Indian Strategic Studies

19 December 2025

How Kaveri Engine's 39-Year Failure Exposes Deep Institutional Voids in DRDO and HAL, Paralyzing India’s AMCA and TEDBF Programmes

RonitBisht

In a scathing The Print column published on 10 December 2025, Admiral Arun Prakash (Retd), the former Chief of Naval Staff and a distinguished strategic thinker, has delivered a stark indictment of India’s aviation establishment.

His assessment is grim: despite ambitious rhetoric surrounding the fifth-generation Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft (AMCA) and the Twin-Engine Deck-Based Fighter (TEDBF), both programmes remain effectively grounded.

The cause is not a lack of funding or desire, but a 39-year-old failure that continues to haunt the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO): the inability to produce a functional indigenous jet engine.

The Kaveri Stagnation: Four Decades of Missed DeadlinesThe heart of the crisis lies with the GTX-35VS Kaveri programme. Initiated by the DRDO's Gas Turbine Research Establishment (GTRE) in 1986—and formally sanctioned in 1989—the project was intended to power India’s Light Combat Aircraft (Tejas). Instead, it has become a case study in institutional inertia.

Admiral Prakash points out that after nearly four decades and the expenditure of billions of rupees, the Kaveri remains unfit for combat application.

Although first bench-tested in 1996, the engine has suffered from persistent technical setbacks, including thrust deficits, overheating turbine blades, and unreliable digital control systems. Every technical failure has been met not with a solution, but with a revised timeline that quietly shifts targets into the next decade.

The War That Happened Only Online: How Pakistan Used AI To Fight A War It Never Fought At Sea

Rahul Sinha

During and after India’s Operation Sindoor, a very unusual pattern emerged in South Asia’s information space. Instead of showing new warships, missiles or real battlefield results, Pakistan-linked networks began pushing something else entirely--AI-generated audio, manipulated videos, and fully synthetic clips designed to confuse audiences and distort the story of the conflict.

Indian fact-checking agencies—including PIB Fact Check, BOOM, Newschecker and Vishvas News—documented a large surge in artificial, altered or completely fabricated media circulating online. Much of this content targeted Indian military leaders, misrepresented Indian operations or pretended to show dramatic events that never happened. The scale and speed of these deepfakes marked a major shift in Pakistan’s approach to psychological warfare. The message was clear. Pakistan’s “new weapons” did not come from its navy or missile programme. They came from its digital propaganda ecosystem.

20,000 Myanmar soldiers and 200 officials deserted, says former Army officer who sought refuge in India

Kallol Bhattacherjee

Around 20,000 soldiers and 200 military officials have deserted the Myanmar military, which is engaged in combating Ethnic Armed Organisations (EAOs), said a military officer who deserted his post in Sagaing region bordering India’s Northeast after the junta started a crackdown following the February 2021 coup.

In an exclusive chat with The Hindu held here this week, Capt. Kaung Thu Win, who left the military in 2021, said the Myanmar military “indiscriminately killed civilians and confiscated private property and indulged in human rights abuses” that requires a solution that will not emerge from the three-phase election that Myanmar will undergo from December 28.

“Many military personnel are unwilling to participate in the killings and property grab that are going on in Myanmar. Around 20,000 soldiers and 200 military officers who have deserted the Tatmadaw (Myanmar military) are staying in Myanmar’s border areas with India and Thailand and in the “liberated zones” inside Myanmar,” Captain Kaung Thu Win said during a rare visit to New Delhi this week.

Pakistan’s 27th Amendment Upends Its Nuclear Command

Haleema Saadia

At its core, the amendment is a move to constitutionally enshrine the army’s supremacy under the guise of modernization. Since Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and his Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz party solidified its power via a 2024 election that was widely viewed as fixed, their government has leaned on the military establishment for support and, in turn, shown a great willingness to reinforce the army’s institutional dominance.

Haleema Saadia is a doctoral researcher at the National University of Sciences and Technology, Pakistan and a former official at Pakistan’s Strategic Plans Division. She specializes in nuclear strategy and arms control.

Ali Mustafa is a visiting scholar with the South Asian Program at the Stimson Center and teaches nuclear politics and strategic issues, with more than a decade of experience in academia, policy, and consulting.

People in the West say they must avoid a new Cold War without realizing that they are already in one – and China is winning.

Qin Hui and Perry Link

Qin Hui, professor emeritus of history and economics at Tsinghua University and a pre-eminent Chinese public intellectual, who now lives and writes abroad, in April of this year published a book on China’s “low-human-rights advantage.” For years, people in the West marveled at the economic “miracle” in China and expected that the growth of a Chinese middle class would lead to political liberalization. But Qin Hui never thought he was observing a miracle.

