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Signing ten-year defense partnership agreements with three leading Gulf states is a significant outcome for Ukraine. However, the positive optics that surrounded Zelenskyy’s recent regional tour may have been even more important for the country.

Since the onset of Russia’s full-scale invasion more than four years ago, Ukraine has been widely seen as a recipient of military aid and a drain on international resources. Zelenskyy’s visit directly challenged this unflattering and outdated view. For the first time, Ukraine was presented as a potentially attractive security partner with much to offer in terms of unique military experience and innovative defense technologies.

For anyone who has been closely following the Russia-Ukraine War, this is hardly news. Over past four years, Ukraine has built Europe’s largest army and has emerged as a world leader in drone warfare. The country’s formerly stagnant defense industry has expanded exponentially and now produces millions of drones every year as well as a growing arsenal of domestically developed cruise missiles.

This has made it possible for the Ukrainian military to blunt Russia’s offensives along the front lines of the war. At sea, Ukraine has used domestically designed marine drones to chase Putin’s Black Sea Fleet away from Crimea. Meanwhile, Kyiv has brought the war back to Russian territory with a long-range bombing campaign that recently knocked out around 40 percent of Russia’s oil export capacity.

Ukraine’s emergence as a major military force is already transforming the balance of power in Europe and will define Kyiv’s relationships with the wider world for decades to come. Zelenskyy’s tour of the Gulf states has helped to highlight this new geopolitical reality.

The Ukrainian leader’s trip was in many ways a masterclass in wartime diplomacy. By moving so nimbly, Zelenskyy secured vital support for the Ukrainian war effort and laid the foundations for potentially game-changing strategic partnerships with the Gulf states. Crucially, he also debunked negative perceptions of his country and enhanced Ukraine’s global standing as a drone warfare superpower.

Peter Dickinson is editor of the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlert service.

Beijing has worked for decades to amass control over global critical mineral supply chains. In 2025, China used that control to pressure the Trump administration to back down on tariffs and other policies Beijing objected to. Now Washington—along with many of its allies—is working to undo that leverage. The Trump administration is investing billions to bring new rare earths production facilities online and reduce US dependence on China for the minerals.

But the new plan suggests China does not plan to stand idly by. Instead, Beijing is gearing up to bolster its dominance over those same supply chains. The new five-year plan states that China’s goal over the next five years is to “continuously strengthen [its] competitive advantages in rare earths, rare metals, and superhard materials.” It orders Chinese firms to move up the value chain. Chinese firms are already buying up the mines that produce these minerals in other nations, and they already send the material those mines produce to China for processing. Now Beijing wants the processed minerals to stay in-country to the extent possible, going into Chinese factories and making the global economy dependent on China not only for processed minerals but for the final products that contain them, as well. China already has that end-to-end dominance in rare earth magnets. Beijing wants to see that vertical control applied in other sectors.

Last fall, referring to US efforts to diversify these same supply chains to reduce Chinese control, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent stated that the United States is “going to go at warp speed over the next one to two years, and we’re going to get out from under this sword the Chinese have over us.” Beijing is signaling that it will be doing everything in its power to sharpen that sword and keep it exactly where it is.

2. Biotechnology is ascendant

Until now, leading on biotechnology innovation was a stretch goal for China. For example, the Made in China 2025 plan (the ten-year industrial policy blueprint issued in 2015) lays out concrete targets for Chinese firms to replace their foreign competitors across multiple sectors, but the goals for biotechnology were uniquely vague. That is changing. This new five-year plan lists eight frontier technologies targeted for breakthrough advancements. Of those, three are directly tied to biotechnology innovation: life science and biotechnology, brain science, and pharmaceutical innovation (the other five are artificial intelligence [AI]; quantum computing; nuclear fusion, deep sea, earth and polar exploration; and deep space exploration). The new plan details research and development priorities for each.

This is the first time a five-year plan has gone into such detail on biotechnology priorities. And for good reason. China is now the world’s primary destination for first-in-human trials, and US firms are paying record amounts for China’s biotechnology outputs. In 2024, US firms paid $52 billion in licensing fees for innovative Chinese drugs; in 2025, that number jumped to $137 billion.

The new plan indicates that Beijing is now ready to reduce the nation’s reliance on foreign firms. It calls for China to “build out a self-sufficient biotech ecosystem,” which is Beijing’s code for reducing China’s reliance on US and other non-Chinese firms. The plan also calls for tighter biological data regulations and for Chinese firms to maximize AI across this sector. Biotechnology has officially moved up to join the elite echelon of industries receiving Beijing’s priority attention and support.

3. The pace of exports will continue

During a press conference at the two sessions, Minister of Commerce Wang Wentao offered his view on China’s trade balance: “Exports and imports are like the two wheels on a car. The more balanced they are, the more steadily it runs, and the farther it goes.” Unfortunately for Wang, little about China’s current balance would suggest a smooth ride: The country’s exports are so excessive relative to its imports that this hypothetical car would likely drive in circles.

Domestic consumption accounts for less than 40 percent of China’s gross domestic product (GDP), nearly half the US number, which is around 70 percent of US GDP. Since Chinese consumers are not buying what Chinese factories produce, the nation is overly dependent on exports. That is disrupting global markets. In 2025, China’s total trade surplus with the rest of the world was $1.2 trillion, over 6 percent of its GDP. That surplus is due to China’s massive export volumes, which are threatening the economic security of many of its trading partners, putting firms out of business and triggering unemployment in those nations.

But Beijing is betting that its trading partners will fail to do anything about it. If the nations that absorb Chinese goods put real tariffs and other barriers in place to stem the flood of those imports, Beijing would be forced to reassess its entire economic model. It would be forced to do real rebalancing, boosting Chinese consumers to enable them to buy more of what the nation produces. The new plan gives no indication that this is on the horizon. Instead, Chinese leaders appear to be betting that the current global trade policy paralysis will continue through 2030.

4. AI-induced job loss remains a major blind spot

Beijing is taking a “move fast and break things” approach to AI deployment. Chinese leaders see AI as a ticket to achieving all of their major political priorities, from surveilling their citizens to achieving global technology leadership and generating new jobs at home. They are pushing to deploy it across the economy as quickly as possible to soak up every benefit AI can provide. Some of the risks from this approach recently played out across the nation when Chinese officials and consumers enthusiastically embraced OpenClaw personal AI assistants. Some local officials—desperate to show Beijing that they are using AI—offered more than one million dollars in grants to anyone developing new businesses based on OpenClaw. Soon the AI assistants were going rogue, running up large bills on consumers’ credits cards and sending their information to identity thieves. The Chinese government is now scrambling to put new guardrails in place.

With AI-induced layoffs and unemployment, the downside risks are much more serious and will be harder to rectify. Already, China is suffering high unemployment among its urban youth: nearly 20 percent are unemployed according to China’s official statistics. The real number is certainly higher. China’s official youth unemployment statistics were so poor in 2023 that Beijing stopped reporting them and revised its methodology to exclude some elements of the population, such as students.

Among the young people who do have jobs, a growing portion are gig workers, struggling to find full-time employment. The new five-year plan paints a rosy picture of AI boosting people’s livelihoods. For example, it calls for more AI use in elder care, classrooms, entertainment, and public services. But it does not acknowledge the likely job loss this will trigger for nurses, teachers, artists, and civil servants. It even pushes AI deployment in the very sectors where it is most likely to trigger job loss, such as using AI agents for personal assistants and AI-empowered robots for manufacturing.

The plan does include a nod to the potential for AI-induced job loss. For example, it calls for Chinese officials to set up “investigation and response mechanisms for the impact of AI on employment” and provide “employment stability guarantees, re-employment training, and employment support” for workers who lose their jobs to AI. But this amounts to just a few sentences of generalities. In contrast, biotechnology is referenced across multiple chapters, with incredibly specific goals. Beijing does not yet seem to view AI deployment as a serious employment challenge. That is a major blind spot.

5. China aims to become the world’s biggest R&D funder

The new five-year plan calls for the Chinese government to keep research and development (R&D) spending growing at least 7 percent per year over the next five years. That means China’s national labs, universities, and industrial clusters will be flush with cash at a time when the United States is slashing those same budgets. As a result, new analysis in the journal Nature predicts that China’s public spending on research and development could surpass US spending by 2029. China is attempting to utilize this spending gap to leap ahead of the United States in “frontier science” and breakthrough technologies in critical sectors such as AI, quantum computing, and biotechnology.

In the fourteenth five-year plan (2020-2025), Beijing focused primarily on commercial technology such as semiconductors, electric vehicles, and information and communication technologies. This new plan is aiming higher. It calls for Chinese firms to move the competition up the value chain to innovation in “future industries” or “frontier industries” that are not yet fully commercialized. It calls for Chinese firms to replace foreign competitors as the leading intellectual-property generators, reducing China’s reliance on the United States and boosting the nation’s “self-reliance.” Beijing is betting that US efforts to cut federal R&D spending are China’s big opportunity to surpass the United States as the world’s leading science and technology innovator. Chinese leaders do not plan to stand idly by and let that opportunity go to waste.

Overall, the new plan indicates that Chinese leaders are much more focused on the nation’s strengths than its weaknesses, and they are feeling incredibly bullish going into 2026. This bodes for even more intense US-China competition over the coming years, particularly in advanced technologies. Washington needs to recognize that the margin of US leadership is narrowing.

The post Five takeaways for US policymakers about China’s new five-year development plan appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Securing cloud infrastructure for AI

Sara Ann Brackett — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 14:00:00 +0000

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Executive summary

Securing artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure requires ensuring the security of the cloud ecosystem. The cloud infrastructure that implements and executes AI workloads presents an opening for adversaries that existing vulnerability management institutions were not designed to cover. This brief examines the mechanisms through which vulnerabilities in cloud infrastructure are discovered, disclosed, communicated, and remediated, and finds them to be inadequate to meet the security demands of an ecosystem in which AI has a growing impact.

Nation-state actors continue to target cloud environments, compressing vulnerability discovery and exploitation timelines. At the same time, public vulnerability data, anchored by the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) ID system and the linked National Vulnerability Database (NVD), faces severe strain. The policy institutions tasked with addressing cloud security face leadership vacuums, funding uncertainty, and competing priorities.

Community and industry driven efforts to respond to these challenges remain fragmented and voluntary, while providers operate without public accountability. Making progress on these urgent challenges requires policy mechanisms to incentivize and mandate clarity and transparency in the cloud ecosystem.

Background

In the United States, several essential cybersecurity authorities and institutions face simultaneous disruption. The Cyber Incident Reporting for Critical Infrastructure Act (CIRCIA), passed in 2022, proposed to establish the country’s first mandatory incident reporting regime for critical infrastructure sectors, has seen the publication of its final rule delayed to May 2026. The Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2015 (CISA 2015), which provides liability and antitrust protections for companies sharing threat indicators with the federal government and each other, lapsed on September 30, 2025 and received only a temporary extension through September 2026, with bipartisan reauthorization efforts stalled in Congress. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) continues to operate without a confirmed director, after the Senate failed to act on the administration’s nominee, and the agency has seen workforce reductions that have diminished its operational readiness. The Cyber Safety Review Board (CSRB), which conducted a landmark investigation of the 2023 Microsoft Exchange Online compromise, was dissolved in early 2025.

In Europe, a set of untested regulatory instruments are taking effect. The European Union (EU) NIS2 Directive expanded cybersecurity obligations for 18 critical sectors. The Cyber Resilience Act (CRA), adopted in 2024 with enforcement beginning in 2027, will require digital product manufacturers to build in cybersecurity capabilities and provide vulnerability disclosure mechanisms. The United Kingdom (UK) Cyber Security and Resilience Bill is progressing through Parliament with similar objectives.

The US, UK, and EU have also adopted policy approaches and established agencies specific to AI. In the US, the Trump administration’s AI Action Plan outlined goals of exporting the US AI stack abroad. The EU AI Act imposed obligations on AI developers based on the level of risk posed by specific AI models. The US and UK also established AI-specific testing and research organizations, the Center for AI Standards and Innovation (CAISI) and the AI Security Institute (AISI) respectively.

Cloud computing

Cloud computing describes a model of access to computing resources, where customers specify workloads, or defined sets of tasks, which cloud providers implement and execute. This model of access is an important part of AI development and deployment, and frontier AI companies have partnered with cloud providers to ensure access to cutting-edge compute resources.

Compute and virtualization services allocate processing power and include the orchestration platforms that oversee AI training and inference workloads. Data and storage services comprise the managed databases and object storage for training datasets, model weights, and inference outputs. Observability and logging services collect the telemetry essential to detecting anomalies and investigating incidents. Identity and access management services control who and what can interact with cloud resources.

Layered on top of these foundational services are AI-specific runtimes and serving frameworks (the managed environments in which models are loaded and scaled) as well as the web and API gateways through which users interact with AI systems. Each of these categories presents distinct vulnerabilities. A flaw in a container escape mechanism raises different remediation questions than a misconfiguration in a logging pipeline, yet both can impact the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of an AI workload.

Fraying public vulnerability infrastructure

The NVD has served for nearly two decades as an authoritative source for enriched vulnerability data, powering compliance frameworks, automated scanning tools, and risk assessments across both the public and private sectors. Budget constraints and rising submission volumes have degraded its reliability as an operational resource. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) acknowledged in early 2025 that a 32 percent increase in CVE submissions during 2024 meant the backlog was still growing.

CISA maintains the Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog, which allows the agency to publicly announce vulnerabilities that have been exploited in the wild. As of March 2026, the catalog contains 1,551 vulnerabilities, making it a useful smaller-scale prioritization signal, especially in comparison to the NVD’s 339,010 vulnerabilities. CISA’s ability to update and maintain the KEV database is likely affected by the ongoing partial shutdown of CISA’s parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, and the mass layoffs of CISA employees since January 2025.

Meanwhile, despite a clear recommendation from the CSRB’s review of the 2023 Microsoft Exchange incident, cloud providers do not comprehensively disclose security vulnerabilities or flaws within their cloud services that do not require customer action to fix. In 2024, both Microsoft and Google announced that they would issue CVEs for critical vulnerabilities, which are only a subset of the overall vulnerability landscape. Vulnerability scoring and severity evaluations are complex and involve judgement calls, so allowing providers to determine which vulnerabilities they disclose distorts publicly available data on cloud security issues.

Failing to issue a CVE identifier for a security flaw also precludes the vulnerability from being included in the KEV database, limiting the ability of US government agencies to publicly communicate evidence of exploitation. Companies can refuse to acknowledge security incidents or transparently communicate with customers in the absence of policy obligations, as Oracle’s communications around an incident in May 2025 exemplified.

Hyperscale cloud providers operate vulnerability reward programs (VRPs) that incentivize external researchers to report flaws. According to a program website, Google’s Cloud VRP has issued $3,574,399 in awards over the past year. These programs are voluntary, variable in scope and payout, depend on the communications channels offered by the cloud provider, and are not subject to public reporting obligations.

Provider programs are siloed. No mechanism exists for identifying shared flaws across cloud platforms or generating a system-wide view of collective vulnerability data. This limitation is consequential considering research demonstrating that independently developed cloud services can harbor similar security flaws due to shared open-source dependencies or common architectural patterns. The absence of cross-provider coordination means that when a researcher identifies a vulnerability pattern in one cloud platform, there is no systematic process for evaluating whether the same pattern exists in others.

AI services are not immune from these systemic challenges. A July 2025 container escape vulnerability in the NVIDIA Container Toolkit, discovered by Wiz researchers, highlighted that security issues in popular libraries impact customers regardless of their cloud provider.

Community-driven projects have attempted to address the lack of standardized tracking mechanism for cloud security issues. The Wiz-backed Open Cloud Vulnerability and Security Issue Database catalogs publicly known cloud vulnerabilities and flaws, providing researchers and practitioners with a centralized reference for flaws that might otherwise be scattered across notification methods. The ONUG Cloud Security Notification Framework addresses the lack of a common data model for security notifications across providers. While these efforts are valuable, neither possesses the institutional backing to compel provider participation or to generate the kind of systematic accounting of vulnerabilities in cloud platforms which could form the basis of further policy action.

AI changes the risk landscape

As a target, AI infrastructure concentrates extraordinarily valuable intellectual property within cloud environments: model weights, proprietary training data, novel research methods, and fine-tuning configurations, all of which are only as secure as the weakest component of their infrastructure. The scarcity of compute resources specific to AI may lead organizations to deprioritize security requirements in favor of rapid access to processing power. The emergence of AI-focused cloud providers, newer entrants that may lack the mature security operations and vulnerability management programs of established hyperscale cloud providers, creates additional points of systemic risk.

As a tool, AI is reshaping the vulnerability landscape on both the offensive and defensive sides, rapidly accelerating the pace of vulnerability discovery and exploit development. Google’s Project Zero reported 20 vulnerabilities in popular open-source packages, each of which was discovered and reproduced by an AI agent without human intervention. A similar collaboration between Mozilla and Anthropic discovered 22 vulnerabilities in Firefox and crafted partial exploits for each of them. Wiz’s first-ever cloud hacking competition surfaced over 11 vulnerabilities in open-source code comprising foundational layers of cloud infrastructure. Open-source maintainers and operators of bug bounty programs have raised alarm about the increasing volume of AI-generated bug reports, which are of varying quality and require significant effort on the part of developers and maintainers to evaluate.

Recommendations

Government agencies must respond to the changing cloud vulnerability landscape. As experts have warned, failing to keep pace with the rapid rate of developments in offensive cyber risks of AI will have security consequences. Managing the risks posed by AI for vulnerability discovery and exploitation requires recommitting to known best practices, which can serve as a foundation for future policy experimentation and adaptation.

1. Follow through on lapsed and languishing cybersecurity efforts

Congress should reauthorize the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2015, which remains the foundational legal framework enabling voluntary cyber threat intelligence sharing between the private sector and federal government. Temporary extensions do not provide sufficient assurance and protection to organizations committing to information sharing, and even brief lapses disrupt long-standing collaborations.

Consistent with the AI Action Plan, the federal government should establish a dedicated Artificial Intelligence Information Sharing and Analysis Center (AI-ISAC) to centralize threat intelligence specific to AI systems, model vulnerabilities, and adversarial exploitation techniques. This body could facilitate real-time coordination across industry, academia, and government, led by DHS in collaboration with CAISI and the Office of the National Cyber Director (ONCD).

Congress should ensure CISA and NIST, as the stewards of the KEV catalog and NVD, receive sustained, adequate resourcing to fulfill their role in the vulnerability management ecosystem.

Congress should re-establish the Cyber Safety Review Board, resolving issues with the original board’s investigation by giving the board both subpoena power and sufficient staff to support critical investigations. Congress should also clarify criteria for incidents reviewable by the board. As recent analysis in Lawfare argued, a review board specific to AI could investigate the role of AI in cyberattacks. An AI-specific body should also be scoped to include cloud security incidents, reflecting the cloud’s critical role as AI infrastructure.

2. Incentivize and disclose high-quality public vulnerability data for cloud computing

ONCD should lead on establishing a comprehensive, government-backed information and data sharing solution to drive more effective vulnerability management across the cloud ecosystem. Policy design in cloud cybersecurity suffers from a lack of high-quality public data on critical and non-critical vulnerabilities; patterns of misconfiguration; and trends in exploitation techniques by threat actors.

ONCD’s leadership on this challenge, as a component of the National Cybersecurity Strategy’s goal to shape adversary behavior, could improve collaboration with the private sector and cloud providers, while avoiding diverting CISA from its core mission of protecting government and critical infrastructure systems.

Greater data transparency and disclosure of vulnerabilities across the ecosystem could serve as the foundation of prioritization processes across the cloud ecosystem, increasing pressure on providers to tackle vulnerabilities and classes of vulnerabilities that have security consequences for government entities and companies worldwide. That prioritization should privilege shared vulnerabilities, architectural flaws, and common weaknesses present across multiple hyperscale providers, which no current mechanism systematically or publicly identifies and addresses.

3. Lead on international coordination

The US government should pursue alignment with the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity and allied governments on cloud vulnerability disclosure norms. The US government’s support of vulnerability databases and coordination efforts creates benefits for other countries. Questions about the stability of that support spur divergent efforts, such as the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity establishing its own database for cataloging cyber vulnerabilities.

Ensuring that AI safety institutions and cybersecurity agencies share information and coordinate on vulnerability management, rather than operating in parallel silos, should be an explicit element of efforts to mitigate the risks of emerging AI for cloud computing security.

The United States and the United Kingdom should begin by harmonizing their own practices and then extend that alignment to the EU. The forthcoming CIRCIA rule and the UK’s Cyber Security and Resilience Bill offer opportunities to embed cloud-specific vulnerability and incident reporting requirements that can serve as reference points for international coordination. Encouraging international allies to adopt the same approach to disclosing vulnerabilities in compute infrastructure can contribute to changing the incentive structure of the AI compute industry, shifting it towards greater transparency from cloud providers.

Conclusion

Trust in cloud computing cannot be sustained without visibility. The physical location of a data center does not determine its vulnerability to misconfigured access controls, unpatched container runtimes, or supply chain compromises. The cloud infrastructure that underpins AI development and deployment is subject to a vulnerability management regime designed for a different era of computing. Cloud-specific security flaws fall between existing institutional mandates, and the organizations building the most consequential AI systems lack the ability to demand transparency from the infrastructure they depend on.

The building blocks for a better approach exist, but the policy architecture to connect them is missing. The United States and its allies and partners possess both the responsibility and the capacity to design an approach to cloud vulnerability management that matches the scale and complexity of the systems it is meant to protect. The question is whether they will do so before the gap between the complexity of cloud infrastructure and the maturity of the institutions overseeing it becomes the defining vulnerability of the AI era.

About the Author

Sara Ann Brackett is an associate director with the Cyber Statecraft Initiative, part of the Atlantic Council Tech Programs. She focuses her work on open-source software security, cloud computing, and software supply-chain risk management within the Cyber Statecraft Initiative’s cybersecurity and policy portfolio.

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank the Cyber Statecraft Initiative and Atlantic Council Tech Programs teams for their support and guidance throughout this project. Thank you to Trey Herr and Tess deBlanc-Knowles, who provided thoughtful feedback, and to Safa Shahwan Edwards and Jen Roberts, who were instrumental in planning and executing a workshop that informed this paper. Thank you to Nikita Shah, whose feedback shaped earlier iterations of this brief and its accompanying visualizations. The author would also like to thank the workshop participants who shared their expertise and perspectives under Chatham House Rule.

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The Atlantic Council’s Cyber Statecraft Initiative, part of the Atlantic Council Technology Programs, works at the nexus of geopolitics and cybersecurity to craft strategies to help shape the conduct of statecraft and to better inform and secure users of technology.

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Ukraine bombs Russia’s Baltic ports as Zelenskyy targets Putin’s oil exports

David Kirichenko — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 10:15:43 +0000

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says some of the country’s partners have called on Kyiv to scale down strikes on Russia’s oil sector as global energy prices surge amid the ongoing Iran War. These international appeals underline the impact of Ukraine’s most recent long-range attacks, which have reportedly reduced Russia’s oil export capacity by at least 40 percent.

Zelenskyy did not specify which of Ukraine’s allies had requested a pause in the country’s current air offensive. In recent weeks, the United States has temporarily relaxed some sanctions on Russian oil exports in a bid to ease mounting pressure on international energy markets due to the closure of the logistically crucial Strait of Hormuz.

Speaking on Monday in Kyiv, the Ukrainian leader indicated that he would only stop targeting Russian oil exports if Moscow also agrees to end its attacks on Ukraine’s civilian energy infrastructure. “We are open to discussing any type of ceasefire; a full ceasefire, an energy ceasefire, a food security ceasefire. We have already proposed all of this and we are still open. If the Russians are ready, let them suggest any time frame,” he stated.

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Zelenskyy’s comments come following some of the most significant Ukrainian airstrikes of the entire war. In recent days, Ukrainian long-range drones have repeatedly struck Russia’s main oil export terminals on the Baltic Sea, causing extensive damage and disrupting one of the Kremlin’s most important economic lifelines.

These Baltic drone raids came just as rising global oil prices linked to the outbreak of hostilities in the Middle East threatened to produce a major economic windfall for the Kremlin. By hitting the most critical elements of Russia’s oil export infrastructure, Ukraine is seeking to limit Putin’s ability to translate higher oil prices into increased wartime revenue.

This tactic appears to be working. Speaking to the Current Time media outlet, independent oil and gas industry analyst Boris Aronshtein described the recent series of Ukrainian strikes as “the most serious threat to exports of Russian oil” since the onset of Moscow’s full-scale invasion in 2022. “The thoughtfulness, the scale and direction of the attacks, as well as the timing of their execution; all this together produced an effect that I personally cannot recall in the four-plus years of the war,” he commented.

