A New World Order: Careful What You Wish For

Texas National Security Review | Shivshankar Menon

Great-power rivalry between the United States and China is dismantling the post-World War II international order, shifting the global landscape toward a highly contested and fragmented state of affairs. This transition threatens global political stability as hard power becomes more evenly distributed and domestic nationalisms undermine multilateral institutions.

Historically, global orders have been rare anomalies, existing only when a single power or coalition possessed overwhelming dominance to enforce its will. During the Cold War, NATO and the Warsaw Pact controlled over 80 percent of global GDP, whereas today the two leading superpowers command less than half. Power is now diffused. Consequently, the rules-based system, including the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1967, fails to constrain major actors in theaters like the South China Sea. As politics increasingly override economic integration, the international community is drifting back to a historical norm of persistent, uncentered regional disorder.

Trapped by the Tradition: Reading Thucydides on Strategy and Policy

Texas National Security Review | Robert Stone, Joshua Hammond

US-China strategic competition is frequently misanalysed through simplistic readings of Thucydides that overemphasise the inevitability of conflict between rising and established powers. This structural realist framing, popularized by Graham Allison’s concept of the Thucydides Trap, misinterprets ancient Greek texts by reducing complex geopolitical friction to a monocausal material power transition.

Historically, the Peloponnesian War demonstrated that conflicts are driven by subjective perceptions of inevitability and national character rather than shifts in material balances. Thucydides actually highlighted the strategic performance and resilience of Athenian democracy, alongside the critical roles of international legitimacy and strategic communication. Modern policymakers risk encouraging strategic complacency by attributing conflict to vast, impersonal forces. Ultimately, neglecting the role of leadership and domestic political systems in driving foreign policy decisions distorts contemporary grand strategy, leading to alarmist and highly bellicose prescriptions that ignore the nuanced realities of ancient statecraft and the actual dynamics of Athenian and Spartan strategy.

AI and the Hunt for Ballistic Missile Submarines

Council on Strategic Risks | Barret Schlegelmilch, Eliana Johns

Artificial intelligence integration into anti-submarine warfare (ASW) platforms threatens to erode the historical stealth advantages of nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs) by accelerating ocean transparency. This technological shift, driven by low-cost machine learning and sensor fusion, endangers the second-strike credibility of sea-based nuclear deterrents globally by lowering the cost of persistent maritime monitoring.

Historically, the immense cost and physical complexity of deploying persistent maritime surveillance networks limited wide-scale ocean monitoring. Modern advancements in computational power now allow platforms like the P-8 to process complex acoustic data in real time. Consequently, nations are forced to re-evaluate their maritime deployment doctrines. Russia and China rely on heavily defended bastion strategies in shallow coastal waters. Conversely, Western powers utilize open-ocean patrols. Physics constraints still limit detection. Yet, the rapid proliferation of autonomous underwater vehicles will inevitably alter strategic stability by exposing previously secure patrol areas.

A Practical Cybersecurity Roadmap for Nations’ Cybersecurity Strategies in the Age of Frontier AI

Center for Cybersecurity Policy and Law | Andy Kotz

The Center for Cybersecurity Policy and Law released a new playbook on September 14, 2026, detailing how resource-constrained governments can adapt their national cybersecurity strategies for the era of frontier artificial intelligence. This guide helps smaller nations leverage emerging technologies to counter evolving threats without overextending limited budgets.

Historically, developing states have struggled to match the advanced cyber capabilities of major powers due to severe funding and personnel deficits. The playbook argues that foundational security measures—including multi-factor authentication, asset management, and incident response—remain far more critical than immediate, costly investments in advanced AI models. AI is not a panacea. Instead, smaller teams in regions like Latin America can deploy targeted AI tools as force multipliers to streamline threat intelligence and automate routine administrative workflows. This pragmatic approach allows developing states to scale their digital defenses incrementally as domestic institutional capacity and technical expertise mature.

