54,193 events tracked
social demographic · culture
The recent film “Pig Feast: Colonialism in Our Times” has unsurprisingly elicited a strong negative reaction from the Indonesian government.
social demographic · culture
An independent group examined official documents from Myanmar ports, leaked bank documents and open-source data to chart the network that supplies Myanmar with jet fuel.
social demographic · sports
With Former Prime Minister Kim Min-seok’s formal confirmation of his bid for the leadership, the race may likely be intense, given the tensions between the pro-Lee and pro-Jung factions.
geopolitical · geopolitical
The highlight of the Indian prime minister's visit to Indonesia was the finalization of a long-pending agreement on the supply of BrahMos missile system and Astra air-to-air missiles.
social demographic · culture
The two sides signed 14 agreements, including a landmark deal for the provision of BrahMos supersonic missiles to the Indonesian armed forces.
natural disaster · natural disaster
To many in the country's development sector, the sudden collapse of the U.S. aid agency felt “like an earthquake.”
geopolitical · geopolitical
An Indian organized crime syndicate led by Lawrence Bishnoi is being treated as a transnational security threat requiring coordinated international action.
economic · economic
Conflicting domestic economic policies, sudden judicial disruptions, and fresh American tariff investigations have upended the India-U.S. trade deal.
social demographic · sports
Australia can help itself and its region by burnishing its credentials as a trusted international mediator.
geopolitical · geopolitical
A CASC poster connected the recent SLBM launch to the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War.
geopolitical
The Department of Defense does not primarily have a cyber recruiting problem — it has a cyber talent management problem. The military already possesses serious qualification frameworks, scholarship programs, credentialing systems, and selection tools. What it still lacks is a system tying assessment, training, assignment, performance, and retention together across an entire cyber career.In March 2026, the department announced at its Cyber Workforce Summit 2.0 an effort to reinvent the cyber workforce. Called Cyber Command 2.0, this effort’s principal goal is improvement in talent management by focusing on identifying, recruiting, hiring, and retaining the right people. The effort also emphasizes The post The Pentagon Still Cannot Manage Cyber Talent at Scale. Here’s the Fix. appeared first on War on the Rocks .
geopolitical
This exclusive Cogs of War interview is with Catarina Buchatskiy, the co-founder and director of analytics at the Snake Island Institute, a Kyiv-based defense analytics center, and Viktoriia Honcharuk, the institute’s director of defense technologies. We asked them to share their views on how Ukraine’s military and defense firms turn battlefield feedback into rapid innovation, what Western investors and defense tech companies can learn from Ukraine, and what a future Ukraine-West defense industrial partnership might look like. Sign Up for Our Newsletter American and allied defense companies often speak about testing their products in Ukraine, but few have consistently done so. Why The post Inside Ukraine’s Battlefield Innovation Loop appeared first on War on the Rocks .
geopolitical
On this Memorial Day, American servicemembers remain deployed across the world. Many are in harm’s way. This simple fact makes the day less abstract, more real. Memorial Day is not only about wars filed away in history, but also about lives lost in service to the nation and the obligations those losses place on the living.For those who served in combat, the day is intensely personal. It is a day of names, missions, and memories that never fade away entirely. Three of the fallen return to me every year: Cpl. Andrew J. Kemple, 2nd Lt. Tracy Lynn Alger, and Sgt. The post The Lessons of Sacrifice appeared first on War on the Rocks .
geopolitical
Editor’s note: This is the ninth article in an 11-part series examining how the United States should organize, lead, and integrate economic statecraft into strategy, defense practice, and the broader national security ecosystem. The special series is brought to you by the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies and War on the Rocks. Prior installments can be found at the War by Other Ledgers page.In September 2010, after a Chinese fishing trawler captain was detained near the Senkaku Islands, Beijing halted rare-earth exports to Japan. The embargo lasted weeks. China showed, on a U.S. treaty ally, how a supply chain could be The post Rebuilding American Manufacturing: A Keystone for Economic Statecraft appeared first on War on the Rocks .
geopolitical
In 2004, I was a boot (translation: brand new) first lieutenant in 1st Battalion, 7th Marines at a retransmission site in the middle of nowhere, al-Qa’im, Iraq. I heard a sudden explosion and small-arms fire two kilometers away. The battalion radio net burst with chatter, with someone saying there were three casualties: two urgent surgicals (send help quickly!) and one routine (no rush to provide aid). Someone in the operating center asked about the status of the routine casualty, and the radio crackled with the kind of transmission that changes everything. “It’s Whiskey Six, he’s KIA [killed in action].” I The post The U.S. Military Lacks an Ethics Doctrine. Combat Effectiveness Suffers appeared first on War on the Rocks .