What he saw was hundreds of millions of low-paid laborers working long hours in an environment that had no free press, no indigenous labor unions and no independent courts – but a very efficient police force. Unmiraculously, these hard workers produced immense wealth that went largely to the Chinese state, to elite families connected to it, and to foreign corporations. Qin could see that dictatorship, its generally bad reputation notwithstanding, under certain conditions could sharply accelerate economic growth.

What follows is an adaptation and translation of the preface to Qin’s new book, “Save Mr. Democracy” (拯救民主) by Perry Link, a distinguished professor in Comparative Literature and Chinese at UC Riverside and the author of numerous books on Chinese literature, society, and politics.

Dual-Use Shijian Satellite Program Ramps up in 2025

Arran Hope

The year 2025 has been a successful one for the Shijian (实践) satellite program. Things kicked off on January 6 with the launch of the Shijian-25 satellite, which state media hailed as a “bright start to China’s space program in 2025” (国航天2025年开门红) (Xinhua, January 7). Since then, a Shijian-26 satellite was sent into orbit in late May, followed by three Shijian-30 satellites in mid-November, and a final Shijian-28 satellite on November 30 (Xinhua, May 29, November 19, November 30). These six launches mark an uptick in cadence for the program, with just one launch in each of the two previous years and none in 2022. A total of 50 Shijian-series satellites have been launched since the program began in 1971, of which 38 remain operational (Wikipedia/实践系列卫星, accessed December 5). [1]

The Shijian series is just one among as many as 100 satellite programs in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) today (Hello Space, April 18). What makes it unusual is that it is used to “put into practice” or “establish best practices for”—the literal meanings of shijian (实践)—novel satellite technologies (CASI, March 28, 2022). It also stands out because of the paucity of publicly available data about its goals and activities compared to other programs. The coverage of Shijian satellites that does exist indicates that they are primarily used for scientific exploration and technological verification and testing. But omissions from the PRC side, coupled with observations and reporting from analysts in the United States and elsewhere, suggest that they likely are involved in much more sensitive operations.

Price tag for ‘T-Dome’ estimated at NT$400bn

President William Lai’s (賴清德) “T-Dome” initiative to build a multilayered air defense network would cost an estimated NT$400 billion (US$12.8 billion), or about one-third of the proposed NT$1.25 trillion special defense budget, according to a senior official.

Commenting on condition of anonymity, the source said that Taiwan would need to buy new arms and equipment to supplement the nation’s existing air defense systems to achieve the advanced capabilities envisioned for the initiative.

This means procurements for an array of domestic and foreign systems, including at least two Chiang Kung (強弓, “Strong Bow”) systems and 128 missiles for NT$36.6 billion, they said.

The Chungshan Institute of Science and Technology-developed air defense system with a maximum interception height of 70km — an offshoot of the Tien Kung III (天弓, “Sky Bow”) missile’s design — would become Taiwan’s primary high-altitude defense missile, the official said.

Patriot Advanced Capability-3 Missile Segment Enhancement systems (PAC-3 MSE), with an interception height of 45km to 60km, would fill the medium-altitude defense role, they said.

What Trump’s National Security Strategy Gets Right

Rebeccah Heinrichs

The Trump administration’s 2025 National Security Strategy is, in many ways, unlike any in U.S. history. Most strategy documents of this kind articulate the threats that the United States’ adversaries pose to Washington and its allies, and they explain how officials can respond to these challenges. But this one seems kinder to the United States’ foes than to its friends. It rebukes Europe in an astonishingly blunt fashion, arguing that some of the continent’s domestic policies are damaging democracy and risking “civilizational erasure.” It says remarkably little, by contrast, about the threats posed by China, Russia, Iran, or

Israel Issues Chilling Cyber Warfare Warning After Iran Attacks

Zak Doffman

Iran versus Israel is the cyber front line.getty

We have heard this before. The threat of cyber armageddon in a world where Chinese technology powers energy, telecoms and transportation infrastructure, with its finger on some kind of virtual red button, and where Russia splinternets itself off from the west.

But there’s a much sharper cutting edge to the cyber threat in the Middle East. That means Israel versus Iran, two of the world’s leading offensive cyber states battling each other continually and quietly, while headlines focus more on the real-world battlefront.

