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Tech/Cyber

Drones Spotted Being Used Illegally

Is the U.S. lagging when it comes to drone warfare superiority?

When Iranian Shahed drones began tearing through the Gulf in the opening hours of Operation Epic Fury on February 28, killing American service [...] More

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The Next Battlefield Is Perception, Not Territory

OPINION – The Gray Zone is no longer a peripheral space between war and peace. It has become the primary arena in which strategic advantage is tested [...] More

The Drone War’s Real Problem Isn’t Technology — It’s Speed

OPINION — When Steve Blank and I sat down over coffee a decade ago and realized that the customer discovery process in Lean was identical to what I'd [...] More

Cheap Drones, Expensive Consequences: The New Economics of War

Cheap Drones, Expensive Consequences: The New Economics of War

OPINION -- The democratization of drone warfareWhen Ukrainian soldiers began destroying Russian tanks with inexpensive quadcopters, the economics of [...] More

The Cognitive Battlefield is Now Decisive Terrain

OPINION -- Senior policymakers, military leaders, technologists and narrative strategists had one thing on their minds as they gathered in a Reston [...] More

They're Coming for Our Kids: How Extremists Target Children Online

OPINION — September is National Preparedness Month - when we check our emergency kits, review evacuation routes, and prepare for natural disasters. [...] More

The Country’s First ‘Cognitive Advantage’ Chief: Influence Is the New Battlefield

The Country’s First ‘Cognitive Advantage’ Chief: Influence Is the New Battlefield

WEEKEND INTERVIEW — In an era when foreign adversaries can shape public sentiment with a well-timed meme and a handful of AI-driven accounts, the [...] More

How China Built AI Dominance on Stolen American Silicon

How China Built AI Dominance on Stolen American Silicon

DEEP DIVE — Federal prosecutors in Texas, in December, unsealed charges and related details exposing a sprawling scheme that quietly siphoned some of [...] More

Agentic AI and the “Human-in-the-Loop” Luxury in Modern Defense

THE IRON TRIANGLE — Welcome to the inaugural edition of “The Iron Triangle”, my new Cipher Brief column that serves the three pillars of modern [...] More

Human Agency in a Technology-Mediated World

EXPERT PERSPECTIVE — Occasionally, a speech does more than mark a leadership transition or outline institutional priorities. It captures, with [...] More

Building U.S. Drone Dominance Brick by Brick

OPINION — One of the things I loved about LEGO as a child was the ability to mix and match an endless amount of parts to create unique builds. [...] More

Modeling the Earth with AI is Now a Strategic Intelligence Imperative

EXPERT OPINION / PERSPECTIVE — We are currently witnessing a mobilization of technical ambition reminiscent of the Manhattan Project, a realization [...] More

X’s Location Feature Exposes a Real Problem, but Does Not Fix It

OPINION — A new location transparency feature on X is revealing foreign influence on American discourse just as federal agencies designed to deal [...] More