Indian Strategic Studies

3 March 2026

India’s AI summit: a success, but with omissions

Paul Fraioli

The India AI Impact Summit, held in New Delhi from 16 to 20 February 2026, was the largest of the four global summits on artificial intelligence (AI) convened since 2023. The scale of the event – with over 100,000 attendees, more than 400 sessions and visits from multiple heads of state – posed logistical challenges for all, but it also made a political statement: AI governance is not solely the province of Western elites but is of broad public concern, including in the Global South.

The summit-ending New Delhi Declaration on AI Impact was non-binding and largely aspirational, but was endorsed by 91 countries and international organisations, including China, Russia and the United States. Washington refused to sign the 2025 Paris summit declaration due to its treatment of AI risk and inclusivity. The India summit and declaration did not address AI used for military purposes, as had preceding events in the series.

India After Operation Sindoor, Through the DIME Framework

Lauren Dagan Amoss & John Spencer

India’s response to the April 22, 2025 Pahalgam attack and the subsequent May 7–10, 2025 Operation Sindoor marked a decisive shift from reactive crisis management to deliberate statecraft. It accelerated a trajectory that had already been underway for years, ushering in an era of strategic clarity, technological ambition, and economic confidence. The dust is still settling, but one thing is already clear: India’s long-term priorities remain growth, connectivity, and stability, with security serving those objectives. The DIME framework, which organizes the instruments of national power into the Diplomatic, Information, Military, and Economic domains, provides a clear structure for assessing India after Sindoor and for understanding the significance of the changes underway.

Diplomatically, Operation Sindoor marked a clearer articulation of India’s long-standing position on crisis management with Pakistan. India’s rejection of third-party mediation became explicit rather than implied. When external governments offered what they described as support for de-escalation, New Delhi publicly framed the crisis as a domestic security matter rather than an international dispute that required outside involvement. This position aligns with India’s long-standing view, grounded in the Simla Agreement, that bilateral crises are to be managed without external mediation. It also reflects what senior Indian officials increasingly describe as sovereign crisis management, a view consistent with Ministry of External Affairs statements that India alone will decide how to manage security challenges and that there is no acceptable role for outside mediation.

Hezbollah Is Winning the Race to Rearm in Lebanon

Matthew Levitt

Lebanon’s top general came to Washington last week to try to persuade US military officials, policymakers, and lawmakers that his country was getting serious about Hezbollah. Gen. Rodolphe Haykal’s pitch was simple: despite its “limited capabilities,” the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) have raided Hezbollah weapons depots south of the Litani River, established “operational control” over southern Lebanon, and are largely completing the first phase of Lebanon’s “weapons consolidation plan,” which is a euphemism for disarming the Iran-backed militia.

The reality, as I recently saw firsthand standing on the Israel-Lebanon border, is that the LAF is working hard, but still falling far short of disarming Hezbollah. Israeli operations targeting Hezbollah decimated the group in the fall of 2024, with exploding pagers, airstrikes that targeted key Hezbollah personnel and weapons systems, and ground forces that swept the Lebanese side of the border for tunnels and underground bunkers. Now, however, the LAF’s disarmament of Hezbollah—required under the November 2024 ceasefire with Israel—is being outpaced by the militia’s determined rearmament. Assessing the LAF’s disarmament efforts requires taking a hard look not at the measures of the LAF’s performance that Gen. Haykal touted—the number of patrols, raids, or seized weapons—but rather at metrics of overall effectiveness seizing weapons stored on private property, targeting underground weapons storage and production facilities, stopping Hezbollah from smuggling weapons sent by Iran across the Lebanese-Syrian border, and transparently disposing of seized weapons.

The Citizens Nobody Protects

FrameTheGlobe, Edge Narrator, and A Poet's Voice

Forty kilometers east, in Paktika province that same night, a religious seminary and a guesthouse were struck. Afghan authorities reported the buildings were empty at the time. The craters were not empty.

This is one side of the ledger.