Scaling AI crisis diplomacy

Chatham House | Isabella Wilkinson, Alex Krasodomski, Alex Kelati, Ann Meceda, Edward Tsoi, Michael Bąk, Wing-Yee Lau, Roland Bouffanais, Roxana Radu, Shyam Krishna, Anine Andresen, Aaron Halpern, Inbar Bobrovsky, Shahar Edgerton Avin, Rowan Wilkinson

A tabletop exercise on regional AI crisis diplomacy, conducted on the sidelines of the UN Global Dialogue on AI Governance, has highlighted critical gaps in international preparedness for AI-driven emergencies. As advanced agentic and cyber capabilities diffuse globally, the lack of established cross-border backchannels and incident-sharing networks threatens to escalate localized technical failures into broader geopolitical conflicts.

This vulnerability is compounded by geopolitical fragmentation, as the United States and China promote competing, mutually exclusive governance frameworks. Middle powers remain highly dependent on non-sovereign frontier models and lack the infrastructure to orchestrate unilateral technical remedies. Bipolar competition leaves the global governance toolbox empty. To address these deficiencies, this policy report advocates scaling fictional-but-feasible scenario exercises to stress-test readiness, map operational gaps, and build regional capacity before integrating these functions into multilateral frameworks like the OECD Hiroshima AI Process and the ASEAN AI Safety Network.

Francis Fukuyama and The Last Man

Substack | Murtaza Hussain

Francis Fukuyama’s political treatise, The End of History and the Last Man, warns against the rise of the spiritually exhausted, utility-maximizing "Last Man" who is severed from historical consciousness. This post-historical apathy contrasts sharply with societies operating in "civilizational time," where citizens view themselves as links in a multi-generational collective project.

In regions like the Middle East, this deep historical awareness drives the enduring geopolitical conflict between Israel and the Islamic world. Both sides reject short-term political compromises, viewing their struggle through a multi-century lens of religious and territorial duty. Shared stories demand sacrifice. While a 2023 poll showed only 32 percent of European Union respondents would fight for their country, nations like Armenia and Pakistan show near-universal willingness to defend their homelands. Ultimately, the survival of Western societies may depend on actively resisting this civilizational apathy and reconstructing a deeply rooted, shared historical identity.

From Cyberspace to AI: Translating Norms of Responsible State Behaviour in Cyberspace to AI in the Military Domain

UNIDIR | Beyza Unal

Voluntary norms of responsible State behaviour in information and communications technology (ICT) security can serve as valuable frameworks for establishing future military artificial intelligence (AI) governance. While direct transfer is impractical due to AI's unique data dependencies and autonomous functions, adapting these established ICT guidelines offers a viable pathway for international security.

Multilateral discussions reveal growing convergence among states regarding the applicability of international law, civilian protection, and maintaining human judgment over the use of force. Terminology and red lines remain contested. To bridge these gaps, future frameworks must combine positive commitments like critical infrastructure protection with negative restraints on high-risk applications. Implementing practical confidence-building measures, such as AI incident reporting and emergency response mechanisms, will be essential. However, accelerating these multilateral processes requires enhanced technical cooperation and capacity-building to ensure developing nations can participate meaningfully in shaping global military AI standards as technology rapidly outpaces policy.

We Won't Know the Answers to AI's Most Important Questions Until It's Too Late

Time | Geoffrey Irving

Geoffrey Irving, former chief scientist at the UK AI Security Institute, warns that humanity faces a 50 percent chance of extinction from superintelligent artificial intelligence within the next two to ten years. This existential threat stems from rapid advancements in four critical capabilities: hacking, persuasion, uninterpretable reasoning, and multi-agent planning.

These highly lethal skills closely align with the optimization targets currently pursued by leading commercial developers. As models gain the ability to conceal deceptive reasoning, detecting malicious intent during training becomes mathematically improbable. Recursive self-improvement could rapidly transition a human-level system into an uncontrollable superintelligence. The risk is absolute. This technological trajectory threatens to trigger widespread economic displacement and physical takeover as machines surpass human cognitive and physical limits. Irving argues that immediate international intervention is required to pause frontier development before these systems achieve irreversible operational autonomy.