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Ukraine’s recent attacks on Baltic Sea oil terminals are part of a strategic bombing campaign to weaken Putin’s war machine by targeting the ports, refineries, and associated infrastructure that drive Russia’s economically crucial energy industry. This has been made possible thanks to Kyiv’s decision during the initial phase of Russia’s invasion to prioritize the development of domestically produced long-range strike drones and cruise missiles. As more drones and missiles become available, the scale of Ukraine’s strikes is steadily increasing.

Zelenskyy has repeatedly emphasized that Ukraine’s expanding long-range strike capability is critical for the current war effort and equally important as a deterrent against future Russian aggression. While long-range weapons provided by Kyiv’s partners often come with limitations on how they can be deployed, there are no such restrictions on the use of domestically produced drones and missiles.

Kremlin officials have certainly noticed Kyiv’s growing reach. In recent weeks, former Russian defense minister and current Security Council secretary Sergei Shoigu warned that Ukraine’s domestic drone program had now advanced to the point where no Russian region is safe from attack.

Ukraine’s ability to conduct large-scale airstrikes deep inside Russian territory has sparked vocal criticism from within Russia’s influential war blogger community, while also generating widespread concerns over the effectiveness of the country’s anti-drone defenses. Many have questioned how slow-moving drones could pass through multiple Russian regions to hit targets often located more than one thousand kilometers from the Ukrainian border.

In fact, the stage for Ukraine’s recent successes was set by efforts to methodically eliminate Russian air defenses and create corridors for long-range strikes. This approach looks set to continue. With much of the Kremlin’s existing air defense capacity already deployed along the front lines in Ukraine or being used to protect major Russian cities along with the palaces of Putin and his cronies, there is now thought to be little left in reserve to counter the growing Ukrainian drone threat.

The scale and frequency of Ukrainian strikes on oil and gas infrastructure will likely continue to increase in the coming months as Kyiv seeks ways to bring Putin’s invasion home to Russia. The Ukrainian authorities are hoping these attacks can help bring the end of the war closer by depriving the Kremlin of vital funding and threatening the foundations of Russia’s economic stability.

So far, Putin has rejected calls for a compromise peace. However, he may finally be forced to rethink his invasion if confronted with the prospect of dangerous destabilization on the home front. The Kremlin dictator remains determined to achieve his goal of erasing Ukrainian statehood, but he is also haunted by fears of a new Russian collapse to mirror the catastrophes of 1917 and 1991.

David Kirichenko is an associate research fellow at the Henry Jackson Society.

Executive summary

Military artificial intelligence (AI) is moving from the margins of experimentation into the core of how NATO will fight, make critical decisions, and deter competitors over the next decade. The 2022 NATO Strategic Concept identifies the technological edge to be critical for the Alliance to fulfil its core tasks. Both contemporary warfare and renewed strategic competition suggest that data-driven AI decision-support systems and autonomous battlefield capabilities augmented with AI will define the character of future conflicts. There is a justified focus on evaluating strategic risks associated with such systems.

This report argues that integrating AI into military systems does not generate vulnerabilities that are fundamentally new in kind compared to existing cyber risks. But the difference lies in consequences. Once AI-enabled decision-support systems and autonomous platforms become critical to Alliance operations, interference with data, models, and computing infrastructure may have implications for NATO’s ability to see, decide, and act under pressure. Similarly, the offensive use of AI-enabled capabilities does not, on its own, raise or lower the nuclear threshold. Escalation thresholds in algorithmic warfare will continue to be driven by effects on the ground rather than by whether a system is AI-enabled. Yet the characteristics of AI—the speed, system opacity, and physical infrastructure—create more room for human error, misperception, and miscalculation.

To explore such possibilities, the Atlantic Council’s Transatlantic Security Initiative, in partnership with the NATO Office of the Chief Scientist, conducted a foresight study to clarify how adversaries might counter AI-enabled capabilities and to examine what this means for NATO doctrine, strategy, and deterrence. The research combined horizon scanning and expert interviews, an off-the-record workshop held in Washington, under Chatham House rules, and scenario modeling. The project mapped AI technology trends across decision-support systems and autonomous platforms, identified likely AI vulnerabilities and vectors of attack, and explored escalation dynamics through structured discussion and scenario-based exercises.

This project brought a new perspective into the debate on the impacts of transformative military AI on future warfare for two reasons. First, it is innovative in its comprehensive scope that encompasses both physical and cyber dimensions of algorithmic warfare. Indeed, it foregrounds the AI triad of data, algorithms, and computing power and shows how each can be attacked through cyber, kinetic, and electromagnetic (EM) means. And second, it examines the intersection of AI and nuclear weapons from a different angle: Tailored nuclear weapons are treated as a potential countermeasure against military AI for their electromagnetic pulse (EMP) effects.

There are two key findings.

While military AI does not generate “shock and awe” in and of itself, AI can exacerbate existing risk conditions for accidents and inadvertent escalations.

The report finds that the employment of military AI does not make the use of tailored nuclear weapons more likely. Instead, the choice of target, physical damage, and casualties are what matter. Workshop participants ranked responses to a notional AI-enabled drone saturation attack in the Baltic region by their perceived escalatory potential. Diplomatic action and electronic warfare were the most preferred responses, followed by kinetic strikes, cyber operations, and directed-energy weapons (DEW). Tailored nuclear EMP attacks were viewed as highly escalatory and politically unacceptable for NATO to use to repel an attack over NATO territory, even when framed as a tool of “information warfare.”

At the same time, military AI is expected to make the difference in terms of increasing speed, autonomy, scale, and uncertainty. This research, however, revealed that in comparison with all three components of the AI triad, the human remains the most vulnerable element of AI. Humans are routinely exposed to phishing, social engineering, cognitive bias, and already run the risk of deskilling as more tasks are delegated to machines.

Integrating AI into military operations therefore creates dangers along two pathways. First, speed and data are working against their user. Such compressed timelines can create cognitive problems in decision-making. Without safety and quality protocols in place, flooding decision-support systems with noisy or nonpatternable data can further thicken the fog of war for commanders. Second, AI-enabled military systems become increasingly complex and can lead to normal accidents, making foreign interference detection and exposure difficult to distinguish from system failures.

Algorithmic warfare highlights the importance of electromagnetic spectrum dominance.

Digital modernization of defense—the data-centric approach and software-defined capabilities—will make electromagnetic threats more salient. Russia’s war in Ukraine already highlights how GPS jamming, communications blackouts, and electronic warfare shape combat operations. This trend will intensify as NATO begins to lean on AI-enabled and multidomain command and control.

Advances in military applications of AI further strengthen the convergence between the cyber domain of operations (digital code) and the electromagnetic environment (electrons). In a crowded and contested spectrum, where software-defined radios, commercial satellites, and cloud-linked data centers underpin military networks, the distinction between “cyber” and “conventional” attack begins to blur. Further fielding of directed-energy weapons also indicates shifting the center of gravity to energy supplies.

Attacks on AI systems can use several vectors. The adversary can target model weights through espionage and hacking; poison training datasets; blind or spoof sensors on intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) platforms; disable data relays; or physically damage hardware in data centers, cables, satellites, or uncrewed systems. Cyber operators, electronic warfare units, special forces, and conventional reconnaissance-strike systems may all participate in degrading AI-enabled capabilities. In contrast, the ongoing trend of lowering the cost of warfare will make any requirements for new protection measures, such as shielding or hardening, difficult to implement due to the trade-offs in terms of cost, weight, and endurance.

The report develops three future scenarios, including a fourth baseline case, to identify likely implications of future algorithmic warfare for NATO’s doctrine and strategy: guarded opportunism, brave new world, and minority report.

Guarded opportunism outlines a future in which military AI, despite its transformative impacts, does not require the military to dramatically alter the rules of engagement. Instead of introducing qualitatively new risks or vulnerabilities, the challenges related to military AI remain manageable with disciplined cyber hygiene and resilient power supply. On the risk side, this scenario points to heightened dangers of AI-fueled hybrid warfare below the threshold of armed conflict.
Brave new world is a less likely but more dangerous scenario detailing the conditions for escalation spirals. Transformative effects of AI lead to conventionalizing nuclear weapons. Fielding of AI-enabled military capabilities provokes the adversary to use new nuclear-powered EM weapons. Nuclear EMP attacks are viewed as a legitimate use of nuclear weapons that belong to the specter of algorithmic warfare.
Minority report presents a different take on the possible algorithmic future in which AI technology hype drives strategy. This scenario focuses on cognitive challenges for political and military decision-makers, who tend to overestimate near‑term benefits and discount the long-term risks and compound challenges of AI integration. Instead of improving AI operational implementation processes, countries race to achieve phantom AI advantages that destabilize the international security environment.

For NATO to leverage and maintain the advantage from transformative AI technologies, this report makes seven recommendations for NATO leaders that can contribute to NATO’s future strategy and doctrine adaptation.

Master AI literacy. NATO needs to develop standards for continuous AI skill development for commanders, operators, and policymakers. AI literacy is not just a strategic competency but also an instrument of restraint.
Engineer redundancy. Instead of creating a digital copy of all existing procedures, NATO should prioritize maintaining the ability to transmit information on rehearsed secondary systems.
Coordinate approach to AI tech industry. NATO should develop a code of conduct for AI tech company engagements that addresses the formation of an exclusive suppliers’ group, the knowledge gap in the private sector, and the rules for civilian software engineers in war zones.
Maintain information dominance. NATO should develop a functional framework for operationalizing AI in support of algorithmic warfare that prioritizes military objectives over abstract benchmarks and diversify its early warning systems.
Clarify escalation thresholds. NATO should develop a shared understanding of escalation thresholds for algorithmic warfare, decide on response triggers, and predelegate command authority in time-compressed scenarios to avoid escalation risks and decision paralysis.
Assess the electromagnetic layer with accuracy. Future algorithmic warfare will require NATO to treat electromagnetic spectrum operations as a distinct layer of multidomain operations to protect its strategic initiative and command-and-control superiority. NATO should also update its standards to reflect the changing scope of critical infrastructure as AI becomes a strategic asset to avoid underestimating the EM layer.
Deter by ambiguity. NATO should project resilience while cloaking its sensitive AI assets in a black box unexplainable by adversaries. However, such deterrence by ambiguity should not erode internal accountability of NATO-run AI systems.

Introduction

The 2022 NATO Strategic Concept emphasizes the importance of the Alliance maintaining its technological edge to achieve mission success.¹ But NATO’s ability to ensure military effectiveness and uphold a credible deterrence and defense posture faces challenges in the era of emerging and disruptive technologies. In the context of rapidly evolving warfare tactics and renewed strategic competition, AI-powered decision-support systems (DSS) and autonomous battlefield capabilities are expected to shape future conflicts. NATO’s 2022 Digital Transformation Vision therefore intended to accelerate the adoption of data and AI analytics to unlock new advantages for the Alliance.²

Accordingly, NATO’s AI Strategy encourages strategic foresight activities to help allies achieve a reasonable level of AI readiness.³ It also focuses on anticipating new challenges and risks related to algorithmic warfare from adversarial use of AI. While the military potential of AI is versatile and uncertain, it has nonetheless become difficult to overlook its importance to strategic competition. Countries are racing to develop and deploy AI across their civilian economies and militaries. Russia, the most significant and direct threat to NATO allies, and the People’s Republic of China, a strategic competitor seeking to control key technologies, have widely communicated their intentions to field AI for military purposes.⁴

Research objective

The Atlantic Council’s Transatlantic Security Initiative, in partnership with the NATO Office of the Chief Scientist, has conducted a foresight study addressing this crucial topic. This effort seeks to gain more clarity on AI’s transformative military effects over the next decade. This report assesses the vulnerabilities entailed in AI integration into NATO military capabilities in the context of the digital transformation of defense and the growing importance of electromagnetic spectrum operations. Importantly, it identifies ways in which adversaries might counter future AI-enabled capabilities on and off the battlefield. The objective is thus to understand how these developments may affect NATO’s doctrine and strategy moving forward.

This report’s focus on the transformative effects of military AI is highly relevant given NATO’s ambition to conduct multidomain operations.⁵ As outlined in the Digital Transformation Implementation Strategy, NATO political and military leaders intend to use advanced analytics in combination with multimodal data from sensor networks for a consolidated multidomain situational awareness in real time.⁶ While the “digital backbone” is intended to enable command and control across all domains, a broader digital interoperability framework with a secured data-sharing ecosystem will enhance political consultation and decision-making processes.

This report therefore seeks to address the complex question of the likely implications of future military AI countermeasures on NATO’s doctrine and strategy. This means identifying the risks from integrating transformative AI into military systems, examining the vulnerabilities the adoption of AI will create, assessing the severity and probability of corresponding adversarial attacks, and formulating recommendations. Importantly, to limit the dangers of technological determinism, this project examined how political and military leaders and policy planners (at the state level of decision-making) perceive new technologies appearing on the battlefield and craft their responses to escalate or not.⁷

Methodology

In terms of methodology, this report used several data collection and analysis tools. The first phase of the project consisted of horizon scanning and road mapping. Through a structured evidence-gathering process based on desk research of relevant open-source documents and background expert interviews, this report identified the most important drivers of change, as well as the likely future developments at the intersection of AI and the defense sector that are at the margins of current thinking and planning.

In the second phase, the Atlantic Council hosted an off-the-record closed workshop held on an unclassified level in Washington. Through two prescripted discussions, conducted under Chatham House rules, policy and scholarly experts were asked to stress test the assumptions from the first phase. This informed the project on the likelihood of AI countermeasures and conditions for escalation in future algorithmic warfare, as well as to validate recommendations.

The third and last phase of the project centered on future scenario development. This is a useful policy analysis tool that visualizes a set of possible future conditions to help NATO decision-makers to anticipate challenges as they define capability requirements for NATO’s success in future algorithmic warfare.

Structure

This report proceeds as follows. Part One maps AI technology trends and their military applications over the next decade, from the battleﬁeld to the war room. Part Two then proceeds to anticipate the vulnerabilities of AI-enabled systems and to assess the possible vectors of attack to explore escalation pathways in algorithmic warfare; it covers both digital and physical dimensions across the so-called “AI triad” of algorithms, data, and computing power—and adds a human factor.

Part Three outlines three algorithmic futures—guarded opportunism, brave new world, and minority report—based on the likely transformative effects of military AI and their impact on international security. This line of scientific inquiry is highly relevant given ongoing research concerned with the impact of roboticized autonomous systems operating with minimal human supervision on future conflicts.⁸

Part Four discusses recommendations for NATO leaders. Based on the project’s findings, this report raises seven main action points that are categorized into three areas: AI readiness and resilience; military AI doctrine; and deterrence.

Part one: Military AI tech trends

AI is becoming a general-purpose military technology that will sit inside almost every digital system that NATO uses.⁹ Its transformative effects will likely concentrate in two areas. First, decision-support systems will expand the scale of information analytics military commanders can process to make better decisions fast. Second, autonomous and semiautonomous platforms will shift how militaries sense, move, and strike on the battlefield. Together, these developments are driving an AI era of algorithmic warfare.¹⁰

AI can, in principle, be implemented in everything that uses a computer. As defense establishments digitize, AI has never been a single-purpose capability in itself. Rather, AI architecture underpins modern command, control, communications, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, logistics, and weapons systems. NATO’s own definitions reflect this evolution. In 1995, NATO described AI as the capability of a functional unit to perform tasks generally associated with human intelligence, such as reasoning and learning. By 2005, it was also seen as “the branch of computer science” focused on building systems that reason, learn, and improve themselves.¹¹ These definitions now apply across a much broader digital ecosystem. Software has become a defining component of many weapon systems and AI is increasingly embedded in sensors, networks, and command-and-control tools.

The overall expectations about AI’s impact on future warfare can be captured in three concepts: speed, scale, and autonomy. Speed refers to faster sensing, processing, and engagement cycles. Scale refers to the ability to handle vast volumes of data and to coordinate large numbers of distributed assets, including swarms of UASs. Autonomy refers to the degree to which AI systems can operate with minimal human supervision. NATO’s challenge will be to harness these three dimensions without sacrificing control, accountability, or interoperability.

From general-purpose enabler to algorithmic warfare

The military applications of AI span relatively low-stakes use cases such as administrative automation and training, operational functions like logistics and cybersecurity, and high-stakes roles in targeting, electronic warfare, and human-machine teaming in combat.¹² From a functional standpoint, experts in defense and military affairs expect AI to matter depending on the AI model type, broadly divided in four categories: generative AI, classification, prediction, and autonomy.¹³ This includes tasks in which large volumes of data must be processed quickly, where patterns are too complex for human perception, where actions need to follow real-time operational intelligence fast, and where simulated environments can meet high training requirements.

Generative AI: Content, coaching, and cognitive effects

Generative AI models create novel content that mimics the statistical properties of the data on which they are trained in response to human prompts. In the military context, these systems are likely to be used as “agents” or virtual advisers that support commanders and staff in alleviating their daily administrative burdens and automating less critical processes, such as drafting routine reports, summarizing long documents, and translating technical information.¹⁴ In training and simulation, generative AI models can serve as simulation tools in war games and exercises. They populate synthetic environments with plausible adversarial actors and behaviors. This role improves scenario realism and generates alternative courses of action.

At the same time, these features can also be weaponized for offensive information operations. Adversaries can use generative AI to run large-scale, low-cost disinformation campaigns. This may involve producing tailored propaganda or impersonating Alliance leaders, journalists, and civil society voices. Generative AI will therefore be a powerful tool in the hands of adversaries seeking to manipulate perceptions and erode NATO’s cohesion.¹⁵

Classification: Noise and signal in a sensor-saturated battlespace

Classification models excel at recognizing patterns in labeled data and assigning new inputs to categories they have learned. Militaries already use such models for computer vision, facial and object recognition, and behavior detection. Computer vision models can identify vehicles, aircraft, ships, and infrastructure in imagery from satellites, aircraft, and UASs against their regularly updated data libraries. Classification tools can become crucial for early warning systems, from detecting stealthy cyber intrusions to flagging irregular troop movements. In sum, over the next decade, these systems are well-suited to sit at the core of intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, and targeting architectures.

Much is expected from AI-enabled electronic warfare too. In a battlespace saturated with sensors, classification tools can automate filtering of the electromagnetic spectrum, such as distinguishing signal from noise and highlighting anomalous signals that warrant human attention. Furthermore, signal processing algorithms can suggest waveforms to counter hostile signals and thus help overcome adversarial jamming in real time.¹⁶ As the electromagnetic spectrum becomes more contested, the ability to recognize and respond to subtle patterns faster than an adversary will be a critical advantage.

Prediction and data fusion: Scaling decision support

Prediction models analyze historical and real-time data to identify trends and forecast likely future events. In military settings, they underpin decision-support systems (DSS) designed to help commanders cope with complexity and information overload. The transition to multidomain operations underscores the importance of such multimodal data fusion and analytics.¹⁷

This type of AI model is therefore suitable to support battle management, as they fuse information from multiple sources and data streams from land, air, maritime, cyber, and space assets, and integrate them into a single operating picture that is updatable in real time.¹⁸ However, this also means that such data-centric decision-making processes can narrow commanders’ perceptions and constrain their choices.¹⁹

They can also highlight early warning indicators, propose likely adversary courses of action, and flag emerging risks in logistics and supply chains. In logistics, in particular, AI can support predictive maintenance of critical stockpiles; forecast demand for ammunition, fuel, and spare parts; and anticipate bottlenecks in transportation networks.²⁰ Predictive systems can also assist with medical support by estimating casualties and optimizing the positioning of medical resources.²¹

Autonomy: From perception to action

Autonomy involves AI systems that perceive their environment, process real-time data from sensors, and make decisions in pursuit of a mission objective without constant human intervention. In this case, AI models can cause kinetic effects, as they can direct hardware and/or software to react within the physical realm based on the input from the immediate environment.

Onboard AI enables uncrewed aircraft, ground vehicles, and maritime platforms to filter and fuse sensor inputs, navigate in contested environments, and pass the most relevant information back to human controllers. Advances in machine vision, for example, allow drones to compare real-time imagery from downward-facing cameras with stored satellite images and inertial data to determine their position without reliance on global navigation satellite systems. This is particularly important in GPS-denied or heavily jammed environments.²²

Autonomy is also extending to terminal guidance and target recognition. Today, many drones operate on autopilot for parts of their mission, with humans in- or on-the-loop for final engagement decisions. Over time, fully autonomous solutions that combine visual navigation, target recognition, and terminal guidance are likely to proliferate. Seamless data flows, however, are crucial. The Ukrainian forces use a practice that resembles “Uber targeting,” where one unit identifies a target, shares the observation on an encrypted network, and the targeting assignment goes to whichever unit is available, even facilitating joint-strike capability from multiple vectors.²³ AI-enabled systems that can collect, process, and act on information in real time will make such dynamic targeting more common, especially when communications with higher headquarters are degraded.

From incremental adoption to algorithmic warfare

Together, developments in these functional areas point toward the algorithmic future of warfare. Broadly speaking, algorithmic warfare refers to integrating automated, autonomous, and AI technologies into the conduct of war, while decreasing the role of human elements.²⁴ In algorithmic warfare, the military conducts operations through AI-enabled capabilities that collect, analyze, and act on data at speeds and scales beyond human capacity. Artificially intelligent means operate when human warfighters cannot and reduce their exposure to danger. Such AI-enabled autonomous capabilities will especially be assigned tasks at the edge of the battlespace to handle time-critical sensing and response functions without human supervision and with minimum guidance.²⁵

Yet the most transformative effects of military AI are likely to appear in two use cases. First, AI in DSS will expand the scale and speed of information processing, giving commanders a richer but more mediated view of the operating environment. Decision-support tools will not only help humans make better-informed choices but also shape the decision space by highlighting some options and obscuring others. Second, AI embedded in weapons platforms will use speed and autonomy to compress the kill chain, shrinking the time between detection, identification, decision, and engagement.²⁶ This has implications for escalation control, the rules of engagement (ROE), and the role of commanders in supervising rapid, machine-driven engagements.

Drivers of change

Several structural drivers are signaling greater reliance on AI and algorithmic approaches to warfare. These drivers are particularly important for NATO as it implements its Digital Transformation Vision and prepares for multidomain operations.

Digital modernization of defense

First, the broader digital modernization of defense is creating the conditions in which AI can thrive. Modern militaries are upgrading their IT infrastructure and moving to software-defined capabilities that deliver new functionality to existing platforms.²⁷ This also means adopting data-centric approaches to capability development through collaborative digital spaces.

As militaries continue implementing digital modernization of their forces, their dominance in the electromagnetic spectrum is crucial for their new dependencies on sensors, satellites, and networked systems. Russia’s war in Ukraine has underscored the importance of EM warfare, including GPS jamming and communications blackouts.²⁸ These developments push militaries to design more resilient, autonomous, and decentralized command-and-control structures with better cybersecurity measures. At the same time, electromagnetic warfare in the West has not gotten the attention it needs and is still seen as largely subservient to or stovepiped from cyber.²⁹

Interconnected domains

Second, the move toward multidomain operations (MDO) requires integrating effects across land, air, maritime, space, and cyberspace, as well as in the virtual and cognitive dimensions. MDO aims to “[orchestrate] military activities, synchronize non-military instruments of power, and deliver converging effects at the speed of relevance.”³⁰ To make this possible, allies are building a digital backbone that can enable command and control across all domains. However, the effectiveness of this backbone depends on interoperable data sharing, secure and reliable communications, and advanced analytics capable of fusing data into a real-time consolidated multidomain picture. Turning well-integrated AI models into C4ISR systems that enhance situational awareness and support decision-making becomes part of the key conditions for conducting multidomain operations.

Autonomy pursuits

Third, recent and ongoing conflicts are accelerating experimentation with AI-enabled autonomous and decision-support systems. In Ukraine, AI-driven platforms already analyze extensive sensor and signal data to generate real-time targeting suggestions and logistical predictions.³¹ In Gaza, reports indicate that machine-learning systems such as “Gospel” and “Lavender” have been used to support dynamic targeting and terminal navigation by combining multi-source imagery with other intelligence inputs.³² These cases illustrate a shift from isolated, weapon-centric AI applications toward more comprehensive systems that inform planning, targeting, and force deployment at all command levels.

Drones are no longer only agents of remote warfare but are fast becoming agents of algorithmic warfare as well. Demand has surged for battlefield drone footage. Thousands of drone-camera videos depicting successful strikes are used to train computer-vision models, while engineers race to design uncrewed systems that can navigate and coordinate in GPS- and communications-denied environments using on-board processing and limited power.

