Indian Strategic Studies

16 February 2026

Ubiquitous Technical Surveillance and the Renewal of Irregular Warfare

Christopher Moede

This article examines ubiquitous technical surveillance (UTS) as the operationalized manifestation of unrestricted warfare in contemporary strategic competition, arguing that it collapses normative assumptions of access, attribution, and initiative. It contends that the renewal of irregular warfare lies in signature reduction as a counteroffensive gray zone doctrine that preserves freedom of maneuver by centering human operational judgment under pervasive surveillance conditions.

“[Unrestricted warfare] means that all means will be in readiness, that information will be omnipresent, and the battlefield will be everywhere. It means that all weapons and technology can be superimposed at will… the boundaries lying between the two worlds of war and non-war, of military and non-military, will be totally destroyed…”

— Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui, Unrestricted Warfare

These prescient words were not speculative theorizing from two senior People’s Liberation Army Air Force colonels, but rather a declaration of the operational reality of strategic competition. This reality – the very operationalized manifestation of Chinese unrestricted warfare – we call ubiquitous technical surveillance (UTS). This condition has increasingly preoccupied policymakers and practitioners. The Central Intelligence Agency and its partner label UTS an “existential threat” that is persistent, pervasive, and increasingly automated across all domains. It has collapsed the crucial boundaries between war and non-war, and our traditional assumptions of access, attribution, and operational initiative along with it.

Oops: The U.S. Military Can’t Build A Military Anymore

Kris Osborn

Synopsis: As of February 2026, the Pentagon faces a systemic acquisition crisis defined by “requirements creep” and industrial fragility.

-Major programs like the M10 Booker and M1 Abrams SEPv4 have been sidelined or scrapped due to excessive weight and aging architectures.

-While the USS Zumwalt has found a new purpose as a hypersonic strike platform, the broader shift is moving toward “Attritable” systems—mass-produced, low-cost drones.

-The challenge remains: the U.S. defense base is currently optimized for a Cold War pace, while the 2026 battlefield demands software-driven adaptability and rapid iteration.

15 February 2026

Taiwan at a Techno-Geopolitical Nexus: Challenges and Opportunities across Critical Technologies

Alayna Bone

As geopolitical competition intensifies and technology becomes increasingly central to national power, Taiwan finds itself at the nexus of economic indispensability and strategic vulnerability. Its global leadership in semiconductors and information and communications technologies has long underpinned both its prosperity and security, yet mounting pressure from the People’s Republic of China (PRC), shifting U.S. industrial policy, and rapid technological change are forcing Taipei to rethink how it sustains this position.

This Asia Policy roundtable series brings together a diverse set of essays that examine Taiwan’s evolving technology and industrial strategies across emerging and established domains from frontier technologies enabling artificial intelligence (AI) to drones, satellites, energy systems, and trusted supply chains. Taken together, this roundtable explores how government policy, international partnerships, and domestic capacity-building intersect as Taiwan seeks to remain a reliable partner to democratic economies while safeguarding its autonomy. At stake is not only Taiwan’s competitiveness, but its ability to translate technological strength into long-term resilience in an era of techno-geopolitical uncertainty.

Sanae Takaichi has the power to change Japan

Ian Bremmer

When Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi called snap elections last month, it was a big gamble. Holding a winter election just four months into her tenure with no real policy record to run on? Staking her sky-high approval ratings – then hovering around 70% – on an untested bet that personal popularity would translate into seats? The conventional wisdom said she was overreaching. The conventional wisdom got torched.

Takaichi walked away from the Feb. 8 vote with a historic landslide, securing a rare two-thirds supermajority in the lower house for her Liberal Democratic Party. The LDP went into the day with 198 seats in the 465-seat chamber and walked out with 316. That's the largest mandate in Japan's postwar history, bigger even than any won by Shinzo Abe, Takaichi's late mentor. The LDP can now override vetoes from the upper house, where it lacks a majority. After cycling through revolving-door prime ministers for years, Japan has elected its most powerful leader since World War II.

