From Kashmir to Reels: The Localisation of Jihadist Propaganda in Indian Digital Spaces

GNET Research | Ashreet Acharya

Jihadist groups including Islamic State Khorasan Province, Al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent, Lashkar-e-Taiba, and Jaish-e-Mohammed are systematically localising digital propaganda across India. Replacing traditional Urdu long-form releases, these networks deploy Hindi and regional-language short-form videos across mainstream platforms such as Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts to maximize engagement.

This strategy aligns extremist messaging with platform recommendation algorithms and domestic socio-political grievances to engage demographic groups far beyond historical Kashmir-centric recruitment pools. A July 2026 National Investigation Agency operation across 10 states exposed a multi-stage funnel where public accounts guide recruits into encrypted Telegram and WhatsApp channels. Standard keyword moderation tools fail. Artificial intelligence translation software and decentralized volunteer media organs like the Al-Isabah and Al-Azaim Foundations rapidly regenerate deleted material in Malayalam, Tamil, and Bengali. This resilient, multi-tiered dissemination pipeline significantly complicates counterterrorism monitoring and digital enforcement strategies throughout the Indian subcontinent.

17,500 feet and counting: How army is betting on FPV drones in the Himalayas

The Times of India | Dhruv Yadav

The Indian Army has ordered 225 indigenous First-Person View (FPV) drones from Aerodrone Robotics after high-altitude field trials at 17,500 feet in Ladakh and Spiti. These tactical platforms aim to modernize logistics and reconnaissance along the Line of Actual Control with China and the Line of Control with Pakistan.

Operating at altitudes between 12,000 and 18,000 feet requires overcoming severe physical constraints, as atmospheric density drops by 40 to 50 percent at 15,000 feet, significantly degrading propeller thrust and battery endurance. Cold temperatures drop sea-level battery flight times from six minutes down to just two or three minutes. Unmanned systems provide a cheaper, faster, and safer alternative to traditional foot patrols, pack mules, and aging Cheetah helicopters. Small tactical units like Ashni platoons will employ these military-hardened systems to bypass digitized air defences and maintain isolated Himalayan outposts. Indigenous software development ensures adaptability in high-altitude environments.

The Afghan Taliban’s Growing Drone War Against Pakistan

The Diplomat | Sadia Sulaiman

Pakistan’s air defense forces shot down eight drones entering national airspace from Afghanistan on September 23, intercepting four near the Torkham border crossing and four near Kohat in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. In retaliatory actions, Pakistani forces struck 10 locations in Afghanistan utilized by the Afghan Taliban to launch and store uncrewed aerial vehicles.

Cross-border aerial threats have escalated rapidly. These operational developments highlight an expanding two-pronged security challenge along the western border, where direct Afghan Taliban drone strikes against Pakistani security positions coincide with the proliferation of drone technology to affiliated militant groups like Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan. Uncrewed systems once restricted to surveillance, propaganda, and battlefield observation have evolved into precision strike assets capable of extending the reach and lethality of cross-border attacks against military check posts. This tactical shift destabilizes fragile bilateral relations. Continued technology transfers enable non-state actors to conduct precise aerial operations, creating unprecedented air defense vulnerabilities across frontier zones.

Russia and Pakistan Sign Deal on Rail Connectivity

The Jamestown Foundation | Syed Fazl-e-Haider

Pakistan Railways and Russian Railways Logistics signed an international freight-forwarding contract on August 31 to establish a container train corridor connecting Pakistan, Russia, Central Asia, and potentially Belarus. This strategic initiative leverages the International North–South Transport Corridor to secure direct overland transit between Russian industrial hubs and South Asian warm-water ports.

Grounded in a mutual desire to bypass traditional maritime trade bottlenecks, the proposed 8,000-kilometer route promises to reduce transit times between Moscow and Karachi to 20–25 days. Progress remains stalled. Severe infrastructure deficits persist along the corridor, notably the missing Rasht–Astara rail link in Iran and incompatible regional gauge standards. Security instabilities across transit territories further complicate execution, following previous trial cancellations in June 2025 due to regional conflict. Nevertheless, successful operationalization would significantly alter Eurasian trade dynamics, cementing Russia's economic footprint in South Asia while offering landlocked Central Asian states direct commercial access to the Arabian Sea.