The other side runs back further and runs deeper. In December 2014, a Pakistani Taliban gunman walked into the Army Public School in Peshawar and killed one hundred and thirty-two children. They were Pashtun children, in a Pashtun city, killed by a Pashtun armed group that Pakistan’s own intelligence apparatus had helped build and then lost control of. In Bajaur, in Swat, in Waziristan, in Kurram, in Bannu, Pakistan’s military fought a counter-insurgency across two decades that displaced millions of its own Pashtun citizens, flattened villages, and produced a generation of internally displaced families who returned to find their homes rubble and their young men radicalized by the experience of watching the state bomb their own neighborhoods. Pakistan counts eighty thousand dead in its war on terror. The overwhelming majority of those dead, soldiers, police, and civilians alike, were Pashtun. They were Pakistani citizens.

What we know after latest escalation in Pakistan-Afghanistan tensions

Aleks Phillips, Farhat Javed,and Mahfouz Zubaide

Pakistan has bombed areas in Afghanistan on Friday, after the Afghan Taliban earlier announced a major offensive against Pakistani military posts near the border.

It is the latest escalation of tensions between the neighbouring countries.

Afghanistan's Taliban government said it had launched an offensive on Pakistani military bases near the border on Thursday night.

Pakistan responded within hours, bombing targets in the Afghan capital, Kabul, and the provinces of Kandahar and Paktika - Afghan provinces close to its 2,600km (1,615 miles) border.

Details are still emerging and the BBC has yet to confirm whether there are casualties on either side.

The bombings are the most significant development in the ongoing tensions between the two countries, which had agreed to a ceasefire last October following a week of deadly clashes.

Bangladesh’s old new politics

Arjuna Keshvani-Ham

On the face of it, last week’s election in Bangladesh marked a long overdue return to the country’s long-neglected democratic project. Over a year and a half after the autocratic matriarch Sheikh Hasina was overthrown by protestors, a liberal party – the Bangladesh National Party, or BNP – won a landslide in the first free election for 16 years. A hardline Islamist party was kept in check. The country voted overwhelmingly in favour of implementing the sweeping democratic reforms fielded by interim leader and Nobel Peace Prize-winner Mohammad Yunus. Reports of violence were few and far between, despite the country’s past trysts with post-election instability.

And yet, driving around Dhaka on the morning after the election, the city felt strangely eerie. The previous morning the streets had been packed with giddy voters: men in flowing white kurtas lining up in orderly queues outside polling stations, students sipping tea and chattering excitedly. Painted green trucks rigged up with loudspeakers zoomed through the crowded streets of the capital, belting catchy party jingles in a kind of gleeful sonic warfare. Now, there was a distinctly different feeling in the air. The office of the new prime minister, Tarique Rahman, was shuttered and closed; the streets outside the president’s house were bare; the BNP central office on Dhaka’s VIP Road was empty but for a few scattered journalists and lazy armed guards. Meanwhile, above the empty streets loomed Hasina’s half-built expressway, starkly noticeable, its unfinished concrete sections hanging over the city like ghosts.

The Purges Within China’s Military Are Even Deeper Than You Think

The report shows that more than 100 senior officers have been purged or potentially purged since 2022, including top leadership across the Central Military Commission, theater commands, and service branches. The report explains that these removals target both corruption and political loyalty while reshaping the PLA’s leadership structure.

The purges have also removed a large share of operational commanders, yet have not significantly disrupted routine military activity. Political control and regime security remain the primary drivers of Xi’s military reforms, but he now faces the task of rebuilding the PLA high command after sweeping purges across senior leadership. Xi will therefore likely prioritize political loyalty alongside competence as he refills or restructures the Central Military Commission and related command institutions, which is a process that could take years to fully play out. Moreover, Xi’s candidate pool has narrowed sharply, which may also shape how quickly the PLA develops experienced operational leaders for modernization and crisis response.