Two motivations stand out: building “mass for precision” and supplementing shrinking human force structures. Swarm tactics and swarm command seek to saturate defenses and compress reaction times through the coordinated use of large numbers of low-cost platforms. At the same time, demographic trends and recruitment challenges will incentivize greater robotic integration and human-machine teaming. Forward-deployed, uninhabited platforms on standby will increasingly redefine how militaries think about force projection and readiness.³³ For instance, large drone formations can provide the aggressor with an edge in the invasion of foreign territory, highlighting the challenge to the capacity of air defenses.³⁴ Across these trends, AI is fast becoming more than just a technological tool; it is a vital strategic competency,³⁵ and will likely determine which militaries can exploit AI—at scale and under stress. For NATO, understanding where AI is most likely to transform operations, and how adversaries might target the vulnerabilities of AI-enabled systems, is a prerequisite for credible deterrence and effective defense in the emerging era of algorithmic warfare.

Part two: The specter of algorithmic warfare

Militaries have not yet realized the full potential of AI technologies, but it is not difficult to see how AI will shape the strategic environment and wartime paradigms. As the AI race intensifies, potent AI-enabled capabilities will be deployed as part of NATO’s digital transformation and decision-support ambitions.³⁶ This section translates interview insights and workshop discussions into a structured analysis of AI’s core components and their vulnerabilities and the likely vectors of adversarial attack. Two case studies used in the workshop—AI applications in autonomous weapons platforms and in a decision-support system—further informed the analysis of the limits of main AI countermeasures and the conditions under which escalation in algorithmic warfare may occur. This is because the likelihood of an adversary attacking NATO for using AI models for predictive maintenance is comparatively low.

AI triad

Military AI rests on three interlocking components often described as the AI triad: data, algorithms, and computing power.³⁷ Each component has a specific implication for offense-defense parameters. For instance, algorithms imply attacks on model architecture, computing power involves disrupting semiconductors and supply chains, while data concern cyberattacks to poison datasets.

Data refers to information about the focus area of the machine-learning system, collected from sensors and other sources, organized, stored, and made accessible. Algorithms are the series of instructions used to process information; machine-learning algorithms derive insights from datasets and the learnable parameters that encode the core capabilities of an AI model in model weights. Computing power provides the speed and capacity to execute algorithms at scale, train models to determine weights, and run inference offline on deployed systems.³⁸ In practice, computing power includes processors and graphics cards, advanced semiconductors, content delivery networks, power supplies, and cooling. Defense applications often need to run offline on edge devices under strict size, weight, and power constraints, or on government cloud resources with limited GPU availability. Data, sometimes dubbed the new “munition” due to their importance for modern warfare, encompasses issues such as volume, quality, salience, and labeling. The amount of training data strongly influences effectiveness, though collecting the right operational data and labeling it correctly are important for accuracy and alignment. Algorithms feed data into model weights through training, and their resulting internal architecture determines future data analysis in real-time operations.

AI vulnerabilities and vectors of attack

Integrating AI introduces several challenges along the entire triad. Core datasets are massive, models can be opaque, and natural-language prompting expands input surfaces. These characteristics create multiple entry points for adversaries and raise the importance of disciplined processes and safeguards. Adversaries will attempt to degrade NATO’s AI-enabled capabilities by targeting the triad across cyber, electromagnetic, and conventional kinetic dimensions. This section outlines how such attacks would prevent the Alliance from enjoying advantages from AI.

Computing power

Vulnerabilities associated with computing power reflect the physicality of AI infrastructure. This is because advanced semiconductors and specialized chips must be sourced, supplied, and integrated into systems that also require stable energy and cooling. The performance of inference-heavy applications may depend on AI-optimized hardware. These dependencies create risks during material shortages, expose weak points in data centers, and constrain performance at the tactical edge.

Adversaries can exploit material attributes of semiconductors. They can disrupt the supply of specialized AI chips, seed vendor-supplied Trojan backdoors, or manipulate cloud architectures built with commercial technology. They can target the electricity supply of data centers and sabotage their water-cooling systems to cause outages, or damage undersea cables and content-delivery networks to disrupt data flows.

Data

Data is vulnerable across the lifecycle of AI models. Adversaries can poison training datasets through cyber operations that mislabel data or introduce hidden triggers that cause the model to misbehave. Poorly labeled or biased datasets degrade performance, making certain classes of objects invisible to the system or misclassifying them at critical ranges. If the wrong data is collected, or if the right data is corrupted, the entire decision-support chain can lead a model to malfunction and reduce its reliability in the long term.

Adversaries can also interfere with real-life data collection. Because drones and other autonomous systems rely on environmental input, adversaries can tamper with surroundings to impact sensory input and cause abnormal behavior. For instance, blinding sensors on ISR platforms with optical illusions, or adjusting the sensors themselves, and generating spoofing signals can mislead the model into inappropriate responses.³⁹ In addition to onboard perception and planning modules, adversaries can target control interfaces, power management, data relays, and user interfaces used to coordinate connected autonomous systems. Alternatively, disabling low-orbit satellites can also stop real-time input and data sharing.

Algorithms

Incorporating AI into the digital architecture makes the existing systems susceptible to attacks that target the AI model itself. Because model parameters encode internal configuration variables crucial for its operation, compromising weights and biases gives an attacker significant leverage. Adversaries can also try to steal model weights through espionage or proxy hackers, gaining access to the core capabilities of the model for manipulation.⁴⁰
Adversaries can thicken the fog of war for algorithms by flooding AI-enabled DSS with inputs that are inaccurate, uncategorizable, or nonpatternable. They can exploit the rare and unpredictable features of the battlefield, since AI models are mostly trained on either synthetic data or on datasets from previous conflicts that may not quite fit the type and circumstances of the current war zone.

Interviewed experts and workshop participants indicated that the most likely adversarial action against military AI architecture would include:

Blinding sensors on ISR platforms to stop the real-time input of new data.
Spreading misinformation to confuse the algorithms with nonpatternable data.
Physically damaging undersea cables to disrupt data sharing.
Conducting espionage in the suppliers’ private lab facilities.

Surprisingly, however, the most vulnerable component of AI seems to be the human; data and algorithms follow, with the computing power being the least vulnerable of AI components. Such human-related vulnerabilities include personalized phishing, social engineering, cognitive bias, and deskilling.

Countering military AI

Having discussed the vectors of adversarial attacks on AI-enabled military systems and capabilities, this section now briefly comments on the means of such attacks. These AI countermeasures include cyber operations, conventional kinetic attack, electronic warfare, directed energy weapons (DEW), and tailored nuclear weapons with enhanced electromagnetic pulse (EMP). Each has distinct advantages and limitations.

Cyber operations

Cyber operations can interfere with how AI models learn and operate by manipulating ones and zeros. Cyberattacks can degrade the model’s performance or integrity, limit its availability by delaying responses or rendering command-and-control systems inoperative at crucial moments.⁴¹ Integrating AI into military systems increases their vulnerability simply by creating more targets for computer hacking.⁴² These AI vulnerabilities include compromising software libraries, poisoning training data, hijacking AI infrastructure, or stealing sensitive AI properties. Such cyberattacks, however, require prior intelligence to target the right datasets and processing centers. Their effects can be difficult to assess and attribute in real time, which increases the potential for miscalculation.

Conventional kinetic action

Conventional kinetic attacks can target ISR assets including space-based systems, airborne warning and control system aircraft, and other hardware components integral in critical AI infrastructure. Traditional air defenses can target offensive AI onboard small autonomous vehicles with low-cost interceptors, nets, and guns. Kinetic action is tangible but can be escalatory depending on target and context, and it may be expensive or resource-intensive if used at scale against saturation attacks.

Electronic warfare

Electronic warfare uses electromagnetic energy to degrade hostile systems by jamming or spoofing. EW can produce reversible, nonlethal effects, but it is constrained by range, power, antennas, and by the need for detailed knowledge of enemy waveforms and code. Focused jamming and signal spoofing in case of multisensor platforms can confuse AI into analytical errors and lead to wrong reactions. Jamming, however, is possible only in the case of collaborative autonomous platforms that communicate among themselves the adaptive course of their action.

Directed-energy weapons

High-power microwaves and high-energy lasers widen the range of electromagnetic spectrum operations (EMSO). They can disable or destroy electronics on autonomous platforms using concentrated electromagnetic energy.⁴³ While microwaves are suitable for area defenses and perimeter denial against swarms of drones, lasers with their energy beams perform point defense similar to short-range air defense and counter-rocket, artillery, and mortar missions. They have low logistics tails and low cost per shot, but they are power hungry and range-limited. Atmospheric conditions, such as rain and fog, can reduce beam quality and effectiveness, as well as increase fratricide risks. Their applications for space missions look promising given their reusability and the potential to degrade or destroy a satellite.⁴⁴

Tailored nuclear weapons with enhanced electromagnetic pulse

Nuclear explosions of all types—from underground to high altitudes—are accompanied by an electromagnetic pulse. The strength and area coverage of this intense time varying electromagnetic radiation depends on the warhead type and yield, and the altitude of the detonation.⁴⁵ This means that while high-altitude airbursts can have a continent-wide deposition region, for explosions in the atmosphere at altitudes below 30 kilometers, the radius ranges from 5 to 16 kilometers.⁴⁶

Since the 1960s, EMPs, either man-made or natural, have been known to have a potential to disrupt, damage, or destroy a wide array of electrical and electronic systems.⁴⁷ Degradation of electrical and electronic system performance as a result of exposure to the EMP may cause either permanent functional damage or a temporary operational impairment, lasting from seconds to hours.⁴⁸ Computers used in data processing systems, communications systems, and semiconductors belong to the category of devices most susceptible to failure.⁴⁹

While airbursts have little or no fallout and no residual radiation, it is difficult to predict their effects and impact on today’s sensitive electronics, as well as avoid collateral damage and civilian casualties. Together with the difficulty to signal limited nuclear use, since the adversary cannot distinguish low-yield from high-yield weapons, such employment of nuclear EMP weapons remains highly problematic and inherently escalatory.⁵⁰ Experimental exercises over the past decades have identified no assurance that a nuclear strike would remain limited.⁵¹

Escalation and algorithmic warfare

The workshop assessed the salience of AI-enabled lethal operations along an escalatory pathway from minor cyber operations to DEW and nuclear EMP. The following paragraphs summarize the expert participants’ discussion on the conditions under which the use of military AI could increase the risk of escalation.

Escalation is defined as “an increase in the intensity or scope of conflict that crosses threshold(s) considered significant by one or more of the participants.”⁵² Escalation thresholds then depend on retaliation in response to some form of attack. The workshop discussion highlighted the distinction between effects-based and means-based escalation logics. While effects-based logic identifies thresholds depending on the impact that is irrespective of the weapons type, means-based logic emphasizes the qualitative difference between nuclear, conventional, and cyber domains. Some means are regarded as less escalatory than others. For instance, cyberattacks have proven capable of restraining the escalation dynamic and even de-escalating geopolitical crises.⁵³ Similarly, attacks on large drones are less likely to lead to escalation than attacks on inhabited aircraft.⁵⁴

Most researchers studying the AI-nuclear intersection focus on AI amplifying existing risks in nuclear command, control, and communications that can spark accidental nuclear confrontation,⁵⁵ undermining deterrence with AI-enabled conventional systems,⁵⁶ incentivizing first strike,⁵⁷ or exacerbating the proliferation/verification dilemma.⁵⁸ This workshop addressed the concern of a possible deliberate use of nuclear weapons as a warfighting tool designed to produce electromagnetic pulse effects to counter military AI. Previous experimental war-gaming showed that although low-yield nuclear weapons do indeed destabilize international security since they are seen as a substitute for high-yield nuclear use, they do not seem to increase the likelihood of crossing the nuclear threshold.⁵⁹

The workshop scenario described an AI-enabled fast and lethal drone saturation attack into the Baltic region. The scenario listed a number of possible responses:

Diplomatic action.
Economic sanctions.
Cyberattack.
Conventional kinetic response.
Electronic warfare measures.
Directed energy weapons.
Tailored nuclear weapons with enhanced electromagnetic pulse.

The workshop participants ranked responses by their perceived escalatory potential. Diplomatic action and electronic warfare tended to come first and often in parallel. Kinetic action, cyber operations, and DEW followed as second-ring responses. Economic sanctions were seen as medium-term tools, not immediate response levers. Tailored nuclear EMP was considered least probable but most escalatory, with a consensus that its use over NATO territory would be unacceptable. Among the most prevalent concerns against the nuclear EMP use, the participants noted: lowering the threshold for strategic nuclear weapon use; observing the nuclear “taboo,” the response’s proportionality, proliferation of nuclear weapons following nuclear use, and setting a negative precedent.

The follow-on discussion highlighted that adversaries may exploit AI structural risks. Complex AI systems can make attribution and intent assessment harder as AI and autonomy create conditions for plausible deniability. In addition, increased speed and data volumes can work against the user, since time-pressured scenarios increase the risk that decision-makers may rely more heavily on potentially compromised AI outputs, without even understanding the source of unanticipated inputs or system failures.⁶⁰

The workshop confirmed that military AI is not escalatory because offensive AI-enabled capabilities do not meaningfully increase the nature or intensity of a conflict. What matters is the choice of target, the physical damage, and the presence of casualties. At the same time, the properties of AI—speed, autonomy, and opacity—can increase the risk of inadvertent escalation. Despite the fight for EM spectrum dominance, the AI status of an attack does not lower nuclear thresholds—effects on the ground determine response. Ultimately, the vicinity of the adversary’s troops continues to be perceived as more escalatory than an AI-powered swarm attack.

Part three: Future scenarios

Juxtaposing the possible transformative effects of military AI against the threat perception (table A), this foresight study outlines three military AI future scenarios: Guarded opportunism, brave new world, and minority report. The goal is to anticipate long‑haul innovation in countering adversarial attacks on NATO’s AI systems and to inform military research and development decisions.⁶¹

The scenarios are modeled after two variables with a graduated level of likelihood. The first variable concerns the transformative impact of AI: whether countries achieve any strategic advantage from integrating AI into their militaries. And the second variable addresses an adversary’s threat perception: whether integrating AI provokes the development of new countermeasures and/or changes on the escalation ladder.

The fourth quadrant—AI fatigue—represents the most unlikely scenario with no decisive AI advantage and no heightened threat perception. It is less policy‑salient but remains useful as a control for future policy planning.

Scenario I. Guarded opportunism

This is the most plausible future scenario. AI meaningfully transforms military affairs and confers comparative advantage on states that integrate it well, yet it does not worsen adversary threat perceptions. Business continues largely as usual. AI‑enabled decision support and autonomy systems transform the character of warfare through expanded scale and increased operational speed yet without changing the nature of war.

NATO’s digital transformation and integrated AI-enabled military capabilities do not introduce qualitatively new risks or vulnerabilities. These remain familiar to cyberspace and can be managed with disciplined cyber hygiene and resilient power-supply architectures. However, AI may heighten some of the existing threat pathways and security risks. As AI becomes integral to the ability to operate and respond, degraded situational awareness and power outages, for instance, could become more consequential—and a new center of gravity—in digitalized, software-defined defense. Decision‑support systems help commanders filter the noise and frame choices faster, but they do not demand new categories of resilience beyond what Part Two already identified for the AI triad.

Hybrid pressure intensifies below the threshold of armed conflict. Cable cuts, data center intrusions, and information operations become routine. Russia continues sabotaging critical AI infrastructure to disrupt supply chains and cyber and drone intimidation campaigns across Europe.⁶² Yet technology knowledge and investments into resilient computer systems limit these escalation attempts. Better engineering and AI literacy shorten detection and attribution loops and make recovery faster.

Two challenges stand out. The first is the intergovernmental character of the Alliance. NATO relies on its member countries for certain types of cyber operations. This dependence on capitals to act creates latency in time‑sensitive crises and may result in inefficient responses that may not prevent further escalation of hybrid warfare. The second is information warfare targeting the Alliance’s reputation. NATO publics in left‑leaning governments are targeted with disinformation campaigns that frame AI‑enabled capabilities as unethical “killer robots,” arguing that NATO violates its own principles of responsible use of AI. Adversaries are further fueling domestic opposition to reduce tech-sector cooperation.

Still, guarded opportunism is defined by low escalation risks. Algorithmic warfare remains bounded by existing ROE and proportional responses. The only time AI and nuclear fields cross their paths with real-world consequences is in the widespread adoption of small nuclear reactors across the military to power demanding computations of AI models.

Scenario II. Brave new world

In the second scenario, AI is transformative and threat perception worsens. The AI triad delivers a real strategic and operational edge. However, AI-related risks grow with it over time due to insufficient literacy, lack of regular training, lagging skill development, and sloppy implementation of zero‑trust policy across armed forces. Furthermore, rapid and widespread integration of AI models creates new vulnerabilities, stemming from limited human agency, which complicate the cognitive aspects of decision-making.⁶³ The result is an increased probability of flash wars among autonomous robotic systems, in which algorithms interact at such a fast pace that humans would not be involved.⁶⁴

Such a degraded security environment sees multiple escalation spirals. Compressed decision-making times and fully autonomous systems contribute to perceptions of asymmetric disadvantage between Russia and NATO. Russia’s doctrine and force structure amplify the problem. Russia’s revision of its nuclear doctrine in 2024—with its greater emphasis on “aerospace attacks,” explicitly including drones, as one of the conditions under which nuclear weapons may be used—seems to lower the threshold for nuclear use.⁶⁵ This demonstrates that Russia became more reliant on its nonstrategic nuclear weapons after its conventional forces degraded in the war on Ukraine.⁶⁶ This seems to strengthen the Russian leadership’s belief that nonstrategic nuclear weapons are Russia’s “competitive advantage” over NATO.⁶⁷ Furthermore, Russia’s vision of new generation warfare builds upon weapons based on new physical principles, including radio frequency, laser, infrasonic, and electromagnetic. Russia has indeed been developing a precision-strike system built on integration of EW, uncrewed strike and reconnaissance systems, hypersonic weapons, and low-yield nuclear warheads.

In contrast, as NATO’s deterrent power derives from advanced conventional capabilities, this scenario portrays a deeper blurring of conventional and nuclear domains.⁶⁸ Yet NATO struggles to attain superiority in strategic command and control, while avoiding dependencies on commercial clouds and satellites. Large‑scale outages and cascading failures are more frequent. Allies hold regular war-gaming exercises to make sure that the Alliance’s responses remain proportionate even when attacks are AI‑generated. Yet Russia’s asymmetric countermeasures to the multidomain concept keep causing electronic damage to NATO command posts and communications centers.⁶⁹

In high tension, states embrace capabilities that manipulate the spectrum—microwaves, lasers, tailored EMP—seeking to blunt swarms and blind sensors. While EW once seemed unbeatable, jamming lost its teeth against uncrewed vehicles that do not use communication and navigation links. And if autonomy was an antidote to EW, then degrading the electromagnetic environment has become the antidote to AI-enabled military capabilities.

Some governments resume nuclear explosive testing of airburst effects, which contributes to further entangling AI with the nuclear domain. The line between conventional and nuclear war will get more fragile with the proliferation of new classes of EMP weapons. Nuclear proliferation gets out of control as more countries strive to develop their own low-yield nuclear EMP deterrent to counter AI-enabled adversaries. Worse, numerous experts inside and outside Russia believe that a nuclear EMP attack does not need to be governed by the same set of considerations as strategic nuclear weapons and nuclear doctrine.⁷⁰ Nuclear EMP weapons are understood within the category of electronic warfare or information warfare, not nuclear warfare. In this increasingly popular interpretation, an EMP attack is regarded as a legitimate use of nuclear weapons within the specter of algorithmic warfare. Even if nuclear EMP is conceptualized as a form of information warfare in some circles, its use would be profoundly escalatory.

Scenario III. Minority report

In the third scenario, technology hype drives strategy. AI does not deliver decisive comparative advantage for the military, yet threat perceptions grow worse. Exaggerated expectations about the game-changing, transformative, and inevitable impact of AI fuel anxiety about falling behind. The fear of missing out, rather than tangible advantages from AI models, pushes countries deep into the AI race. Such alarmism about phantom AI advantages has a destabilizing effect on strategic balance.

Information asymmetries deepen the problem. NATO militaries and Russian officials tout milestones and “breakthroughs,” while major AI firms speak of revolutionary models. The strategic conversation fixates on what might be developed tomorrow rather than what is fielded today. Decision‑makers overestimate near‑term effects and discount the risks and challenges of AI integration work highlighted in Parts One and Two. As a result, nuclear-armed great powers interpret routine military exercises as cover for preemptive strikes at machine‑speeds and tend to see AI-enabled ISR improvements as a direct threat to their second-strike capabilities.

Escalation pathways in this scenario are cognitive. On the one hand, leaders race to push fully autonomous prototypes forward before safety case evaluations are completed. Miscalculation risk rises not because AI-enabled autonomous weapons systems are unstoppable, but because the decision-makers believe they are. On the other, the adversaries deploy cognitive warfare tactics of “algorithmic amplification” to influence how decision-makers reason, degrade critical decision-making processes, and undermine their sense of security.⁷¹

The Alliance faces the challenge of lowering expectations while preserving its technological edge. However, while allies agreed to coordinate their political objectives of developing AI-enabled armed forces, the lack of national resources and ineffectiveness of their national AI strategies to achieve them weakened NATO’s cohesion.⁷² Leading AI countries are reluctant to institutionalize transparent metrics for AI readiness that separate laboratory promise from operational proof.

This scenario points to the need to move beyond the polarizing hopes-vs-fears dichotomy of AI in order to translate technological potential into military advantage through a sound implementation strategy.⁷³ This scenario reminds policymakers and defense planners to budget for the cognitive dimension of technological competition. Publics and markets react to hyped narratives faster than to scientific results. Adversaries will try to exploit this gap with rhetoric about their AI leapfrogging, announcing the winner of the AI race.

Across all three futures, NATO faces distinct challenges posed by future algorithmic warfare. NATO’s advantage from AI models rests on speed, scale, and autonomy delivered by a resilient AI triad under close human oversight. Guarded opportunism is the most likely scenario and highlights AI vulnerabilities in the light of hybrid and information warfare. Brave new world is less likely but the more dangerous of the three futures. In this algorithmic future, NATO is constantly on the cusp of spirals of escalation and de-escalation and points to the dangers from rapid and widespread integration of AI models without correspondingly fast doctrinal adaptation. Minority report, meanwhile, outlines the destabilizing effects of AI hype in the context of lacking safety and transparency standards.

Part four: Policy recommendations

NATO’s advantage in algorithmic warfare will depend on converting AI’s speed, scale, and autonomy into reliable military capabilities while avoiding inadvertent escalation. This report suggests that the Alliance should focus on three lines of effort. First, it must build AI readiness and resilience across the Alliance. Second, it must refine military AI doctrine to preserve information dominance and to clarify response triggers under compressed timelines. Third, it must develop a deterrence strategy for its strategic AI-enabled DSS. These policy recommendations address the AI vulnerabilities and attack vectors identified in the report’s earlier sections, providing practical steps for NATO leaders implementing the Digital Transformation Vision and preparing for multidomain operations. Each recommendation is intended for near‑term adoption to set conditions for long‑term advantages from AI.

I. AI readiness and resilience

NATO should anchor its AI strategy in two core principles—literacy and redundancy—and reinforce those principles through a coordinated approach to the AI tech industry. Such an approach will help NATO avoid the risks of stale knowledge and deskilling.

Recommendation 1: Master AI literacy

AI literacy should be treated as a strategic competency for commanders, operators, and policymakers rather than as a niche topic confined to chief information officers. NATO should integrate AI education into professional military education, operational exercises, and staff development programs so that leaders understand both the promise and the limits of current AI models. AI-literate armed forces are less likely to succumb to tech-centric thinking and automation bias in future strategy and doctrine development.

NATO should also educate wider publics and political elites so that strategy debates do not become hostage to hype. Clear explanations of how models are evaluated, how data shape military performance, and how human judgment remains central are key for preparing policymakers at all levels to make informed AI-related decisions.⁷⁴

Recommendation 2: Engineer redundancy

Maintaining the ability to transmit information is essential for coordinated actions. NATO should assume that outages and system failures will occur. The Alliance needs to exercise capabilities in communications‑degraded electromagnetic environments and design robust and rehearsed secondary systems. This involves mapping cyber and physical dependencies to avoid single points of failure.

The Alliance should pursue controlled geographic decentralization of data centers to improve resilience of its AI architecture. This will require lawmakers to align national legislative requirements on strict data standards and protocols for insider-outsider threat detection. Vetting the data that goes into AI-enabled DSS, together with delineating clear boundaries between training periods and operational deployment of AI models, will improve the ability to isolate “poisoned” data and contain their spread. Training a team of experts to ensure human oversight of AI workings can limit the consequences of system malfunctions, while limiting the number of people with authorized access to base model parameters, can reduce the risk of sabotage and espionage.

