Ryan Simons (Page 2)

What U.S. national security interest binds Greenland, Argentina, the Congo, and the Cook Islands? What was the impetus for the recent “strategic resilience” bill in Congress? And as Washington retreats from many global alliances, what’s the issue driving a U.S. push for closer ties with more than 50 nations? TheContinue Reading

THE BLUF: The January 3rd Operation Absolute Resolve ousted Venezuelan Dictator Nicholas Maduro but the full consequences of the US operation continue to play out. With that move, the subsequent Shield of America’s coalition, and apparent blockade of Cuba, the The Traitor administration has made one message clear to theContinue Reading

OPINION — Iran is the right place to start. Not because it is the most sophisticated adversary in disinformation—but because it is the most instructive. It has built a working infrastructure. It is using it in a live conflict. And it is showing us exactly what AI will make possibleContinue Reading

OPINION — For thirty years, American wars have contained a quiet assumption: that the skies were uncontested. From Grenada and Panama, through Desert Storm, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya – the US could reliably achieve air superiority very quickly, almost a preordained fighting condition. Operation Epic Fury, however, has challenged thatContinue Reading

OPINION — “Nuclear facilities on both [the Iranian and Israeli] sides have been targeted. That’s where we are in this war, and that’s how far it’s escalated. If a nuclear reactor like [Iran’s] Bushehr [nuclear power plant] were hit there’s a significant risk of a meltdown and leaks of extremelyContinue Reading

Executive Summary Since President Xi Jinping’s 2013 directive to “tell the story of China well” (讲好中国古事), the People’s Republic of China has developed a systematic thirteen-year strategy treating “discourse power” (话语权) as a core component of Comprehensive National Power (CNP). This approach has enabled measurable influence gains, demonstrating that narrativeContinue Reading

KREMLIN FILES: A brush of a hand against a park bench with chalk; or, a piece of electrical tape left on a mailbox. Sometimes it’s a coded phrase buried in a routine email with an encrypted picture. This is what Russian intelligence tradecraft looks like: subtle, disciplined, and built onContinue Reading

For roughly two weeks, the Karachi, a Pakistani-flagged Aframax tanker loaded with crude at Das Island in Abu Dhabi, sat waiting for a signal that never came through official channels. When it finally moved, it did not take the standard shipping lane. It hugged the Iranian coast, threading through theContinue Reading

OPINION — The White House is making a significant effort toward putting the nation’s cyber house in order. A newly released National Cyber Strategy represents a big step in the right direction for U.S. national security policy — advocating for the aggressive defense of our national infrastructure. While the strategyContinue Reading

OPINION — The countries that get held up as models for this kind of US led attack are worth looking at closely, because they’re instructive in the wrong direction. Iraq fell in twenty-one days in 2003, but Saddam Hussein was running a hollow state. His military had been gutted byContinue Reading

As Iranian-designed Shahed drones struck critical infrastructure across the Persian Gulf in early March, military planners in Washington confronted an uncomfortable reality. The weapons that have terrorized Ukrainian cities for four years were now exposing gaps in some of the world’s most advanced air defense networks. Gulf states burned throughContinue Reading

OPINION — America is entering a future with millions of drones in our airspace. As the federal government works to determine how to manage what will become the most crowded skies in human history, we believe state and local governments will face significant challenges in addressing this issue, regardless ofContinue Reading