China is playing the long game over Iran

Ahmed Aboudouh

Despite close ties with Tehran, China has refrained from coming out in strong support of its partner as the US continues its military build-up in the Gulf.

Amid US threats to attack Iran, Beijing has focused on encouraging diplomacy and regional security. On 24 February, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson reiterated this position, saying that ‘We hope various parties will exercise restraint and resolve differences through dialogue.’

For some, China’s ostensibly neutral emphasis on restraint and dialogue in the face of US military threats may seem like it has abandoned Tehran, reinforcing the view that it is an unreliable partner. This follows China’s inaction after the US kidnapped its close partner Nicolás Maduro and established control over Venezuela’s oil sector, in which Beijing had invested billions.

Donald Trump Launches a War of “Epic Fury” on Iran

Robin Wright

President Donald Trump has launched a capricious and personal war on Iran that is more ambitious, politically and militarily, than any past U.S. campaign in the perpetually volatile Middle East. In an eight-minute video released in the wee hours of Saturday morning, while most Americans were still asleep, he announced that his goals are the abolishment of the theocratic regime, total capitulation by its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps—or else the death of its members at U.S. hands—and an end to the country’s controversial nuclear program.

Trump called for Iran’s ninety-two million people to rise up in popular resistance and form a new government. “For many years, you have asked for America’s help, but you never got it,” he told the Iranian people. “Now you have a President who is giving you what you want, so let’s see how you respond. America is backing you with overwhelming strength and devastating force.” It is an audacious gambit, undertaken in coördination with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, of Israel, that has no clear outcome. For a man who hungers for the Nobel Peace Prize, this war of choice borders on delusion.

The Strait of Hormuz: A U.S.-Iran Maritime Flash Point

Mariel Ferragamo

Escalating tensions between the United States and Iran have raised the specter of imminent conflict, with one of the warning signs emerging in the Strait of Hormuz. Open-source air traffic radar data showed dozens of U.S. fighter jets positioning near Iran last week, while Iran had partially closed the strait during talks with the United States.

The strait is a crucial choke point in the global oil trade. The U.S. government estimates that roughly one-fifth of the world’s crude oil and a quarter of the world’s liquified natural gas is shipped through the Strait of Hormuz, which is 21 miles wide at its narrowest point and abuts southern Iran. Gulf countries, which rely on unimpeded travel through the strait to access world oil markets, would see their access severely curtailed in the event of a major regional conflict.

Trump Should Take the U.S. Military’s Warning on Iran Seriously

Max Boot

President Donald Trump likely feels that the U.S. military is invincible after the success of various operations he has ordered during his time in office, including the killing of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani in 2020, the bombing of the Iranian nuclear program in June 2025, and the abduction of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro in January. But those were all “one and done” strikes. The military operation that Trump has threatened against Iran is potentially much larger and lengthier—and thus much riskier.

Various news outlets have published articles in recent days reporting that General Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is concerned about the risks of strikes on Iran. This looks very much like a concerted messaging campaign by the U.S. military to surface their concerns before Trump orders them into action. In response, Trump took to Truth Social to denounce “the Fake News Media” for stating that Caine “is against us going to War with Iran,” calling that “100% incorrect.” But, in fact, all of these news stories state that Caine has not expressed either support or opposition to the strikes; he is merely raising concerns about how a military campaign would unfold, as he is legally obligated to do in his role as the president’s senior military adviser.

The Third Enemy: Washington, Tel Aviv, and the Political Liquidation of Iran’s Left

FrameTheGlobe

The names of the political forces being cleared out of Iran’s future are not a secret. They are chanted at monarchist rallies in London, Munich, Los Angeles, and, increasingly, Tehran itself. “Marg bar seh chapaleh: Akhund, Chapi, Mojahed.” Death to three corrupt: the cleric, the leftist, the MEK. The Islamic Republic is the first enemy. The Mojahedin-e-Khalq is the second. The left, the Mossadegh nationalists, the Tudeh cadres, the secular republicans, the labor organizers, the feminist movements that emerged from the Woman Life Freedom uprising of 2022 explicitly rejecting both theocracy and monarchy is the third. This is the story that the coverage of Operation Epic Fury is not telling.