The ‘Trump Corollary’ in the US security strategy brings a new focus on Latin America – but it is a disordered plan

The new US National Security Strategy (NSS), unveiled on 5 December, has been influenced by various interest groups and personalities, from those in Washington who prioritize containing China and Russia, to those who want to expand Make America Great Again (MAGA) to Europe – and those who wish to dominate the Western Hemisphere.

On the latter, ‘sovereigntists’ have gained ground in the NSS – a trend that, according to Jennifer Mittelstadt, ‘asserts liberty from international agreements and institutions that threaten to limit the sovereign jurisdiction and governance of the US’.

The strategy states that the Western Hemisphere must be controlled by the US politically, economically, commercially, and militarily. It is the ‘Trump Corollary’ to the Monroe Doctrine – an 1823 policy which established that European powers should not intervene in Latin America. This paved the way for US pre-eminence in the region until well into the 20th century. However, Washington neglected it in the last three decades.

According to the Trump Corollary, the US has the right to resuscitate the Monroe Doctrine. To that end, it will readjust its military presence in the region, increase naval forces to control migrant routes and illicit trafficking, and carry out deployments at borders. In addition, it will use ‘the military system superior to any other country in the world’ to gain access to energy and mineral resources in the region.

A velvet reset: Trump’s new strategy hands China breathing space

Imran Khalid

For years, Washington framed China as the defining adversary of the American century. The National Security Strategy released on December 4 has quietly abandoned that posture. At just 33 pages, the document mentions China sparingly and never as an existential threat. Instead, it treats Beijing as a major power with which the United States must reach “reciprocity and fairness” in trade.

The shift is deliberate and, from a Chinese perspective, long overdue. After a decade of being cast as the villain in successive Pentagon papers and Biden-era strategies that labelled China a “pacing challenge” and “systemic rival,” Beijing now finds itself described in language that prioritizes economic rebalancing over ideological confrontation.

This is not weakness on Washington’s part; it is realism born of exhaustion with endless confrontation and recognition that tariffs and technology bans have hurt American farmers, manufacturers and consumers as much as Chinese exporters. Beijing would be wise to pocket the concession and widen the opening before domestic politics in either capital reverses course.

The NSS is likely to offer China short-term relief – but cause for long-term concern.

Ngo Di Lan

Since Trump’s return to power in 2025, China-U.S. relations have oscillated between confrontation and signs of rapprochement, driven by unprecedented tit-for-tat tariffs, tighter technology controls, and inconsistent diplomatic signals. Against this uncertain backdrop, the newly released 2025 National Security Strategy (NSS) is likely to offer Chinese leaders short-term relief: it tempers ideological language, clarifies U.S. priorities, and suggests a more predictable basis for managing competition.

However, the NSS also lays foundations that could, in the long run, complicate China’s external environment and strengthen the forces arrayed against it.

Grounds for Optimism

For Beijing, the strongest basis for near-term optimism is the 2025 NSS’s striking departure from earlier U.S. conceptions of strategic competition. In Trump’s first term, the 2017 NSS cast China as a “revisionist power” bent on reshaping the international system, while the Biden administration’s 2022 NSS elevated the rivalry into a global contest between “democracies and autocracies.”

The Scramble for the Seafloor

Rebecca Egan McCarthy

Since 1779 photosynthesis has been the standard-issue explanation for the continuation of life on earth: plants absorb sunlight, which fuels their metabolism, and create oxygen as waste. This is such basic, grade-school science that it normally wouldn’t bear mentioning, but in July 2024 a team led by Andrew Sweetman at the Scottish Association for Marine Science reported a startling finding in Nature. On the deep seafloor—where light never penetrates—oxygen is apparently being produced by rocks.

These rocks are known as polymetallic nodules, which form over the course of millions of years when small debris like sharks’ teeth attract trace metals from the surrounding seawater. The seafloor is covered in a viscous ooze, composed of the compressed skeletons of dead marine life, and the nodules lie strewn atop it, packed closely together. Sweetman and his team were investigating the microbial life in this deep-sea environment by lowering custom-designed chambers into the depths, creating a seal around seafloor sediment. Generally, the oxygen within the chambers decreases as various organisms consume it. In the nodule fields, against all odds, oxygen levels were rising.

Improving Japan’s Cyber Power

Japan faces serious threats in cyberspace. It is largely supine, continually vulnerable, and subject to persistent cyber threats from China and, at times, North Korea. Japanese cyberspace defenses struggle to keep up with the reality that Japan’s intellectual property (IP) is being stolen, its economy is being extorted to fuel North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, and its civilian infrastructure is being infected with foreign code designed to deny its function during times of crisis and conflict or to intimidate the Japanese Government.