Investment priorities should include research programs that work on future novel materials for shielding and protection of high-speed digital computers against EM interference. Given that the adversaries are likely to invest heavily in spoofing and dazzling hardware capabilities, the Allies should consider hardened interfaces against exfiltration. Lastly, NATO should invest in resources for continuous active defenses that constantly look for evidence of deception and run malfunction diagnostics.

Recommendation 3: Coordinate approach to AI tech industry

NATO should develop a code of conduct for private-sector engagements. The code would require AI companies developing products for decision-support systems and autonomous platforms to adhere to safety and ethical standards. The Alliance should create a trusted group of commercial suppliers and establish clear rules for civilian software engineers and technicians deployed in war zones. To prevent adversaries from achieving tech superiority, the Allies should examine their technology dependencies, “friend-shore” supply chains, and tighten export controls of critical components.

The Alliance should try to address the knowledge gap that exists in the private sector on how EMPs affect computer-based systems. NATO should partner with space tech organizations that have experience with the most advanced research into electromagnetic disturbances. As part of coordinating government–industry unclassified information sharing, NATO could also facilitate partnerships between traditional military hardware providers with software developers so that commercial capabilities can be deployed on military‑grade platforms. Lastly, NATO should encourage forward thinking. Routine, joint red‑teaming and data‑poisoning drills with industry will expose weaknesses. Regular brainstorming on risks from new EMP weapons and postquantum cryptography should feed into the life-cycle design of current systems.

II. Military AI doctrine

Doctrine must convert technical possibility into operational advantage while reducing the pathways to inadvertent escalation. Three recommendations on doctrinal adaptation can contribute to preserving NATO’s advantage from AI.

Recommendation 4: Maintain information dominance

NATO should develop a functional framework for operationalizing AI in support of algorithmic warfare that prioritizes military objectives over abstract benchmarks. Commanders should measure success in terms of effects—such as optimized asset‑to‑target allocation on defense—rather than in terms of statistical thresholds.

Investments should focus on early warning systems, electromagnetic warfare capabilities, and a layered counter‑UAS architecture that combines continuous passive radars, electronic warfare, DEW, and point defenses.

Maintaining information dominance also requires the ability to distinguish routine probing in the form of hybrid air denial operations from preparations for larger operations using drone saturation attacks. Exercises should therefore include ambiguous data, degraded sensors, and adversarial attempts to manipulate inputs so that the troops learn to question AI outputs without losing their operational tempo.

Recommendation 5: Clarify escalation thresholds

Compressed timelines will produce decision paralysis unless allies agree on response triggers and predelegate command authority to avoid escalation risks. NATO allies should develop a shared understanding of escalation thresholds for algorithmic warfare, including thresholds defining the strategic effects of adversarial AI-enabled attacks, as well as of attacks on NATO’s own AI architecture.

NATO also should have clear protocols in place for attribution and proportionality regarding the Alliance’s responses. For instance, would poisoning an adversary’s data count as an offensive cyber operation? NATO allies also need to make sure there are clear rules of engagement for autonomous and semiautonomous response systems. In anticipating the adversary’s deniability claims in the event of AI-enabled attacks, such as “accident” or “loss of control,” NATO should not be adjusting its red lines between subthreshold manipulation and armed attack.

Recommendation 6: Assess the electromagnetic layer with accuracy

The electromagnetic spectrum should not be an afterthought. NATO defense planners need to take the electromagnetic spectrum into consideration at the beginning of warfare planning and develop a spectrum plan with assigned frequencies. Future algorithmic warfare may require NATO to update its standards for survivability (STANAG 4145) to reflect the reality that modern critical infrastructure includes data centers and commercial satellites in addition to traditional command facilities.
In planning for EM-contested environments, NATO allies should preposition shielded assets—power, fuel, generators, and communications equipment—in forward locations to avoid logistical shortages during compressed timelines. They could also invest in software‑defined or reconfigurable radios and optical/laser communications. They should also explore the use of UAS or balloon‑based repeaters to restore the ability to transmit information when ground infrastructure is compromised. Treating the spectrum as a distinct layer of multidomain operations will protect the strategic initiative and the superiority in command and control that NATO seeks to maintain.

III. Deterrence

As AI‑enabled systems underpin strategic command‑and‑control functions, NATO must develop a deterrence strategy based on black box ambiguity without locking itself into a rigid declaratory policy.

Recommendation 7: Deter by ambiguity

NATO should project resilience while keeping the internal architecture of sensitive AI systems opaque to adversaries. Black box AI would also deprive adversaries of the ability to assess the real costs of potential attack. At the same time, the Alliance must maintain the diagnostic capacity to distinguish foreign interference from technical failure in case of system malfunctions, so that ambiguity does not erode internal accountability.

Building and demonstrating resilience—technical, organizational, and informational—will enable NATO to signal confidence and control. Its strategic communication should make clear that deliberate interference with decision‑support systems could carry serious consequences, even if precise thresholds and responses remain undisclosed. Taken together, these seven recommendations translate the analytical sections into concrete actionable items. Literacy keeps humans in charge under compressed timelines. Redundancy and industry coordination make the AI triad more trustworthy. Doctrine secures the informational high ground and clarifies action in crisis. Finally, deterrence by ambiguity protects the Alliance’s AI advantage without inspiring its adversaries into building new countermeasures. Implemented in parallel, these steps position NATO to enjoy its AI advantage in algorithmic warfare on terms that contribute to a stable security environment.

Conclusion

NATO’s competitive edge in the era of emerging and disruptive technologies will come from treating AI as a general-purpose enabler embedded across the Alliance’s digital backbone, rather than as a stand-alone “wonder weapon.” AI-enabled decision support and autonomy do not create vulnerabilities that are different in kind from cyber risks, but they raise the stakes by tying mission-critical effects—speed, scale, and autonomy—to software-defined systems that adversaries will target. Escalation will continue to be governed by effects and targets, not labels, while cognitive factors complicate judgment under time pressure. The practical implication for NATO is clear: invest in literacy, engineer redundancy, clarify doctrine, and project resilience with measured ambiguity.

This report addresses NATO’s ambition to protect its AI technological edge while digitalizing defense. Part One showed how AI will matter most in two intertwined areas: decision-support systems that compress time and expand the scale of information processing, and autonomous or semiautonomous platforms that accelerate sensing, movement, and strike. These advantages rely on the secured AI triad of algorithms, data, and computing power. Part Two mapped where adversaries will try to turn those strengths into liabilities—poisoning data, spoofing sensors, stealing model weights, interrupting cloud access and cable backhaul, and attacking the AI physical infrastructure. The analysis emphasized that while attempts to degrade AI-enabled military capabilities will resemble cyberspace operations, the consequences of failure are amplified when AI is made responsible for situational awareness at the core of command-and-control decision-making.

Parts Three and Four translated those findings into future forecasting and recommendations. The foresight scenario exercise underscored that the most likely near-term pathway is one of guarded opportunism—AI improves productivity and tempo without changing the nature of war—while the most dangerous pathway blends real AI advantage with worsening threat perception, making EMSO and directed-energy tools more salient in crisis. The most deceptive pathway is driven by hype: Threat perceptions rise even when fielded capabilities do not correspond to exaggerated predictions. Across all futures, effects, targets, and collateral risk determine algorithmic warfare dynamics.

Crucially, military AI systems do not introduce vulnerabilities that are categorically new, yet the consequences of foreign interference can be greater. If AI-enabled systems are integral to a unit’s ability to operate and respond, then successful attacks on those systems may warrant responses that are more escalatory than tit-for-tat cyber exchanges. Timing matters as well. Loss of real-time situational awareness in a crisis reduces clarity about what happened and who is responsible, raising the probability of misperception and inadvertent escalation. In practice, this report calls for disciplined deployment of decision-support systems that can only rely on rehearsed secondary systems.

The study also clarified the relationship between EMSO and nuclear restraint in the context of tailored, nonstrategic nuclear weapons. Means-based analysis sheds light on how emerging technologies shape modern escalation dynamics. Rather than making technology-centric estimates, this report highlights systemic risks related to AI: How leaders perceive risk under pressure remains decisive.

Literacy is therefore more than a training agenda; it is an instrument of restraint. Educated policymakers, commanders, and publics are less likely to treat AI as “cyber pixie dust” or to confuse reversible electronic effects with strategic attack. They will be better able to choose the right mission for the AI-enabled capability. In parallel, designating data centers, cables, AI labs, and commercial satellites as critical infrastructure and strategic assets will help align strategy and doctrine with the realities of a software-defined force.

This study contributes to AI literacy by stripping away hype and clarifying where algorithmic warfare introduces new challenges. For NATO leaders implementing the Digital Transformation Vision, the immediate tasks are practical: align skill development programs, harden the AI triad, codify response triggers, and show resilience without over-specifying red lines. Doing so reduces the risk that exaggerated expectations about new technology will drive strategy.

The report’s findings point to a future research agenda that looks into how tactical actions can engage strategic effects. AI-enabled autonomy and speed can magnify the psychological impact of hybrid campaigns, especially where the cost of interceptors is high and the pace of exchange is machine-driven. Routine “gray zone” activities are already redefining the baseline of normalcy across Europe.⁷⁵ Such threshold uncertainty permits plausible deniability, keeping the adversarial action away from Article 5 territory.

Open questions remain. How robust is the “firebreak” in escalation theory when algorithmic systems increasingly shape perception and timing? Can allies maintain recognizable qualitative distinctions between domains when effects propagate across them in multidomain operations? And where, precisely, do we draw escalation thresholds when nonkinetic actions in the electromagnetic spectrum generate strategic consequences? Answering these questions will require continued red teaming, transparent metrics for AI readiness, and joint experimentation that links tactical vignettes to strategic decision-making fora.

The Alliance has long excelled at military hardware. In a data-centric, software-defined approach to defense, advantage will come from systems engineering and smart innovation adoption choices. If NATO invests in AI literacy and redundancy, elevates the EM spectrum within the multidomain operations concept, and projects resilience with measured ambiguity, it can protect its AI edge and defend against adversarial attacks. That is the path to credible deterrence and effective defense in the emerging AI era of algorithmic warfare.

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank the interviewed experts and workshop participants for their generosity in sharing their time and knowledge, the Atlantic Council’s Transatlantic Security Initiative staff for making a home for this project, and the NATO Office of the Chief Scientist for choosing to fund this project as part of its 2025 grants program.

About the author

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Dominika Kunertova

Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security Transatlantic Security Initiative

Artificial Intelligence Central Europe

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The Transatlantic Security Initiative aims to reinforce the strong and resilient transatlantic relationship that is prepared to deter and defend, succeed in strategic competition, and harness emerging capabilities to address future threats and opportunities.

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43 Kelley M. Sayler et al., 2024, “Department of Defense Directed Energy Weapons: Background and Issues for Congress,” Congressional Research Service, July 11, https://crsreports.congress.gov R46925.

44 Zhanna L. Malekos Smith, 2024, “The Specter of EMP Weapons in Space,” Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, March 27, https://www.carnegiecouncil.org/media/article/the-specter-of-emp-weapons-in-space.

45 US Department of Energy, 2017, US Department of Energy Electromagnetic Pulse Resilience Action Plan, https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2017/01/f34/DOE%20EMP%20Resilience%20Action%20Plan%20January%202017.pdf#:~:text=Although%20an%20EMP%20is%20also%20generated%20by,EMP%20events%20produced%20by%20high%20altitude%20detonations.

46 Samuel Glasstone and Philip J. Dolan, 1977, “The Electromagnetic Pulse and Its Effects,” in The Effects of Nuclear Weapons, Glasstone and Dolan, eds., US Department of Defense and the Energy Research and Development Administration, 514–531, Digitized and published by Chris Griffith and Eric A. Meyer, 2022, https://atomicarchive.com/resources/documents/effects/glasstone-dolan/chapter11.html.

47 Roger Allen Meade, 2022, “Operation Fishbowl,” Los Alamos National Laboratory, National Nuclear Security Administration, US Department of Energy, October 25, https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1896391.

48 Glasstone and Dolan, “The Electromagnetic Pulse and Its Effects.”

49 Washington State Department of Health, 2003, “Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP),” Fact Sheet 320-090, Division of Environmental Health, Office of Radiation Protection, https://doh.wa.gov/sites/default/files/legacy/Documents/Pubs/320-090_elecpuls_fs.pdf.

50 Richard Wolfson and Ferenc Dalnoki-Veress, 2021, Nuclear Choices for the Twenty-First Century: A Citizen’s Guide, MIT Press.

51 Lawrence Freedman and Jeffrey H. Michaels, 2019, The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy, 4th ed. (London: Palgrave Macmillan).

52 Forrest E. Morgan et al., 2008, Dangerous Thresholds: Managing Escalation in the 21st Century (Santa Monica, California: RAND Corporation), 8.

53 Sarah Kreps and Jacquelyn Schneider, 2019, “Escalation Firebreaks in the Cyber, Conventional, and Nuclear Domains: Moving beyond Effects-based Logics,” Journal of Cybersecurity 5, no. 1: 1–11, tyz007, https://doi.org/10.1093/cybsec/tyz007.

54 Erik Lin-Greenberg, 2022, “Wargame of Drones: Remotely Piloted Aircraft and Crisis Escalation,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 66, no. 10: 1737–1765, https://doi.org/10.1177/00220027221106960.

55 James Johnson, 2021, “‘Catalytic Nuclear War’ in the Age of Artificial Intelligence & Autonomy: Emerging Military Technology and Escalation Risk between Nuclear-Armed States,” Journal of Strategic Studies, 1–41, https://doi.org/10.1080/01402390.2020.1867541.

56 Steve Fetter and Jaganath Sankaran, 2024, “Emerging Technologies and Challenges to Nuclear Stability,” Journal of Strategic Studies 48, no. 2: 252–96, doi:10.1080/01402390.2024.2433766; Vladislav Chernavskikh and Jules Palayer, 2025, “Impact of Military Artificial Intelligence on Nuclear Escalation Risk,” Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), June, https://doi.org/10.55163/FZIW8544; and Jacob Stokes, 2025, Averting AI Armageddon: US–China–Russia Rivalry at the Nexus of Nuclear Weapons and Artificial Intelligence, Center for a New American Security, https://www.cnas.org/publications/reports/averting-ai-armageddon.

57 Michael C. Horowitz, 2019, “When Speed Kills: Lethal Autonomous Weapon Systems, Deterrence and Stability,” Journal of Strategic Studies 42, no. 6, 764–788. https://doi.org/10.1080/01402390.2019.1621174.

58 David M. Allison and Stephen Herzog, 2025, “Artificial Intelligence and Nuclear Weapons Proliferation: The Technological Arms Race for (In)visibility,” Risk Analysis 45, no. 11: 3839–3859, https://doi.org/10.1111/risa.70105.

59 Andrew W. Reddie and Bethany Goldblum, 2022, “Evidence of the Unthinkable: Experimental Wargaming at the Nuclear Threshold,” Journal of Peace Research 60, no. 5: 760–776, https://doi.org/10.1177/00223433221094734.

60 Matthijs M. Maas, 2019, “How Viable Is International Arms Control for Military Artificial Intelligence? Three Lessons from Nuclear Weapons,” Contemporary Security Policy 40, no. 3: 285–311.

61 Alexander Kott, and Philip Perconti, 2025, “How Accurate Is Forecasting of Military Technologies?,” NATO Defense College, Hindsight Series Paper no. 6, https://www.ndc.nato.int/how-accurate-is-forecasting-of-military-technologies/.

62 Charlie Edwards and Nate Seidenstein, 2025, “The Scale of Russian Sabotage Operations against Europe’s Critical Infrastructure,” International Institute for Strategic Studies, August 19, https://www.iiss.org/research-paper/2025/08/the-scale-of-russian–sabotage-operations–against-europes-critical–infrastructure/.

63 Avi Goldfarb and Jon R. Lindsay, 2022, “Prediction and Judgment: Why Artificial Intelligence Increases the Importance of Humans in War,” International Security 46, no. 3: 7–50, doi: https://doi.org/10.1162/isec_a_00425.

64 Paul Scharre, 2018, Army of None: Autonomous Weapons and the Future of War, 1^st ed. (New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company).

65 Russian Federation Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2024, “Fundamentals of State Policy of the Russian Federation on Nuclear Deterrence,” per Russian Presidential Order no. 991, https://www.mid.ru/en/foreign_policy/international_safety/1434131/.

66 Liviu Horovitz and Lydia Wachs, 2024, “Russian Nuclear Weapons in Belarus? Motivations and Consequences,” Washington Quarterly 47, no. 3, 103–29, doi:10.1080/0163660X.2024.2398952.

67 Jacek Durkalec, 2025, “Counterforce at the Regional Level of War: A European Perspective,” in Counterforce in Contemporary U.S. Nuclear Strategy, ed. Brad Roberts, Center for Global Security Research, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, 152–167.

68 Wilfred Wan and Gitte du Plessis, 2025, “Blurring Conventional–Nuclear Boundaries: Nordic Developments, Global Implications,” SIPRI, https://www.sipri.org/commentary/essay/2025/blurring-conventional-nuclear-boundaries-nordic-developments-global-implications.

69 Katarzyna Zysk, 2023, “Struggling, Not Crumbling: Russian Defence: AI in a Time of War,” RUSI, Commentary, November 20, https://rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/struggling-not-crumbling-russian-defence-ai-time-war.

70 Peter Vincent Pry, 2017, “Foreign Views of Electromagnetic Pulse Attack,” Report to the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack, http://www.firstempcommission.org/uploads/1/1/9/5/119571849/foreign_views_of_emp_attack_by_peter_pry_july_2017.pdf.

71 Frank Hoffman, 2025, “Assessing ‘Cognitive Warfare,’ ” Small Wars Journal, November 14, https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/11/14/assessing-cognitive-warfare/#_ednref3.

72 Dominika Kunertova and Olivier Schmitt, 2024, “Assessing NATO’s Cohesion: Methods and Implications,” International Politics 62: 1097–1110, https://doi.org/10.1057/s41311-024-00641-1.

73 Andreas Graae, 2023, Servers before Tanks? Defence AI in Denmark, Defense AI Observatory, DAIO Study 23|18, https://defenseai.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/daio_study2318_servers_before_tanks_andreas_graae.pdf.

74 Sophia Hatz et al., 2025, “Local US Officials’ Views on the Impacts and Governance of AI: Evidence from 2022 and 2023 Survey Waves,” PLOS ONE 20, no. 10, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0332919.

75 The Atlantic Council has defined the gray zone as “the space in which defensive and offensive activity occurs above the level of cooperation and below the threshold of armed conflict.” See “Adding Color to the Gray Zone: Establishing a Strategic Framework for Hybrid Conflict,” a Forward Defense project, Atlantic Council, December 23, 2023, https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/programs/scowcroft-center-for-strategy-and-security/forward-defense/adding-color-to-the-gray-zone-establishing-a-strategic-framework-for-hybrid-conflict/.

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Only additional pressure can push Putin toward peace

Kira Rudik — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 21:19:03 +0000

After more than a year of US-led talks to end the Russian invasion of Ukraine, there is little sign of progress toward peace. Instead, Moscow is now reportedly aiding Tehran as Iranian drones target United States bases and American allies across the Gulf region. New approaches are clearly needed in order to prevent a further descent into international insecurity.

When US President Donald Trump returned to the White House in January 2025 and began efforts to end Russia’s war against Ukraine via diplomacy, many Ukrainians were not overly optimistic. This skepticism was rooted in their own bitter personal experience of broken Russian promises over the past few decades.

Since Ukraine regained independence in 1991, Russia signed a long list of treaties and agreements obliging Moscow to respect Ukraine’s territorial integrity and refrain from acts of international aggression. These commitments did not prevent Russian President Vladimir Putin from invading Ukraine in 2014 or launching a full-scale invasion eight years later. Understandably, few in Kyiv now believe Putin can be trusted to respect future deals.

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Over the past year, it has become evident that Russia is using US-led negotiations to stall for time and divide the transatlantic alliance. Putin has refused to join Ukraine in accepting an unconditional ceasefire and continues to insist on maximalist goals that would mean the end of an independent Ukrainian state. Meanwhile, the Kremlin underlines its lack of commitment to peace by sending low-level delegations led by figures such as presidential aide Vladimir Medinsky, who is best known for penning radically anti-Ukrainian history textbooks.

On the battlefield, Russia’s intentions are equally clear. Despite suffering catastrophic losses over the past four years, the Russian army remains on the offensive and continues to recruit tens of thousands of new troops each month to fill the depleted ranks of Putin’s invasion force.

In parallel, Russia is escalating attacks on Ukraine’s civilian population. During the recent winter months, millions of Ukrainians found themselves without access to heating and electricity amid Arctic temperatures due to a strategic bombing campaign targeting critical civilian infrastructure that aimed to freeze the country into submission. According to UN data, 2025 was the deadliest period of the war for Ukrainian civilians since the first months of the invasion, with the number of civilian deaths rising by 31 percent compared to the previous year.

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With the Kremlin ignoring calls for a compromise peace, the only way to advance negotiations is by putting more pressure on Putin. Failure to do so could have disastrous consequences that would be felt far beyond the borders of a subjugated Ukraine.

The current Russian plan is to drag out negotiations indefinitely while grinding down Ukraine’s resistance and sowing division among Kyiv’s international allies. Moscow seeks to entice the United States with promises of lucrative economic cooperation, while supporting populist political forces across the EU in a bid to weaken European support for Ukraine. If this strategy succeeds, Ukraine may at some point become unable to defend itself.

The collapse of Ukrainian resistance would not bring peace to Europe. Instead, a victorious Russia would take control of Ukraine’s formidable military and the country’s rapidly expanding domestic defense industry. Putin would then command the two most powerful armies in Europe, with unrivaled combat experience and knowledge of drone warfare. In such circumstances, it is dangerously delusional to think that Russia would not seek to go further. At the very least, European governments would be forced to increase defense budgets to levels that would dwarf the current cost of supporting Ukraine.

The steps necessary to secure peace through strength are no secret. First and foremost, this means adequately arming Ukraine. Trump suggested in 2025 that if Russia continues to reject peace efforts, he may provide Ukraine with Tomahawk missiles. This would be a welcome and meaningful step. Other partners including Germany have also spoken of increasing Ukraine’s long-range strike capabilities. Now is the time to do so.

In parallel, sanctions measures targeting Putin’s war economy must be expanded and tightened. This should include steps to increase the costs for international customers who continue to purchase Russian oil and gas exports, thereby funding the Kremlin war machine.

Western leaders have always had the tools at their disposal to counter the Russian threat. Unfortunately, however, they have so far failed to demonstrate the political will necessary to deploy these tools effectively. This excessive caution is counter-productive and only serves to embolden the Kremlin. Moscow believes it is already at war with the West and treats calls for compromise as signs of weakness. If Kyiv’s partners are serious about stopping Russia, they must abandon appeasement and increase the pressure on Putin.

Kira Rudik is leader of the Golos party and a member of the Ukrainian parliament.

Drone superpower Ukraine is an ideal tech partner for the Gulf states

Anatoly Motkin — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 20:43:08 +0000

In recent weeks, the Iran war has shone a spotlight on Ukraine’s emergence as a drone superpower. Kyiv’s decision to help defend the Gulf states against Iranian attack drones by deploying teams of Ukrainian specialists is now highlighting the scope for broader tech sector cooperation between Ukraine and the region. This potential for partnership was underlined by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s visit to Saudi Arabia on March 26.

When Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, few analysts predicted that the outgunned Ukrainians would soon fundamentally alter the global understanding of unmanned systems warfare. Yet that is precisely what has happened. From improvised FPV drones strapped with grenades to the long-range naval strike drones that have forced Russia’s Black Sea Fleet to retreat, Ukraine has demonstrated that asymmetric drone warfare can neutralize conventional military advantages in ways that expensive Western defense systems never quite anticipated.

What distinguishes Ukraine’s drone program is not simply its scale, but also the speed and adaptability of its development cycles. Ukrainian engineers, often operating in basements and converted workshops, upgrade drone designs in a matter of days rather than the year-long processes typical of conventional defense procurement. Software updates are pushed out overnight. Lessons from the morning’s combat inform the afternoon’s engineering innovations. The Ukrainian battlefield has become the most demanding product testing environment in the world.

This lean, decentralized, and ruthlessly practical model has not gone unnoticed in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and their Gulf region neighbors. All have been studying the Ukrainian experience carefully. For countries that have invested hundreds of billions of dollars in conventional military hardware only to find themselves operating in a world where a commercially available drone can threaten a warship, the Ukrainian approach represents both a warning and an opportunity.

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The Gulf states are not passive observers of technological change. The UAE’s Vision 2071, Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030, and Qatar’s National Vision 2030 all share a common ambition to transform their economies from hydrocarbon dependency into diversified, knowledge-based societies where technology plays a central role.