Orbital geopolitics: China's dual-use space internet

Altynay Junusova, Rebecca Arcesati

Satellite internet has become a commercial and geopolitical focal point. Satellite communications promise to deliver connectivity to underserved areas, while bypassing the limitations of terrestrial networks. Concerns about the vulnerability of these critical networks have intensified since the recent sabotage of subsea cables in the Baltic Sea and the waters around Taiwan, for example.1 Satellite internet requires minimal ground infrastructure, thus offering a more resilient, reliable, and widely available option. This explains why this dual-use infrastructure is not just vital for civilian communications but increasingly also for militaries worldwide. While Russia’s war on Ukraine has exposed the pitfalls of relying on commercial providers,2 US-based SpaceX’s Starlink network of satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO) offers unparalleled speed, affordability, and redundancy.

Starlink’s effectiveness and its use in Ukraine have spurred China’s military to closely study LEO as a strategic subdomain of space.3 Beijing is investing massive resources in building an independent and complete space-based internet, encompassing low, medium, and high orbits and integrating technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT). The state-led projects Qianfan (literally “Thousand Sails,” 千帆星座, also known as SpaceSail) and Guowang (“National Network,” 国网) together aim to place 27,992 broadband satellites into LEO – 15,000 and 12,992 by 2030, respectively. Additional private sector-led constellations, if successfully deployed, would bring the number to over 50,000 satellites.

Harnessing the People: Mapping Overseas United Front Work in Democratic States

Cheryl Yu

Today, over 2,000 groups are helping the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) achieve its goals across the United States, Canada, Germany, and the United Kingdom.[1] These are part of a global network that likely numbers in the tens of thousands, according to some CCP sources.[2] Their efforts help shape a global environment that is more hospitable to CCP interests. The United Front Work Department (中共中央统一战线工作部), a functional department under the Party’s Central Committee, directs these efforts.[3] Internationally, it coordinates and carries out work in power centers outside the Party’s direct purview, including by mobilizing groups to further the Party’s ambitions. Foremost among these ambitions is “the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation” (中华民族伟大复兴).

According to the Party, achieving national rejuvenation includes replacing the United States as the dominant global power. In the words of a 2021 People’s Daily editorial, “the key to national rejuvenation lies in winning the initiative in the competition for comprehensive national power” (在综合国力的竞争中赢得先机是民族复兴的关键).[4] This sentiment has been echoed by other academics and political advisors in the People’s Republic of China (PRC).[5] National rejuvenation also entails securing the CCP’s territorial claims by annexing Taiwan.[6]

China’s demographic crisis has moved from theory to fact

Ronny P Sasmita

China’s demographic crisis is no longer a distant projection buried in academic journals or UN forecasts. It has become an observable fact, confirmed by official statistics and increasingly felt across Chinese society.

In January 2026, China’s National Bureau of Statistics reported that the country recorded its lowest birth rate since 1949. Fewer than eight million babies were born in 2025, a figure once unimaginable for a nation long associated with demographic abundance.

The decline is not marginal. With roughly 5.6 births per 1,000 people, China now ranks among the world’s lowest-fertility societies, closer to aging European economies than to the image of a rising Asian power.

Tumbler Ridge mass shooting: What we know so far

Jaroslav Lukiv

Canadian police say eight people have been killed in a mass shooting at a school and home in the remote rural community of Tumbler Ridge in the western province of British Columbia.

Six people were killed and at least 25 others were injured at Tumbler Ridge Secondary School. The suspect, 18-year-old Jesse Van Rootselaar, was found dead at that scene from a self-inflicted gunshot injury, police said.

Two others - the suspect's mother, 39, and step-brother, 11 - were also found dead at a nearby home.

This is what we know so far about one of the deadliest gun attacks in Canada's history.