The delays Japan is currently experiencing in developing a strong cyber strategy mirror those that hindered US cyberspace policy in the early days of the domain. Defending against and deterring the daily violations of US sovereignty, loss of IP, and adversary preparation of the environment (the emplacement of adversary cyberspace capabilities inside US civilian infrastructure) required a straightforward admission of what was happening and how similar—with some crucial differences—cyberspace is to the other domains.

Cyberspace is a mess. Over the last few years, cyberspace attacks in the United States have doubled in frequency, reaching upwards of 801,000 reports in 2022. Worldwide, this trend is increasing at a slightly slower but still alarming rate of 30 percent year after year. Cybercrime, in general, can now be considered the third largest economy in the world, after that of the United States and China. Grossing $8 trillion in 2023, the financial damage of cyberattacks is expected to triple by 2027. North Korea uses cybercrime to fund its nuclear weapon and ballistic missile program. China uses cyber espionage to steal IP, such as chip, quantum, and artificial intelligence technology. Worse, China is embedding cyber capabilities within Japanese infrastructure to be used in a crisis or conflict to shut off essential infrastructure to extort and intimidate Japanese political leadership.

Germany accuses Russia of air traffic control cyber-attack

George Wrightand, Bethany Bell,Berlin

Germany has accused Russia of a cyber-attack on air traffic control and attempted electoral interference, and summoned the Russian ambassador.

A foreign ministry spokesman said Russian military intelligence was behind a "cyber-attack against German air traffic control in August 2024". The spokesman also accused Russia of seeking to influence and destabilise the country's federal election in February this year.

The latest accusations come amid heightened concern in Europe over suspected Russian cyber-attacks since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Russia has "categorically rejected" the claims, saying their alleged involvement in such incidents was "absurd".

"The accusations of Russian state structures' involvement in these incidents and in the activities of hacker groups in general are baseless, unfounded and absurd," Russia's embassy in Berlin said in a statement to AFP news agency.

The foreign ministry in Germany said that Berlin - in close co-ordination with its European partners - would respond with counter-measures to make Russia "pay a price for its hybrid actions".

In the last year, both the UK and Romania have accused Russia of meddling in their domestic affairs, including targeting organisations that deliver foreign assistance to Ukraine and presidential elections.

Trump leaves complacent Europe most vulnerable since 1939

Antony Beevor

President Trump's new National Security Strategy is incoherent and egotistical. Yet Europe's elites must bear responsibility for leaving their continent in a state of vulnerability comparable to the late 1930s.

Donald Trump salutes a Navy Honour Guard aboard the USS Harry S. Truman on 5 October, 2025. Credit: Blueee / Alamy

President Donald Trump’s National Security Strategy is 33 pages long. Considering the fatuous self-praise it contains, heaped upon the president himself, it was released in an unusually low-key way. Much of it is a so-called ‘Trump corollary’ to the Monroe Doctrine of 1823. It also contains an echo of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Although Roosevelt claimed that the United States would be a ‘good neighbour’ to Latin America, he rather gave the game away when he privately admitted that Anastasio Somoza, the dictator of Nicaragua, was ‘a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch’. This is a very Trumpian way of thinking, but it is also a fantasy.

Trump thinks he can get dictators in his pocket and yet he seems to have no idea when they are playing him. He has utterly misjudged Vladimir Putin, who clearly despises him. Putin kept his negotiators, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, waiting for three hours, then showed quite clearly that he had no intention of compromising on any of the 28 points that he himself appears to have dictated to the White House as a basis for discussion.

How Gaza Shattered the West’s Mythology

Pankaj Mishra

On April 19, 1943, a few hundred young Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto took up whatever arms they could find and struck back at their Nazi persecutors. Most Jews in the ghetto had already been deported to extermination camps. The fighters were, as one of their leaders Marek Edelman recalled, seeking to salvage some dignity: “All it was about, finally, was our not letting them slaughter us when our turn came. It was only a choice as to the manner of dying.”

After a few desperate weeks, the resisters were overwhelmed. Most of them were killed. Some of those still alive on the last day of the uprising committed suicide in the command bunker as the Nazis pumped gas into it; only a few managed to escape through sewer pipes. German soldiers then burned the ghetto, block by block, using flamethrowers to smoke out the survivors.

Silicon Valley Has China Envy, and That Reveals a Lot About America

Li Yuan

In social media posts, podcasts, interviews and newsletters, the elites of the American tech sector are marveling at China’s speed in building infrastructure, its manufacturing might and the ingenuity of the A.I. company DeepSeek. At the same time, they are lamenting aging infrastructure and cumbersome regulations in the United States, and an economy that can’t seem to make screws or drones, or the machines that manufacture them.