Defense and security technology, long imported wholesale from the United States, United Kingdom, and France, is increasingly identified as a sector where these nations want enhanced domestic capacity. This is not merely a matter of patriotic pride; it is increasingly recognized as a strategic necessity.

For now, ambition and execution remain some distance apart. The Gulf states have capital in abundance and a genuine appetite for technology transfer. What they have found harder to cultivate organically is the specific combination of engineering talent, risk tolerance, regulatory flexibility, and competitive urgency that drives genuine innovation. This is precisely where Ukraine’s wartime technology ecosystem presents an intriguing counterpart.

The case for deeper Ukraine-Gulf technology cooperation rests on synergies that are easy to overlook amid the noise of geopolitics. Ukraine possesses what the Gulf states most covet: Battle-proven engineering expertise; a deep talent pool in software, electronics, and materials science; and a development culture forged under conditions of extreme pressure.

Meanwhile, the Gulf states can offer what Ukraine most urgently needs: Capital, global commercial networks, and the ability to provide a stable platform for technology commercialization at a time when much of Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure and economic base remain under threat.

Drone technology sits at the most visible intersection of these complementary strengths, but it is far from the only area for potential cooperation. The ecosystem that has made Ukraine’s drone program so formidable is built on broad technical foundations including robust software engineering, AI-assisted target recognition, electronic warfare countermeasures, and sophisticated logistics platforms. Each of these capabilities has substantial civilian and commercial applications in areas that match the priorities of the Gulf states.

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Any deepening of Ukraine-Gulf technology ties must navigate a complex geopolitical landscape. The Gulf states have, with varying degrees of success, sought to maintain working relationships with both Russia and Ukraine throughout the current war.

This studied neutrality is a potentially valuable asset in fostering Ukraine-related technology cooperation. Some Ukrainian companies might prefer partners who can operate without the political complications of deeper NATO engagement, while Gulf-based joint ventures offer a flexibility that Western partners often cannot.

At the same time, the Gulf states maintain active ties with both Russia and China, creating potential risks for Ukraine’s battle-tested tech to travel further than intended. EU and US sanctions packages have repeatedly flagged UAE-based entities for supplying military and dual-use goods to Russia, including microelectronics and UAV components. The threat of Ukrainian defense IP migrating toward Beijing or Moscow through a Gulf intermediary is not theoretical. It is a structural problem that any co-production framework would need to resolve before NATO partners could endorse it.

Western governments are watching these dynamics carefully. There is a legitimate concern in Washington and Brussels about the dual-use nature of drone and AI technologies amid alarm that capabilities developed by Ukraine could, if commercialized through Gulf intermediaries, find their way into the hands of hostile actors.

These concerns will require careful management. But they should not obscure the more fundamental point that technology partnerships between Ukraine and the Gulf, conducted transparently and within a clear governance framework, could potentially serve the strategic interests of both parties and of the broader rules-based international order.

Ukraine’s drone program is the most dramatic expression of a broader technological transformation that the country has undergone since the Euromaidan Revolution of 2014 and, with accelerating urgency, since 2022. The war with Russia has in many ways turbo-charged Ukraine’s tech sector, driving engineers toward defense applications with the same creative energy previously directed at consumer software.

For the Gulf states, engaging with this ecosystem means potentially accessing not just drone know-how but a broader pipeline of technology talent and startup energy. A deliberate focus on Ukrainian technology companies, whether through direct investment, co-investment structures with Ukrainian state entities, or technology accelerator partnerships, would represent a logical extension of existing Gulf region investment strategies.

Transforming this potential into reality requires deliberate institutional architecture. At the governmental level, the frameworks for technology and investment cooperation between Ukraine and the Gulf states remain underdeveloped compared to those with EU member states or the United States. Bilateral investment treaties, technology transfer agreements, and joint venture frameworks need to be negotiated, or existing agreements updated, to reflect the current reality of Ukraine’s technological capabilities and the investment priorities of individual Gulf states.

At the industry level, dedicated platforms for technology matchmaking are needed. Existing tech sector events are useful, but a more targeted mechanism such as an annual Ukraine-Gulf technology forum could provide the sustained attention that one-off exhibitions cannot. Ukraine’s Ministry of Digital Transformation and the country’s tech industry associations have the institutional capacity to anchor such an initiative from the Ukrainian side.

At the financial level, the structure of Gulf investment in Ukrainian technology will need to be carefully designed to account for the realities of war, reconstruction, and regulatory complexity. Special purpose vehicles, escrow arrangements, and the use of third-country holding structures may be necessary to provide Gulf investors with the governance certainty they require.

The interest that Gulf region governments and investors are showing in Ukraine’s drone capabilities is, at one level, simply pragmatic. But this interest, if properly cultivated, could serve as the entry point for a much broader and more consequential relationship.

Ukraine needs to rebuild its economy, attract sustainable foreign investment, and establish itself as a technology hub that can thrive in the postwar era. The Gulf states need to accelerate their technology transitions, diversify their strategic partnerships, and develop genuine domestic innovation capacity rather than simply buying capabilities off the shelf from Western defense contractors. These are not competing objectives. They are, in important respects, the same objective approached from different directions.

The drones are the headline. But behind the headline lies the possibility of a durable, mutually beneficial technology partnership between two of the world’s most dynamic and consequential technology stories of the current decade. Whether that possibility is realized will depend on the vision and initiative of policymakers, investors, and entrepreneurs on both sides. The ingredients for something significant are present. The question is whether those involved will have the strategic clarity to combine them.

Anatoly Motkin is president of the StrategEast Center for a New Economy, a non-profit organisation with offices in the United States, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Kyrgyzstan, developing the knowledge driven economy in the Eurasian region.

Several factors drive this skepticism. Safety concerns, including fears related to AI-driven psychosis and AI-enabled teen suicides, feature prominently in public discourse, as do worries about the technology’s environmental footprint and its impact on jobs. Search “AI and water” on Instagram and you’ll be flooded with posts from influencers calling on followers to boycott AI over the energy and water demands of the data centers powering it. Recent mass layoffs, such as fintech company Block’s decision to cut 40 percent of its workforce due to the integration of AI into the company’s workflows, have amplified fears around broader workforce contractions. Some studies have extrapolated from initial data around AI adoption to suggest that the technology will create more jobs than it eliminates, but much of the public discussion has focused on the prospect of significant job losses on the horizon, raising anxiety among white-collar workers.

This unease with AI is increasingly visible in politics. More than 1,500 AI-related bills have been introduced in state legislatures in 2026 alone, many focused on protecting consumers and minors from AI-related harms. AI skepticism has come from both sides of the aisle. Data centers have drawn criticism from left-leaning environmental advocates and from deep-red communities alike. A study found that twenty data center projects were blocked in the second quarter of 2025 due to local opposition, representing $98 billion in stalled investment. This year, Democratic and Republican lawmakers have begun backing away from data center investments that they recently championed. At least six Democratic governors used their state of the state addresses to announce plans to roll back incentives or impose new regulations on data centers. And Democratic lawmakers in New York and Maine, as well as Republican lawmakers in Oklahoma, are calling for temporary bans.

The Trump administration’s approach to AI

The second Trump administration has made AI a national priority from the outset. Just three days after his inauguration, US President Donald Trump issued the first of seven executive orders related to AI released in 2025, which signaled the administration’s intent to “sustain and enhance America’s global AI dominance in order to promote human flourishing, economic competitiveness, and national security.” The order set the tone for the administration’s follow-on actions, including a foundational AI Action Plan that positioned the United States as going all-in on AI against the backdrop of a rising global competition with China. So far, the administration has expanded AI education opportunities, worked to harness AI for science, accelerated permitting for data center construction, and attempted to prevent states from passing laws regulating AI.

Yet, even before the Anthropic-Pentagon controversy, tension between the administration’s position on AI and its own political base were surfacing. Upon the release of the AI Action Plan in July 2025, former US Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene issued a pointed rebuke. She warned that “competing with China does not mean become like China by threatening state rights, replacing human jobs on a mass scale, creating mass poverty, and resulting in potentially devastating effects on our environment and critical water supply.” The administration’s push to preempt and pause future state laws regulating AI was defeated twice in Congress prior to being advanced by executive order in December 2025. The original congressional campaigns incurred widespread pushback from across the political spectrum, including a request to remove the legislative provision, which was signed by seventeen Republican governors.

Recent announcements suggest the administration is beginning to recognize public resistance. In his State of the Union address, Trump introduced a ratepayer protection pledge that calls on technology companies to commit to covering the cost of increased energy production to support the build-out of data centers. This is intended to prevent those costs from being passed on to local communities. Seven of the largest players in AI have since signed on. A National Policy Framework on AI released at the end of last week reaffirms this push and lays out the administration’s legislative priorities for the technology, including enhanced safeguards for children, increased action to combat AI-enabled scams, and protections for individuals against unauthorized distribution of AI-generated voice or image likenesses.

Despite these moves, the administration’s handling of the Anthropic standoff has intensified debates in public and within the tech sector around the dangers of AI and the necessity of building guardrails for responsible use. The administration’s maximalist position that contracts with AI companies should provide flexibility for the government to employ AI for “all lawful uses” runs counter to US public opinion. Indeed, 80 percent of US adults believe the government should maintain rules for AI safety and data security, even if doing so slows development.

Public distrust on display

Following OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s announcement on February 27 that the company had signed a deal with the Pentagon that it claimed contained the same provisions that Anthropic had been fighting for, public and private reactions were swift, with many skeptical of the company’s claims. Uninstalls of the ChatGPT app jumped 295 percent overnight and a #QuitGPT campaign gained steam on social media. Some OpenAI employees publicly criticized their company’s stance and OpenAI’s hardware lead resigned in protest.

Anthropic, meanwhile, filed suit, contesting the Pentagon’s designation of the company as a supply chain risk following the inability of the company and the Pentagon to reach an agreement on contractual terms. The case has attracted amicus briefs from a wide range of groups, including tech sector workers, Catholic theologians and ethicists, and the American Civil Liberties Union. A brief signed by a group of almost forty employees from Google and OpenAI, including Google’s chief scientist, affirmed a shared belief in the risks underpinning Anthropic’s contractual red lines. Their brief noted the dangers to US democracy posed by AI-enabled surveillance and warned that today’s AI systems are too immature to be relied on for use in lethal autonomous weapons.

While the immediate controversy may be fading, the episode has already provided a revealing window into US sentiment around AI and the ongoing litigation will keep the issue in public focus. A poll conducted by NBC News this month after the standoff found that 57 percent of registered voters believe the risks of AI outweigh its benefits.

That number should command attention. For the administration’s and the tech sector’s AI ambitions to translate into the economic growth and national security gains that policymakers and CEOs envision, it will take a concerted effort to rebuild the social contract with the public on AI. Treating public skepticism as noise to be managed rather than a signal to be heeded risks causing rapid political polarization on AI. This, in turn, could cause a self-imposed slowdown in the United States’ ability to realize AI opportunities at home and compete effectively abroad, stifling government and industry AI initiatives alike.

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Negotiating an EU-US biometric information-sharing agreement

Kenneth Propp — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 18:00:00 +0000

Bottom lines up front

The US and EU are negotiating a biometric data-sharing agreement to allow DHS access to EU member states’ fingerprint and other biometric databases.
The EU has never before agreed to provide a non-EU country large-scale access to Europeans’ personal data for purposes of the foreign country’s border security.
The EU aims to secure limits on bulk data collection, human oversight of automated decisions, and reciprocal access to US databases.

The Trump administration has taken adversarial and unconventional approaches with European allies on subjects ranging from trade to content moderation, but in another important area the United States is proceeding more traditionally. The subject is politically controversial: biometric information sharing for purposes of border security. In late January, European Union officials flew to Washington to start low-key formal talks with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) aimed at an international agreement. Despite the sensitive nature of the endeavor, EU member states and the European Data Protection Supervisor have endorsed it.

Why is the United States taking a consensual approach with Europe on border security information sharing, and why is the European Union so far willing to accommodate? Why is this agreement on a fast track in Washington and Brussels when law enforcement initiatives such as the projected EU-US CLOUD Agreement have been paused by the Trump administration? Is the border security information-sharing effort a one-off or could it be a harbinger of a return to traditional transatlantic legal diplomacy?

DHS seeks enhanced border security partnerships

DHS operates an international biometric information-sharing program to assist in “assessing the eligibility or public security risk of individuals seeking an immigration benefit or encountered in the context of a border encounter or law enforcement investigation related to immigration or border security issues,” according to the department’s privacy impact assessment (PIA). The program entails “automatic comparison of the fingerprints collected by DHS or a foreign partner on international travelers, suspected criminals, asylum seekers, irregular migrants, refugees, [and] applicants for visa and/or immigration benefits,” the PIA states. Biometric identifiers potentially include facial and iris scans and DNA, as well as traditional fingerprints.

In 2022, DHS decided that all forty-three countries that benefit from visa-free entry to the United States through the Visa Waiver Program (VWP) must conclude agreements, dubbed enhanced border security partnerships (EBSP), enabling DHS to screen their biometric records for immigration or border security purposes. When DHS queries a name against a foreign state’s identity records and it yields a match, DHS automatically receives the responsive biometric data. Other identity information also could be conveyed by the foreign state. In the absence of a match in the foreign database, no fingerprints or other biometric information would be supplied to DHS.

Shared competence: EU and member-state roles

Twenty-four of the EU’s twenty-seven member states (all but Bulgaria, Cyprus, and Romania) participate in the VWP; they comprise more than half of all VWP members globally. Each EU state maintains its own national biometric information records for border purposes. Thus, DHS could take an important step toward fulfilling the overall EBSP goal by reaching biometric information-sharing agreements with these EU countries.

The EU, for its part, also has two relevant responsibilities: setting rules protecting personal data transferred outside its territory, per Article 16(2) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU); and setting common policy on visas and external border checks, per Article 77(2) TFEU.

As popular sentiment for stricter border controls has swelled across Europe in recent years, the EU’s policymaking role in this area has become more prominent. In the past year, it has finalized a Pact on Migration and Asylum, a new set of rules on managing migration and asylum applications. In addition, new systems for tracking the entry and exit of foreign travelers and collecting the personal data of those entering EU territory on a visa-free basis are being put in place. These new systems show the EU moving in a similar direction as the United States in collecting information on foreign visitors.

DHS’s demand for biometric information-sharing agreements with EU member states thus touches on an area of “mixed” competence, i.e., one shared between the EU and its member states. In such a situation, the EU and its member states had to decide who would be responsible for negotiating with the United States.

The question took time to resolve. Only in 2024 did the Council of the European Union—which comprises the member states’ national ministers—invite the European Commission to develop a mandate for an international agreement at the EU level. Member states reportedly were eager to bring the collective negotiating strength of the EU to the table with the United States, rather than facing Washington individually.

A year passed before the Commission presented its draft negotiating mandate. It did so based on the understanding that the agreement sought by the United States related to the VWP and thus fell within the EU’s visa policy competence. Negotiations between the Council and Commission on the final contours of the mandate ensued during the second half of 2025.

Finally, in December 2025, the Council adopted a decision authoring the negotiation of an EU-level “framework” agreement with the United States. The framework would provide an overall legal structure for EU member states to conduct bilateral information exchange with DHS, setting the general conditions under which EU member states could provide biometric information to the US border agency. Each eligible member state subsequently would conclude an implementing agreement or arrangement with DHS identifying its relevant databases and operationalizing the data transfers.

Other relevant EU-US agreements

Over the past two decades, the EU has entered into a series of law enforcement and security information-sharing agreements with the United States—ranging from airline passenger name records (PNR) data to financial messaging data (via SWIFT) to mutual legal assistance in criminal matters. DHS is the principal beneficiary of PNR data sharing; the US Department of the Treasury receives SWIFT data used in tracking terrorist finance; and the Department of Justice manages information exchanged for criminal investigations and prosecutions. The United States and the EU also have concluded an agreement elaborating the data protection safeguards that must accompany transfers for law enforcement purposes, the so-called Umbrella Agreement.

In addition, DHS already enjoys access to foreign biometric and biographic data for purposes of preventing and combating serious crime (referred to as PCSC agreements), under a separate negotiating program that commenced in 2009. This earlier generation of agreements assists DHS in border encounters with persons suspected of terrorism and other serious offenses, but they do not apply to all foreign persons seeking to enter the United States.

The EU at that time had also sought to negotiate a PCSC agreement collectively on behalf of its member states, but DHS rebuffed Brussels and instead chose to negotiate individually with each EU member, believing the agency would have better leverage that way. The first two PCSC accords were concluded with Greece and Italy, and eventually all the European participants in the VWP program reached agreements as well.

An EU-level agreement on broad-scale border security information-sharing cooperation with the United States would represent a novel departure for Brussels. “It would be the first agreement concluded by the EU implying large-scale sharing of personal data, including biometric data, for the purpose of border and immigration control by a third country,” the European Data Protection supervisor has observed.

This time, DHS appears to have appreciated the relative speed and efficiency that comes from negotiating one uniform set of access conditions that will apply to all EU VWP participants. The EU and its member states, meanwhile, seem to have reached a sensible division of labor that respects member states’ prerogatives for controlling their own biometric information databases and for managing technical interactions with DHS.

EU negotiating goals

One major EU ambition in setting the rules and procedures governing DHS queries is to preclude generalized processing of all travelers’ data. A Commission press spokesman emphasized the “non-systematic nature of the information exchange and that the exchange is limited to what is strictly necessary to achieve the objectives of this cooperation.”

The EU mandate further stresses that the EU seeks an agreement that would be reciprocal in nature, enabling member states’ border authorities to query corresponding DHS databases. A leaked Council presidency working paper suggested that a monitoring mechanism should ensure reciprocity in implementation: “Information on member states’ citizens should be exchanged under the framework only if the U.S. exchanges information on American citizens.”

It is not clear that the United States and the EU are entering into these negotiations with entirely congruent views on the scope of the framework agreement. DHS envisages checking the biometric databases of travelers from VWP countries on a routine basis. However, the European Commission, as noted above, views the information exchange as “non-systematic.”

In addition, the US international biometric information-sharing program envisages access to foreign databases “in the context of a border encounter or law enforcement investigation related to immigration or border security issues,” according to the DHS Privacy Impact Assessment (italics added). The EU mandate, by contrast, concentrates on security screening and identity verification at the border, with subsequent law enforcement data access to be exclusively governed by other bilateral agreements.

The EU’s data protection rules are its main tool in ensuring that information conveyed to DHS pursuant to the EBSP agreement remains targeted. For example, the negotiating directive insists that processing of personal data be limited to what is “necessary and proportionate in individual cases.” Necessity and proportionality is a key concept in EU data protection law, including in the Schrems jurisprudence of the European Court of Justice, albeit one that is hard to define a priori.

The EU also seeks to include other traditional data protection safeguards in the EBSP agreement with the United States, according to press reports. One reported provision would require human involvement in decisions having significant adverse effects on individuals, rather than permitting entirely automated decision-making. Another would allow for the transfer of “special categories” of personal data—such as sensitive data regarding political opinions, religion, and sexual orientation—only when necessary and proportionate to prevent criminal or terrorist offenses, and with additional protections that limit the universe of individuals who may access it and the duration of retention. Onward transfers of foreign-supplied biometric data to third countries would require the explicit consent of the country from which the data originated.

According to the European Commission version of the negotiating mandate, the EU also seeks to limit DHS retention of transferred personal data to cases of “travelers in respect of whom there is objective evidence from which it may be inferred that there is a continuing risk to public security or public order.” In other words, DHS would not be permitted to store fingerprint data supplied by EU VWP countries on a generalized basis; it could do so only if it has reason to believe that the person would continue to be a threat—a difficult prediction for a security agency to make at the time of the initial border encounter.

The European Data Protection supervisor stated in his opinion that he “largely supports” the proposed approach with the United States. At the same time, he pointed to certain information-sharing constraints the EU would face. Two important EU data repositories prohibit sharing of information with third countries: Eurodac, which contains biometric information on persons who have applied for refugee status in an EU member state or otherwise have migrated irregularly, and ECRIS, which links together member-state records of third country nationals with criminal convictions within the EU. However, the member states themselves regard the exclusive focus of negotiations with the United States on national databases as “without prejudice to any further reflections on the possibility for information exchange with selected third countries from EU databases,” the leaked Council presidency document suggested.

Finally, the EU mandate also seeks the right to an “effective remedy” for persons whose information has been transferred to DHS. This principle, enshrined in the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, consistently has proven very difficult to resolve in past EU information-sharing agreements with the United States.

Major issues and possible solutions

The existing web of EU-US information-sharing agreements offer valuable precedents for the latest negotiation on access to biometric data for border security purposes. The PCSC agreements, for example, can provide a template for structuring technical interaction between DHS and EU member-state databases. Equally, the types of data protection provisions contained in the law enforcement Umbrella Agreement could be mirrored in the EBSP agreement, even if the former cannot directly be applied to the border security context.

Remedies for misuse of information likely will prove more difficult to resolve. The Data Privacy Framework (DPF), which offers safeguards against illegal US intelligence agency access to personal data transferred from Europe in the commercial context, provides redress in the form of a special tribunal established within the US Department of Justice. Europeans may not petition an ordinary US court if they believe a US intelligence agency has improperly used their data, however. The Court of Justice of the European Union has yet to decide if this specialized form of recourse meets EU fundamental rights standards.

By contrast, the EU did secure US judicial redress for EU citizens whose information is exchanged for law enforcement purposes, under the terms of the EU-US Umbrella Agreement. It took a US statutory change, through the adoption of the Judicial Redress Act, to extend such a right to foreign persons. (The US Privacy Act otherwise limits the right of judicial redress only to US individuals.) Extending this right to Europeans’ whose biometric data is transferred to DHS for the purposes of border security—as opposed to law enforcement—likely would require a further US statutory amendment. Persuading Congress of the necessity of such a change would be challenging.

The necessity and proportionality concept in EU fundamental rights law serves as a legal technique for balancing data protection rights with legitimate public order and public security interests. In the DPF, the United States accepted explicit reference to the EU’s necessity and proportionality standard—in a sensitive context dealing with potential intelligence agency access to personal data. Incorporating this concept in the border biometric information-sharing setting could similarly assure the EU and its member states that DHS is not engaged in mass data collection.

Legal and political dynamics

DHS faces a complex legal situation in pursuing negotiations involving both the EU and its member states. It is consistently difficult for a US government negotiator to be certain where a particular responsibility lies within the EU’s confederal system. In this case, the task is complicated by the cumbersome division of competences for visa and border policy.

In addition, since DHS seeks information for not just border security but also related law enforcement purposes, it must engage with two separate and varying sources of EU data protection law. Data protection rules for immigration control and visa policy are governed by the General Data Protection Regulation, while the rules for protecting law enforcement data fall under a separate directive.

Political factors in Europe also could slow completion of the agreements with the United States. Some members of the European Parliament who belong to the liberal Renew parliamentary group wrote to the European Commission in January, stating: “Looking at the current geopolitical context, we consider it undesirable for the European Commission to start or continue such negotiations.” Although the European Parliament does not have the power to stop the negotiations, it must approve any international agreement that the EU reaches with the United States.

The Trump administration’s removal of Democratic members serving on the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PLCOB) and on the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) have undermined confidence in European privacy circles in US institutions charged with privacy protection. Moreover, DHS’s proposed rule requiring visitors to the United States to supply five years of details on their social media activity has generated widespread outrage abroad. Although this initiative is formally separate from the VWP program, the European public might well conflate the social media and biometric information demands of the United States.

DHS’s goal of wrapping up both the EU framework agreement and, subsequently, the twenty-four implementing agreements with EU member states by the end of 2026, as has been reported, will likely prove overly ambitious. A more achievable ambition would be to complete the EU framework by that date, with the necessary member states implementing agreements afterward. (The leaked Council presidency document sternly states that it considers “Member States’ commitment to refrain from bilateral negotiations with the US while material discussions on the framework are ongoing to be of critical strategic importance.”)

Nevertheless, there is reason for optimism that the US-EU engagement on border security biometric information sharing will yield success. Both sides appear to have entered talks pragmatically, the EU and its member states by agreeing on a sensible division of labor between themselves, and the United States by accepting the practical benefits of negotiating with both Brussels and member-state capitals. Each is impelled by a desire to have greater control of its borders and sees reciprocal information sharing as a promising approach. However, flexibility on both sides will be indispensable to overcoming divergent positions on issues such as remedies.

Further, by winning support in principle for the framework agreement from the EU’s data protection supervisor, the EU already has shown its commitment to achieving a broadly acceptable agreement. Europe’s collective approach to these negotiations also reflects a sober appreciation of power realities. EU citizens value the ease of visa-free travel to the United States, so member states ultimately will do what is necessary to retain VWP status, within the confines of fundamental rights.

