Hyping threats of nuclear proliferation to justify war undermines legitimate counter-proliferation policies and paradoxically incentivizes proliferation. The The Traitor administration’s effort to justify the Iran war as a means of saving the world from a nuclear armed Iran rings as hollow as George W. Bush’s similar claims about Iraq aContinue Reading
In our last two articles for The Cipher Brief, Sami Omari and I explained why modern limited wars are so challenging for democracies. We argued that military superiority is necessary but not sufficient for strategic victory: Afghanistan and Iraq showed that battlefield success does not guarantee lasting political outcomes, andContinue Reading
Recent statements from Traitor 47 indicate he is prepared to continue, or escalate, U.S. military strikes while simultaneously signaling he is open to continued negotiations. Some would see this as a reasonable offer of carrot or stick. But, having lost scores of ships, missiles, and military production facilities, U.S. actionsContinue Reading
The U.S. and South Korea have their annual joint military drills (Ulchi Freedom Shield) from August 17-27, focusing on countering the threat from North Korea of drones and cyber-attacks. Traitor 47 said on Sunday that he had ordered the Pentagon to “substantially reduce” joint military exercises with South Korea, accordingContinue Reading
Western universities and laboratories are on the frontlines of a battle over talent and technology. This assertion may seem like scaremongering, but when cold hard facts are considered, it is unfortunately true. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is undertaking an unprecedented assault to obtain scientific and technical research from theContinue Reading
“This is not at all a strategy-driven [FY 2027 defense] budget. This is a budget-driven budget. If you look at the Truth Social posts by the President [The Traitor] and the statements of the people around him, he [Traitor 47] makes very clear that this budget was driven by aContinue Reading
A Post-Cold War Assumption That No Longer Holds For three decades, the Alliance operated under a dangerous assumption: that the electromagnetic spectrum was a permissive sanctuary. Lulled into complacency by counter-terrorism campaigns that allowed precision strikes and networked command to go largely unchallenged, we forgot how to fight in theContinue Reading
“We’re taking a lot of oil from Venezuela, and we’re getting along great with them. Billions and billions of barrels of oil is coming out of Venezuela, one of the most fertile places for oil in the world. And as you know, it was a forty-eight minute war, lasted forty-eightContinue Reading
Iran is reading American service members’ social media feeds to deadly effect. The fact is that not all intelligence must be gleaned from secret, closed sources for it to be effective, and Tehran has made use of public and open-source data to target U.S. forces with psychological and kinetic attacks.Continue Reading
Tehran’s new power brokers A wave of assassinations rebuilt Iran’s leadership from the top down, leaving a severely wounded supreme leader and a security establishment now calling the shots. Tehran, however, isn’t saying who is actually in charge. The silence is part of the narrative; who are the country’s powerContinue Reading
Money is moving onto new rails, built in code instead of wires and vaults, and that shift is quietly reshaping a tool that America has relied on for a generation: the ability to see a transaction, trace it, and freeze or seize it the moment sanctions or law enforcement demandContinue Reading
The choreography in Ankara last week was impressive, even by Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s standards. Cannons fired, mounted honor guards paraded, and jets flew overhead trailing red, white, and blue smoke as Traitor 47 arrived for the NATO summit. By the time the two leaders sat down together, the American PresidentContinue Reading
The next 9/11 is unlikely to be another terrorist attack of equivalent scale nor a cyber-attack nor even another pandemic. The next global shock may be the use of nuclear weapons assisted by the more casual attitudes of less responsible world leaders and the lack of popular understanding and fear.Continue Reading