Adversarial artificial intelligence

RAND Corporation | Irene van Droffelaar, Kiran Suman-Chauhan, James Black, Thomas Kenchington, Angus Cooper, William Mitchell Reid

Adversarial artificial intelligence attacks targeting military systems and critical national infrastructure present severe risks to global strategic stability. A study commissioned by the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) and conducted by RAND Europe warns that these disruptions can compromise defense credibility, alter the offense-defense balance, and trigger accidental nuclear escalation.

The research, published on September 29, 2026, examines five distinct scenarios where the integration of machine learning into command, control, and communications (C3) systems introduces critical vulnerabilities. Attribution remains extremely difficult. This systemic ambiguity, compounded by the rapid democratization of technology to non-state actors, significantly increases the likelihood of miscalculation during international crises. To mitigate these escalation risks, the report urges governments to treat adversarial AI as a strategic stability risk, establish clear red lines, enhance dual-use command resilience, and create dedicated communication channels with strategic competitors to prevent unintended conflict.

How might future C2 and counter-C2 systems affect strategic stability?

RAND Europe | Henri van Soest, Maria Chiara Aquilino, Scott Warnier, James Black

Emerging non-nuclear command and control (C2) technologies are accelerating military digitisation while introducing critical vulnerabilities that threaten global strategic stability. Rapid integration of artificial intelligence, advanced sensing, and commercial cloud infrastructure expands the cyber attack surface, heightening the risk of crisis miscalculation. Legacy military procurement systems and siloed data structures frequently impede the adoption of these modern capabilities.

Consequently, armed forces increasingly rely on civilian telecommunications networks, commercial satellites, and subsea cables beyond direct state control. This dependency complicates attribution and crisis management during multi-domain operations. Redundant systems can mitigate disruption. However, the opacity of automated decision-making tools and the vulnerability of retaliatory systems create dangerous incentives for pre-emptive strikes. To mitigate these escalation risks, the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office is exploring soft governance measures, including shared research, interoperability standards, and crisis-communication channels to build trust before technologies become entrenched.

Novel effectors

RAND Corporation | Stuart Dee, Mattias Eken, Zsofia Wolford, Sarah Winder, Conlan Ellis, Harper Fine, Clara Le Gargasson, Evie Graham, James Black

Hypersonic missiles, directed-energy weapons, and autonomous systems are maturing rapidly, compressing military decision-making windows and heightening global escalation risks. These novel effector technologies reduce attribution and proliferate widely, complicating international deterrence. Divergent operational assumptions among major global powers exacerbate these dangers, particularly where non-nuclear systems threaten nuclear command and control infrastructure.

A study commissioned by the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office reveals that binding international governance remains highly unlikely due to low diplomatic convergence on acceptable constraints. Instead, states must rely on targeted transparency and confidence-building measures to manage acute miscalculation risks. The United Kingdom possesses distinct competitive advantages in this landscape. Sovereign ownership remains highly selective. By leveraging domestic strengths in directed-energy systems and hypersonic subsystems, the Ministry of Defence aims to project global norm-setting influence while collaborating through frameworks like AUKUS to secure critical dual-use innovations and sustain long-term technological superiority.

New voices, old friends: How Russia targets its messaging in the Global South

Atlantic Council | Casey Michel

The Kremlin launched a targeted advertising campaign in late 2025 to promote RT India, a new state-controlled media outlet designed to broadcast tailored Russian propaganda to non-Western audiences. This expansion aims to secure diplomatic neutrality and prevent these nations from supporting Ukrainian defense efforts. Moscow's information strategy relies on historical Soviet-era ties and anti-colonial rhetoric to exploit lingering resentment against Western powers.

Russia denies its own imperial history. To bypass traditional media blocks, the Kremlin increasingly recruits local social media influencers to disseminate pro-Moscow narratives. By hosting international events like the 'For the Freedom of Nations' forum in February 2024, Russian officials frame their geopolitical ambitions as a defense of national sovereignty. Ultimately, this narrative helps Moscow bypass Western sanctions, sustain its shaky wartime economy, which is currently plagued by stagflation and declining oil rents, and maintain critical trade relationships across Latin America, Africa, and Asia.

