration and integrate AI into military capabilities. Meanwhile, the United States relies on private-sector capital and export controls, whereas Europe remains structurally dependent on foreign cloud providers and hardware. European policymakers face critical strategic choices regarding growing technological integration with Chinese open-weight models versus continued reliance on American infrastructure, risking long-term digital sovereignty vulnerabilities across industrial and security sectors.

As Xi Visits Washington, Trump Plays Down China’s Actions Against U.S. Interests

New York Times | Erica L. Green

President Trump hosted President Xi Jinping of China for a state visit in Washington, dismissing multiple reported infractions by Beijing against American national interests. Despite accusations that Beijing engaged in sinister election meddling and provided satellite imagery and spy satellite access to Iranian military forces for regional attacks, Mr.

Trump portrayed Mr. Xi as a personal friend rather than a geopolitical competitor. Senator Roger Wicker, Republican of Mississippi and chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, criticized the invitation on the Senate floor, condemning the Chinese leader as an oppressive dictator with a massive military arsenal aimed at the United States. The diplomatic outreach bypassed ongoing bilateral rivalries spanning trade, artificial intelligence, and global power, drawing pushback from congressional allies over Beijing's continued business dealings with Tehran and defiance of U.S. economic sanctions.

Chinese Culture Is Not the Obstacle: Taiwan, Democracy, and the CCP’s Narrative War

Small Wars Journal | Russell D. Howard

Taiwan's consolidated democracy directly refutes the Chinese Communist Party's strategic narrative that democratic governance is fundamentally incompatible with Chinese civilization. The island boasts fierce political competition, peaceful transfers of power, and a thriving civil society while preserving its rich Confucian heritage. Taiwan is living proof. This democratic reality challenges Beijing's cognitive warfare, which seeks to frame one-party rule as the sole authentic expression of Chinese culture.

Historically, mainland reformers pursued constitutionalism through the 1898 Hundred Days Reform and the 1911 Revolution led by Dr. Sun Yat-sen. These efforts failed due to geopolitical instability, warlordism, and foreign invasion rather than cultural rejection. Today, the island's security remains vital to the United States, not only for its dominant role in the global semiconductor supply chain but as an ideological alternative. Defending this democratic model prevents Beijing from forcibly claiming exclusive ownership over the political future of Chinese civilization.

Xi-Trump dinner puts US tech titans in spotlight – what does it mean for ties?

Scmp | Vincent Chow

Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump convened at a White House state dinner attended by prominent American technology executives, highlighting the central role of artificial intelligence, semiconductors, and bilateral tech competition. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, AMD CEO Lisa Su, and Apple executive chairman Tim Cook secured prime seats at the head table alongside both leaders in Washington.

That high-level corporate presence underscores how Washington increasingly evaluates its broader geopolitical relationship with Beijing primarily through a technological lens. Persistent strategic tensions between the two superpowers continue to shape commercial interactions across critical hardware and software markets. Diplomatic engagements remain closely tied to supply chain vulnerabilities and the ongoing tech war dynamics affecting global markets.

The Full Stack of U.S.-China Cyber Competition

Lawfare | Benjamin Ang

Full Stack Spies examines U.S.-China cyber competition across tradecraft, statecraft, and instability, utilizing an upstairs-downstairs framework that connects leadership decisions to operational execution. The book analyzes how Chinese state institutions like the Ministry of State Security and the People’s Liberation Army direct hacker groups embedded within commercial ecosystems.

It details the shift from intellectual property theft toward pre-positioning for disruption, specifically examining campaigns such as Salt Typhoon and Volt Typhoon. Strategic deterrence remains constrained by uncoordinated allied naming and shaming strategies that fail to alter Beijing's calculus. The analysis introduces volatile trust and not war as conceptual lenses to evaluate sub-threshold competition, though certain historical claims and attributions require closer scrutiny. Ultimately, the volume provides a structural foundation for bridging the gap between technical cyber mechanics and grand strategy.