Will Overregulation Cost America the AI Race?

National Interest | Asheesh Agarwal

The United States risks losing the artificial intelligence supremacy race to China through excessive domestic regulation and infrastructure roadblocks. Artificial intelligence could raise global gross domestic product by $7 trillion over the next decade while transforming healthcare, manufacturing, defense, and energy sectors. China is currently investing $1.4 trillion in artificial intelligence, generating twice as much power as America, and leading in critical technology domains.

Meanwhile, American policymakers have introduced over 1,800 state-level artificial intelligence bills and more than 300 active data center moratoriums across 44 states. These regulatory barriers threaten to stifle innovation and infrastructure investment. Embracing technological change remains essential to prevent a modern digital divergence that cedes global leadership and authoritarian standard-setting to Beijing.

The PRC’s Compute Push Goes Global

RealClearDefense | Daniel Fu

Chinese technology companies are expanding artificial intelligence compute infrastructure across overseas markets despite severe domestic hardware shortages caused by United States export controls. Chinese firms are deploying domestic accelerator hardware and exporting cloud-based processing capacity through standardized "Token going global" service frameworks to establish international technical standards. This dual strategy allows Beijing to monetize excess aggregate compute capacity while bypassing high-end frontier chip bottlenecks.

Aggregate computing scale expanded rapidly. Subsidized energy costs and integrated telecommunications infrastructure enable providers like Huawei and Sugon to offer cloud inference at one-fifth the cost of Western competitors. Initial overseas deployments in Saudi Arabia, South Korea, and Southeast Asia aim to secure market share across the Global South. By embedding Huawei Ascend accelerators and Hygon DCU architectures into foreign data centers, Beijing seeks to cultivate long-term technical dependencies. This international expansion creates foreign demand that actively accelerates the iterative development of China's domestic artificial intelligence ecosystem.

China Needs Russia in the Fight

CEPA | Chels Michta

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi privately informed European Union officials that Beijing cannot afford a Russian defeat in Ukraine, underscoring how Moscow’s military survival directly prevents the United States from shifting its primary strategic focus toward the Indo-Pacific. Since 2022, China has purchased $372bn in Russian fossil fuels and exported $10.3bn in dual-use technologies to sustain Moscow's wartime economy.

This economic lifeline is reciprocal. Russia compensates for Beijing's industrial leverage by offering sensitive military technologies, including hypersonic systems, nuclear attack submarine propulsion, and joint development on missile defence surpassing the S-500. Both militaries have conducted 119 combined exercises, deepening operational ties alongside Russian naval and missile assistance to North Korea and Iran. Furthermore, China holds pricing leverage in Power of Siberia 2 pipeline negotiations, yet requires Russian military distraction in Europe to maintain its Indo-Pacific trajectory. This structural dual-dependency permanently frustrates Western efforts to sever the bilateral alignment.

China’s AI Rollout Has No Off Switch

Foreign Policy | Agathe Demarais

China’s August 2025 “AI Plus” action plan targets a 70 percent penetration rate for artificial intelligence agents and smart devices by 2027, scaling to 90 percent by 2030. While Washington focuses on developing frontier models, Beijing prioritizes rapid economic diffusion and industrial integration. This strategy leverages massive industrial data collection, widespread application deployment, and embodied robotics to drive domestic productivity.

In 2025, Chinese firms installed 354,000 industrial robots and produced 12,800 humanoid units, representing 90 percent of global production. Internationally, Beijing expands its technological footprint by flooding global markets with open-weight models like Zhipu’s GLM-5.3, which reached over 1.4 million downloads on Hugging Face. This open-source diffusion strategy fundamentally undermines Western safety frameworks centered on emergency shutdown mechanisms. Kill switches cannot recall open weights. Once released globally, modified open-source architectures permanently eliminate centralized safety oversight, permitting unrestricted user modification, guardrail removal, and uncontrolled autonomous recursive self-improvement across decentralized global servers.