Some have called for an American DeepSeek project, published industrial manifestoes full of references to China and even adopted China Tech’s grueling “996” work culture, 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. six days a week.

“As China races forward, moving goods, people and information at machine speed, we risk being stuck in the past,” a recent blog post from the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz warned.

Among Silicon Valley leaders and policy-minded Democrats, there is a fascination with China. It’s a mix of curiosity, anxiety and envy. Long-held assumptions about China are being re-evaluated.

Suddenly, Chinese firms once dismissed as copycats are being studied for lessons on efficiency and scale. China’s top-down, state-led system is being reframed not as a political liability but as a model of efficiency and execution.

Transforming and Modernizing Army Information Forces: Creating the Information Warfare Branch

William Bryant

“Information technology is expected to make a thousandfold advance over the next 20 years. In fact, the pace of development is so great that it renders our current materiel management and acquisition system inadequate. Developments in information technology will revolutionize-and indeed have begun to revolutionize-how nations, organizations, and people Interact. The rapid diffusion of information, enabled by these technological advances, challenges the relevance of traditional organizational and management principles. The military implications of new organizational sciences that examine internetted, nonhierarchical versus hierarchical management models are yet to be fully understood. Clearly, Information Age technology, and the management Ideas It fosters, will greatly Influence military operations in two areas – one evolutionary, the other revolutionary; one we understand, one with which we are just beginning to experiment. Together, they represent two phenomena at work in winning what has been described as the information war – a war that has been fought by commanders throughout history.”

The quotation above was written in 1994. During this period, the Army attempted to marshal its resources to prepare for the future operating environment in anticipation of the information age. While Force XXI Operations correctly identified the characteristics of the information age and the need for adaptation, the Global War on Terror blindsided the United States and interrupted this effort. Now, 31 years later, the U.S.’s adversaries effectively retain the capabilities to outcompete it in the information environment (IE), as seen in modern conflict and within strategic competition. In response, the U.S. military must adapt now to ensure future relative advantages across competition, crisis and armed conflict.

Revisiting Humility as a Leadership Attribute in the Army

Col. Jordon E. Swain, PhD, U.S. Army, Maj. Catherine Grizzle, U.S. Army, Maj. Benjamin, Ordiway, U.S. Army, Jacob A. Brown, PhD

In Military Review’s September-October 2000 article “Humility as a Leadership Attribute,” Lt. Col. Joseph Doty and Dan Gerdes state that “humility ... is often disregarded when describing traits of good leaders because it seems to suggest a lack of toughness and resolve essential in an effective leader. However, the humble leader lacks arrogance, not aggressiveness.” (Photos courtesy of Military Review)

It has been twenty-five years since Lt. Col. Joseph Doty and Dr. Dan Gerdes penned their piece in Military Review calling for the Nation’s oldest branch of service to embrace the leader attribute of humility.1 In that nearly quarter century, much has changed in what is known about humility and the promise it holds for leaders in the Army.

Since 2000, scholars have produced over twenty-three thousand works exploring humility, clarifying the concept, and generating new, important insights into both the benefits and challenges of leader humility. The past quarter century has also seen the Army reintroduce humility to its leadership doctrine, although this does not mean that every leader in uniform understands or embraces the attribute.

We Can’t Buy Our Way Out: It’s Time to Think Differently

T. X. Hammes

Current U.S. force structure and major platforms are likely to fail in the emerging operational environment. If the Pentagon still believes 2027, or even 2035, is the deadline to be ready for a conflict with China, the U.S. defense industrial base simply cannot produce enough of our current platforms and munitions, even with unlimited funding. We can’t buy our way out. Focusing on the new generation of containerized air, ground, sea, and subsea precision weapons that can be mass produced is the only path to fielding sufficient capability to deter China or succeed in a sustained conflict. While current U.S. weapons systems cannot be produced in large numbers in the next few years, these new systems can quickly strengthen the Joint Force.

Rapid changes in the character of warfare have created a tactical environment where pervasive surveillance, AI-assisted command and control, and long-range, autonomous precision mass make current U.S. land, air, and sea forces increasingly vulnerable.1 This is not a theory or a prediction. The changes are occurring now in a variety of conflicts globally.

Building Japan’s Counterstrike Capability: Technical, Temporal, and Political Challenges

Masashi Murano

In December 2022, the Japanese government released a trio of major strategic documents—the National Security Strategy, the National Defense Strategy, and Defense Buildup Program. As part of this review of Japan’s national security settings, Japan acquired long-range strike capabilities that the Self-Defense Forces (SDF) have not previously possess, assets which the Japanese government refers to as “counterstrike capabilities.”

