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Defense

The Military’s Race to Operationalize AI

“I feel as though I was catapulted into a dystopian future in which the battlefield (or ‘kill zone’ as Ukrainians call it) is dominated by drones and [...] More

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Can America’s All-Volunteer Force Survive the Next War?

“It made sense for the United States to transition from this mixed force of conscripts and professionals to an All-Volunteer Force. It has enabled us [...] More

The AI We Cannot Deploy — And What Is at Stake

Last week, I argued in these pages that the United States is buying an army it cannot command — writing procurement checks at a scale its adversaries [...] More

The New Economics of Warfare: David vs Goliath

The most important lesson emerging from the Iran conflict may not actually be about Iran. It is about the changing economics of warfare and what [...] More

The Nuclear Umbrella is Bent, Not Broken

Why Extended Nuclear Deterrence Still Matters Jennifer Lind and Daryl Press make a compelling argument in a recent article about the future [...] More

The Cost of Squandering America’s Reputation

Make no mistake: the United States is weaker today than it was yesterday, and the day before that.Many of our closest allies have moved from fear to [...] More

Blowing up Boats: The Numbing Effect of Repetitive Illegality

Operation Southern Spear, the U.S. campaign against alleged drug trafficking small boats off the coast of several South American nations, continues [...] More

America Is Buying an Army It Cannot Command

The U.S. Army has committed to a million small drones by 2028. The Department of Defense has not decided who will authorize how they fire.That is not [...] More

The Growing Cost of Keeping U.S. Submarines Idle

“Inactive idle time describes when a [U.S. Navy] attack submarine designated for decommissioning cannot be inducted into a dry dock in a shipyard. As [...] More

Open-Source Intel Makes U.S. Troops an Easier Target for Iran

Iran is reading American service members’ social media feeds to deadly effect. The fact is that not all intelligence must be gleaned from secret, [...] More

It’s Time For The President To Level With The American People on Iran

The U.S. administration’s strategic expectations are increasingly colliding with a set of hard realities. While Iran has taken a considerable [...] More

How About Equipping Local Law Enforcement with a Better Anti-Drone Arsenal?

During the week of March 9, drones came over Barksdale Air Force Base in waves. Barksdale is the home of the 2nd Bomb Wing, one of the places this [...] More

How Ukraine Is Changing the Way the U.S. Army Fights

“To me, the biggest way that we're doing this is introducing technology into the [U.S. Army] formations that is not fully baked. And so all of us who [...] More