The USA And Israel Have Started Bombing Iran: A Primer

Phillips P. OBrien

Though he has campaigned for years on reducing America’s military interventions abroad, and much of his base therefore adopted this belief, Trump has become increasingly enamored of the use of military force within specific limits. He has seen the US military as a way of getting cheap wins, of executing what he can claim are overwhelmingly successful operations and for which he can take credit. It has led him down a very different path than that he had campaigned upon. He now sees using the US military as a real political plus, though he has to do it within certain parameters. He will not want US soldiers to die and he will desperately need to convince the American public that the US of military force is a success.

THE WRONG REVOLUTION: Washington Does Not Get to Choose Iran’s Future. History Already Answered That Question.

TheGlobalChief and The Ren Way

Begin there. Begin with forty desks and the Saturday morning sun over Hormozgan, and then follow the chain of decisions backward until you reach the men who made them, the ones who will not be named in the official communiques, who will not appear in the footage of the strikes, who will give interviews in the coming days about precision and proportionality and the regrettable costs of necessary action. Follow it back until you reach the specific architecture of this war and the specific political project it was designed to install.

Because what began this morning over Iranian skies is not, at its core, a nonproliferation campaign. It is a regime change operation with a preferred successor already waiting in a Virginia suburb. And the history of such operations, in this region and beyond, is not a matter of speculation. It is a documented record.

Experts react: The US and Israel just unleashed a major attack on Iran. What’s next?

He went big. On Saturday morning, US and Israeli forces unleashed Operation Epic Fury, what US President Donald Trump called “a massive and ongoing” campaign against Iran. He called on the Iranian people to overthrow the regime once the fighting is done. Iran responded quickly by attacking Israel and US bases in the region. Below, our experts assess the unfolding war and where it goes from here.

6 Questions About Operation Epic Fury

Daniel Byman

As the United States and Israel began to bomb Iran as part of Operation Epic Fury on Saturday, U.S. President Donald Trump declared a wide range of ambitious objectives that his administration would accomplish. Trump noted that “for 47 years, the Iranian regime has chanted ‘Death to America’ and waged an unending campaign of bloodshed and mass murder, targeting the United States, our troops, and the innocent people in many, many countries.” He then condemned Iran for killing tens of thousands of its own protesting citizens and funding “terrorist militias that have soaked the earth with blood and guts.” He also argued (with far less evidence to back him) that Iran is rebuilding its nuclear program, developing long-range missiles that “could soon reach the American homeland.”

Trump promised to end all of these dangers, claiming that the United States would destroy Iran’s missile program and navy, end its support for terrorist proxies, and “ensure that Iran does not obtain a nuclear weapon.” Perhaps most consequentially, and most dangerously, the president told the Iranian people, “When we are finished, take over your government.

Three Lessons from the Ukraine War, Four Years On

Stavros Atlamazoglou

Today, four years later, the Russian forces have lost nearly 1.3 million troops, including nearly 350,000 dead, and control approximately 19 percent of Ukraine. Russia maintains the strategic initiative on the battlefield, choosing when and where to launch offensives, but has been unable to field the necessary operational strength to break through the Ukrainian defenses.

On a geopolitical level, the large-scale invasion of Ukraine had the exact opposite result than the Kremlin wished. A quick Russian victory in Ukraine was intended to demonstrate European institutions’ inability to protect themselves, and Russia’s military mastery of Eastern Europe. Instead of fracturing Europe and NATO, however, the invasion reinforced bonds of mutual trust, especially among European nations. Today, Europe is much stronger and united, and the European defense industry has been largely revitalized by the threat of Russia.