How closer China-US ties – and more Xi-Trump summits – could work in Iran’s favour

South China Morning Post | Fan Chen

Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump established enhanced diplomatic alignment on Iran during September 2026 talks in Washington, endorsing commitments against nuclear proliferation and tolling on international waterways. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian publicly welcomed Beijing’s calls for US-Iran dialogue as the Middle East conflict entered its seventh month.

Beijing's high-level engagement with Washington provides Tehran an effective diplomatic channel during heightened regional friction. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi consulted Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi prior to the Washington summit to safeguard Iranian interests. Diplomacy remains stalled following Donald Trump's rejection of a Qatari-brokered proposal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Washington is preparing a third aircraft carrier deployment. Beijing balances critical energy security with its strategic ties to Tehran while avoiding direct military intervention. Further head-of-state summits scheduled at APEC in Shenzhen in November 2026 and the G20 in Miami in December 2026 create additional diplomatic avenues.

China muddies the waters east of Taiwan

International Institute for Strategic Studies | Erik Green

China launched a joint special maritime law-enforcement operation east of Taiwan from 6–10 June 2026, marking a significant escalation in Beijing’s grey-zone strategy. Involving the China Coast Guard, Maritime Safety Administration, and Ministry of Transport, Chinese vessels hailed 198 commercial ships and questioned three flagged in Benin, Liberia, and Singapore.

The operation established a new near-shore governance model designed to assert substantive jurisdiction beyond the Taiwan Strait. Subsequent deployments included survey ships like the Lanhai 201 alongside civilian research institutes to institutionalize administrative control over maritime transit and fisheries. Combined naval and coast guard deployments surged through August. Meanwhile, aerial incursions into Taiwan’s Air Defence Identification Zone fell to a three-year low. Beijing explicitly framed this multi-agency expansion as a direct countermeasure to Japanese and Philippine boundary negotiations. By dispersing law-enforcement responsibility across civilian entities, China seeks to construct a layered administrative presence that normalizes jurisdictional authority in international waters.

Beijing Makes Rapid Gains Toward Seed Self-Reliance

Jamestown | Christopher Nye, Charles Sun

Chinese seed enterprises and state institutions are rapidly achieving technological self-reliance, breaking longstanding foreign monopolies across genotyping chips, genetically modified traits, and artificial intelligence-driven breeding platforms. Domestic genotyping chips developed by firms like Suzhou Laso Biotech and MolBreeding have displaced imports from U.S. suppliers such as Illumina and Thermo Fisher Scientific, while Ministry of Commerce restrictions and intellectual property policies consolidate the domestic market.

Simultaneously, genetically modified crops such as corn and soybeans rely exclusively on indigenous traits, with foreign competitors barred from domestic cultivation by negative lists and biosafety regulations. State-backed initiatives integrate artificial intelligence and streamlined gene-editing approvals into commercial pipelines, positioning domestic developers to expand their footprint internationally across major agricultural markets.

China Might Lap the United States on AI Adoption

Foreign Policy | Kenton Thibaut, Kat Duffy

China established the World AI Cooperation Organization in Shanghai alongside twenty-nine signatory nations to promote open-weight model sharing, capacity building, and localized artificial intelligence infrastructure across developing countries. This multilateral initiative contrasts with Washington's Pax Silica export framework, which bundles full-stack American technology packages for favored allies while enforcing exclusive partnership commitments.

Beijing's strategy targets low- and middle-income states across ASEAN, the African Union, and the Arab League by offering adaptable, affordable open-source tools. Washington risks international isolation. By demanding that international partners choose between competing technology stacks, the United States ignores growing global demand for multi-vendor technological sovereignty and non-aligned digital governance. President Xi Jinping pledged 5,000 training slots and meteorological early-warning access through China's Mazu platform, securing early operational footprints in target markets. As European and Global South leaders reject single-source dependencies, Beijing's collaborative framework threatens to outpace American commercial market dominance across key foreign administrative and industrial sectors.

America’s Naval Power Is Waning. That Could Change.