On the face of it, the mere political commitment to acquire these capabilities was significant. Indeed, for a long time, constitutional restrictions, political norms, and a relatively benign strategic environment meant that Japan could afford to demur on the SDF’s power projection capability, even when assets like the Air Self-Defense Force (ASDF) F-2 fighter plane could be equipped with guided strike munitions like the Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM). However, various other components needed in a mission package to penetrate deep into enemy territory and conduct strike operations were lacking. For example, the ASDF lacked escort jammers such as the EA-18G, while the number of aerial tankers required to expand the range and persistence of Japanese fighter options was also limited. Furthermore, what strike capabilities Japan did possess were limited in range. For instance, the Ground Self-Defense Force had not procured ground-based long-range missiles, with its longest-range land-based missile, the Type 12 surface-to-ship missile, limited to a range of approximately 200 km.

A Navy of Necessity: Ukraine’s Unmanned Surface Vessels at War

Thane C. Clare

Ukraine stood on a strategic precipice in 2022. With its navy eliminated in the first weeks of Russia’s full-scale invasion, Ukraine was left with a shoreline vulnerable to amphibious assault and its vital maritime commerce exposed to interdiction by Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. Yet by mid-2023, Ukraine had forced the Russian navy into a defensive posture and resumed seaborne grain exports.

This stunning reversal was the result of a Ukrainian sea denial campaign executed with improvised unmanned surface vessels (USVs)—the first large-scale wartime employment of USVs. In A Navy of Necessity, CSBA Senior Fellow Dr. Thane Clare argues that Ukraine’s ability to turn the tables on Russia’s fleet was founded on a minimum viable warfare approach: fielding a sea denial capability quickly enough to prevent strategic failure, even if that capability was not yet robust enough to overcome all potential countermeasures.

Dr. Clare highlights four major themes that emerged from the campaign: USVs’ critical contribution to sea denial, their role as range extenders for Ukraine’s anti-ship capability, the evolution of their cross-domaincapabilities from anti-ship to anti-air and beyond, and the measure–countermeasure competition with Russia. The report closes with considerations for U.S. and allied planners, outlining the possibilities and limitations of USV employment in other wartime scenarios.

The Nvidia Chip Deal Is a National Security Disaster Waiting to Happen

Aaron Bartnick

In September, the leader of the world’s most valuable company lambasted China hawks for “destroying” the American dream. To be tough on China was a “badge of shame,” Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang argued. “It’s not patriotic, not even a little bit.” His comments came after withering criticism over a proposed deal with the Trump administration to allow new semiconductor exports to China in exchange for a 15 percent kickback to the U.S. government. Then, on Monday, President Donald Trump announced that he would allow Nvidia to export cutting-edge chips to China—with capabilities at least a generation ahead of China’s most advanced technologies—in exchange for an even higher kickback of 25 percent.

For Huang, the incentives are clear: China represents a $50 billion, nearly untapped market for Nvidia that is likely key to realizing investors’ lofty expectations for the company’s growth. But selling advanced semiconductors to the United States’ greatest adversary is national security malpractice akin to selling the Soviets nuclear technology after World War II. What’s more, the deal appears to be illegal under the U.S. Constitution’s Export Clause, which explicitly prohibits taxes or duties on exports to foreign countries from any state. This is why the administration is still struggling to develop a legal mechanism to facilitate the H20 deal Trump authorized earlier this year. Nvidia, the only company with the standing to sue, seems happy to accept giving the U.S. government a large cut of the anticipated Chinese profits.

Internet Censorship Tools Exported Along Belt and Road

Athena Tong & Yun-Ting Cai

In mid-November, the artificial intelligence (AI) firm Anthropic disclosed the first publicly documented case of a near end-to-end espionage operation orchestrated through a commercial AI coding assistant. The company claimed that a state-linked actor in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) had weaponized its Claude Code tool to automate elements of a cyber-espionage campaign targeting dozens of governments, defense firms, and technology companies worldwide (Anthropic, November 14). The attackers used the large language model to script malware, generate spear-phishing lures, and optimize software infrastructure. U.S. lawmakers responded by summoning Anthropic’s CEO to testify on AI-enabled cyber threats (Cyberscoop, November 26).