Contingent Capabilities: Southeast Asia’s Emerging Anti-access Environment

Evan A. Laksmana

This research paper analyses why and how maritime Southeast Asian states are seeking to develop and implement anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) strategies and capabilities. The development of A2/AD strategies and capabilities by Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Vietnam is rudimentary thus far and lacks coherent, consistent and systematic planning across the strategic, operational, tactical and technological levels.

While the five states conceptualise A2/AD differently, they are all generally concerned with military-modernisation goals, such as advanced coastal defence, as well as possible future contingencies, such as a US–China conflict. But there is a significant disconnect between the strategic- and policy-level debates over, firstly, such contingencies; secondly, the extent to which A2/AD strategies and capabilities should feature in a response to a contingency; and thirdly, current joint doctrinal and posture development as well as asset-acquisition plans and existing capabilities.

Global defence spending continues to grow amid geopolitical uncertainty

Fenella McGerty

In contrast, European spending continued to grow at record levels, with the region allocating almost USD563 billion to defence in 2025, almost USD100bn more than the year before. In real terms, this represents a 12.6% year-on-year increase, on a par with the real-term uplift seen in 2024. Crystallised by NATO members’ pledge at The Hague Summit in June to increase defence and security spending to 5% of GDP by 2035, such levels defied expectations that spending growth would slow after an initial spike. As such, European defence spending now accounts for over 21% of the global total, up from 17% in 2022. Based on current budgetary plans, growth is expected to remain elevated in 2026, indicating a sustained regional effort to bolster European defence capability rather than a short-term reaction to the turbulent security environment.

The primary source of regional growth has been, and will continue to be for the forseeable future, Germany, where defence funding increased by 18% in real terms in 2025 to reach EUR95.0bn (USD107bn). This followed a 23% rise in 2024 and means that Berlin accounted for a quarter of all European defence-spending growth over the last two years. Nordic countries also drove spending increases, with Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden reaching a combined spend of USD53.7bn in 2025 – more than double 2020 levels.

A Choice to Lead

Lt. Col. Peyton Hurley, U.S. Army

The release of ChatGPT in November 2022 thrust generative AI (GenAI) into the hands of the everyday user by transforming a technical capability into a public force. For the military, it marked a point of no return: AI would now shape the professional development of its leaders, whether they were ready or not. While algorithms had long influenced battlefield systems, GenAI made those capabilities visible and accessible to nonexperts. Now, anyone could generate essays, synthesize research, or simulate adversaries in seconds. As Dr. James Lacey, a professor at Marine Corps University, notes, military education institutions are still catching up, implementing inconsistent policies that leave students navigating ambiguous, sometimes contradictory rules around AI use.1

Thomas Dohmke, CEO of GitHub, captured the urgency: organizations must decide “which side of the productivity polarity” they want to be on.2 In fields from finance to software development, GenAI is already automating tasks and reshaping knowledge work. The Army must evolve too, but its adoption remains uneven and scattered; operational units are experimenting and strategic leaders are drafting policy. One critical domain, however, is being underutilized: professional military education (PME).

Ukraine Is Losing the War

Michael C. Desch

Four years into Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Trump administration is pressing Kyiv to agree to painful territorial concessions as the price for peace. In a draft peace agreement first reported by Axios in November, the administration proposed that the entire regions of Crimea, Donetsk, and Luhansk be recognized as de facto Russian territory and that Russia retain control of the parts of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia its forces now occupy. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is pushing back, refusing to do anything that would violate his country’s territorial integrity. Yet the realities of the battlefield are not on his side.

Ukraine has been putting up valiant resistance, but its determination cannot disguise the fact that it is losing the war. Russia controls a large swath of Ukrainian territory, and Kyiv has little chance of dislodging it, as Ukraine’s failed counteroffensive in 2023 demonstrated. To be sure, recent Russian gains have come very slowly and at significant cost; over the last three years, Russia has taken a mere one percent of additional Ukrainian territory. But that does not change the reality that Russia now holds almost a fifth of the land within Ukraine’s 1991 borders—or that Russia’s greater resources and population mean that Moscow can fight on for years to come. Overcoming those Russian advantages and clawing back lost land on the battlefield would require time and investment that Ukraine doesn’t have. Current circumstances are therefore pushing Kyiv toward a compromise peace—one that will necessarily include the surrender of Ukrainian territory.