New York Times | Rana Foroohar

The United States risks losing a defining maritime security struggle as its once-dominant shipbuilding capacity steadily erodes. Despite the rise of modern drone warfare, more than 80 percent of global trade continues to move by sea, highlighting the enduring link between commercial and military power. While Washington abandoned support for commercial shipping during the Reagan era and slashed defense budgets in the 1990s, Beijing prioritized maritime industries through decades of targeted state backing.

China now commands overwhelming production capacity, having tripled its output relative to the United States over the past twenty years as part of a deliberate strategy to dominate global commerce. This divergence stems from an era of extensive economic outsourcing that traded domestic industrial resilience for cheaper consumer goods. Rebuilding American naval power will require reversing decades of manufacturing decline.

The Case for Economic Espionage

Foreign Affairs | David S. Cohen

Chinese state-sponsored espionage operations targeted United States commercial technologies in over half of 224 incidents recorded by the Center for Strategic and International Studies between 2000 and 2023. Former CIA Deputy Director David S. Cohen argues that Washington must conduct offensive economic espionage against foreign companies to protect American competitiveness.

Historical precedents include Cold War KGB trade secret theft and 1980s French intelligence surveillance of American technology firms. Foreign states routinely deploy intelligence services to bolster critical domestic industrial sectors. State-directed intellectual property theft systematically erodes Western technological dominance. Restraint leaves domestic firms vulnerable. Cohen advocates abandoning long-standing American policy prohibitions against intelligence gathering conducted for direct commercial advantage. Aligning intelligence collection with private sector innovation redefines national security statecraft in an era of intense geoeconomic rivalry. Washington faces structural pressure to leverage state intelligence assets for corporate defense and long-term market supremacy.

Army releases 'How the Army Fights' operational warfighting guidance

Army.mil

The U.S. Army released How the Army Fights, new operational warfighting guidance providing a common framework to translate tactical success into campaign-level advantage for the Joint Force. Developed by Vice Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Christopher C. LaNeve, the publication builds on multidomain operations doctrine by detailing how land power is employed at the operational level of war.

The framework organizes Army land power across four interdependent operational elements: convergence, strike, close battle, and endurance. These elements connect tactical battlefield actions to overarching campaign outcomes. The guidance directs formations to prioritize readiness for the pacing threat, defend the homeland, and strengthen interoperability with allies and partners while integrating advanced capabilities like uncrewed systems and artificial intelligence alongside enduring human judgment.

Pete Hegseth and the risk of the Pentagon’s intellectual disarmament

Ejercitos | Christian D. Villanueva López

Pete Hegseth has prioritized physical fitness, discipline, and combat readiness across the US Armed Forces while dismantling key analytical institutions that provide vital intellectual depth. US defense restructuring efforts have included the temporary dismantling of the Office of Net Assessment and cuts to civilian positions at the China Aerospace Studies Institute, alongside new limits on civilian tenure-track faculty at military academies.

These institutional changes risk hollowing out long-term strategic forecasting and specialized adversary analysis. Modern military complexity demands deep technical expertise, advanced programming capabilities, and continuous research that temporary military assignments alone cannot easily sustain. Eliminating specialized civilian expertise undermines the institutional memory required to navigate future strategic competition and technological acceleration. Future commanders will increasingly confront ambiguous operational environments where traditional manuals offer insufficient guidance for navigating multi-domain warfare. Preserving rigorous intellectual infrastructure remains essential for maintaining strategic foresight amidst accelerating geopolitical rivalry.

Germany is right to rearm. But Europe has well-founded fears about that

The Guardian | Paul Taylor

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has committed to making Germany Europe’s strongest conventional military power by 2039 through a dramatic surge in national defence spending. This rapid rearmament strategy has revived long-standing anxieties among European allies regarding potential German hegemony across the continent. Doubts over the reliability of the United States security guarantee under NATO, alongside the rise of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland party, have further intensified regional political concerns.