The model of state-linked commercial actors supporting the PRC’s hitherto unique approach to Internet governance is now moving overseas. A tranche of documents leaked in September 2025 show that Beijing is systematically equipping foreign governments to replicate and innovate its authoritarian Internet governance model. The materials, consisting of source code, field-test reports, project management software tickets, and internal briefings, reveal how Beijing’s Great Firewall is being packaged and exported as turnkey infrastructure to One Belt One Road (OBOR) initiative and Digital Silk Road partner countries. [1]

18 December 2025

Afghanistan’s Uncertain Gamble for Economic Survival

Salman Rafi Sheikh

Afghanistan, in a desperate domestic struggle for mere survival amid an ongoing humanitarian catastrophe, a severe economic collapse, and a profound human rights crisis, is now caught in a dangerous geopolitical squeeze. India is maneuvering to exploit Kabul’s standoff with Islamabad, the United States is eyeing a return to Bagram amid its rivalry with China, and China remains Kabul’s closest ally, although its support is largely symbolic. Russia is the only state to formally recognize the Taliban, lending political legitimacy but offering little in the way of economic relief.

Meanwhile, Pakistan’s ongoing border closures are bleeding Afghanistan’s economy, cutting trade revenue by hundreds of millions of dollars every month. In response, the Taliban are seemingly pivoting toward Iran and Central Asia in search of alternative trade routes. But these routes come with high costs, fragile logistics, and uncertain returns.

Every move risks tipping the delicate balance between sovereignty and dependence, resistance and isolation, forcing Kabul to navigate a perilous path in a region where every alliance, every border, and every negotiation carries enormous stakes.

Top secret US report warns American forces would be drastically outmatched by China

Shweta Sharma

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The U.S. military is most likely to suffer a defeat at the hands of China if it tried to intervene in a war over Taiwan, a top secret Pentagon assessment report has found.Pentagon war games simulating a Chinese invasion of Taiwan have shown that Beijing could cripple U.S. fighter squadrons, major warships, and even satellite networks before they deploy effectively, the highly classified document, “Overmatch Brief”, warned.

Why China may be better placed than US in tussle for rare earths

Dewey Sim

During his Southeast Asia trip in October, US President Donald Trump sealed deals with Malaysia and Thailand on the same day – both aimed at securing and diversifying America’s supply chains for critical minerals and rare earths. Trump and Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim agreed to step up cooperation on building and expanding critical minerals supply chains, according to a White House statement. They also agreed to strengthen the security of critical minerals and rare earths supplies in the two countries.

Using similar wording, the White House said the US would also “strengthen cooperation [with Thailand] on critical minerals supply chains development and expansion” and promote trade between the two nations in areas including critical mineral resource exploration, extraction, and processing and refining. The back-to-back deals reflect how resource-rich countries are becoming a key battleground in the contest between the US and China for control over rare earths and critical minerals. But Beijing could be better poised to court these economies than Washington, according to analysts, since China has long engaged with resource-rich nations – from Southeast Asia to Africa.

‘China threat’ narrative a ‘complete mislabelling’, economist Jin Keyu says

Sylvia Ma

A prominent economist has dismissed the “China threat” phenomenon as a “complete mislabelling”, arguing that the country has instead supported the global diffusion of technology by significantly lowering costs through production at scale.

Speaking at a summit on Tuesday, Jin Keyu – a professor of finance at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology – also said China’s proposals for its next five-year plan indicate Beijing recognises the need to rebalance its economy and better harmonise with the rest of the world in a process she added will require patience.

“We have to recognise that the other angle is not China as a threat, but China as a great benefactor of the diffusion of technology around the world,” she said at the Global Supply Chain Business Summit in Hong Kong.

Economist Jin Keyu at a 2023 Ted Talk. Photo: Handout

She described China as a “huge contributor” to the proliferation of advanced technology, which she called “essential” for developing economies seeking to catch up with the rest of the world.

Jin attributed this to the country’s enormous manufacturing and innovation capacity, giving China the lion’s share of credit for the roughly 90 per cent drop in solar panel prices observed in recent years.

China Can Send 300 Thousand Troops to Taiwan Within 10 Days

Dmytro Shumlianskyi

Chinese amphibious vehicles land from the Type-075 UGV during an exercise. Photo credits: People's Liberation Army of China China’s landing ships can land 21,000 troops in the first wave of an attack, and 300,000 in 10 days if civilian vessels are mobilized. This is according to an analytical report by the Center for Transportation Strategies. The confrontation around Taiwan could become the next hot spot on the current unstable geopolitical map of the world. Taiwan’s defense ministry has identified 2027 as the likely time for China’s invasion of the island.