geopolitical
In 2019, the Missouri River flooded at historically high levels and damaged 137 facilities, destroyed 1.2 million square feet of workspace, and flooded 3,000 feet of runway at Offutt Air Force Base. Repairing the installation cost $1.2 billion. The Trump administration and Department of Defense justified $1.2 billion in budget reductions to the U.S. Geological Survey, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and Defense Department climate programs as cuts to “woke” climate or environmental initiatives, but a singular event caused sufficient damage to erase those savings.The lethality of American presence in the Pacific depends upon the resilience of bases, ports, and The post An Inconvenient Reality: Climate-Preparedness Cuts Are Lethality Cuts appeared first on War on the Rocks .
geopolitical
Welcome to The Ukraine Compass, a weekly digest of Ukrainian commentary and analysis from across the political spectrum only for War on the Rocks members. Each Monday, we bring you a curated selection of articles from Ukrainian media offering insight into how Ukrainians themselves debate the issues shaping their country.American coverage often narrows the view to the battlefield — these pieces widen it, revealing the texture of daily life, politics, and public argument in a nation at war. The perspectives gathered here are varied, candid, and often surprising, together forming a more complete picture of Ukraine as it really is.Frontline and StrategyЦензор.НЕТ — The post Understanding the Value of Ukrainian Railways appeared first on War on the Rocks .
geopolitical
We had been tracking the contact for six hours.The acoustic signature was ambiguous. The geometry was incomplete. The tactical picture had shifted twice in the preceding hour.I ordered battle stations anyway. Not because I was certain, I was not. I ordered it because the decision window was closing. Waiting for certainty was no longer a strategy, it was a risk. That moment — the space between incomplete knowledge and irreversible action — is where submarine command lives. It is where I spent 14 years.Modern militaries have spent decades trying to eliminate that space. Networked sensors, satellite surveillance, and instantaneous communications The post Leading in the Dark: How Submarine Commanders Think Under Uncertainty appeared first on War on the Rocks .
geopolitical
Why are there more antennas on Svalbard than anywhere else on Earth? Svalbard of all places, where cats and childbirth are banned and there are more polar bears than people? This cluster of islands in the Arctic, one thousand kilometers from Norway, is key to everything from your weather forecast to your car’s navigation. At 78 degrees north, Svalbard is the highest-latitude satellite ground station on Earth and is a crucial point in humanity’s growing dependence on space. In fact, the polar regions — the Arctic and Antarctic — are both crucial to space access.The polar regions are the only The post The Road to Space Runs through the Poles appeared first on War on the Rocks .
geopolitical
Is it too late to stop criminals and American adversaries from exploiting AI to conduct cyberattacks or design novel pathogens? Has regulation kept pace with the threat civilian drones pose to critical infrastructure? AI researcher Lennart Heim, Army drone strategist Paul Lushenko, and CEO of Sentinel Bio Claire Qureshi join Jonathan to discuss the trade-offs between protecting the public and letting the private sector forge ahead. The conversation gets into synthetic DNA, the risk of drones at the FIFA World Cup, and whether the U.S. government should get early access to Silicon Valley’s newest large language models.Image: T. T. Paris The post Synthetic Biology, Drones, and AI: The Risks of Dual-Use Technologies appeared first on War on the Rocks .
geopolitical
In 2025, Nazmelis Zengin wrote, “The Fragility of U.S. Space Power in a Multipolar World,” where she argued Washington’s space superiority could be challenged if the United States doesn’t rethink its course, taking lessons from mid-tier space powers. A year later, we asked Nazmelis to revisit her arguments.Image: NASA Kennedy Space Center/NASA/Chris Swanson via Wikimedia CommonsIn your 2025 article, you argued that American space dominance could be challenged if the United States doesn’t alter how it systematically thinks about adaptability, resilience, and co-development, taking lessons from mid-tier space powers. In late 2025, President Trump signed Executive Order “Ensuring American Space Superiority,” The post Washington Shouldn’t Fly Solo on Building Space Superiority appeared first on War on the Rocks .
geopolitical
The 11th Review Conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) concluded on May 22. Held every five years, the conference offers an opportunity to evaluate the treaty’s implementation, respond to technological and geopolitical developments, and reinforce states’ commitment to the treaty. For the third time in a row, the conference failed to reach consensus on a final document.We asked five experts for their perspectives on what the conference achieved — or failed to achieve.Read more below.Ankit Panda Stanton Senior Fellow in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Host of War on the Rocks’ Thinking the Unthinkable PodcastWhile the The post What Did the NPT Review Conference Achieve? appeared first on War on the Rocks .
geopolitical
When news broke that North Korea had revised its constitution, analysts in the West and across the Korean Peninsula rushed to declare it the formal death of Korean reunification as a policy objective. The changes were hard to ignore. Pyongyang stripped all references to a unified Korean nation, codified a territorial clause treating the Republic of Korea as a separate foreign state, vested direct nuclear weapons authority in Kim Jong-un personally, and concentrated near-absolute executive power in the supreme leader alone. On the surface, it looked like the official burial of seven decades of unification ideology.That reading is seductive. It’s The post What Everyone is Missing About North Korea’s Reunification Strategy appeared first on War on the Rocks .
