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National Security

US-POLITICS-OBAMA-INTELLIGENCE

DNI Day One: Three Strategic Decisions for National Security Evolution

Authors’ Note:This paper is intended to frame a discussion, not settle one.Too often, debates about intelligence reform begin with organizational [...] More

The Latest

Before Funding a Record Defense Budget, Congress Should Demand Answers on Iran

As I listened to Defense Secretary Hegseth testify about the proposed $1.5 Trillion defense budget, the quote from Robert Heinlein, the science [...] More

How Anonymous Wikipedia Editors Influence Global Narratives — and AI Systems

OPINION -- If you ask Google what Al Jazeera is, the answer you receive draws heavily on Wikipedia. The same is true if you ask ChatGPT, Perplexity [...] More

Part II: When a Machiavellian and a Charismatic Met

In our pre-summit piece on the Xi/Trump meeting [When a Charismatic and a Machiavellian Meet 12 May] we wrote: "When a gifted political charismatic [...] More

AI, Autonomous Weapons, and the Pentagon’s $55 Billion Bet on Future War

“The [Defense] Department (DoD) is requesting a massive increase for DAWG. For those in the audience that may not know, DAWG is the Defense [...] More

Remembering the Americans Who Made Ukraine’s War Their Own

Remembering the Americans Who Made Ukraine’s War Their Own

This Memorial Day, The Cipher Brief is remembering the Americans who answered the call after Russia launched its unprovoked, deadly invasion of [...] More

DHS Has Become Central to American Strategy, But Its Strategy Has Not Caught Up

A generation after 9/11, the homeland has returned to the center of American national security strategy. The 2025 National Security Strategy, the [...] More

The G-2: Takeaways from Trump's Trip to Beijing

The G-2: Takeaways from Trump's Trip to Beijing

By most accounts, President Donald Trump’s trip to Beijing ended ambiguously for the U.S. From Air Force One on his way back to the U.S., Trump [...] More

Proscribing the IRGC Will Make Britain Safer

The United Kingdom must act to proscribe Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC, before it’s too late. The IRGC must be proscribed before [...] More

Cybersecurity Photo Illustrations

Iran's Digital War Machine Targeting U.S. Infrastructure

The first missile strikes hadn’t even cooled before Iranian-linked hackers were moving. When the U.S. and Israel launched military operations against [...] More

The administration needs a better relationship with the Vatican

President Reagan formed an alliance with Pope John Paul II in the 1980s that contributed to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.This is a [...] More

A Bridge Too Small: Why $49 Billion Can’t Fix a $1.5 Trillion Problem

Welcome to The Iron Triangle, the Cipher Brief column serving Procurement Officers tasked with buying the future, Investors funding the next [...] More

Sustaining Decision Advantage: The Case for Analytic Tradecraft Reform

OPINION -- In an era where warfighters and decision-makers have on-demand access to vast data holdings and AI-generated insights, the future of [...] More