Beijing’s main military power in the conquest of the island should be the navy, which China is actively building up. For example, China puts into operation 20-25 times more warships per year than the Royal Navy of the United Kingdom. Chinese main battle tanks are loaded aboard the commercial ferry Zhong Hua Fu Jing. Photo credits: China Military Online On December 4, 2025, China conducted its largest naval operation in the East China and South China Seas. The operation involved a hundred ships of the navy and coast guard.

Pronatalist Pivot Assessing China’s Policy Efforts to Boost Fertility

Kelly Atkinson, Tahina Montoya, Michael S. Pollard

China is experiencing declining birth rates and a rapidly aging population, resulting in a shrinking workforce and increased pressure on social services. The Chinese government has implemented a range of pronatalist policies aimed at reversing fertility decline, including the universal two-child policy in 2015 and the three-child policy in 2021, yet these policy measures have not corrected China’s plummeting total fertility rate or birth rate. The authors of this report assess China’s policy responses to demographic challenges from 2015 to 2025 and consider how China’s experience can inform U.S. policy responses to fertility decline and related demographic challenges.

Key Findings

China’s implementation of pronatalist policies has been highly unevenChina’s pronatalist policies have not reversed fertility decline or increased population growth to a sustainable rate, demonstrating the limits of state-led interventions in family decisionmaking.

China’s implementation of national fertility policies is highly uneven across regions, with national directives producing a patchwork of local practices that reflects administrative fragmentation and variable capacity.

How China Wins the Future

Elizabeth

When the Chinese cargo ship Istanbul Bridge docked at the British port of Felixstowe on October 13, 2025, the arrival might have appeared unremarkable. The United Kingdom is China’s third-largest export market, and boats travel between the two countries all year.

What was remarkable about the Bridge was the route it had taken—it was the first major Chinese cargo ship to travel directly to Europe via the Arctic Ocean. The trip took 20 days, weeks faster than the traditional routes through the Suez Canal or around the Cape of Good Hope. Beijing hailed the journey as a geostrategic breakthrough and a

Iran Faces Critical Air Defense Gaps Against Israel At Home And Abroad

Paul Iddon,

A former Iranian president has said his country is highly vulnerable to Israeli airstrikes. He also indirectly acknowledged that Iran’s prior efforts to stand up air defenses against Israel in the regional countries between them have failed. He’s correct on both counts.

“The skies over Iran have become completely safe for the enemy,” said former Iranian President Hassan Rouhani earlier this month. “We no longer have real deterrence. Our neighboring countries – Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan – all have airspace controlled by the United States and Israel.”

Rouhani knows a thing or two about his country’s air defense. For one, he was the commander of Iranian air defenses from 1985 until 1991, which coincided with Iran’s lengthy and arduous war with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. His two consecutive terms as president, from 2013 to 2021, coincided with Iran’s unveiling of several indigenous air defense missile systems, such as the Bavar-373 and Khordad-15. During his second term, Tehran sought to set up air defenses in neighboring states as an additional layer of defense against Israel’s powerful air force.

Trumps’ security strategy is making a hard pivot on China. Why now?

Jessie Yeung, Mike Valerio

When the Trump administration unveiled its new national security strategy (NSS) last week, many experts noticed one major shift: how it talks – or more importantly, doesn’t talk – about China. Gone are the sweeping declarations about China being “America’s most consequential geopolitical challenge,” as articulated by the Biden administration. Nor does it include much of the stronger language in the NSS of President Donald Trump’s first term, describing China in 2017 as challenging “American power, influence and interests.”

Instead, this latest document, one that every president submits to Congress outlining their foreign policy vision, emphasized the US-China economic rivalry above all – barely mentioning the concerns of authoritarianism or human rights abuses that had consistently peppered previous administrations’ reports. “There isn’t a single mention of great power competition with China. China is seen much more as an economic competitor,” said David Sacks, a fellow for Asia studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.

At the Breaking Point: The State of the U.S. Foreign Service in 2025

America’s global leadership depends on a strong, professional diplomatic workforce. But in 2025, the U.S. Foreign Service faces an unprecedented crisis. Personnel losses, political interference, and the erosion of America’s soft power have pushed the diplomatic corps to a breaking point—just as global threats intensify.

To document the realities and challenges facing career diplomats in this moment of profound institutional strain, the American Foreign Service Association conducted a survey of its active-duty membership between August and September 2025. More than 2,100 diplomats responded—from entry-level officers to senior leaders, serving in Washington and at posts worldwide.

With the federal government’s own workforce survey discontinued earlier this year, AFSA undertook this study to fill the gap and ensure the voices of America’s diplomats are heard.

Read the Report

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