Trump revokes landmark ruling that greenhouse gases endanger public health

Matt McGrath

Trump announces rollback of Obama-era greenhouse gas ruling

US President Donald Trump has reversed a key Obama-era scientific ruling that underpins all federal actions on curbing planet-warming gases.

The so-called 2009 "endangerment finding" concluded that a range of greenhouse gases were a threat to public health. It's become the legal bedrock of federal efforts to rein in emissions, especially in vehicles.

The White House called the reversal the "largest deregulation in American history", saying it would make cars cheaper, bringing down costs for automakers by $2,400 per vehicle.

Environmental groups say the move is by far the most significant rollback on climate change yet attempted and are set to challenge it in the courts.

How far will Trump push Cuba?

Dr Christopher Sabatini

The US’s 64-year embargo on Cuba is about to get a lot tougher. The Trump administration has cut off the estimated 27,000 to 35,000-barrel-per-day deliveries of cheap Venezuelan oil to the island and is threatening tariffs on countries that may think about trying to fill the void.

The end of that oil lifeline comes as Cuba is already suffering its worst economic crisis since the 1959 revolution – one that has brought rolling electrical blackouts, declining hard currency reserves, and food and fuel shortages.

President Donald Trump has said that he’s offered a deal to the Cuban government, headed by Miguel Díaz-Canel, and that the two governments are having discussions. The Communist Cuban regime faces an impossible choice: concede to White House demands that will threaten its power – for instance, to release political prisoners and hold elections – or try to use repression to cling on through a looming humanitarian crisis that could erupt into chaos and/or massive outmigration.

Trump turns to military leaders for high-stakes diplomacy

Filip Timotija

President Trump is increasingly turning to military leaders for some of his toughest diplomatic assignments, sending top brass to help negotiate the end of the Russia-Ukraine war, a potential new nuclear deal with Iran and forge closer ties with countries in the Western Hemisphere.

Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll, an Iraq War veteran and ally of Vice President Vance, has become a key negotiator as the U.S. seeks to broker peace with Russia. Adm. Brad Cooper, the commander of the U.S. Central Command (Centcom), joined talks in Oman last week for the first round of nuclear negotiations with Iranian officials. And Gen. Dan Caine, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, traveled to Puerto Rico and Trinidad and Tobago in lead-up to the U.S. forces’ raid on Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro.

“Normally, people who work in diplomacy work in diplomacy a long time because it requires a certain amount of skill, tact, patience,” Larry Haas, a senior fellow for U.S. foreign policy at the American Foreign Policy Council, said Tuesday in an interview with The Hill.

The Coming War in America

Christopher A. Williams

As overseas threats to U.S. national interests intensify, America’s enemies can be expected to carry the fight to the U.S. homeland. The reason for this is clear: The U.S. homeland is a ripe target for such attacks. America has significant systemic societal vulnerabilities, limited defensive capabilities, and exploitable gaps and seams between various organizations responsible for identifying threats and defending the homeland.

Today America is under attack by adversary nations, terrorist groups, transnational criminal organizations, violent illegal immigrants, and radicalized or disgruntled U.S. citizens. News stories and official Government reports provide ample evidence of attacks on U.S. critical infrastructures, plots to assassinate current and former government officials, illicit penetrations of key U.S. government facilities including military bases, attacks on U.S. lawmakers, and more.

U.S. racing to build space weapons to counter anti-satellite power of China and Russia

Bill Gertz

The U.S. Space Force is accelerating the deployment of counterspace weapons under a new Trump administration policy aimed at reasserting and ensuring American dominance over China and Russia in any potential orbital conflict.

The force is deploying three electronic satellite jammers and racing to match the more advanced space forces of China and Russia, which include arsenals of anti-satellite weapons.

Space Force Gen. B. Chance Saltzman, chief of space operations, said Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth recently set the goal for the U.S. military to dominate in space.

“And the Space Force was created to do just that,” Gen. Saltzman told The Washington Times. “The service has and will continue to invest in a full range of counterspace capabilities to deter conflict in space and to win decisively if called upon.