Allocating AI Priority: A Strategic Token Reserve?

Small Wars Journal | Terence Check

The United States government faces severe operational risks during national crises because commercial artificial intelligence models lack prioritization mechanisms, prompting proposals to establish a strategic token reserve or leverage Title I of the Defense Production Act to guarantee immediate, machine-speed inference access for critical national security and emergency services over recreational users.

Without intervention, adversaries could exploit market-based allocation by launching computationally expensive energy-latency attacks to clog queues and degrade decision-making. This vulnerability stems from fixed short-term inference capacity, as constructing data centers requires years of permitting and grid integration. While the AI Action Plan contemplates priority access for the Department of War, a broader reserve would protect private sector network defenders and critical infrastructure. Decision windows are incredibly short. Voluntary agreements under existing legal frameworks would allow frontier model providers to coordinate reserve capacity without incurring antitrust liability, securing America's technological edge.

The Trouble With the Nuclear-AI Analogy: America Is Learning the Wrong Lessons From the Atomic Age

Foreign Affairs | Charles L. Glaser

Policymakers and tech executives frequently draw on atomic-age frameworks to propose nonproliferation regimes, verification bodies, and arms control agreements for artificial intelligence. However, the historical record of nuclear governance is far more muddled than this analogy suggests, having relied heavily on superpower coercion, domestic priority shifts, and improbably good luck during near-miss crises like the Cuban missile crisis.

Furthermore, the nuclear order is currently fraying as bilateral treaties collapse and states expand their arsenals. Crucially, nuclear technology differs fundamentally from AI because fissile materials are physically constrained and traceable, whereas AI components are built by private companies with profit motives across nearly every sector. This technological divergence, combined with the absence of a catastrophic catalyst to generate sustained political pressure, means the atomic blueprint cannot provide a ready-made governance framework for regulating fast-advancing artificial intelligence.

What Machiavelli Would Say About Trump

Foreign Policy | Stephen M. Walt

United States President Donald Trump is defying Niccolò Machiavelli’s foundational principles of effective statecraft, embodying a guide on how to be a very bad prince. While Machiavelli argued that it is better to be feared than loved, Trump’s blunders, such as the war with Iran, and the general inconstancy of his regime have caused other countries to lose their fear and push back against his predatory approach.

Trump has increasingly become hated and despised due to his attacks on subjects' property and women, his fiscal spendthrift habits, and his ignorance of military affairs. He is mired in an unwinnable conflict that damages the U.S. position while weaponizing the Justice Department for arbitrary personal vendettas. Furthermore, whereas Machiavelli advised that a ruler must conceal deception behind an appearance of virtue, Trump’s public prevarications fail the basic requirements of successful statecraft.

Unleashing Achilles: How the Army Can Build a Faster Learning Force

Small Wars Journal | Howard C. Romans III, Richard A. McConnell

The U.S. Army must accelerate its institutional learning loops to prevent rapidly evolving autonomous systems, proliferating sensors, and dual-use technologies from permanently outperforming traditional military acquisition and training processes. Recent directives like the 30 April 2025 acquisition reform memorandum mandate division-level unmanned systems and counter-UAS capabilities, yet bureaucratic bottlenecks block rapid scaling.

This systemic friction stems from a deeply ingrained military culture that resists ambiguity and intellectual risk, as demonstrated by officer discomfort during creative exercises at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College. In contrast, Ukrainian forces under existential pressure have bypassed centralised programs. By April 2025, their Brave1 platform registered over 1,500 companies and 1,000 solutions, proving that decentralised, user-driven ecosystems can rapidly field commercial technologies. Adaptation is now a continuous cycle. To institutionalise this agility, the proposed Army Innovation Learning Architecture outlines a five-step process—capture, screen, test, share, and institutionalise—to systematically scale grassroots soldier innovations before they disappear.

