WASHINGTON – Pressure is mounting in Congress to crack down on prediction markets, which have been at the center of national security scandals in recent months, with insiders accused of profiting from classified or sensitive information. In June 2025, over a dozen accounts collected more than $600,000 by wagering on a surprise attack on Iran hours before it happened. In … Read more
As NATO’s northern flank becomes a sensor-saturated operating environment, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) fusion increasingly depends on the integrity of undersea cables, unmanned systems, cloud infrastructure, and allied data-sharing architectures. The Baltic critical undersea infrastructure (CUI) has become part of NATO’s sensor-decision environment, tracing the very pathway through which cable disruption can degrade ISR fusion, slow attribution, and produce … Read more
Abstract A recent argument that the United States Army Special Forces have become a campaign afterthought is right about the diagnosis but provides an incomplete assessment of the cure. The decisive terrain of great-power competition is cognition, and the culturally immersed and distributed character of Special Forces—built on a “by, with, and through” —gives the regiment a latent comparative advantage … Read more
Every profession rests on a body of accumulated knowledge. Doctors study medicine. Engineers study engineering. Yet, military expertise is often treated as little more than opinion. Politicians routinely dismiss military judgment as institutional bias. Commentators with no military education confidently pronounce what armies should or should not do. Even some within the profession treat military theory as something reserved for … Read more
On June 8th, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) published its annual assessment of the state of disarmament and international security. On June 9th, we did a brief commentary on the Yearbook’s summary. We then did a more in-depth look, in which we pulled on some of the threads, pointed out patterns, and asked some questions. Here, we’ve selected key … Read more
Craig Hooper argues in a Forbes piece called “FPV Drone Attack Risk Sinks Future Navy Infrastructure At U.S. Border” that FPV drones have rendered the 100-mile zone along the U.S. southern border functionally indefensible for critical naval infrastructure. The problem is that the Navy doesn’t want to do anything about it. The Threat Is Credible Ukraine’s strikes on Kronstadt and … Read more
Access National Security News HERE. Access Korean News HERE. National Security News: 1. How the Iran war could drive conflicts in countries thousands of miles away 2. Political Violence in Democracies Just Makes Things Worse 3. Former Sailor Accused in ISIS Plot to Attack Special Forces 4. Major Russian Refinery Burns After Drone Strike as Explosions Reported Across Crimea 5. Trump Says U.S. Will Launch … Read more
Introduction The war in Ukraine has catalyzed a fundamental transformation in the economics of warfare. Commercial drones and improvised first-person-view (FPV) systems, often assembled from inexpensive civilian components, are now destroying armored vehicles, artillery systems, communication and command infrastructure as well as fortified positions worth potentially millions of dollars. What began as an improvised adaptation by Ukrainian units in the … Read more
Abstract The use of political violence in democratic countries is illegitimate, unnecessary, and oftentimes disastrous for society. With peaceful civic options at the disposal of the people, the decision to engage in militant revolutionary violence for political ends is utterly contemptible. Worse, whenever dissidents or activists resort to political violence in a democracy, it has an incendiary effect on the … Read more
Matthew Cheng of the South China Morning Post, in “New Hong Kong law allows national security procedures to extend to older cases,” highlights a familiar tension in statecraft. That is, the boundary between procedural adaptation and retrospective application. Background on the law: The new legislation allows the chief executive to classify certain criminal cases as involving national security, subjecting them … Read more
On June 9th, we did a brief commentary on the 2026 edition of the SIPRI Yearbook’s summary, which was published June 8th. Here we pull on some of the threads, point out patterns, and ask questions. This is an initial deep-dive before seeing where the full report takes us. The Unraveling of Multilateral Institutions Is Self-Reinforcing The US withdrawal from … Read more
Access National Security News HERE. Access Korean News HERE. National Security News: 1. Setting Out to Win: Why America Needs to Get Serious About Irregular Warfare 2. A Bed-ROC-k for Total Defense: Building a Practical Manual to Disrupt Hybrid Threats and Deter War 3. Apache Crew Rescued by Naval Drone off Coast of Oman 4. Stars and Signals: Why Operational Advantage from Satellites and … Read more
Editor’s Note: this article is being republished with the permission of the Irregular Warfare Initiative as part of a republishing arrangement between IWI and SWJ. The original article was published on 20 May 2026 and is available here. Editor’s Note: This is part two of a two-part article assessing the past, present, and future of U.S. Army Special Forces. See part one here. … Read more
In February 1944, Soviet bombers attacked Helsinki in one of the largest air raids of the Continuation War. Proactive defensive actions ensured that much of the destruction fell outside the city center. Clever Finnish defenders lit deceptive fires on the outskirts of the city, maintained blackout discipline, utilized radar-guided anti-aircraft fire and false target arrays to mislead Soviet navigation and … Read more
The 2026 edition of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute’s Yearbook, published June 8th, presents a bleak portrait of international security in 2025. Data and analysis presented in the report’s summary document confirm that the post-cold war security architecture is collapsing. The following is our capture of the summary document’s key highlights. Armed Conflict and Human Cost The number of … Read more
On Monday evening, a U.S. Army AH-64 Apache helicopter went down near the Strait of Hormuz off the coast of Oman. Thomas Novelly of Defense One reports that a Saronic Corsair autonomous surface vessel located and recovered the two downed aviators, marking the U.S. military’s first publicized use of an unmanned boat to rescue downed aircrew in real-world warfare. (See … Read more
Access National Security News HERE. Access Korean News HERE. National Security News: 1. Why Green Berets Can’t Stop Asking Who They Are 2. What Teaching Cognitive Warfare Taught Me About Cognitive Warfare 3. A Global Security Advisory and Assistance Strategy for Strategic Competition: Winning Before War Through Effective Campaigning 4. Why Does It Take Years to Get a Patriot Missile From Factory to … Read more
DoD’s expansion of its Section 1260H list, which now encompasses 188 Chinese firms including BYD, Alibaba, and Baidu, represents a significant escalation in the ongoing technology and economic competition between Washington and Beijing. This Discourse draws on a BBC report on the move by Osmond Chia, called “US adds BYD to list of firms with alleged Chinese military ties.” What … Read more
Since April 2023, Sudan has been consumed by a brutal war between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). While the international coverage has focused on battlefield maneuvers, mass displacement, and atrocities, a quieter but equally devastating process is unfolding: the systematic collapse of governance and the violent contest for civil authority. This article argues that … Read more
When I wrote “Cognitive Warfare to Dominate and Redefine Adversary Realities: Implications for U.S. Special Operations Forces” for Joint Special Operations University Press in late 2025, I believed the core argument for this unique form of warfare was sound and the concept novel enough to justify military investment as the human mind is a distinct domain of conflict and Artificial … Read more