Securing Ukraine’s Future: Adapting to New Realities After Four Years of War

Heidi E. Crebo-Rediker

Ukraine’s defense industrial base (DIB) has evolved from improvised wartime production into a core pillar of Europe’s future security and Ukraine’s postwar economy. Wartime necessity created a rapid-innovation ecosystem—especially in drones, autonomy, electronic warfare, and battlefield software—initially financed by grants and angel investors, and now increasingly supported by platforms like Brave1 and growing venture capital interest. As Ukrainian output has scaled to millions of drones annually, the emerging challenge has become how to scale Ukrainian firms beyond Ukraine. While the potential is clear, realizing it will require capital, certification, and integration into European and NATO procurement ecosystems.

How Putin Sold a False Win in Ukraine to Trump

George Barros

Russian President Vladimir Putin has worked hard to convince the world that Ukraine’s defeat is inevitable when it is not. His biggest success has come not on the front line but in the battle of narratives. Since meeting with Putin in Alaska, Donald Trump has shifted from demanding an immediate ceasefire to pressuring Kyiv to hand over unoccupied territory to Moscow based on the false idea that Russia is bound to win. “They’re much bigger. They’re much stronger,” Trump has said, giving Russia the “upper hand” in Ukraine.

Putin’s narrative of inevitable Russian victory rests on false claims: Ukraine’s front line is on the verge of collapse; Russia will capture the territories it claims; Russia has the manpower and resources to sustain the war indefinitely; and Ukraine cannot defeat the Russian military. Invoking the Soviet Red Army’s crushing of the German Wehrmacht in World War II, the Kremlin wants us to think that today’s much smaller Russian military is an unstoppable steamroller destined to win.

Can Ukraine Kill Its Way to Victory?

Sam Skove

Ukraine’s newly appointed defense minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, has a new, grim strategy for winning against Russia’s onslaught: Kill more Russian troops than the Kremlin can send.

It’s a goal that could strain Russia at a moment when it is seeking major gains. It could also give leverage to Ukraine in peace negotiations with Russia, which the United States is currently brokering.

Senior Air and Space Force Leaders Discuss Defense of Homeland

Matthew Olay

Yesterday, during a panel on homeland defense at the Air and Space Forces Association's annual warfare symposium in Aurora, Colorado, three senior Air and Space Force generals discussed how their respective combatant commands are working to do just that.

Space Force Gen. Stephen N. Whiting, commander of U.S. Space Command; Air Force Gen. Gregory M. Guillot, commander of U.S. Northern Command and North American Aerospace Defense Command; and Air Force Lt. Gen. Michael J. Lutton, deputy commander of U.S. Strategic Command, spent just under 45 minutes discussing what they view as the biggest threats to the homeland and how they foresee the development of the Golden Dome for America missile defense system, among other topics.

Four Years of War in Europe

Christian Caryl, Angela Stent

If, at the outset in 2022, many saw Russia’s war against Ukraine as a regional conflict that might be contained, its nature as a global geopolitical turning point has become ever clearer. The invasion that Moscow launched four years ago next week has forced Europe to rearm and think about future wars on the continent. The Eurasian autocracies have aligned economically, technologically, and strategically in unprecedented ways—bringing Iranian weapons and North Korean soldiers deep into the European battlespace. The economics of energy are shifting as Europe cuts its links to Russia and the dangers of overreliance on a hostile power have become plain to see.

Many of these developments have been turbocharged since the inauguration of U.S. President Donald Trump. His hostile stance toward Europe, abandonment of aid to Ukraine, and eagerness to strike a deal with Russia have put even more of an onus on Europe to secure stability on its borders and prepare for future conflict. As Washington refocuses on the Western Hemisphere, Europe is reaching out to new partners around the globe, accelerating the shift to a post-American world.