Special agents' blood and urine test results stolen in FBI hack

BBC | Joe Tidy

The cyber-criminal group ShinyHunters breached Federal Bureau of Investigation systems and compromised sensitive medical data for approximately 60,000 current and former special agents. The stolen files include fitness-for-work examinations containing blood and urine test results, home addresses, phone numbers, and doctors' notes detailing personal health conditions. Experts warn that the permanent nature of compromised medical records leaves law enforcement personnel highly vulnerable to targeted phishing, identity fraud, blackmail, and impersonation operations.

The hackers claim they exploited a vulnerability in an Oracle cloud storage system utilized across multiple internal platforms, including the FBI MedLink database and the FBI BEAST background-check repository. Rather than demanding financial ransom, the collective is seeking a retraction of an agency advisory published in May. The Federal Bureau of Investigation stated it is aggressively investigating the breach to determine whether the infiltration occurred directly or via a third-party vendor supporting FBIJobs.gov.

FBI investigating claim hackers have stolen details of all its agents

Bbc | Joe Tidy

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is actively investigating a claim by the cyber-crime collective ShinyHunters that it has compromised sensitive data belonging to approximately 38,000 bureau staff members. The threat group asserted that it exfiltrated names, badge numbers, home addresses, phone numbers, and spouse information by exploiting a vulnerability in an Oracle cloud storage system utilized by the bureau.

This breach reportedly affected internal platforms including FBIJOBS, FBI BEAST, FBI MedLink, and FBI BICS, with leaked samples exposing assignments targeting foreign intelligence agencies and drug cartels. The hackers stated the intrusion was motivated by retaliation rather than financial gain, demanding the bureau retract a May public service announcement characterizing them as extortionists. The group warned that failure to remove the advisory within one week will result in the full database publication. Meanwhile, the bureau stated it is evaluating whether its own servers or third-party infrastructure providers were compromised.

The System, Not the Centrifuges

Small Wars Journal | Rania Kisar

The Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding, signed on 17 June 2026 to halt United States-Iran hostilities, collapsed within weeks because it failed to address Tehran's regional proxy networks and ballistic missile capabilities. This diplomatic failure triggered a resumption of military operations on 7 July 2026, leaving the strategic Strait of Hormuz highly vulnerable to maritime coercion.

Historically, Washington has prioritised nuclear containment over regional security dynamics. This narrow focus allowed Iran to build an expansive, asymmetric threat network while nearing the nuclear threshold. Consequently, Gulf capitals now face severe economic blackmail through inflated shipping fees and targeted infrastructure strikes. The conflict remains unresolved. Any future diplomatic settlement that ignores these non-nuclear leverage points will merely reschedule the next military confrontation, leaving exposed partners to bear the immediate operational and financial costs of renewed escalation while Tehran retains its coercive regional leverage.

An Overture to Victory: Operation Vivaldi and Ukraine’s Path to Battlefield Decision

Modern War Institute | Franz-Stefan Gady

Ukraine's 3rd Corps launched Operation Vivaldi in May, collapsing a Russian salient near Lyman and liberating up to 250 square kilometers of land after achieving decisive drone dominance over Russian forces. By saturating rear areas with AI-enabled Hornet drones operating more than 150 kilometers behind the front, Ukrainian forces severed logistics, neutralized Russia's elite Rubicon drone unit, and isolated enemy formations.

This tactical success stems from a broader middle-strike campaign championed by defense minister Mykhailo Fedorov, shifting Ukraine away from narrow attritional approaches toward operational-level breakthroughs reminiscent of Soviet deep operations doctrine. However, overcoming continuous defenses in depth remains challenging due to heavy drone surveillance, requiring sustained targeting of enemy command structures and sustainment lines. While Operation Vivaldi validates this strategic pivot, transforming such local breakthroughs into a decisive victory requires scaling exploitation tempo to fundamentally alter Russian strategic calculations.