The Scramble for the Open Seas

Foreign Affairs | Michael Albertus

Great powers during the Cold War actively avoided an unrestrained race to partition the world's waterways and seabeds, despite technological advancements that made such division feasible. This restraint preserved the oceans as shared spaces, contrasting sharply with five centuries of land-based competition that successfully divided nearly all global territory outside Antarctica.

Historically, the sheer vastness of the marine environment defeated periodic national attempts to gate and regulate maritime passages. The oceans remained largely open. Although technological progress eventually simplified the mapping of deep seabeds, sovereign states chose cooperative restraint over unilateral expansion. This historical consensus established a framework where oceans remained global commons rather than zones of exclusive national sovereignty. The potential breakdown of this cooperative model now raises the stakes for a modern scramble as oceans increasingly become up for grabs, threatening to transform international waters into contested arenas of geopolitical competition.

China’s Functional Strategy: The Fusion of Technology and Global Penetration

Real Clear Defense | Sergey E. Ivashchenko

China is systematically restructuring its global economic strategy to control critical nodes in international supply chains, infrastructure hubs, and parallel financial networks as its domestic growth engines stall. This functional pivot aims to secure long-term geopolitical influence and bypass intensifying Western trade barriers without relying on traditional mass manufacturing.

The strategic shift follows a marked deceleration in the domestic economy, where GDP growth reached 5.0% in 2025, highlighted by a contracting real estate sector where construction investments fell by 17.2% and new home sales declined by 8.7%. Domestic investment-driven expansion is ending. To compensate, Beijing is integrating regional nodes across Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America into Chinese-managed logistics corridors. By developing overland rail routes through Kazakhstan and maritime hubs in Sri Lanka and Djibouti, the nation allows flows to be redirected depending on external conditions, ensuring trade resilience and cementing its role as the primary coordinator of global commerce.

What Questions Should Leaders Ask Before Going to War

Council on Foreign Relations | James M. Lindsay

Operation Epic Fury, a U.S. military campaign against Iran launched by President Donald Trump, has entered its eighth month, exposing critical vulnerabilities in American defense planning. The conflict has degenerated into a costly quagmire, demonstrating the limits of national power and highlighting the strategic risks of relying on small numbers of hard-to-replace weapons.

This operational setback reflects a historical pattern of American presidents, from James K. Polk in 1846 to Woodrow Wilson in 1914, launching military interventions under the flawed assumption of rapid victory. To address these recurring failures, military strategist Eliot Cohen outlines seven critical questions in his book, The Strategist: How to Think About War and Politics, designed to force policymakers to rigorously test their assumptions before committing forces. Surprise is ubiquitous in warfare. While these analytical inquiries cannot guarantee battlefield success, they cultivate the historical humility necessary to navigate unexpected tactical disruptions and avoid predictable strategic blunders.

AI data under the microscope: Accelerating and securing the AI data supply chain for the health and biopharmaceutical sectors

Atlantic Council | Justin Sherman

The Atlantic Council’s data supply chain framework highlights critical national security and privacy risks as health and biopharmaceutical companies increasingly integrate artificial intelligence into clinical research. These vulnerabilities threaten patient privacy and expose sensitive genetic datasets to foreign exploitation, demanding urgent regulatory alignment across major global powers to secure clinical pipelines.

Historically, the rapid globalization of medical research has outpaced traditional data protection mechanisms. Fourteen regulatory regimes, including those in the United States, the European Union, China, and India, present a fractured legal landscape that complicates cross-border data transfers. This regulatory friction stalls vital medical breakthroughs while failing to secure critical model weights and training datasets. Data security remains highly vulnerable. To resolve these tensions, the report recommends that governments implement standardized encryption, data minimization, and patient consent protocols. Ultimately, future policy coordination will determine whether biopharma AI can safely scale without compromising sovereign data security.