Finally, the EU’s decision to take a leading role in the EBSP negotiations reflects its increased institutional maturity and importance in the field of border security. DHS’s willingness to pursue a framework agreement with the EU may show a corresponding recognition of Brussels’ growing role in this area. As popular sentiment has converged in Europe and America on more tightly controlling borders, there is now an opportunity to achieve a balanced transatlantic agreement on sharing information to that end.

about the author

Kenneth Propp is a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Europe Center, an adjunct professor of European Union law at the Georgetown University Law Center, and a senior fellow with the Cross-Border Data Forum. His prior experience includes serving as legal counselor at the US Mission to the European Union in Brussels and in the Office of the Legal Adviser at the US Department of State.

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Russia bombs Ukrainian UNESCO site as Putin escalates terror tactics

Peter Dickinson — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 21:35:39 +0000

Russia bombed a UNESCO World Heritage site in the historic heart of west Ukrainian city Lviv on March 24 as Kremlin efforts to target Ukraine’s civilian population continue to escalate. The rare daytime drone strike hit a residential building close to the Bernardine monastery complex, causing extensive damage and leaving two people seriously injured. The area has featured on the UNESCO World Heritage Site List since 1998 as part of Lviv’s historic architectural ensemble.

Ukrainian officials condemned Tuesday’s attack on the bustling downtown district of Lviv and called on the international community to react. “Russia brutally struck the center of Lviv, a city of exceptional cultural value and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. I urge the UNESCO Director General to immediately respond to this crime in the strongest terms,” commented Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha. “Russia is doing exactly what the Iranian regime is doing in the Middle East, but in the middle of Europe.”

Video footage of the bombing appears to show a Russian drone flying unimpeded into the building in central Lviv, indicating a targeted airstrike. This was the latest in a series of similar Russian attacks on Ukrainian heritage sites that have fueled accusations of a deliberate campaign to erase the symbols of Ukrainian culture and national identity. In response to these repeated Russian attacks, UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee has already added three Ukrainian sites located in Kyiv, Lviv, and Odesa to the UN agency’s official List of World Heritage in Danger.

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Many Ukrainians saw Tuesday’s attention-grabbing airstrike on a non-military target in central Lviv as part of Kremlin efforts to terrorize the civilian population and break Ukrainian society’s will to resist the ongoing Russian invasion. “This is how Russia tries to make normal life impossible,” commented Ukrainian member of parliament Inna Sovsun.

Over the past year, Russian attacks of civilian targets have risen sharply. According to United Nations data, 2025 was the deadliest period for Ukrainian civilians since the initial months of the full-scale invasion, with the number of deaths rising by 31 percent compared to the previous year.

Many of these civilian deaths came as a result of an escalating bombing campaign made possible by the dramatic expansion of Russia’s domestic drone production capacity. Whereas aerial attacks in 2023 and 2024 typically involved dozens of drones, it is now common for Russia to launch hundreds of unmanned bomber drones at targets across Ukraine in a single day. For example, Tuesday’s strike in central Lviv was part of a nationwide attack involving almost one thousand drones over a 24-hour period. The sheer scale of these bombing raids means that Ukrainian air defenses are often overwhelmed.

The recent winter season saw Russia’s most extensive bombing campaign against the Ukrainian civilian population of the entire war, with a coordinated air offensive targeting critical heating and power infrastructure amid Arctic temperatures. This apparent attempt to freeze millions of Ukrainians into submission in their own homes ultimately failed, but it did serve to underline Kremlin dictator Vladimir Putin’s readiness to employ terror tactics as he seeks to increase the pressure on the Ukrainian authorities and push Kyiv toward capitulation.

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Moscow’s mounting attacks on Ukrainian civilians have come against a backdrop of growing battlefield frustration for the Kremlin. Despite enjoying the military initiative throughout 2025, Russia managed to seize less than one percent of additional Ukrainian territory while suffering catastrophic losses.

This underwhelming military performance has continued in recent months. For the first time in more than two years, Ukraine actually liberated more land during February 2026 than Russia was able to occupy. The Russian army’s inability to achieve a decisive breakthrough is now causing rumblings of discontent on the home front, including among Russia’s vocal pro-war blogger community.

Despite his army’s lack of progress on the battlefield, Putin shows no signs of a willingness to compromise on the maximalist goals of his invasion. Instead, he continues to insist on peace terms that would leave postwar Ukraine isolated, defenseless, and completely at his mercy.

The Russian ruler knows he cannot afford to settle for anything less. After all the sacrifices of the past four years, a negotiated peace that left 80 percent of Ukraine beyond Kremlin control and firmly anchored in the Western world would be viewed in Moscow as a defeat of historic proportions.

With no obvious route to military victory in Ukraine, Putin finds himself trapped in a war he cannot win but dare not end for fear of weakening his grip on power and tarnishing his place in Russian history. So far, he has responded to this dilemma by increasing attacks on Ukraine’s civilian population.

There is very little evidence to suggest this approach is working. On the contrary, recent polls indicate that the bombardment of civilians has hardened Ukraine’s resolve to fight on rather than accept peace terms dictated by the Kremlin. Nevertheless, Russian attacks on civilians are likely to expand further in the coming months as Putin lacks credible alternatives to revive his faltering invasion.

Russia’s decision to bomb a heritage site in the middle of a major Ukrainian city in broad daylight was a signal of intent that points unmistakably toward a coming escalation. Putin is clearly struggling to defeat Ukraine on the battlefield, but he remains committed to extinguishing Ukrainian statehood and is prepared to ruthlessly target the civilian population in order to break the current deadlock and force the country’s surrender. Tuesday’s attack on a UNESCO site in the heart of Lviv sent a chilling message that nobody and nowhere in Ukraine is safe.

Peter Dickinson is editor of the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlert service.

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Many have inevitably drawn comparisons with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the role played by fake separatist movements created by the Kremlin to justify Moscow’s expansionist agenda in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region. When separatist propaganda about “People’s Republics” first began appearing in Ukraine in the years prior to the onset of Russian aggression in 2014, it was not initially taken seriously.

Recent references to a “Narva People’s Republic” appear to refer to the entire Ida-Viru County in northeastern Estonia rather than the city of Narva alone. Like Ukraine’s Donbas, Ida-Viru County was subject to an extended period of russification. During the Soviet occupation following World War II, large numbers of Russian-speakers from various parts of the Soviet Union were settled in Narva and in newly built Soviet industrial cities in the region.

With a current population that remains dominated by Russian-speakers and ethnic Russians, this would seem to make Ida-Viru County ripe for the Kremlin’s influence operations and grievance politics. However, the Estonian government has invested significantly in the region’s economic development and cultural integration.

Also, the fact that many residents of Estonia’s northeast have family links to Russia means they are well aware that they currently enjoy a far better standard of living than most people across the Narva River in the Russian Federation. With Estonia, like Ukraine, one must avoid the fallacy of conflating language with loyalty.

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The fact that a grassroots separatist movement is unlikely to develop in Ida-Viru County will not necessarily prevent Russia from using the separatist narrative to advance its agenda. When efforts to cultivate a local separatist movement in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine proved insufficient in 2014, the Kremlin sent in Russian citizens and military personnel without insignia. Soon after, they were followed by an undeclared invasion force.

Russia’s goal in Estonia might not be military conquest. It is often suggested that Moscow could aim to test NATO’s collective security commitments and discredit the alliance by launching a relatively minor incursion and claiming a small chunk of Estonian territory on the pretext of protecting compatriots. This would be much easier said than done, however, given Estonia’s heavily monitored border, where even the smallest infraction is noticed quickly. In such a case, Estonia would not wait for NATO to respond.

Estonian officials can be prickly about any portrayal of their country as particularly vulnerable or overly reliant on others for security. Since Russia’s 2014 invasion of Ukraine, there have been endless articles asking “is Narva next?” This framing has been met with strong push back from Estonian security experts.

Similarly, war games exercises resulting in a quick Russian takeover of the Baltic region have been criticized by Estonian officials as lacking understanding of the Baltic states’ own security posture to the point of being insulting. In common with nearby Finland, Latvia, and Lithuania, Estonia employs a whole of society “total defense” concept that should not be underestimated.

Due to the enormous losses it is sustaining in Ukraine, Russia’s military is currently thought to be in no position to launch an invasion of Estonia. In its annual report for 2026, Estonia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, while clear-eyed about the Kremlin’s expansionist ambitions, assessed that Russia has no intention of militarily attacking Estonia or any other NATO member state in the present year, or likely the next.

It is no wonder that Estonia’s foreign and defense policy has been focused on marshaling support for Ukraine as it confronts Russian aggression. It is also easy to understand why elements in Russia would like to create the impression of a looming threat to Estonia. So far, Estonia’s reaction to social media chatter about a supposed separatist movement has been typically phlegmatic. As this narrative has drawn media attention, we can expect to see it pushed further and recycled. Estonia’s NATO allies should follow Tallinn’s lead and react by remaining alert but calm.

James Rice is a doctoral student at the Institute of World Politics and former legislative director for US Senator Chuck Grassley.

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Ukraine’s experience over the past twelve years underscores a central truth of cyber defense: People play a decisive role in cyber security. Since 2014, thousands of professionals from the private sector, volunteer networks, and academia have mobilized to defend Ukraine’s digital front. Sustaining this momentum requires institutional support and a long-term talent strategy.

Priority areas include integrating cyber education across schools, universities, and military institutions. Partnerships between industry and academia should undergo expansion through education and internships. Workforce development is not merely a labor market issue; it is a pillar of cyber sovereignty and continuity of government. It is also crucial to establish a national cyber reserve supported by access to cyber ranges and allied training platforms.

Wartime conditions have already accelerated innovation in Ukraine. Cloud-based backups, relocation of critical data to secure environments abroad, and decentralized platforms for citizen services are now routine. These practices must be institutionalized to endure beyond the war. Priorities include embedding innovations into permanent government processes and establishing applied cyber research centers at universities.

The convergence of academia, defense institutions, and the technology sector in wartime Ukraine is enabling a distinct national cyber security model to emerge rooted in operational experience and continuous adaptation. It is a model that complements existing frameworks while reflecting Ukraine’s realities. As a result, Ukraine has become an integral actor within the Euro-Atlantic cyber ecosystem.

At the international level, cooperation with the EU, NATO, United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and Japan has evolved from ad hoc assistance to structured partnerships. Core focuses include joint threat intelligence-sharing mechanisms; harmonization with EU and NATO standards; participation in multinational exercises; and the development of a shared resilience space in which national resilience contributes to collective defense. Ukraine’s expertise positions it not only as a recipient of assistance, but increasingly as an exporter of operational resilience models to partners confronting hybrid threats.

Ukraine’s progress demonstrates the importance of embedding cyber resilience in institutional architecture rather than treating it as a reactive function. A resilience-by-design model entails distributed system architecture to reduce single points of failure. It requires adoption of open standards and transparent protocols, along with continuous training and simulations embedded in institutional life cycles.

Psychological resilience training for cyber professionals operating under sustained pressure and information warfare conditions is also crucial. This should position cyber security as a governance principle, framing Ukraine not only as a state under attack but as a testing ground for next generation digital resilience.

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Since the onset of Russia’s invasion in 2014, Ukraine has become the world’s most consequential real-time laboratory for cyber resilience. The country’s experience demonstrates that effective cyber security is an integrated system encompassing governance, education, law, diplomacy, and economic resilience. Institutionalizing these lessons into a durable national cyber resilience ecosystem will underpin postwar recovery and long-term digital sovereignty.

For partners, Ukraine’s experience offers much more than a narrative of resistance. It represents a practical plan for collective security for the coming decades of international military conflicts, each of which will have a mandatory digital component.

As Ukraine develops its forthcoming National Cybersecurity Strategy 2.0, several priorities should guide the next phase of institutional reform. First, Ukraine should expand the doctrine of active cyber protection, enabling defensive operations that proactively detect, disrupt, and neutralize threats before they impact critical systems.

Second, the continued Euro-integration of Ukraine’s cyber regulatory framework will be essential. This should include alignment with EU directives such as NIS2, the Critical Infrastructure Resilience framework, and the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA), ensuring interoperability with European cyber governance standards.

Third, Ukraine should actively participate in the development of a European cyber shield. The goal should be a collective resilience architecture built on shared threat intelligence, joint incident response mechanisms, and coordinated defensive capabilities across the continent.

Fourth, long-term resilience requires sustained investment in cyber workforce development aligned with the NIST Cybersecurity Framework 2.0. This should include standardized training pathways, public-private talent pipelines, and the expansion of national cyber reserve capacities.

Fifth, strengthening cyber security capacity at the regional administration level across Ukraine will be vital. This can help ensure that local governments and regional critical infrastructure operators possess the operational capabilities and resources necessary to implement national cyber resilience policies effectively.

Finally, Ukraine’s next cyber strategy should also define a clear wartime framework that establishes legal authorities, operational coordination mechanisms, and public–private responsibilities for defending national digital and operational infrastructure during periods of armed conflict or hybrid attack.

With each subsequent international conflict, the digital component will grow in importance and become an increasingly critical part of the battlefield. This is already becoming clear in the current context of revolutionary progress in robotics, the development of AI, big data, parallel computing, and ever-accelerating data transmission technologies.

In this evolving environment, success will no longer depend on greater human or conventional military resources, but on an innovative, flexible, and progressive approach toward the development and use of the latest technologies. In these conditions, cyber resilience is not only a security strategy but also the foundation of freedom.

Dr. Oleksandr Bakalinskyi is a Senior Researcher at the G. E. Pukhov Institute for Modeling in Energy Engineering at the National Academy of Sciences in Ukraine. Maggie McDonough is the Senior Vice President and Chief Innovation Officer at the Baltimore Development Corporation. She was previously affiliated with the Purdue Applied Research Institute (PARI) and Purdue’s Center for Education & Research in Information Assurance and Security (CERIAS), where she served as a technical advisor on global cyber security resilience programming.

Mythical Beasts: Investigating the role of intermediaries in the proliferation of offensive cyber capabilities

Jen Roberts, Sarah Graham, and Lyla Renwick-Archibold — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 04:01:00 +0000

Executive summary
Introduction
Methods
Characterizing the complicated: Defining intermediaries
The driving and narrowing effects of brokers and resellers on the OCC marketplace
Policy recommendations
Conclusion
Acknowledgements
About the authors

project series

Executive summary

The marketplace for offensive cyber capabilities (OCCs) has become increasingly complex over time. Contributing to this complexity are intermediaries—entities that serve a critical yet poorly understood role in the proliferation of this industry. Largely due to the private nature of intermediary relationships and transactions, there is limited public knowledge about these intermediary entities that bridge relationships and transfer goods within the OCC supply chain.

As governments and international processes seek to establish norms and regulations for this highly fragmented OCC industry through initiatives including the ongoing multistakeholder Pall Mall Process, the lack of shared public knowledge is a significant hurdle. The opacity of this market subsection poses policy challenges and complicates efforts to regulate these entities. This undermines transparency, accountability, compliance, and due diligence, and threatens to enable the unchecked proliferation of these capabilities to end users who abuse them.

This research draws on expert roundtable interviews and vignettes that shine light on intermediary functions and their effects on the wider market—features of the supply chain that still confound researchers and policymakers alike. Building on research in the Mythical Beasts project series, this issue brief maps intermediary roles and effects, with an aim to enable more precise, effective policies to curb abusive proliferation while maintaining the legitimate security research and defensive capabilities that these entities can offer.

Introduction

As technological and regulatory evolutions in offensive cyber capabilities (OCCs) continue, the landscape of tools, vulnerabilities, and skills leveraged for sophisticated and targeted operations continues to adapt. However, many states turn to the open market to procure these often highly specialized products and services, due in part to limited in-house capacity among other factors. In recent years, the marketplace for these OCC products and services has continued to evolve and proliferate—as evidenced in the Atlantic Council study on the global spyware market, Mythical Beasts and Where to Find Them: Mapping the Global Spyware Market and its Threats to National Security and Human Rights. This research and other global mapping initiatives shed light on the complex supply chains of OCCs, a complexity and opacity that pose challenges tomeaningful marketplace transparency and accountability.

A key feature of the marketplace—intermediaries, which are entities that provide essential products or services that support a final OCC product—continues to be largely fragmented, with minimal shared public knowledge on the characteristics, influences, and norms on of the entities operating within the OCC supply chain. As surveyed in the Mythical Beasts project, open-source information about what roles intermediaries play in proliferation and the effects they have on marketplace dynamics is limited, despite academic research and public reporting indicating that there is a heavy reliance on commercialintermediaries.

Intermediaries are fundamentally different than other entities that operate within the marketplace for OCC. Intermediaries are largely found as partners within the OCC supply chain, complimenting product development through vulnerability research to complete exploit chains or as auxiliary support during technology deployment. Unlike OCC vendors, intermediaries are typically not the public face of products; rather, they are better known within private client bases. Intermediaries can be a one-person shop, relying on personal relationships to establish a client network. They can drive up business by facilitating new relationships to previously inaccessible or new customer bases and to increase profits for both themselves and on behalf of vendors that employ them. Altogether, these factors make it more difficult to track and understand the types of relationships and effects that intermediaries have on the OCC market, as limited public information exists about them outside of hacked and leaked documents, investigative reporting, and sporadic transparency initiatives.

As an important aside, the concept of an intermediary can be applied not only to private sector entities but also to states. Third-country intermediaries typically operate in permissive trade environments that act as favorable “stepping stone” jurisdictions; for example, they may offer legal or logistical support that facilitates the movement of spyware and exploits across regulatory boundaries. These jurisdictions themselves operate as an intermediary state hub that is hosting intermediary companies locally domiciled to provide services such as the transfer or export of goods onward to a third country. Although the permissive or restrictive nature of states is a feature of the OCC supply chain, the design of policy interventions for state exports differs from those applied to intermediary entities and, thus, is beyond the scope of this issue brief.

These questions surrounding the characteristics and effects of intermediaries persist not only as they pertain to spyware, but also in how they interact with other components of the OCC supply chain— from the foundation from which they are built, such as vulnerability and exploit research, to the services like training or educational materials they might provide. With the Mythical Beasts project as a jumping-off point, this piece explores intermediary relationships, products, and their effects on submarkets within the larger OCC supply chain for high-end cyber intrusion products. These products, often referred to as spyware, range fromsoftware and tools that enable remote access to a computer system without the consent of the user, administrator, or owner of the computer system. With system access, intermediaries are able to collect, exploit, extract, intercept, retrieve, alter, delete, or transmit content.

The limited and siloed knowledge regarding intermediaries creates a significant policy hurdle—these entities contribute to the opaque proliferation of the OCC industry. But how can policymakers enact effective regulation and standards to curb the abusive effects of vendors when they do not understand the perimeters within which these entities operate? This issue brief explores the characterization of intermediaries, the difference between different intermediary types (i.e., broker, reseller), how different intermediaries carry varying effects on the market (i.e., price increases, supply chain muddling) and concludes with policy recommendations to mitigate the effects of these issues, specifically for the ongoing Pall Mall Process.

Methods

To investigate intermediaries in the OCC marketplace and product supply chain, this brief combines expert interviews with desk review to present a rich description of the characteristics, influences, and norms of intermediaries. The interviews were conducted in fall 2025 in a roundtable format with subject matter experts on the cyber capabilities ecosystem from across the national security and private sectors as well as in one-on-one conversations. Individual interviews were conducted with sources from private sector firms who have interfaced with or researched intermediaries or can be identified as intermediaries themselves (e.g.,exploit brokers). For privacy considerations, interviewees remain anonymous but represent the following profiles:

leaders and senior employees of offensive hacking or vulnerability research companies in the United States or Europe,
security researchers with expertise in offensive hacking and regional specialties both within and outside the United States, and
individuals acting as intermediaries that have facilitated relationships and access from individuals or companies to buyer countries based in Five Eyes countries and Europe.

Individual interviews will be cited based on the roundtable that interviewees participated in (e.g., Roundtable #1) to avoid attribution. Due to the lack of public information on intermediaries, interviews are a significant source of descriptive data for this brief. Prior to the roundtables, the authors reviewed academic, policy, and recent media reporting to identify the terms used to refer to entities intermediate to the OCC supply chain. Below, the authors map these terms and seek to clarify the terminology.

Characterizing the complicated: Defining intermediaries

Cyber intrusion products like spyware are characterized by their sophisticated infection chains, meaning they can combine vulnerabilities and exploits to achieve greater levels of compromise. They are also often valued for their stealth on a target device. A maturing marketplace has emerged to enable the development, sale, and deployment of these products, with intermediaries playing a crucial role in ensuring robust and effective exploit chains and in deploying products with varying degrees of anonymity. Notably, as France’s national cybersecurity agency (ANNSI) explains, an intrusion product typically exploits several vulnerabilities as an exploit chain to bypass each application layer and deploy the desired surveillance as close as possible to the system’s core. Given this interrelated set of permissions or access points at both a technical and organizational level, there are numerous opportunities for intermediaries to supply products or services.

Across industry materials, policy documents, and technical reporting, a range of terms are used to describe intermediary entities that operate at various junctures in the OCC supply chain. Intermediaries are entities that provide essential products or services that support a final OCC product. For example, they can facilitate access to or transfer of goods (e.g., vulnerabilities) or services (e.g., access-as-a-service) between two or more parties. In different literatures, intermediaries encompass a variety of relationships, including brokers, resellers, contractors, partners, middlemen, infrastructure providers, and even countries as third-party intermediaries. Some of these terms share overlapping responsibilities, while others are distinct. Here, these terms will be addressed and categorized.

Brokers, sometimes referred to as vulnerability brokers, broker firms, or middlemen, will purchase vulnerabilities or exploit components from researchers and sell them to governments or other clients. Brokers establish their clientele based on relationships with sellers and buyers, and for each transaction, there can be an individual or a chain of brokers that sell said good or service onward to a buyer.¹ Thus, brokers can serve as direct links between the seller and a buyer or can sell to another broker in the chain who then sells to an end client or another broker. Oftentimes, brokers sell a single component of an OCC, rather than a bundled product (i.e., selling an exploit versus selling an OCC product containing an exploit bundled with malware). For instance, Operation Zero, a Russian vulnerability brokerage firm, specializes in acquiring and selling zero-day exploits.

Resellers, on the other hand, typically procure and then repackage or rebrand cyber intrusion products to new customers. Crucially, a reseller obtains the rights to a software product and may even modify the product before selling it onward to a new buyer. In practice, repackaging or rebranding means bundling spyware or exploit capabilities with services including technical support, training, and adapting products to local contexts, thus making exploits easier for clients to deploy.²Oftentimes, and distinguishable from brokers, resellers bundle products together, reselling a package of products rather than a single component of OCC. Resellers may also lease supporting infrastructure to multiple vendors, such as virtual private networks (VPNs) or domain hosting. Frequently, resellers operate within jurisdictions that have favorable or limited regulations, thereby enabling sales across borders.³ An example of a reseller is RCS Lab, which sold Hermit spyware (Hacking Team/Memento Labs spyware) on behalf of Hacking Team.⁴

Notably, brokers and resellers can operate both “in-house” or as “contractors” for the entity they broker or resell the products for. In-house intermediaries are entities that are owned by an OCC vendor, or other entity in the supply chain. For example, a spyware vendor can own a reseller whose purpose is to resell its spyware to specific countries. Alternatively, vendors can contract a broker or reseller to procure a specific capability, product, or service, or facilitate the sale of a specific capability, product, or service. Below, the authors do not distinguish between in-house and contracted brokers or resellers as it cannot be determined whether they have varying degrees of effect on driving or narrowing proliferation in distinct ways.

Other terms in the literature combine brokers and resellers into one category. For example, in the defense and intelligence communities, “contractors” serves as a stand-in term for resellers and brokers, used also with “prime contractors” for large system integrators and “sub-contractors” for boutique firms or individual researchers.

Partner is another term that combines the functions of brokers and resellers with the specific context of the offensive cyber capability of spyware. “Partner” is a term observed in industry materials and used in theAtlantic Council’s Mythical Beasts research to encompass a broad range of actors—business and operational partners, technical or analytical tool providers, and, in some cases, entities that also function as brokers or resellers.

On the other hand, other terms carve out brokers and resellers and focus on other functions of intermediaries. For example, infrastructure providers are characterized as entities leasing domains, hosting, or operating infrastructure to multiple vendors, providing a commoditized, reusable operational layer for multiple exploits. Access providers are described as firms or individuals that integrate exploits into tools and sell “access-as-a-service” to clients.

The term of intermediary also takes on various meanings and implications across mentions, or lack thereof, in policy. For example, the 2025 Pall Mall Code of Conduct uses “intermediary” explicitly, grouping “resellers, distributors, brokers, and system integrators” of commercial cyber intrusion capabilities together under a single umbrella. In contrast, the Code distinguishes another category for the role of access providers. While this represents a step toward articulating the diversity of actors in the OCC marketplace, there is little attention devoted to the functions and effects of these intermediaries. Rather, this report highlights the instances in which distinguishing between terms is beneficial to policymakers in ongoing industry code-of-practice to effectively include entities that fit more granularly within the market, bolstering potential implementation of outcomes from the code-of-practice.