The Impacts of the Houthis’ Advance Could Extend Well Beyond Saudi Arabia

Carnegie Endowment for International Peace | Andrew Leber, Lesley Anne Warner

Yemen’s Houthis captured the Port of Mokha and the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, shattering a UN-brokered ceasefire and threatening critical global energy trade routes amid broader conflict with Saudi Arabia. This territorial expansion brings Houthi forces within 80 miles of Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti while intensifying security risks for Saudi energy infrastructure already strained by pipeline attacks.

Furthermore, the strategic shift enables closer operational collaboration between the Houthis and al-Shabaab through weapons exchanges and technical training. Meanwhile, the impending termination of U.S. funding for UN logistical support in Somalia threatens to provide militant groups with greater freedom of movement across the Horn of Africa. These compounding maritime and regional security developments complicate multilateral efforts to stabilize Red Sea shipping corridors and force regional actors to confront an expanded battlespace extending far beyond the immediate Yemeni theater.

Big Tech Is Destroying Democracy. Here’s How to Fight Back.

Foreign Policy | Ravi Agrawal

Digital information ecosystems are undermining democratic governance globally through algorithmic architectures designed to maximize engagement via outrage and polarization. Artificial intelligence platforms accelerate this destabilization by generating persuasive disinformation at scale, weakening institutional trust and empowering autocratic actors. Addressing these systemic vulnerabilities requires coordinated regulatory interventions, increased transparency from technology corporations, and legal frameworks holding platforms accountable for the societal harms propagated by their business models.

Without decisive structural reforms to alter the economic incentives driving digital platforms, democratic institutions will continue facing severe erosion from unchecked algorithmic manipulation and information warfare.

Space and AI – the final frontier

Engelsbergideas | Nayef Al-Rodhan

Artificial intelligence, quantum systems, robotics, and synthetic biology are converging to transform space exploration into an era of Disruptive Techno-Convergence. This technological fusion enables rovers like NASA’s Perseverance to navigate independently while driving commercial plans for large-scale orbital data centres powered by continuous solar exposure. However, concentrating computational power and hybrid intelligence architectures beyond terrestrial jurisdiction risks deepening global digital asymmetries and escaping regulatory oversight.

As decision cycles compress to machine speeds across tightly coupled systems, geopolitical competition over orbital infrastructure intensifies, raising the potential for rapid escalation. Without robust ethical frameworks and cooperative governance, the very capabilities driving human expansion into space could simultaneously magnify systemic vulnerabilities and civilisational risks.

Space and the new struggle for civilisational supremacy

Engelsberg Ideas | John B. Sheldon

Chinese and Russian space officials announced plans for a joint International Lunar Research Station to put humans on the moon by the mid-2030s, following the US Artemis Accords and similar lunar exploration initiatives by Japan, South Korea, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates. This contemporary space competition transcends traditional geopolitics, serving as an absolute mandate for civilisational states seeking grandeur and permanent dominion beyond Earth.

The democratisation and cost reduction of space technologies since the 1990s have enabled powers worldwide to pursue independent spaceflight and infrastructure. Unlike Cold War rivalries aimed at terrestrial ideological dominance, today's race leverages a trillion-dollar space economy to establish habitable lunar bases and project cultural values into the solar system. While critics highlight terrestrial challenges like climate change and poverty, space exploration remains an inescapable civilisational imperative driven by domestic validation, power, and influence.

China vs US: Who is winning the AI race, in four charts

Al Jazeera | Hanna Duggal

United States President Donald Trump and China’s President Xi Jinping are scheduled to meet in Washington, DC, to address critical bilateral issues, including a proposed artificial intelligence notification hotline to mitigate national security risks. This diplomatic push occurs as both superpowers aggressively accelerate their respective AI capabilities to secure global technological dominance.