Berlin recently notified parliament of €123.3bn in planned arms purchases, prioritizing domestic and American defense industries over continental partners. Germany also canceled joint next-generation fighter aircraft and tank development programs with France while ruling out joint European defence bonds. Neighbors fear a unilateral buildup. By shunning cooperative procurement and integration, Berlin's massive spending surge threatens to destabilize regional defense cohesion and divide European partners.

The End of Gaza

Foreign Affairs | Khaled Elgindy

Israel continues to conduct persistent airstrikes across the Gaza Strip despite the October 2025 cease-fire framework negotiated under U.S. President Donald Trump's administration. This ongoing kinetic activity has killed hundreds of civilians, including approximately 300 children over a twelve-month period, following the release of the final Israeli hostages.

The framework established a phased political track meant to facilitate large-scale reconstruction and restore municipal infrastructure. U.S. envoy Jared Kushner promised early in 2026 that essential services would be restored swiftly to stabilize the enclave. Progress remains stalled. Gaza sits in a volatile political vacuum without functional administrative bodies or sovereign governance mechanisms. Without a clear transition strategy, constant tactical military engagements risk fully undermining the initial diplomatic deal. The absence of effective international oversight leaves the region vulnerable to renewed large-scale combat operations, indefinitely delaying long-term stabilization efforts.

Putin Found Ukraine’s Achilles Heel: Russia Has a New Class of Drones Slamming Kyiv While Defense Missiles are Running Low

National Security Journal | Caleb Larson

Russian forces are expanding air strikes against Ukrainian power plants, water networks, ports, and rail lines ahead of winter, deploying upgraded Geran drones equipped with Chinese turbojets and mesh radio modems. These networked swarms operate as dynamic airborne signal repeaters, dramatically shortening reaction windows for defenders. This technological evolution intersects with a severe air-defense bottleneck across Europe and the Middle East.

While domestic Ukrainian interceptors counter older threats, combating Russian cruise and ballistic missiles requires American MIM-104 Patriot systems. Production timelines for Patriot interceptors span 24 to 30 months due to rigorous validation of complex subsystems. Interceptor supplies remain dangerously finite. Meanwhile, Moscow aims to cripple Kyiv’s wartime economy through infrastructure destruction. Compounded by European Union carbon tariffs on metallurgy, Ukraine faces projected losses of $4.7 billion between this year and 2030. Surviving this multi-domain pressure requires sustained allied financial support and coordinated missile procurement.

The New Red Sea Wars

Foreign Affairs | Alan Boswell

United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio informed the United States Congress on June 3 that the three-year conflict in Sudan had evolved into a proxy war, explicitly blaming Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates for frustrating American mediation efforts. This regionalization of Sudan's internal power struggle reflects a broader, highly volatile geopolitical transformation unfolding across the Middle East and the Horn of Africa.

The convergence of these once-disparate regional theaters has effectively blurred traditional boundaries, binding the security architecture of the Red Sea littoral into a single, deeply intertwined crisis zone. Outside interventions and overlapping rivalries threaten to prolong regional instability and complicate international diplomatic responses. Strategic competition among Gulf states and external powers increasingly dictates local alignments, exacerbating protracted conflicts and obstructing pathways toward durable political settlements.

Who Will Be the Next UN Secretary-General?

Council on Foreign Relations | Diana Roy

Rebeca Grynspan Mayufis of Costa Rica secured nine encourage votes in the October 7, 2026 United Nations Security Council straw poll, establishing a narrow lead in the race to succeed incumbent Secretary-General António Guterres on January 1, 2027. Seven candidates remain in contention for the position, with four candidates being women amidst escalating calls to select the organization’s first female leader.

Informal regional rotation customs strongly favor a diplomat from Latin America and the Caribbean, where Javier Pérez de Cuéllar served as the region's sole prior secretary-general. Former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet Jeria withdrew on September 19, consolidating support behind Grynspan and Guyanese diplomat Carolyn Rodrigues Birkett. Security Council vetoes remain the decisive hurdle. Any successful nominee must secure nine affirmative votes without opposition from permanent members before General Assembly confirmation. The incoming tenth leader must navigate severe funding deficits, institutional reform, climate change, artificial intelligence governance, and sharp geopolitical rivalries.