On the other hand, some policy documents do not directly mention the role that intermediaries play in the OCC marketplace. For example, the 2023 US State Department’s Guiding Principles focuses on government procurement, transparency, and human rights obligations of states and vendors that deploy surveillance technology. In this instance, “vendors” and “surveillance technologies” are treated as broad, catch-all categories, but the guiding principles do not specifically include brokers, resellers, infrastructure providers and the other obscure players in this ecosystem—even though these actors are drivers of price distortion, supply-chain opacity, and risk.

Finally, within the technical and threat-intelligence community, intermediary terminology is more closely tied to specific entities in case studies: Singaporean brokers for Indonesian spyware procurement, third-country intermediaries in Hungary, and exploit brokers or suppliers like COSEINC in Singapore or firms operating in China. Reports from these groups reference the functions that “middlemen,” “brokers,” “regional partners,” and “local distributors” take such as repackaging, resale, and routing logistics, but often without drawing specific lines between the terms and which specificactions they take. In the industry and vendor ecosystem itself, marketing language includes “partners,” and “value-added resellers,” which flattens important distinctions.

There is overlap across this landscape, specific intermediaries connect entities within the OCC supply chain to support product development. Where they diverge is when and how clearly roles are named, differentiated, and assigned responsibly. Policy frameworks tend to underspecify intermediaries altogether; technical reporting documents their behavior without standardizing definitions; and industry terminology combines multiple roles under ambiguous labels. Without clarification and specificity, it is difficult to surface accountability or design effective policy to encourage market regulation. Without clear differentiation, policymakers risk applying underdeveloped, misdirected policies that may have minimal or counterintuitive effects on marketplace transparency. Therefore, disentangling the functions of these entities is a necessary step toward understanding the landscape and designing policies that address how this market functions in practice. For example, policy solutions to curb an individual operating as a broker versus a companyoperating as a reseller might take different approaches, with governments having their own priorities. Thus, for this piece, the authors rely on specific terms to clarify the function that each entity type(s) serves in the market and will use the term most closely aligned with an intermediary type versus a more general term such as “middlemen” or “contractor” to inform policymakers seeking to address specific characteristics of these entities.

Taking a step back from the cybersecurity marketplaces, intermediaries are observable across complex and sometimes illicit supply chains, with parallel effects on connectivity and opacity. They are key components of global supply chains ranging from diamond trade and critical minerals to commercial data brokers and the wider defense sector. Across these supply chains, intermediaries play an important role in aggregating, transforming, or legitimizing goods as they move across regulatory lines. Brokers may resemble commodity traders who arbitrage information and relationships, and there are parallels to commercial data brokers who package digital assets sources indirectly through oftentimes untraceable or illegitimate means. These commonalities highlight how the OCC marketplace similarly is characterized by multilayered supply chains and shaped by asymmetrical information and specialized labor.

These comparisons surface considerations of how, if at all, the OCC marketplace can achieve rigorous and legitimate responsible purchasing protocols for cyber capabilities. While these sectors, including entities supporting OCC development, are shaped by state and industry-imposed due-diligence norms and obligations including Know Your Customer requirements, beneficial-ownership disclosures, and chain-of-custody documentation, an overall lack of vendor and intermediary reporting and transparency persists. Given this, the following section aims to fill in some of these knowledge gaps regarding the operation of and the effects posed by intermediaries in the OCC supply chain.

The driving and narrowing effects of brokers and resellers on the OCC marketplace

This section draws on the insights from roundtables to characterize the effects brokers and resellers appear to have on the OCC marketplace. A limited body of public research has investigated the economy of vulnerability trades and exploitations, analyzed the business practices of known exploit vendors, and articulated the relationship between exploits and the spyware marketplace. In each of these cases, analyses rely on public knowledge and rare leaked documents to draw insights about the ecosystem. To compliment this and to expand the landscape of shared public knowledge, this analysis follows the methodology of recent policy research by turning to experts in a roundtable format to drive conversation and insights into underattended areas of the marketplace.

How intermediaries link entities together in the supply chain of offensive cyber capabilities

Here, effects are grouped in two major categories—features that drive proliferation of the OCC marketplace and features that narrow or limit the scope of the OCC marketplace. While these effects pose different consequences for different actors ranging from those seeking wider access to the marketplace to those seeking a far more contained and heavily regulated ecosystem, the authors frame these effects principally in terms of how brokers and resellers shape the marketplace itself. Thus, on the one hand, this analysis demonstrates that entities drive proliferation through the development, sale, and deployment of products. On the other hand, this piece observes the narrowing effects to widespread proliferation principally by driving costs, limiting the diversity of product types, and presenting roadblocks to necessary transparency and due diligence.

As detailed in the subsequent subsections, the presence of intermediaries can be characterized as both enabling proliferation and contributing to the homogeneity of the marketplace. While intermediaries fuel the proliferation of OCC, layering additional opacity into already murky supply chains, they also offer policymakers essential leverage points. Their market position, and critical functions they provide in supporting OCC deployment and transactions, make them uniquely effective targets for the needed transparency and enhanced due diligence requirements to curb the rampant proliferation of tools.

Driving market mechanics

Emerging from expert interviews and case study compilation are three critical roles that intermediaries play in connecting entities in OCC supply chains and driving market proliferation. First, brokers and resellers facilitate sales across jurisdictions, increasing overall access to these capabilities oftentimes to new vendors or markets that otherwise could not directly procure these capabilities directly from a vendor. Second, they enable product development by providing skills, services, or pieces of an end-product that could not be easily developed in-house by a vendor. Finally, brokers and resellers can aid with operation deployment, to assistwith the hands-on tasks of using an offensive cyber capability. Notably, the authors highlight that these features are not the only enabling effects intermediaries have on OCC marketplace proliferation, but rather, there are three major trends highlighted throughout interviews and case study analysis.

Facilitating sales across jurisdictions

Reports from civil society suggest that brokering and reselling intermediaries have played key roles in numerous high-profile transactions. Specifically, intermediaries have facilitated transactions that otherwise could not have taken place given regional export controls or trade bans.

For example, in 2017, spyware vendor Quadream Inc. established its own reseller, InReach Technologies Limited. Sourcing revealed InReach Technologies Limited was “solely founded for the promotion of Quadream products, like Reign, outside of Israel” to bypass the EU’s dual-use export.

Later, in 2018, Bangladesh acquired Israeli-made surveillance technologies through Hungarian and Thailand-based resellers to circumvent the Bangladeshi trade ban that prohibits direct trade with Israel. Without intermediaries, it is unlikely this acquisition would have occurred. Again, in 2021, Bangladesh acquired surveillance technology by relying on intermediaries. The state procured surveillance technology from the Intellexa Consortium’s reseller Passitora Ltd (formerly WS WiSpear Systems Limited). The Intellexa Consortium is known for its Predator spyware. Passitora Ltd had sold its product to broker Toru Group Limited, a Swiss company operating out of the British Virgin Islands. This case highlights an example of an intermediary chain, working jointly in service of an end-use OCC vendor, which, through these multiple sales introduces additional opacity into the supply chain for these goods and services.

Intermediaries also expand the total geographic market for spyware vendors by connecting regional markets, which might otherwise be constrained by export regulations or limited regional capacity. For example, the South African company VASTech, connected spyware vendor Hacking Team (now named Memento Labs) to sell the vendor’s spyware to “local customers.” Other times, as noted by roundtable participants, third-country intermediaries facilitate sales where vendors cannot or do not want to appear directly, oftentimes to avoid unwanted public attention and potential reputational harm.⁵ As noted in Mythical Beasts Diving into the Depths of the Global Spyware Market, ten intermediaries (resellers) facilitated NSO Group’s Pegasus sales to government buyers. Unlike the case with VASTech, Mexican intermediaries created misleading and vague contracts that concealed both the products and the original vendor, illustrating how intermediaries can be used as a tool to avoid transparency in the marketplace for OCC.

Overall, both brokers and resellers widen the reach of cyber-intrusion vendors into jurisdictions that would be otherwise inaccessible due to reputational, political, export-control, or trade barriers widening and driving the sales of these capabilities.

Enabling product development

Throughout the expert roundtables and individual consultations, a recurring observation was that exploit brokers and resellers fill a commercial gap in the development and, ultimately, the proliferation of OCC products. Notably, experts reiterated that OCC products rarely rely on a single exploit, rather they require an interdependent chain of exploits and sometimes additional infrastructure.⁶ Intermediaries meet this need by bridging the gap between security researchers and vendors seeking their exploits. In doing so, they can increase the rate of OCC development by reducing the time needed to identify and negotiate between researchers and buyers. As noted in the roundtables, successful vulnerability brokers maintain regular relationships with government entities and private contacts, thereby establishing some trust in an ecosystem reliant on reputation and word of mouth, meaning that they can more efficiently match customer demands with the current supply of vulnerabilities.⁷

In addition to matching supply with demand, exploit brokers can bundle components of the supply chain so that vendors do not need to establish individual relationships and transactions themselves. Evidence from recent reporting suggests that brokers and resellers are meeting these product development needs not only through the sale of exploits but also by providing infrastructure setup support or by arranging transactions through platforms with limited traceability to circumvent oversight. Taken together, these entities meet a marketplace need by connecting skills, services, and products to OCC vendors who may, for a variety of reasons discussed above, seek these external services.

Supporting operational deployment

Brokers and resellers often meet vendor needs by facilitating the transaction of infrastructure, where they provide platforms or services to assist with operational deployment of a capability. This allows OCC vendors to scale operations across multiple regions without having to rely on local infrastructure built in-house from scratch.⁸ Recorded Future’s analysis of Predator spyware reveals the diverse operational deployment roles that resellers fulfill, from establishing operational training centers to operating front companies to ship products to providing data analysis systems.

This case is especially significant, as the Intellexa Consortium—the business cluster behind Predator spyware—is renowned for incorporating intermediaries “in house.” Meaning, the vendor itself owns various resellers, brokers, and infrastructure providers versus contracting them externally, suggesting that even sizeable spyware vendors that “own” various intermediaries also require external contracted intermediary support for operational deployment for certain targets.

Limiting market proliferation

While the previous three broker and reseller effects demonstrate how these entities can meet the needs of the OCC marketplace and advance the market’s proliferation, experts and case studies similarly highlighted how, on the other hand, intermediaries can contribute to increased homogeneity off the marketplace in several ways. Specifically, this includes driving up cost, limiting the diversity of product types, and impeding due diligence and transparency efforts.

Escalating costs

Brokers and resellers, across the marketplace, anecdotally appear to drive up the final cost of OCCs. Multiple roundtable members with industry experience at many junctures of these supply chains described how each broker in a chain adds its own markup, layering on a 10-15 percent markup to the exploit for each onward sale.⁹Popular and open-access exploit marketplaces, like Zerodium, will list the prices of vulnerabilities, but what remains unclear is the extent to which these public prices reflect the intermediary markup.

Evidence suggests that the costs of exploits range drastically, with some of the most sought-after exploits, like zero-click or mobile-messaging exploits being notably more expensive. Similar cost escalation occurs at other junctures in the OCC marketplace. For example, MATIC—a reseller of NSO Group‘s Pegasus spyware—sold Pegasus to the Polish Central Anticorruption Bureau with a nearly $1.5 million markup.

These markups exist at virtually every step of building and selling OCCs, which push higher-end capabilities out of reach for smaller states and agencies, effectively restricting market access to those with the most purchasing power. As reiterated throughout this section, brokers and resellers appear to fill an open commercial gap and charge a fee for their services. Consequently, the lack of transparency on pricing and inflation contributes to overall marketplace ambiguity for the industry as a whole by increasing opacity on costs associated with developing, selling, and procuring OCCs.

Limiting the diversity of products

Roundtable participants noted that a consequence of both the current intermediary ecosystem and in-house vulnerability research is an overall narrowing of what is considered a top-priority commodity. With buyers’ focus on the most popular target vectors (such as iOS and Android devices) and on final products that prioritize speed, timing, precision, and anonymity, downstream intermediaries respond by focusing their discovery and procurement on these few, high-value exploits.¹⁰

These experts narrowed in on this unintended market effect, in which buyers seek out and buy certain vulnerabilities (i.e., remote bypass for popular operating systems), which contributes to knock-on effects for the wider intermediary marketplace. Roundtable participants explained that as resellers and brokers prioritize acquiring these few high-value exploits, there is limited buyer interest and purchasing power for smaller bugs that can be used in complimentary or alternative ways to reach similar end goals.¹¹. In essence, while it is not possible to have full view into the demand-and supply-side activities, “all eyes are trained on the same targets.”¹²One participant noted an exception to this marketplace norm, highlighting a positive externality in the public-private ecosystem in Israel that has created an incentive system in which researchers and intermediaries have access to funding and investments necessary to create and prove product viability for OCCs that exploit less or obvious sources.¹³

What was observed, in general, is that most of the attention and purchasing power is directed at a relatively narrow slice of the vulnerability marketplace to build out the exploit chains of OCC products. Experts speculated on the consequences of this intermediary and product homogenization. For instance, they highlighted that from an engineering perspective, products appear to be “less creative.” Others noted that this zeroing in on the same few exploits incentivizes brokers and resellers to engage in disreputable and insecure business practices such as selling the same exploit to different vendors, threatening security breaches or bottlenecks when exploits are discovered and patched.

Impending transparency and due diligence

Overall, the introduction of more actors in the form of intermediaries to the OCC ecosystem poses additional considerations to the tracking and reporting necessary for transparency initiatives. Given the relationship-based nature of brokering and reselling, where deals and transactions oftentimes rest on preexisting, trusted contacts or references, the ability to surface and track these transactions within a digital “supply chain” is limited.¹⁴ This has implications for the growing advocacy and policy guidelines for which “responsible purchasing” has been offered as a potential remedy to market proliferation.

The analyses above highlight how brokers and resellers can drive-down transparency efforts in the marketplace for OCC by muddying supply chains and creating confusion for end-buyers as to the source of a product or product component, which in turn complicates due-diligence efforts and “responsible purchasing.” Even vendors of OCCs have indicated how intermediaries complicate their own alleged due-diligence efforts. For example, the CEO of spyware vendor Memento Labs, recently asserted that one of its clients misused outdated variants of their malware. This demonstrates that OCC vendors can lose control of variant propagation once intermediaries and resellers are involved. Members of the industry echoed this sentiment, describing the “ceiling of capabilities” problem—as resold or outdated capabilities continue to circulate in the market, sometimes through third-country intermediaries, the likelihood of detection increases and the effectiveness of the exploit is reduced.¹⁵ On the other hand, current market opacity enables unchecked vendor transparency reports, including the recent 2025 NSO transparency report, which lacks any concrete details on annual disclosures, supply chains, customers, and more.

Further complicating transparency and due diligence efforts are incentive structures in the marketplace for OCC. Emerging security researchers and brokers are often incentivized by the appealingly sizable and rapid profit potential, shifting the focus to speed and margin overdue-diligence obligations. Discovering and selling vulnerabilities is not geographically restricted to certain markets and thus the profit margins can be “transformative” for some researchers and intermediaries, particularly in the global majority.¹⁶

An ultimately observable theme in the OCC supply chain, like many other illicit flows, is that entities are largely incentivized by factors including profit and reputational protection, which oftentimes are measured by high levels of discretion and privacy. As a consequence, supply chain transparency and publicly accessible and meaningful due diligence contrasts with these appealing payouts and an inherent culture of opacity.

Policy recommendations

The policy recommendations below aim to address the aforementioned effects that brokers, resellers, and other intermediary types pose. Based on analysis from interviews and background research, this report sets out four recommendations aimed at confronting the consistent issue set across the Mythical Beasts project—increasing and incentivizing transparency at multiple levels of the OCC supply chain.

These specific recommendations are oriented toward governance regimes in the United States, the United Kingdom, and the multilateral Pall Mall Process to develop Know Your Intermediary requirements, improve corporate registries to capture more details about intermediary relationships, and create certification programs.

I. Implement Know Your Vendor requirements

To facilitate more effective due diligence of cyber capability transactions, governments should gain a better understanding of brokers and resellers enabling these transactions. Know Your Vendor requirements would mandate that OCC brokers and resellers disclose their supplier relationships, vendor partnerships, investors, subcontractors, and parent entities to develop a consistent reporting environment where governmentlicensing officers can assess whether prospective intermediaries have ties to sanctioned or restricted entities before signing contracts.

Within the United States, the Federal Acquisition Regulatory Council should update the Federal Acquisition Regulation, Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement, and Defense Logistics Acquisition Directive to require any broker or reseller bidding on government cyber operations contracts to disclose vendor relationships, supplier networks, investors, subcontractors, and holding entities. While the Defense Logistics Acquisition Directive requires the disclosure of “the name and location of all supply chain intermediaries,” it does not require information about access providers, parent companies and holding companies, investors, and others.

Within the United Kingdom, the Cabinet Office should update procurement regulations to require intermediaries providing spyware-related services to disclose complete supply chains.

II. Improve corporate-run registries for brokers and resellers

Government-run corporate registries are essential resources for due diligence and accountability in tracking OCC behavior. As indicated in the Mythical Beasts project series, there is work to be done to ensure these registries are comprehensive, publicly accessible, and contain verified information to bolster transparency and accountability efforts.

National regulations should determine comprehensive requirements for brokering and reselling related entities in corporate registries. At minimum, registries should include:

Basic company information: Name, registration number, tax ID, address, contact details, and date of registration
Ownership details: Senior executives, management board, beneficial owners, and investors
Operational details: Number of employees, geographic scope of operations, and jurisdictions where licensed to operate
Corporate history: Name changes, mergers and acquisitions, and predecessor entities

This information serves as a baseline but could be expanded to include relationships with known spyware manufacturers, telecommunications partners, and access providers.

Within the United States, there is no centralized “nationwide” corporate registry, as each state maintains their own. The National Association of Secretaries of States can build out guidance on what individual states can do to bolster disclosure requirements of dual-use technology companies on their respective registries, which will more holistically capture information about brokers and resellers.

By contrast, the United Kingdom has a more robust corporate registry system. Nevertheless, to improve this system to capture additional information about OCC intermediaries, the United Kingdom should encourage Parliament to amend the Companies Act 2006 to include additional information about entities connected via supply chains in the national registration. When it comes to international fora, the United Kingdom,through the Pall Mall Process, should establish a Working Group with Code of Practice signatories on how states can improve corporate registries to better capture information pertinent to intermediary and OCC marketplace behavior. The UK government should also consult civil society organizations to provide expertise through this process.

III. Certified brokers and resellers program

As leaders of the Pall Mall Process, the United Kingdom and France should establish internal certification programs recognizing brokers and resellers that demonstrate exceptional compliance practices and encourage other signatories to the Pall Mall Process Code of Practice for States to do the same. Utilizing the Pall Mall Code of Practice for industry as a jumping off point to establish a certification, certified brokers and resellers are eligible to receive streamlined licensing processes for low-risk transactions and have a greater likelihood of winning government contracts, encouraging other brokers and resellers in the ecosystem to pursue this certification. This recommendation is a voluntary certification program, where interested brokers and resellers can apply to be certified for the benefits overviewed above, as not every broker and reseller seeks to work directly with government clients.

Certification criteria must include a government-led due diligence effort to ensure a demonstrated history of accurate disclosure, implementation of human rights impact assessments, participation in industry best practice fora, cooperation with government due diligence investigations, and consultation with civil society actors. More detail on assessment of these criteria is below.

Within the United States, Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) should administer the certification program, serving as the entity that issues, maintains, and revokes certifications. Shoring up technical expertise willenable BIS to leverage its existing expertise as the entity that oversees export controls of dual-use goods that pose potential risks to national security and can evaluate compliance through access to export violation records and licensing records. BIS can also enforce compliance, as it already oversees the “Export Controls List” on which some OCC vendors are listed.

The US Department of State should coordinate and share human rights impact assessments for certification applicants, providing country and regional human rights risk assessments, and compliance with international law. This can be informed through expert consultation by civil society organizations to review and bolster the rigor of the assessment’s methodology and focus. Finally, the Office of Foreign Assets Control at the US Department of the Treasury should provide sanction screening and verification services for the certification program.

In the United Kingdom, the Export Control Joint Unit (ECJU) within the Department for Business and Trade should administer the certification program, serving as the entity that issues, maintains, and revokes certifications. The ECJU, similar to BIS, can leverage its existing expertise in UK export control regulations and licensing requirements to implement and oversee this program.

The Foreign Commonwealth Development Office, similar to the US Department of State, should coordinate and share human rights impact assessments for certification applicants, providing country and regional human rights risk assessments, compliance with international law, and adherence to UK human rights commitments and the Consolidated EU and National Arms Export Licensing Criteria. Finally, the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation of His Majesty’s Treasury can administer UK sanctions screenings and compliance verifications for the certification program.

Information sharing, coordination, and harmonization between various intermediary certification programs in the United States and the United Kingdom can be coordinated during the Pall Mall Process or other appropriate international fora.

Conclusion

The opacity of intermediaries in the OCC marketplace represents a discernible gap in current policy frameworks. This research demonstrates how intermediaries—be it brokers, resellers, or other entities—are essential enablers and connectors of the OCC supply chain. They drive proliferation by expanding market access across jurisdictions, supporting product development, and facilitating operational deployment while introducing market complications through cost escalation, product homogenization, and supply chain obfuscation.

The policy recommendations highlighted in this piece reinforce a core point—transparency. They seek to bolster publicly accountably transparency without pushing legitimate vulnerability research underground. These recommendations recognize and reflect on treating intermediary roles in OCC marketplace not as a collective unit, but rather as distinct categories with a range of policy responses.

When journalists, political leaders, activists, and private citizens become targets of OCCs like spyware that has been developed through intermediary chains, the opacity complicates accountability and enables ongoing surveillance of personal information and private communication. Each layer of the supply chain makes it increasingly complicated to trace the technology and sales, further complicating accountability. Adding to this, intermediaries can create vulnerabilities for national security when states are unknowingly reliant on adversarial infrastructure or indirectly funding, through acquisition of these capabilities’ adversarial vendors.

Through international momentum via the Pall Mall Process and the wide variety of policy actions to curb the proliferation and misuse of spyware and other OCC, a critical window exists to shape the future of intermediaries’ operations within the OCC supply chain and bring them out from the shadows.

Acknowledgements

The authors owe a debt of gratitude to the security research community, particularly to the individuals who spoke candidly about their many years of learned experiences during our roundtables and in interviews; the report authors are eternally grateful.

Thank you to Winnona DeSombre Bernsen and Nikita Shah, whose valuable conversations shaped the early focus of this issue brief. To all who have contributed to the Mythical Beasts projects over the years, this project would not be the same without your valuable contributions.

About the authors

Jen Roberts is an associate director with the Cyber Statecraft Initiative, part of the Atlantic Council’s Tech Programs. Roberts leads CSI’s Proliferation of Offensive Cyber Capabilities work, including the management of the Mythical Beasts project series. Roberts holds an MA in International Relations and Economics from Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) and a BA in International Studies from American University’s School of International Service.

Sarah Graham a nonresident fellow with the Cyber Statecraft Initiative, part of the Atlantic Council’s Tech Programs. She is also a European Union Schuman Fulbright fellow working with the Center for Democracy and Technology in Brussels. Her work focuses on European digital policies and how they might respond to intrusive and harmful uses of technologies ranging from spyware to digital platforms. Graham is also a policy research affiliate at New York University’s Center for Social Media and Politics, where she previously served as the Center’s research and operations manager and oversaw a diverse portfolio of projects and data access initiatives for interdisciplinary research teams. She has contributed to publications at the Journal of Experimental Political Science and Journal of Quantitative Description, and her writing has appeared in Brookings and Tech Policy Press. She holds degrees from the University of St. Andrews and New York University.

Lyla Renwick-Archibold is a research associate in Artificial Intelligence at the Council on Foreign Relations. Renwick-Archibold previously interned at the Atlantic Council’s Cyber Statecraft Initiative, where she researched the spyware market. She also served as a Princeton in Africa Fellow based in Tanzania, where she led digital literacy and tech education initiatives in partnership with schools and local organizations. She graduated from Washington University in St. Louis with a degree in computer science, where she focused on the intersection of technology, policy, and equity. Renwick-Archibold has worked in research and product roles across the public, private, and nonprofit sectors. She served as a researcher for Coda Media, where she reported on AI, surveillance, and human rights in East Africa. Before that, at the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, she published articles on facial recognition and digital surveillance.