Currently, the US maintains a significant lead in infrastructure, holding nearly three-quarters of global AI computing power and operating 5,400 data centres compared to China's 14 percent capacity share. Furthermore, US hyperscalers like Amazon and Microsoft are projected to spend $764bn on AI infrastructure in 2026, dwarfing the $102bn projected for Chinese counterparts like Alibaba and Tencent. The spending gap remains vast. However, Chinese open-weight models like DeepSeek V4 Pro are rapidly closing the performance gap, trailing US frontier systems by only eight months. China also dominates academic output, producing over 27 percent of global AI scholarly publications.

Navy wants more offensive, ‘expeditionary’ cyber capabilities

Breaking Defense | Justin Katz

The US Navy is actively seeking commercial capabilities from industry to conduct offensive cyber operations at the tactical edge. Anne Marie Schumann, principal cyber advisor for the Department of the Navy, announced the initiative at the Billington Cybersecurity Summit, aiming to deliver robust cyberspace effects to forward-deployed Sailors and Marines.

This shift breaks from decades of centralized control by U.S. Cyber Command, aligning the Navy with broader Department of Defense doctrines that support expeditionary cyberspace operations across multiple military services. Tactical edge operations require specialized hardware to target systems disconnected from traditional networks, often leveraging the electromagnetic spectrum via radio waves. Empowering fleet-level commanders to execute non-kinetic strikes directly from vessels bypasses lengthy authorization chains, granting crucial operational flexibility in contested maritime environments.

Excerpts of Interview of retired PLA Lieutenant General Yin Fatang regarding 1962 India-China War

Newreckk

Retired PLA Lieutenant General Yin Fatang details the operational planning and command structures of the People's Liberation Army during the 1962 India-China War. The Tibet Military Region established the ad hoc 419 Unit comprising roughly 8,000 personnel across three infantry regiments to operate in the eastern sector. Strategic adjustments included transferring the 55th Division from Xining alongside specialized artillery, engineering, and communications detachments from interior military regions.

Liu Bocheng characterized Indian forward deployments along the road network as a vulnerable single-line serpent formation, prompting an operational directive to strike the head, cut the tail, strike the back, and open the belly. By August and September 1962, the 419 Unit conducted battalion- and regimental-scale live-fire exercises, supported by the integration of more than one hundred English, Hindi, and Tibetan translators transferred from the interior to prepare for active combat operations.

SELECTING THE RIGHT LEADER, NOT THE BEST LEADER

War Room | Clayton Manning

Selection panels across military and civilian institutions consistently mistake confidence for competence, rewarding polished performance over job-relevant evidence. Traditional selection processes favour abstract qualities like raw intellect and charisma, yet decades of industrial-organizational psychology demonstrate that structured interviews and behavioral assessment outperform unstructured expert intuition in predicting performance.

The U.S. Army tested this science through the Command Assessment Program, which evaluated thousands of battalion and brigade command candidates using multi-method behavioral assessments before its discontinuation in 2025. Although the program ran at scale, its failure to publish longitudinal validation evidence left it vulnerable to termination. Expanding structured, behaviorally anchored protocols to NCO promotion boards and senior flag officer selections can mitigate interpersonal and ethical failures. Institutionalizing empirical validation requirements ensures selection mechanisms remain defensible, shifting the focus from finding the best candidate on paper to matching the right leader to the operational context.

The Price of Arctic Ambition

Foreign Affairs | Iris Ferguson

Extreme environmental vulnerabilities in the Arctic continue to disrupt modern military operations and commercial maritime transit across fragile polar theaters. A 2016 ice fracture beneath the U.S. Navy's flagship exercise north of Prudhoe Bay forced an early evacuation, while an early freeze trapped commercial vessels in the East Siberian Sea in 2021.

Meanwhile, a 2025 Canadian-led multinational drill exposed severe equipment failures as extreme cold grounded helicopters and knocked out communications. These recurring operational failures demonstrate that unilateral ambitions cannot overcome extreme polar environments without deep allied cooperation and specialized infrastructure. Sustaining operations in the high north requires robust collective logistics and shared icebreaker assets to mitigate severe environmental friction.

The Army That Learns: The Russian General Staff and the Hidden War in Ukraine

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