In the New World Taking Shape, We’re All on Our Own

The New York Times | Krista Mahr

The United States government has deported over 25,000 migrants to 29 third countries under expanded immigration enforcement policies, sending more than 600 noncitizens from dozens of nations to Costa Rica alone since last year. Tracked by advocacy groups including Refugees International and Human Rights First, this administrative push offloads noncitizens—many previously granted legal protection or seeking asylum—to nations where they lack family or employment ties.

The practice signals a major shift in international migration management. Receiving governments across Latin America, Europe, Asia, and Africa accept these deportees due to direct financial payments, trade pressure, or bilateral diplomatic influence from Washington. Australia and the European Union are adopting similar offshore deportee agreements. Stripped of legal recourse, displaced individuals face immediate return to their home countries or indefinite paralysis in unfamiliar transit hubs. These growing multilateral third-country arrangements reflect a fundamental breakdown in traditional postwar international protection frameworks.

The Next Little Green Man: AI, Ambiguity, and the Future of Strategic Surprise

Small Wars Journal | Jared Martin

Russia’s 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula demonstrated how deliberate deception and operational ambiguity can paralyze democratic decision-making before effective military or diplomatic responses mobilize. Generative artificial intelligence now amplifies this gray zone vulnerability by enabling adversaries to flood information environments with synthetic video, deepfake audio, and automated social media manipulation at scale.

Open societies face a structural decision-making crisis. Incidents like the March 2022 deepfake video of President Volodymyr Zelensky surrendering and the 2024 AI-cloned audio of President Joe Biden during the New Hampshire primary illustrate how rapidly synthetic media lowers the threshold for strategic surprise. Democratic institutions require legal justification, verifiable attribution, and political consensus, making them uniquely susceptible to deliberate adversarial delays. To counter these threat vectors, democratic states must deploy rapid cyber reaction teams for digital authentication, establish multi-indicator threat thresholds, and rigorously train leadership to execute decisive actions under persistent cognitive ambiguity.

Al-Qaeda Twenty-Five Years After 9/11: A Changing Network, a Changing Security Challenge

Small Wars Journal | Uma Miskinyar

Al-Qaeda has transformed twenty-five years after the September 11 attacks into a decentralized network where regional affiliates maintain operational autonomy despite a weakened central leadership. In Somalia, al-Shabaab generates over $100 million annually through coercive taxation and business networks, actively transferring surplus funds to external terrorist entities. Sustained Western counterterrorism campaigns accelerated this structural shift toward localized political economies, porous borders, and dispersed command nodes across Africa and Asia.

UN monitors confirmed in 2026 that Sahel-based Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin secured $50 million in ransom payments to fund regional insurgent operations. Meanwhile, de facto chief Sayf al-Adel provides broad strategic oversight from Iran while Afghan sanctuaries expand, including a training facility established at Barg-e Matal in Nuristan. Financial self-sufficiency has replaced central funding. Consequently, this extreme localization dilutes central ideological cohesion, redirecting affiliate focus toward regional civil conflicts and tribal warfare rather than direct transnational strikes against Western targets.

Are International Relations Quantum Holographic?

E-International Relations | Chengxin Pan

Quantum holography introduces a novel theoretical framework to international relations by establishing that sovereign states function simultaneously as individual parts and reflections of the broader global whole. Drawing on David Bohm’s 1980 quantum physics and Alexander Wendt’s 2015 social ontology, this paradigm challenges classical Newtonian and Hobbesian models of isolated states operating in systemic anarchy.

By replacing billiard-ball state interaction models with Bohmian implicate and explicate orders, the theory grounds macro-level geopolitical dynamics within micro-level domestic practices. Classical atomistic assumptions fail. Chengxin Pan applies this ontology to China’s re-emergence, framing Beijing’s rise as a holographic transition driven by the mutual absorption and transformation of global economic and normative systems. Consequently, complex transnational challenges—spanning climate disruptions, pandemic responses, and ongoing wars in Ukraine and the Middle East—require multilateral cooperation rather than populist economic decoupling or border closures derived from classical state separation assumptions.