‘A step in the wrong direction’: Israel’s West Bank plans prompt global backlash

Julian Borger

Israeli measures to tighten its control of the West Bank have prompted a global backlash, including a signal from Washington restating the Trump administration’s opposition to annexation of the occupied territory.

Announcing the measures, which involve extending Israeli control in areas that are currently under Palestinian administration, Israel’s defence minister, Israel Katz, made clear they were aimed at strengthening Israeli settlements in the West Bank and pre-empting the emergence of an independent sovereign Palestine.

The measures, passed by the Israeli security cabinet, also make it easier to find out who owns land in the West Bank and for non-Arabs to buy property in the territory. It was not initially clear when the new rules would come into effect but they require no further approval.

Growing cracks in the BRICS+ wall

Burak Elmali

The 2026 World Economic Forum in Davos highlighted a deepening divergence in how global stability is managed.

While the formalization of President Trump’s “Board of Peace” (BoP) signaled a move toward a hyper-transactional, unilateralist approach to conflict resolution, it simultaneously exposed the structural limitations of the BRICS+ alliance.

Long popularized as a major alternative to Western-led governance, BRICS+ now faces a strategic crisis. As the international system shifts toward a diplomatic trajectory defined by bilateralism and personal diplomacy, the cracks in BRICS+ are widening.

Politics, Economics, and Security

Jordan Becker, Amanda Monaghan

The liberal international order is dead. The institutions, incentives, and organizing principles that characterized the post-war international system no longer inform state behavior, especially that of the United States. This systemic change—most obviously exemplified by the return of Great Power politics, the resurgence of antidemocratic and populist movements within states, and the degradation of international norms that shaped international politics during the Cold War—corresponds to dramatic changes in state behavior as well. President Donald J. Trump’s second administration has accelerated this process, for example, by upending the US commitment to the postwar order as a response to the rise of multipolarity and the erosion of American hegemony. For better or worse, we are living in an unprecedented period of systemic and foreign policy change. The scope and scale of this change have raised several important questions about the durability, promise, and pitfalls of grand strategy as an intellectual and heuristic tool driving foreign policy. Can grand strategy serve as an effective anchor in the policy process, guiding decision-makers in this time of uncertainty and profound political change? Or is grand strategy a straitjacket that imperils the kind of flexible thinking needed to navigate a dynamic, multiplex international system? To address these broad questions, this working group convenes scholars from various disciplines and approaches to explore the sources and consequences of grand strategy. This paper proceeds as follows. First, I review the relevant literature to identify what grand strategy is—and what it is not—and how international and domestic structures can impede or facilitate its development. Next, I present the state of current research on grand strategy.1 Finally, I derive and offer a few policy implications and recommendations.

Making hay while Trump shines: China’s tactical step back

Joe Keary

Beijing has temporarily adjusted how its military operates across the Indo-Pacific. This includes less aggressive behaviour from flotillas sailing deep into the region and its military engagements inside the first island chain.

But it’s a tactical calibration, not strategic adjustment. President Xi Jinping is making the most of a geopolitical window shaped in part by Donald Trump’s return to the White House. The long-term trajectory of Chinese power projection remains unchanged.

In a parliamentary committee hearing yesterday, Defence officials confirmed that another Chinese naval task group sailed deep into the Indo-Pacific late last year, travelling into the southwest Pacific after first being detected in the Philippine Sea. Chief of the Defence Force Admiral David Johnston said the group approached Australia but stayed ‘more than 200 nautical miles’ from it. The group didn’t enter Australia’s exclusive economic zone.