Cognitive Warfare Is Cheap—and That’s the Problem

Sara Russo

Much of the debate around cognitive warfare has been largely revolved around definitions. Is it merely a continuation of information operations? A kind of psychological warfare that uses digital technologies? Or is it a completely new domain? These questions have been at the center of policy debates, doctrinal documents, and public discussions. However, by focusing on these questions, an additional issue that is as significant as the starting point of a common definition has been overlooked.

The real question, in addition to what cognitive warfare is, is why it works so persistently.

The explanation does not only lie in the novelty of the phenomenon or the technological superiority; rather, it is about the cost. The influence sphere of cognitive warfare is effective because it is cheap to start, hard to pinpoint the perpetrator, and a lot more expensive to counter. One single ambiguous action – may it be legal, narrative, administrative, or informational – has the potential to trigger a cascade of reviews, coordination mechanisms, public responses, and internal alignment activities that would overwhelm the initial investment.

Who's Setting the Rules for Military AI? Not Congress

Tony Johnson

On Tuesday, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth gave Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei a Friday deadline: remove the guardrails on the Claude AI system — specifically, the company’s restrictions on mass domestic surveillance and fully autonomous weapons — or lose a $200 million Pentagon contract. Hegseth also threatened to invoke the Defense Production Act and designate Anthropic a supply chain risk, a designation that could effectively blacklist the company from work across the federal government. As of this writing, Anthropic has not budged.

Lawful Use Is the Right Starting Point — But It’s Not the Finish Line

Let’s give credit where it’s due. The Pentagon’s core principle — that the military, having purchased a capability with taxpayer dollars, should be free to deploy it for any lawful purpose across its authorized missions — is defensible. It reflects the basic structure of civil-military authority in a constitutional democracy.

Shattering the Software Stovepipes: How to Close the US Military’s Technology Integration Gap

Ryan McLean

In the 1950s, American strategists warned of a bomber gap. By the end of that decade, the fear had shifted to a missile gap. In both cases, the perception of a gap drove enormous defense investments that ultimately formed the backbone of a credible nuclear deterrent. Today, the joint force faces a different kind of gap. It is not a deficit in capability relative to an adversary. It is a failure to connect the capabilities it already owns. A true modular open systems approach is itself a strategic deterrent—a force that can reconfigure, integrate, and adapt faster than an adversary can target it is a force that deters conflict. But the Department of Defense has not yet closed this integration gap.

The money is flowing. The tools are arriving. Integration, however, is stuck several decades in the past. Absent marked change in how it makes integration a shared government-commercial responsibility, the department faces an integration gap that risks handicapping today’s commercial modernization push as merely experimentation. Warfighters require fielded and sustained combat capability—not science projects.

SOCOM on the hunt for ‘acoustic rainbow’ tech for silencing drones

Michael Peck

“Acoustic rainbows” sound psychedelic. But the idea is no acid trip: By dispersing sound waves, noisy objects can actually be made silent.

That’s why U.S. Special Operations Command is seeking acoustic rainbow emitters, or ARE, for its drones, according to a SOCOM Small Business Innovation Research solicitation.

“The ARE would provide a means to redirect the acoustic signature of a UAS and change the frequencies of the acoustic signature,” notes the solicitation, which closes March 25.

Though tactical drones can be small and hard to spot, the noise of their propellers can warn potential targets and put the drone itself at risk to hostile fire. “Acoustic sensors are becoming more prolific on the battlefield,” SOCOM noted.

2 March 2026

Pakistan–Afghanistan Escalation Signals Shift from Proxy Conflict to Open Hostilities

Tensions between Pakistan and Afghanistan turned into open hostilities on Friday after a prolonged period of escalating cross-border violence that is rooted in decades of unresolved disputes and militant activity. The latest phase began when Pakistani forces launched airstrikes against what this France24 report describes as “key military installations of the Afghan Taliban regime,” marking a shift from proxy conflict to direct confrontation. The DW News video below provides expert discussion on the background that led to the current conflict.