The collective impact of intelligence reforms by democracies

IISS | Tom Field

Democracies across Europe and the Indo-Pacific are systematically expanding sovereign intelligence capabilities and counter-espionage legislation to address mounting geopolitical threats and mitigate perceived American unreliability. Germany increased its intelligence budget by 26% to €1.5 billion, while Japan allocated approximately $400 million to establish a centralized National Intelligence Bureau.

These statutory overhauls extend beyond major economies to nations including Sweden, South Korea, Taiwan, and the Philippines. This widespread legal modernization creates formidable operational barriers for hostile foreign intelligence services operating in foreign jurisdictions. Enhanced domestic security frameworks—such as the United Kingdom’s National Security Act 2023 and the National Security (State Threats) Act 2026—allow rapid enforcement disruptions and proscriptions of foreign state proxy groups. Heightened intelligence sovereignty provides middle powers with crucial decision-making autonomy during crises. Autonomous collection reduces intelligence reliance. Ultimately, these bilateral and multilateral security partnerships foster a resilient democratic intelligence ecosystem capable of sustained operational burden-sharing.

Open-source platform puts the military common operational picture in any browser

Bioengineer.org

Researchers Damian Frąszczak and Mariusz Chmielewski from Poland’s Military University of Technology have developed COMPACT, an open-source, browser-based software platform designed to standardize and visualize the military Common Operational Picture. Detailed in the journal SoftwareX, the system addresses the limitations of closed commercial command platforms by providing a modifiable, web-driven environment for situational awareness research.

Legacy command-and-control software often restricts source-level inspection and demands heavy administrative deployment. COMPACT solves this. Built on Java Spring Boot and single-page client architecture, the software enables researchers, instructors, and planners to construct, evaluate, and modify multi-domain operational scenarios across land, air, maritime, cyber, and space domains. The platform incorporates decision-support services using Digital Terrain Elevation Data for line-of-sight analysis, flood-zone mapping, and route planning. Capable of operating in disconnected tactical edge environments, COMPACT features a REST API and unified data model to integrate geospatial formats and multi-agency reports seamlessly.

Capability in Adaptability: Training for Modern Conflicts in Contested Environments

Real Clear Defense | Mikael Edqvist

Army aviation and ground forces must integrate training environments to prepare for contested, data-driven multidomain operations characterized by degraded communications and electronic warfare threats. Project Convergence exercises demonstrate that future operational success requires shared data, common timing, and close coordination across joint formations to overcome compressed decision timelines.

Live, virtual, and constructive training platforms allow commanders to rehearse complex missions under realistic conditions before live execution. Electronic warfare, GPS jamming, and integrated air defense threats routinely disrupt command-and-control systems, forcing units to adapt tactics rapidly. Shared after-action reviews fuse multi-domain data to identify timing mismatches, targeting disconnects, and communications breakdowns across echelons. Modernizing these evaluation processes ensures units build resilience and situational awareness under uncertainty.

The Kill Web May Already Be Inside the Perimeter

Real Clear Defense | Burak Oktenli

Ukraine's 2025 Operation Spiderweb prepositioned first-person-view drones inside Russian territory, damaging up to 30 strategic aircraft and demonstrating how latent kill webs bypass outer perimeter air defenses. This capability enables concealed threats to activate directly inside rear areas, neutralizing traditional early warning timelines. Conventional counter-drone architectures assume an approaching vector, whereas pre-emplaced systems compress engagement windows to mere seconds.

Decision latency now dictates engagement success. Organizational fragmentation across base security, electronic warfare units, air defense elements, and civilian authorities introduces critical administrative delays during internal-launch incidents. NATO’s $40 billion Drone Edge initiative focuses heavily on technical sensor integration, such as the NCIA Data Challenge, but inter-service command handoffs remain largely unstandardized. Major multinational exercises like Baltic Trust 26 must rigorously evaluate authority transfers, operational data preservation, and decentralized execution rules under degraded communications to ensure command structures keep pace with fast-evolving threats like jet-powered Shahed drones.