The Adolescence of Technology: Confronting and Overcoming the Risks of Powerful AI

Dario Amodei

There is a scene in the movie version of Carl Sagan’s book Contact where the main character, an astronomer who has detected the first radio signal from an alien civilization, is being considered for the role of humanity’s representative to meet the aliens. The international panel interviewing her asks, “If you could ask [the aliens] just one question, what would it be?” Her reply is: “I’d ask them, ‘How did you do it? How did you evolve, how did you survive this technological adolescence without destroying yourself?” When I think about where humanity is now with AI—about what we’re on the cusp of—my mind keeps going back to that scene, because the question is so apt for our current situation, and I wish we had the aliens’ answer to guide us. I believe we are entering a rite of passage, both turbulent and inevitable, which will test who we are as a species. Humanity is about to be handed almost unimaginable power, and it is deeply unclear whether our social, political, and technological systems possess the maturity to wield it.

In my essay Machines of Loving Grace, I tried to lay out the dream of a civilization that had made it through to adulthood, where the risks had been addressed and powerful AI was applied with skill and compassion to raise the quality of life for everyone. I suggested that AI could contribute to enormous advances in biology, neuroscience, economic development, global peace, and work and meaning. I felt it was important to give people something inspiring to fight for, a task at which both AI accelerationists and AI safety advocates seemed—oddly—to have failed. But in this current essay, I want to confront the rite of passage itself: to map out the risks that we are about to face and try to begin making a battle plan to defeat them. I believe deeply in our ability to prevail, in humanity’s spirit and its nobility, but we must face the situation squarely and without illusions.

America Isn’t Ready for a Drone War

Stacie Pettyjohn and Molly Campbell

This week, U.S. personnel near El Paso, Texas, tested a high-energy laser as part of their mission to shoot down cartel drones along the southern border. The resulting confusion between the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the Pentagon triggered the longest airspace closure since 9/11, just the latest example of how unprepared America is for a drone war.

In August 2025, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth created a new task force to rapidly field drone defenses, but recent events highlight the considerable work that remains.

This drone threat is not new. In 2016, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) was the first to use quadcopters to drop bombs on U.S. forces in Mosul, Iraq, raising alarms about how this commercial technology was being weaponized. Since then, the threat has only metastasized as drones have proliferated—and with America’s adversaries building millions of drones annually. Enemies could use these drones in clandestine attacks against U.S. bases, like Ukraine’s Operation Spider’s Web, or launch them in large numbers to overwhelm U.S. defenses.

How an AI-First Military Is America First

John Pence

America cannot afford to fight tomorrow’s wars with yesterday’s mindset. Wars are no longer fought only on traditional battlefields. They are fought in cyberspace, through data, and with advanced technology. That’s why declaring the U.S. military an “AI-first” warfighting force is a huge step toward leading the AI revolution in military training and development thanks to the leadership of President Trump and Secretary of War Hegseth.

President Trump recognizes that the world has changed and our enemies have moved faster than we have in recent years. And as Secretary Hegseth noted this week at SpaceX, our military must stop treating emerging technology like a peacetime exercise and start treating it as a warfighting priority.

The Drone Dock Blind Spot

Craig Singleton

For years, policymakers treated Chinese drones the way they treat most controversial technologies: as a procurement problem, deciding what to buy, what to ban, and what to phase out. But the drone market has already moved on. The next leap in public-safety aviation is the rise of drone docking stations, fixed hubs that stage multiple drones on standby to support first responders and protect critical infrastructure. While Washington recently banned new Chinese drones from entering the US market, Beijing is already shifting the competition to drone docks, positioning its companies to dominate an industry that first responders will depend upon when seconds matter.

The FCC’s Drone Ban Targeting China

Last December, after an extensive national security review, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) updated its Covered List to include foreign-produced unmanned aircraft systems and their critical components. The logic was straightforward: drones from certain foreign countries, namely China, can be used to harvest sensitive data or be sabotaged through rogue software updates. The FCC’s ruling did not ground Chinese drones already in use; however, the decision prevents new Chinese drone models from operating in American airspace on national security grounds.

China’s Cyber Forces Are Impressive, and Growing

David Vallance

China’s military modernisation since the start of the twenty-first century has been nothing short of astonishing. In little over three decades, it has built thousands of modern combat aircraft, created a fearsome arsenal of missiles, and fielded the world’s largest navy, radically changing Australia’s strategic circumstances. But amid all the discussion of air power, rocketry, and maritime power, there is a more silent but nonetheless critical element of its modernisation: China’s cyberwarfare capabilities.