France24 also reports that Pakistani Defense Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif framed the action in severe terms, declaring that “now it is open war between us and you,” and also accused Kabul of turning Afghanistan into a hub that “gathered all the terrorists of the world in Afghanistan and began exporting terrorism.” Pakistan justified the escalation by citing a surge of militant attacks that it has linked to actors operating from Afghan territory. Analysts speaking to DW News assessed the shift as “decisive,” noting that when one country attacks another’s armed forces inside its borders, “that’s a war”.

China Is Winning by Waiting

Kyle Chan

One of the greatest advantages the United States has over China has been its soft power—the ability to persuade other countries, particularly allies and partners, to go along with its wants without having to resort to coercion. For decades, other countries have made sacrifices on behalf of the United States because they believed they were better off working with Washington than Beijing in the long run. This was the ultimate win-win for the United States and its partners. Together, they prospered through collective defense, integrated markets, and coordinated action on common challenges, including dealing with China.

U.S. President Donald Trump has threatened to put an end to much of that cooperation. The United States, once the bedrock of the international system, is now a major source of geopolitical instability. Trump launched a global trade war, slapping tariffs indiscriminately on allies and adversaries alike and bullying longtime partners. He ordered the capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, raising fears that sovereign rules no longer apply, and has repeatedly threatened to seize allied territories.

Are China’s ‘AI tigers’ cheating? US rival Anthropic alleges some are

John Liu

United States artificial intelligence firm Anthropic is accusing three prominent Chinese AI labs of illegally extracting capabilities from its Claude model to advance their own, claiming it raises national security concerns.

The Chinese unicorns – DeepSeek, Minimax and Moonshot AI – created over 24,000 fraudulent accounts and trained their models using over 16 million exchanges with Claude, a process known as distillation, Anthropic alleged in a Monday blogpost.

CNN has reached out to DeepSeek, MiniMax and Moonshot AI for comment.

Distillation is a common method of training in the AI industry with frontier labs often distilling their own models to make cheaper versions for customers. But most leading proprietary AI model providers including Anthropic explicitly ban such practices. Claude is not available in China.

What It Will Take to Change the Regime in Iran

Behnam Ben Taleblu,

The Islamic Republic of Iran is, quite possibly, at its weakest point since its founding, in 1979. In June, Israeli and U.S. attacks destroyed its uranium enrichment capacity and many of its air defense systems. In December and January, the country experienced the most widespread domestic uprising since the birth of the Islamic Republic. Throughout, it has faced spiraling economic and environmental crises that it cannot fix. None of these events has knocked out the Islamic Republic. But there is no doubt it is down.

Now, U.S. President Donald Trump is threatening to attack the country. He has made it clear he has little tolerance for the regime’s efforts to rebuild its nuclear program or the extraordinarily brutal way it cracked down on protests. “If Iran violently kills peaceful protesters, which is their custom, the United States of America will come to their rescue,” he said last month. “We are locked and loaded and ready to go.” The president has since amassed U.S. air and naval assets in the region, and he is considering a variety of strike options.

Trump hits out at reports that top US general warned against attacking Iran

Bernd Debusmann Jr

US President Donald Trump has lashed out at reports that his top military adviser had urged caution on air strikes against Iran, saying the general believes it would be "easily won".

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General Dan Caine, has warned that strikes against Iran could be risky, potentially drawing the US into a prolonged conflict, US media report.

Caine has reportedly cautioned that a military action could have repercussions across the region, potentially including retaliatory strikes by Iranian proxies or a larger conflict that would require more US forces.

In a lengthy post on Truth Social, Trump described the reports as "fake news".

"General Caine, like all of us, would like not to see war, but, if a decision is made on going against Iran at a military level, it is his opinion that it will be something easily won," the president wrote.

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