geopolitical
Sea control has changed. In recent years, there has been a quiet revolution in maritime strategy that has seen navies increasingly expected to exert greater levels of control over more of the world’s oceans, more of the time. Whether it is NATO forces protecting critical maritime infrastructure in the Baltic, Pacific Island nations requiring maritime domain awareness to protect against illegal fishing, or Chinese coast guard and maritime militia vessels occupying features in the South China Sea, navies across the globe are confronting major challenges and are being forced to operate in new and novel ways. Behind all of this The post A Sea Control Revolution? appeared first on War on the Rocks .
geopolitical
In 2024, when Jiangsu Delong, the world’s second-largest stainless-steel producer, filed for bankruptcy, several Chinese firms and state-owned enterprises quietly absorbed its Indonesian assets. Among them was China First Heavy Industries, a state-owned enterprise founded in 1954 as one of China’s early Soviet-backed industrial projects. Today, China First Heavy Industries supplies military-grade metals to China’s military, including reactor vessels for nuclear submarines. For a manufacturer embedded deeply in China’s naval industrial base, securing nickel feedstock for specialty steels is crucial.The episode reveals China’s strategy for critical minerals: Incentivizing access to upstream assets for Chinese firms reduces the risk of supply The post Control Without Ownership: How China’s Party-Business Networks Dominate Indonesia’s Mineral Supply Chains appeared first on War on the Rocks .
geopolitical
The Battle of Midway has assumed a place in American naval lore that has put it on par with other great battles in world naval history. What Salamis was for the Greeks, Trafalgar for the British Royal Navy, and Tsushima for the Japanese, the clash northwest of Midway Island on June 4, 1942, represents for the U.S. Navy. It was a moment of heroism, professional skill, and victory, which came to define how the Navy viewed itself for the rest of the 20th century and beyond.Unlike those other great battles, however, Midway was a decidedly modern naval operation. It involved The post Revisiting The Importance of the Battle of Midway appeared first on War on the Rocks .
geopolitical
China’s plan to become a world leader in AI by 2030 is a fixture of practically every Congressional briefing and expert commentary on Beijing’s AI ambitions. The plan’s logic — introduced in 2017 — was simple and alarming: Beijing would direct capital, mobilize its firms, recruit talent, and execute with the strategic patience of a state-led innovation ecosystem. Nearly a decade later, that frame has only hardened. Beijing’s recently issued 15th Five-Year Plan directs Party organs to take “extraordinary measures” to strengthen technological self-reliance and launch a new “AI+” initiative to integrate AI across the nation’s strategic sectors. Beijing has The post Forged in a Knife Fight: China’s Brutal Domestic AI Competition appeared first on War on the Rocks .
geopolitical
When is the risk of war the highest? And what should the United States be doing about it? One of the most important but underappreciated questions in international politics is how states think about the future balance of power. Countries that believe their position is improving often choose patience. Those who fear their position is deteriorating may feel pressure to act before their advantages disappear. In this episode, Ryan is joined by Dean Cheng, Mira Rapp-Hooper, and Amanda Hsiao to explore how Chinese leaders may be thinking about time, power, and Taiwan. This episode is sponsored by Kibu, which ensures you always know The post Is Time on China’s Side? Beijing’s Taiwan Calculus and the Balance of Power appeared first on War on the Rocks .
geopolitical
In August 2024, scholars at a Xiamen-based think tank published a paper urging Beijing to immediately establish a shadow Taiwan government on the Chinese mainland in preparation for a full takeover of the island. “It is imperative to prepare a plan for the comprehensive takeover of Taiwan after unification,” they said. The scholars were writing at a fraught moment for Beijing.Only months earlier, the anti-China Democratic Progressive Party had taken office after a third consecutive presidential election win. Unusually for a Chinese publication on such a sensitive topic, the paper made several frank admissions: that opposition to unification within Taiwan The post After the Invasion: China Considers the Problem of Ruling Taiwan appeared first on War on the Rocks .
geopolitical
Adversaries do not need to breach the Pentagon’s systems: They only need to harvest the logic of the publicly released frontier AI models that underpin them. This is a defining risk as the Department of Defense pivots to an “AI-first” warfighting machine. In this new context, military predominance is a derivative of AI model supremacy. From Project Maven’s intelligence fusion to the high-velocity sensor-to-shooter loops of Anduril’s Lattice, the Defense Department’s most advanced systems are tethered to the frontier models forged by tech heavyweights like Anthropic, Google, and OpenAI. As long as these firms hold the high ground in the The post The Pentagon’s AI Edge Is Being Distilled Away appeared first on War on the Rocks .