In a networked world where everything from banking to missile telemetry is supported by cyberspace, capability in this domain is a critical enabler for all other kinds of national power. Moreover, cyber operations are the only kinds of attacks from which Australia’s geography provides no natural defence.

Europe’s unbreakable dependency on American AI

Gabriel Elefteriu

The global AI race has become the defining feature of our times. It is now taking place on an unfathomable scale and speed, and cutting across all domains. The latest example is SpaceX’s acquisition of xAI, with Elon Musk placing his largest bet yet on orbital data centres that can generate vast compute powered by hundreds of gigawatts, and eventually terawatts, of space-based solar energy. The idea is that better AI models lead to faster innovation and discovery, higher productivity and smarter technology – overall, to a stronger national economy and military, and thus a massive strategic advantage. It’s increasingly clear to most observers that the future, writ large, will be shaped by AI power to a decisive degree.

Certainly, some doubt or at least uncertainty still remains over this narrative. AI tech is still new, the hype is off the charts, and the practical and societal difficulties ahead are unprecedented. Nonetheless, even if there will be setbacks or even crashes along the way – like the dotcom bubble was for the internet – AI is here to stay and to upend the world as we knew it. There is no escape from the deep questions it raises for decision-makers.

Beyond the Chips: A Better Strategy for AI Dominance

Sharon Squassoni

The Department of Justice recently announced that its Operation Gatekeeper had helped dismantle a smuggling ring that had exported about $160 million worth of integrated circuits (semiconductor chips) to China in a six-month period in 2025. In describing the challenge, the US Attorney Nicholas J. Ganjei for the Southern District of Texas said, “These chips are the building blocks of [artificial intelligence] AI superiority and are integral to modern military applications. The country that controls these chips will control AI technology; the country that controls AI technology will control the future.”

Chips Enforcement Can’t Keep Pace with the Market. If so, the Trump administration should be worried. According to a 2025 Reuters report, nearly $1 billion worth of Nvidia AI chips entered China via black markets between April and July in 2025.

A few days after the arrests in Texas, President Donald Trump rolled back the Biden-era ban on exporting Nvidia’s second-best chip (the Graphics Processing Unit H200) to China. Perhaps he realized that despite significant effort, time, and money spent on enforcement, the administration’s ability to make a dent in chip smuggling has been marginal.

As naval combat evolves, there will be few ‘safe havens’ in a future war

Jeff Schogol

The Navy has been heavily involved in combat operations in recent years, including two lengthy campaigns against Houthi rebels in Yemen, during which sailors were pitted against enemy drones, missiles, unmanned boats, and other threats.

U.S. sailors have not faced a peer adversary since World War II, when the Navy fought against German submarines, helped the Allies come ashore in North Africa and Europe, and waged titanic battles against the Japanese across the Pacific. But the sheer variety of threats facing sailors today has not been seen since then, said retired Navy Capt. Bradley Martin, a senior policy researcher with the RAND Corporation.

“The threats can come from multiple domains — sea, air, space, ground-based systems, cyber — and might come in numbers sufficient to overwhelm ship systems,” Martin told Task & Purpose.

The Origin of the US-UK Intelligence 'Special Relationship'

J.R. Seeger

From the beginning of World War II in Europe in 1939, a formal, albeit limited, liaison relationship existed between the intelligence and security services of the United Kingdom and their American counterparts—the Army and Navy intelligence staffs and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Like many modern liaison relationships, the U.S.-UK relationship at the time was problematic, limited by suspicion and, at times, outright hostility. This changed in the 1940 when U.S. presidential envoy William J. Donovan travelled to the United Kingdom with instructions to report back to President Franklin Roosevelt on the likelihood of its survival. The president’s decision to go outside normal bureaucratic channels and send a civilian to answer his questions would change the nature of the intelligence relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom forever.

In the spring of 1941, the British had been at war for nearly two years. Their intelligence services had matured under the pressure of an effective German counterespionage program inside occupied Europe run by an aggressive military intelligence service (the Abwehr), and the Nazi party intelligence and security services—the Geheimstatspolizei (Gestapo) and the Sicherheitdienst (SD). When Donovan arrived in London, the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) leadership saw little benefit in providing their U.S. counterparts with anything other than leads to counterespionage investigations that would prevent Nazi sabotage at U.S. ports.

Why Has the M1 Abrams Tank Lasted So Long?

Peter Suciu

The United States military’s M1 Abrams main battle tank (MBT) is nearly half a century old. It was first developed in the days of disco, and first entered service in 1980, as Ronald Reagan campaigned for the presidency and the world wondered who shot JR.

An upgraded model of the tank, the M1A1, first rolled off the assembly line six years later, at the same time Tom Cruise made the F-14 Tomcat an international star in Top Gun.

Although the Abrams was developed singlemindedly for use in Europe in a conventional war against the Soviet Union, it didn’t see its baptism by fire until 1991 in the desert of Iraq, where it engaged and took out Soviet-designed T-72s with devastating effectiveness.

14 February 2026

When the Gulf Heats Up, India Is the First to Pay

Fatemeh Aman

A new US-Iran crisis in the Persian Gulf need not escalate into a full-scale war to harm India. The fear that the region is sliding into an escalatory cycle in which markets, shipping companies, and insurers begin pricing in the worst-case scenario is enough to create problems for New Delhi, whether in the form of inflationary pressures, higher shipping costs and insurance premiums, and diaspora anxiety.

India’s exposure to Gulf instability is structural. New Delhi may be a rising power in the Indo-Pacific, but the Gulf remains one of its most sensitive economic lifelines. That is why even limited military action involving Iran, Israel, or the United States tends to force India into caution, narrowing its options before it forces anyone else’s.

The Strait of Hormuz is the clearest reminder of how the region exports shock. The International Energy Agency estimates that from January to May 2025, approximately 14.5 million barrels per day of crude oil passed through the Strait of Hormuz, and that China and India’s imports together accounted for 46 percent of those volumes. Even without a blockade, escalation can trigger large pricing reactions because markets price risk, not certainty.

Will India’s Kaladan Project in Myanmar Meet the 2027 Deadline?

Rajesh A M and Varun Tripuraneni

In July 2025, India’s Union Minister of Shipping, Sarbananda Sonowal, told the Indian parliament that the India-funded and developed Kaladan Multi-Modal Transit Transport Project (KMMTTP) in Myanmar will be fully operational by 2027 after the completion of the Paletwa-Zorinpui Road.

The project was initiated in 2003, and a Framework Agreement and Protocols were signed in 2008. But since then, the project has faced numerous obstacles, delaying its completion.

The Kaladan project includes a sea component between Kolkata and Sittwe, a river component involving 158 km of the Kaladan river from Sittwe to Paletwa, and a 109 km road component linking Paletwa in Myanmar’s Chin State with Zorinpui in India’s Mizoram state.

Grassroots workers of Awami League blame top Ministers, former General Secretary for downfall of party

Kallol Bhattacherjee

As Bangladesh goes to the polls, the Awami League continues to remain underground while its workers carry out internal discussions dissecting the reasons behind the party’s downfall.

The party’s top leadership, including deposed Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, remain in exile in various countries such as India and Belgium, its grassroots leaders mince no words while examining the reasons that led to the overthrow of the party in the 2024 uprising.

Mohibul Hasan Chowdhury Nowfel and Hasan Mahmud, who were Ministers in the Sheikh Hasina Government, addressed press conferences in Delhi in January, but Awami League workers who spoke to The Hindu here said that many of the Ministers and individuals who formed the coterie around Ms. Hasina lacked popularity and acceptance within the party.

An army of lawyers is advancing. Taiwan is the target

Nathan Attrill and Shelly Shih

China has built not only a military to coerce Taiwan, but an army of lawyers to intimidate and constrain it. In 2025, Beijing’s lawfare campaign shifted decisively from largely declaratory threats to active enforcement. The objective is not legal resolution but deterrence: raising the personal cost of engagement with Taiwan’s democracy and normalising coercion under the fig leaf of law.

One clear indicator is the sharp rise in the detention and restriction of Taiwanese nationals in mainland China just in 2025. While Beijing frames these detentions as routine law enforcement, the pattern points to a deliberate strategy: using vague or politicised national-security charges to intimidate Taiwanese citizens, deter travel and engagement with the mainland, and signal that legal risk now attaches to Taiwanese identity itself.

The Chinese embassy just told you how it controls local media

Raymond Powell

When China’s embassy in Manila responds to criticism, it occasionally does something remarkable: it tells the truth. Recently the embassy has been remarkably forthcoming about how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) views the job of overseas Chinese-language media. These revelations were not intentional, I’m sure, but in defending its tight coordination with these Manila-based outlets, the embassy has given us all an education in how authoritarian states exploit free societies.

Over the past month, the embassy’s deputy spokesperson Guo Wei has issued four social media statements attacking the SeaLight Foundation’s recent reporting on Chinese state influence through these Chinese-language outlets. Rather than refuting the facts we documented, however, Mr. Guo’s responses confirm our thesis.

China is the bright spot in Trump’s foreign policy

Lyle Goldstein

After one year in office, the Trump administration’s foreign policy has drawn mostly negative reviews. Major efforts to bring peace to both Eastern Europe and the Middle East—both admittedly tall orders—have resulted in meager progress. That is to say nothing of the intense nervousness neighbors and allies feel over Washington’s unique new vision for hemispheric defense.

Amid that bleak overall picture, China stands out as a possible bright spot. While many pundits have forecast an intensifying great-power rivalry in the Asia-Pacific, it has not yet meaningfully materialized. The second Trump administration has rejected the ideologically charged anti-China position that hawkish figures like Mike Pompeo and John Bolton brought to Trump’s first term. Trump’s new approach in the Asia-Pacific considers deterring China as a secondary priority to the primary objective of securing the homeland.

China is the clean energy superpower, but there’s another snapping at its heels — and it’s moving even faster

Laura Paddison

The Pavagada Solar Park in Karnataka, India, on October 11, 2021. New research has found that India is electrifying faster and using fewer fossil fuels than China did at a similar level of economic development. Abhishek Chinnappa/Getty Images

Prem Chand is one of the many rickshaw drivers who spend their days darting and weaving along Delhi’s hectic roads. And like an increasing number of the city’s many thousands of rickshaws, Chand’s vehicle is electric.

He used to drive a gas-powered cab but ditched it eight months ago when he did the math and realized an e-rickshaw was far cheaper to run. Plus there’s an added bonus: it pumps no tailpipe pollution into the city’s famously toxic air.

From Venezuela to Tehran, Trump keeps the world guessing — to his advantage

Martin Gurri

We Americans are a parochial people — we’re homebodies.

War with Iran?

We’d rather watch the Super Bowl.

Overthrow a South American dictator?

Are you kidding?

Let’s talk about the Epstein files — sex, a supposed suicide and CIA all wrapped in one lurid package.

It’s one of our better traits.

Our country is often accused of rank imperialism, but in truth we’d rather putter around our own backyards.

Now and then, though, we need to peek over the garden wall and see how the rest of the world is doing.

If we do so today, we’ll find our sitting president, Donald Trump, feverishly rearranging the scenery and props on the geopolitical stage.

If the play he inherited from his predecessor was “The Decline and Fall of the American Empire,” Trump’s new production is an updated remake of “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.”

Everything is in an uproar, everything looks different — mostly, I must say, to the president’s advantage.

Subscribe to: Comments (Atom)