Explore the Program

1 Roundtable #1 (virtual), November 13, 2025.

2 Roundtable #1.

3 Roundtable #1.

4 As early as 2012, RCS facilitated the sale of Hacking Team products and services, including Hacking Team’s Remote Control System (RCS), to government agencies in Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Turkmenistan. In 2022, security researchers at Lookout determined RCS Lab created and sold the Hermit spyware, and it continues to operate as a spyware vendor.

5 Roundtable #1; Roundtable #2 (virtual), December 16, 2025.

6 Roundtable #1.

7 Roundtable #1; Roundtable #2.

8 Roundtable #1.

9 Roundtable #1.

10 Roundtable #2.

11 Roundtable #2

12 Roundtable #2

13 Roundtable #2.

14 Roundtable #1; Roundtable #2.

15 Roundtable #1.

16 Roundtable #1.

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UN: Putin’s deportation of Ukrainian children is a crime against humanity

Peter Dickinson — Sat, 14 Mar 2026 12:10:22 +0000

Russia’s mass deportation of Ukrainian children is a crime against humanity, a new United Nations investigation has found. Published this week by the UN’s Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine, the report concluded that following the onset of Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, Kremlin officials “at the highest level” have overseen large-scale deportations from occupied regions of Ukraine targeting thousands of Ukrainian children.

The report provides fresh insights into Russia’s comprehensive wartime program of child deportations. Moscow is accused of abducting tens of thousands of Ukrainian children since 2022 and forcibly transferring them to Russia as part of a “carefully organized plan” coordinated at the highest levels of the Russian Federation state apparatus. Many victims are reportedly subjected to ideological indoctrination designed to strip them of their Ukrainian identity and impose Russian nationality. This process often includes name changes and adoption into Russian families.

Despite extensive campaigning and humanitarian efforts by Ukraine and the international community, only a relatively small number of abducted children have so far been rescued. The plight of Ukraine’s deported kids has made global headlines and has attracted the attention of US First Lady Melania Trump, who has reportedly sought to help facilitate the return of victims by engaging directly with the Kremlin.

The new UN report noted that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s direct involvement in the mass deportations has been “visible from the outset.” This tallies with existing criminal charges against Putin brought by the International Criminal Court in The Hague. In spring 2023, ICC officials issued an arrest warrant for Putin for his personal role in Russia’s child abduction program. This warrant has since prevented the Kremlin dictator from attending a number of international summits due to fears that he may face arrest for war crimes.

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This is not the first time United Nations investigators have accused Russia of committing crimes against humanity during the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. A spring 2025 UN probe concluded that the large-scale detention of Ukrainians in occupied regions of the country represented a “systematic attack against the civilian population” that qualified as a crime against humanity. In areas of Ukraine currently under Kremlin control, Moscow is accused of conducting a Stalin-style terror campaign of mass arrests targeting thousands of civilians including elected officials, journalists, civil society activists, religious leaders, cultural figures, and military veterans.

Similarly, a more recent UN investigation into targeted Russian drone strikes against the civilian population in three front line regions of southern Ukraine determined that these aerial attacks amount to a crime against humanity. The killings are clearly intentional, United Nations investigators concluded, with Russian troops reportedly using video-guided drones to hunt down individual victims. Terrified locals refer to Russia’s drone strikes on civilians as a “human safari.”

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The Kremlin’s ongoing program of child deportations and accompanying anti-Ukrainian indoctrination are viewed in Kyiv as elements of a broader Russian plan to erase Ukrainian national identity entirely. Throughout occupied regions of Ukraine, the Russian authorities are ruthlessly eradicating all traces of Ukrainian statehood, history, language, and cultural heritage. Meanwhile, local residents are being forced to accept Russian citizenship. Anyone who refuses to cooperate risks being denied access to basic public services or deported.

Moscow’s efforts to forcibly Russify thousands of abducted Ukrainian children have been widely cited as evidence of the genocidal intent underpinning Russia’s invasion. This is hardly surprising. The 1948 United Nations Genocide Convention specifically identifies “forcibly transferring children of the group to another group” as one of five internationally recognized acts of genocide.

Russia rejects United Nations claims that it is committing crimes against humanity in Ukraine and has consistently denied allegations of mass child abductions. Instead, Kremlin officials maintain that the large-scale transfer of Ukrainian children from occupied Ukraine to Russia is a routine wartime safety measure. However, nobody in Moscow has been able to explain why it is necessary to indoctrinate children against their native Ukraine and force them to adopt a Russian national identity in order ensure their safety.

Peter Dickinson is editor of the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlert service.

PRC commentary does highlight a real contradiction in US AI governance.

First, a throughline in many of the PRC sources surveyed is that the conflict between Anthropic and the Department of Defense has laid bare some of the fundamental bargains that US AI companies have made as they have sought to strike a delicate balance: They seek to position themselves and their technologies as core to US national security while also trying to uphold high ethical standards with regard to the development and deployment of AI. In the view of many commentators, US policy has come to increasingly frame AI as a strategic national security capability. As they seek advantageous market position, favorable regulatory policy, and government partnerships, tech companies have argued that there is a need to protect and develop US AI capabilities against Chinese encroachment. As Chinese academician Gao Lingyun put it, the episode shows that “so-called ‘national security’ has become a political tool aimed at making enterprises serve its own interests.”

Much of the Chinese commentary on the Anthropic dispute aims to highlight the consequences of this framing. In the view of several commentators, US technology firms such as Anthropic promote national security narratives to demonstrate their strategic importance; however, those same narratives in turn strengthen the state’s claim to control the technology. In the view of several commentators, Anthropic in particular has embraced narratives that have contributed to the securitization of AI. For example, Anthropic founder Dario Amodei once said that selling high-end chips to China would be like “selling nuclear weapons to North Korea.”

In pushing these national security narratives, these analysts claim, companies such as Anthropic are now victims of their own success, as they are facing demands for full military access to their technologies. That a US firm is now facing a supply-chain risk designation—a provision once only applied to firms located in countries that are considered foreign adversaries—illustrates for many analysts in China the fundamental truth that as national security categories expand, governments will seek to assert greater sovereignty over advanced technologies. As one commentator put it, the dispute shows that the US government is “redefining the boundaries between technology and power within its AI national security framework.” One commentator similarly argues that the dispute “strips away the veil of so-called ‘technology neutrality,” showing that as AI capabilities grow, governments will increasingly deploy state power to integrate these systems into military operations.

More broadly, Chinese commentary examined the growing structural tensions between state power, corporate ethics, and AI militarization. Many commentators argued that the incident reveals a fundamental incompatibility with AI designed to curb its capabilities to not harm humans—as in Anthropic’s “Constitution” for its large language model Claude—while also claiming that developing the same technology for use in military applications is a determining factor in the “race for AI dominance.” In modern warfare, they argue, AI has become essential to intelligence analysis, targeting, and decision cycles, making its development and deployment a matter of strategic necessity, with corporate safeguards subsumed under the will of the state. In other words, when technology enters “efficiency-driven state machinery,” corporate restrictions become unsustainable. Companies may choose whether to participate in defense programs, these commentators argue, but they cannot dictate how militaries employ advanced technologies.

Some commentators pointed to Anthropic’s February announcement of a change in its Responsible Scaling Policy, in which the company would no longer pause training on new models whenever capabilities reached predefined danger thresholds, as evidence that in a battle between company ethics and state priorities, the latter always wins. Firms such as OpenAI and Anthropic, which once shaped global digital platforms and had broad leeway to operate as they saw fit, now face increasing pressure to align with state security priorities or face penalties.

In a bit of irony coming from PRC commentators, several analysts argued that this securitized language allows governments to redefine risks and obligations depending on their own strategic priorities. According to researcher Gao Lingyun, when national security definitions become “arbitrarily defined,” they lose moral authority as policy justifications. This argument mirrors criticisms that the United States has long directed at Chinese technology firms. US policymakers frequently warn that Chinese companies are compelled to assist PRC government authorities, including military and intelligence services, under existing legal frameworks such as the National Intelligence Law and the Data Security Law. PRC analysts have turned this criticism back on the United States, asking how much trust to put into AI technologies if governments possess the legal authority to compel access to them (and to US citizen data to enable surveillance, if Anthropic’s accounting is accurate).

Ultimately, PRC commentary on the Anthropic-Pentagon dispute reveals how the Chinese political apparatus is seeking to frame the incident internally for Chinese audiences. It behooves the PRC to present the US AI governance ecosystem as chaotic and to heighten the perception of risk around US military use of AI. However, PRC commentary does highlight a real contradiction in US AI governance. If US AI firms promote trust, safety, and independence as core advantages over their competitors, how durable are those claims in the long run when national security authorities intervene? And how does this impact the competitiveness and trustworthiness of US systems writ large? As AI systems are becoming increasingly central to military and economic competition, the answer to these questions will shape global perceptions of technological trust and jurisdictional risk beyond this dispute and the context of US-China competition.

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Romania’s drone and energy plans with Ukraine make Europe stronger and more secure

jcookson — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 19:47:55 +0000

BUCHAREST and WASHINGTON—“We must not hide that historically there was distrust between our countries,” Romanian President Nicușor Dan said to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on March 12 in Bucharest. However, Dan continued, “This distrust evaporated at the beginning of the war in 2022, and today is a moment when the two countries assume mutual trust in what they can do together, assume common responsibility for this part of Europe, for its citizens and for the entire region.”

Zelenskyy’s visit to Bucharest marks a politically and strategically significant moment for Romania’s regional role. It is the Ukrainian president’s second visit to Romania since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, but the first under Dan, who took office in May 2025. In this sense, the visit also signals that the initial adjustment period of the new Romanian presidency has effectively ended. Romania is now moving from a phase of positioning and signaling toward one of policy implementation, particularly in areas related to regional security and defense cooperation.

The timing of the visit is particularly relevant. Just one day earlier, Romania’s Parliament approved the deployment of additional US military capabilities on Romanian territory, including aerial refueling aircraft and satellite communication systems with a defensive role. Taken together, the two developments highlight how Romania is consolidating its position on NATO’s eastern flank: strengthening its security relationship with the United States, including support for US operations in the Middle East (Romania also offered its support in Gaza) while simultaneously deepening strategic cooperation with Ukraine.

The Strategic Partnership Declaration that Dan and Zelenskyy signed in Bucharest formalizes a relationship that has been intensifying since the start of the war. The framework covers defense cooperation, energy interconnection, economic collaboration, education, and minority rights. These areas suggest that both governments are seeking to anchor their partnership in long-term strategic interests rather than temporary wartime coordination. The progress made on sensitive issues such as minority rights also suggests that both capitals increasingly view their bilateral relationship through the lens of regional security.

The most strategically consequential outcome of the visit is the agreement on joint drone production in Romania, financed through the SAFE program with an estimated allocation of around €200 million. The logic of the project reflects a new model of cooperation: Ukraine contributes battlefield-tested technological know-how developed during the war, while Romania provides NATO territory, industrial capacity, and access to European defense funding. In practice, this represents a shift from traditional military assistance toward co-production of defense technologies, integrating Ukraine’s wartime innovation into the European defense industrial ecosystem.

Energy cooperation represents another structural dimension of the agreements announced on March 12.

Since late 2022, when Russia began to systematically target Ukraine’s energy infrastructure as part of its military strategy, Romania has been one of Ukraine’s most important European energy partners. It has, for example, advocated within the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity, known as ENTSO-E, for greater power exports to Ukraine. It has also scrounged Romania’s system for spare parts that could be used for grid and generation repair, and it has leveraged Romania’s long history with civilian nuclear power to support the heroic efforts of Ukraine’s nuclear operator, Energoatom, to maintain safe operations under the most severe stress imaginable.

Romania is likely to become one of the main operational gateways for reconstruction projects and postwar economic cooperation.

In parallel, Ukrainian companies are increasing their footprint in Romania, illustrating how the country’s private sector is adopting an increasingly European focus. For instance, DTEK*, Ukraine’s largest private energy company, is growing its renewables portfolio through new build and acquisitions in Romania’s wind and solar sectors, aiming for a one-gigawatt portfolio by 2030. Projects in this effort include the 60-megawatt Ruginoasa wind farm, the 53-megawatt Glodeni I solar park, and the 126-megawatt Vacaresti solar farm commissioned this past December. Metinvest, DTEK’s sister company, has acquired ArcelorMittal’s Tubular Products plant in Iași, near the Romanian border with Moldova. This cluster of energy and metals investment will now be complemented by defense industry—and in any post-conflict scenario the role of Romanian ports and rail in supporting Ukrainian logistics will grow exponentially.

Meanwhile, Romania’s longstanding support to Moldova—whose grid is umbilically tied to Ukraine—has played an indispensable role in helping both countries to weather four winters of Putin’s energy war and the end of Russian gas deliveries to Transnistria. Plans to accelerate electricity interconnections—such as the Suceava-Chernivtsi line—and to expand cooperation on gas routes and storage capacity point toward a deeper integration of Ukraine into the regional energy network.

Romania is also playing a leading role in advancing the commercial understandings necessary for the Vertical Corridor, a planned gas route from Greece to Ukraine. This effort is opening opportunities for increased US liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports to the region, and it helps position southeastern Europe for the European Union’s 2027 phase-out of all Russian gas. Meanwhile, Romania’s status as the European Union’s largest gas producer—anchored in the offshore Neptun Deep project—points to the future role of Black Sea resources in helping to replace gas formerly sold by Russia. Strategically, this would strengthen Ukraine’s resilience while reinforcing Romania’s ambition to position itself as a regional energy hub linking Ukraine and Moldova with European Union member states.

But Zelenskyy’s visit also showed how the Vertical Corridor is about much more than energy molecules. The discussions in Bucharest point to a broader role for Romania beyond wartime support, with Bucharest increasingly preparing to assume a key role in the reconstruction of Ukraine, particularly in ports, infrastructure, logistics, and cross-border economic integration. With its geographic proximity, access to European Union funding mechanisms, and growing strategic partnership with Kyiv, Romania is likely to become one of the main operational gateways for reconstruction projects and postwar economic cooperation.

Bucharest is steadily moving from a supportive neighbor to a strategic enabler in shaping the security architecture of the Black Sea region and NATO’s eastern flank.

Note: DTEK’s parent company, System Capital Management, is an Atlantic Council donor.

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Iran war highlights Ukraine’s rapid rise to drone superpower status

David Kirichenko — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 21:00:19 +0000

Ukrainian drone warfare experts arrived in the Middle East this week to defend the region against Iranian attack drones. Teams of Ukrainian specialists will help coordinate air defense operations in Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, and will also reportedly work alongside American colleagues to protect US military bases in Jordan.

News of these landmark deployments came also exactly one year after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s infamous Oval Office meeting with US President Donald Trump, which saw the US leader tell his Ukrainian counterpart, “You don’t have the cards.” Twelve months on, it would appear that Zelenskyy does in fact have some trump cards of his own.

The Iran war has sparked a sudden surge in international demand for Ukraine’s unique drone warfare expertise. As hostilities have spread across the Gulf region, more and more states are now looking to Kyiv for support as they seek to counter swarms of Iranian attack drones that are threatening to overwhelm or exhaust conventional missile-based air defenses.

Nobody is better equipped to address this challenge than Ukraine. Since 2022, the Ukrainians have gained unrivaled experience defending their country against massive Russian drone attacks on an almost daily basis. They have learned to do so in a cost-effective and sustainable manner by employing a wide range of tools including cheap interceptor drones, sophisticated monitoring systems, electronic warfare equipment, and helicopter gunships.

Since the outbreak of hostilities in the Middle East, Ukraine has signaled a readiness to share its drone warfare experience with the United States and its Gulf region allies. Kyiv’s offer has been readily accepted. As a result, the Ukrainian drone defense crews currently deploying to the Middle East are likely to be the first of many. Others are also taking note. Berlin confirmed plans this week to have Ukrainian experts train German troops, while Romania unveiled a major joint venture to co-produce drones together with Ukraine.

This is having a profound impact on Ukraine’s international image. Until recently, Ukraine was widely regarded as a country with little leverage that was heavily dependent on the West for survival. In light of recent developments, a radically different picture is now emerging of Ukraine as a valuable security partner and a major military power in its own right.

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Ukraine’s rise to drone superpower status has been remarkably rapid. The country first began experimenting with the use of drones on the battlefield in the wake of Russia’s initial invasion in 2014. However, major breakthroughs would not take place until the full-scale invasion of 2022.

In the space of just four years, Ukraine has gone from defense tech startup to global leader in the art of drone warfare. This remarkable progress owes much to Ukraine’s vibrant prewar tech sector and the country’s strong entrepreneurial spirit, which have combined to turbo-charge the wartime development of a domestic drone manufacturing sector. The existential nature of the Russian threat has also played a key role, providing local producers and government officials with all the motivation they need to remove potential roadblocks and maximize domestic output.

Ukrainian officials recognized early in the war that they could not rely on Western partners to supply the necessary weapons and ammunition on time and in sufficient quantities. Prioritizing the mass production of comparatively cheap drones was identified as Ukraine’s most realistic strategy as the country sought to counter Russia’s often overwhelming advantages in terms of manpower and conventional firepower. The results speak for themselves. When the full-scale invasion began, Ukraine only had a handful of drone producers. In 2026, domestic output is expected to reach seven million drones.

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Ukraine’s strategic emphasis on drones has transformed the war on land, in the air, and at sea. Around three-quarters of all Russian battlefield casualties are now inflicted by Ukrainian drones. Meanwhile, a drone-dominated kill zone stretching for over ten kilometers either side of the front lines makes any major offensive operations fraught with danger for the attackers. As the Russian invasion enters a fifth year, Ukraine’s “drone wall” is now the key to the country’s defensive strategy.

At sea, Kyiv has used domestically developed naval drones to break the Russian blockade of Ukraine’s Black Sea ports and neutralize around one-third of Russia’s entire Black Sea Fleet. Following a string of naval humiliations, Putin was forced to withdraw the remainder of his warships from Crimea to the relative safety of Russia itself.

Ukraine’s naval drones are becoming increasingly sophisticated. Some recent models have been armed with anti-aircraft missile capabilities, while others have served as mini aircraft carriers for smaller drones. This creative use of maritime drone technologies has made it possible for Ukraine to gain the upper hand in the Battle of the Black Sea, despite not having a conventional navy to speak of.

Ukraine’s growing drone arsenal also includes long-range drones that have made it possible to strike targets deep inside Russia. In recent years, Kyiv has escalated attacks on military and industrial sites located over one thousand kilometers from the Ukrainian border. This has expanded the geographical scope of the war and brought Putin’s invasion home to Russia in ways that the Kremlin propaganda machine is unable to censor.

Ukraine’s new friends in the Gulf region are primarily interested in Kyiv’s interceptor drone technologies. These weapons have been developed in response to Russia’s own innovative use of attack drones. Since acquiring the blueprints from Iran during the early stages of the war, Russia has significantly upgraded its fleet of Shahed drones to make them bigger, faster, and more maneuverable. Moscow has also dramatically increased production, enabling far larger nightly attacks on targets throughout Ukraine.

The Ukrainian authorities have responded to this escalating Russian bombardment by developing a series of interceptor drones that can be mass produced for a fraction of the cost of traditional air defense missiles. Customers including oil giant Saudi Aramco are reportedly now queuing up to acquire these Ukrainian interceptors.

When Russian President Vladimir Putin launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, he expected an easy victory and vowed to “demilitarize” the country. With Ukrainian drone specialists now training NATO forces while guarding Gulf petrostates and US military bases, it is safe to say that this attempted demilitarization has backfired in spectacular fashion.

Rather than leaving Kyiv disarmed and defenseless, the war unleashed by Putin four years ago has transformed Ukraine into a drone superpower. This newfound status is already changing outside perceptions of the country and looks set to further strengthen Ukraine’s geopolitical standing as more countries seek to benefit from Kyiv’s drone warfare expertise. Zelenskyy clearly holds plenty of cards and is prepared to play them.

David Kirichenko is an associate research fellow at the Henry Jackson Society.

As the world watches the Russian invasion of Ukraine unfold, UkraineAlert delivers the best Atlantic Council expert insight and analysis on Ukraine twice a week directly to your inbox.

When Russia occupied Crimea in 2014 and shortly afterward invaded east Ukraine’s Donbas region, many observers in Washington and European capitals saw it as a shocking but limited land grab. Many accepted the narrative that Crimea and eastern Ukraine were “Russian lands,” populated by Russian speakers who supposedly wanted to be part of Russia. Some even argued that Moscow was merely responding to local preferences, albeit illegally. Even then, it was clear that this reading was dangerously wrong. In reality, Moscow was asserting a unilateral right to intervene wherever it claimed the population as compatriots, regardless of what those communities actually wanted.

The idea of protecting Russian compatriots has long served as the backbone of a broader Kremlin project aimed at redrawing borders and reasserting Russian dominance across the post‑Soviet space. Similar tactics including cultural outreach, imperialistic propaganda, the distribution of Russian passports, and military intervention, have been evident in Moldova’s Transnistria region, Georgia’s South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and Ukraine. This approach also poses an obvious threat to a range of other countries.

Russia’s full‑scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 confirmed that Crimea was not an exception but a pilot project. Putin’s justification for war leaned heavily on the idea of restoring Russia’s so-called historical unity and protecting Russian speakers in the Donbas region from alleged discrimination.

Alarmingly, even as Russia bombed Ukrainian cities and attempted to seize Kyiv, many Western discussions continued to treat parts of Ukraine as spaces where Russia’s claims might be partially legitimate or at least negotiable. This conceptual carve‑out has endured over the past four years, subtly shaping proposals to freeze the conflict along the current lines of control.

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The idea of a single, unified Russian people stretching across borders is less a sociological reality than a political ambition. The Kremlin has long blurred the lines between ethnic Russians, Russian speakers, non‑Russian ethnic minorities such as Abkhazians and Ossetians, and political “compatriots.” This allows Moscow to manufacture a constituency that justifies military intervention, even where Russian speakers are a minority or have no desire for Moscow’s protection.

This dynamic is visible in Ukraine today. Moscow claims to be acting on behalf of Ukraine’s Russian‑speaking communities, but in practice it has bombed, tortured, deported, and repressed these communities throughout the occupied territories. Meanwhile, millions of Ukrainians who speak Russian at home, including many in cities like Kharkiv and Odesa, have chosen to resist Russian forces, volunteer for the Ukrainian army, or flee westward, contradicting the notion that language determines loyalty.

Putin’s talk of defending compatriots is a not a minority rights policy; it is a carefully crafted propaganda script to justify military aggression. First, Moscow defines a broad, elastic category of compatriots. Then it alleges discrimination against them. The target group next receives Russian passports. Finally, the Kremlin claims a duty to intervene militarily. When international policymakers and commentators accept the vocabulary of “protection” on Moscow’s terms, they are accepting the logic of empire. After all, modern borders depend on international law not historical grievance or dubious ethnic claims.

As the largest European invasion since World War II enters a fifth year, Western policy is still constrained by the remnants of these myths. When officials suggest that a peace settlement might involve Ukraine “recognizing realities on the ground” in Crimea or the occupied east of the country, they echo the idea that these territories are somehow less Ukrainian because of their demographic and linguistic profile.

In practice, this means legitimizing and rewarding the Kremlin’s compatriot policy. Accepting this logic in Ukraine would signal that using Russian speakers and the protection of ethnic Russians as a pretext for occupation and annexation is an acceptable tool of statecraft. That message would not only entrench Russia’s gains in Ukraine; it would also open the door to similar tactics in other states from Kazakhstan to the Baltics, where Moscow could once again weaponise bogus historical narratives to justify future aggression.

To move toward real peace, Western governments need to update not only their military and economic policies, but also their mental maps. That means rejecting Russia’s imperial expansion strategy built on historical myths that foster the quiet assumption that Crimea and eastern Ukraine are “different” in ways that justify special rights for Moscow. Instead, any settlement must reflect international law and the internationally recognized borders of Ukraine, rather than Putin’s imperial ambitions.

As long as the West grants tacit legitimacy to Russia’s compatriot doctrine and Putin’s claims to “historically Russian lands” in Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, and beyond, it will be extremely difficult to end the current war in a manner that will safeguard European security.

Dr. Agnia Grigas is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and author of Beyond Crimea: The New Russian Empire.

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Guns for Hire podcast is a production of the Atlantic Council’s North Africa Initiative. Taking Libya as its starting point, it examines the causes and implications of the increasing use of mercenaries in armed conflicts.

The podcast features guests from many walks of life, from ethicists and historians to former mercenary fighters. It seeks to understand what the normalization of contract warfare reveals about the world we currently inhabit, the future of the international system, and what war may look like in the coming decades.

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In Season 2, Episode 13 of the Guns for Hire podcast, host Alia Brahimi is joined by the Iraqi political analyst Mohammed Salih to discuss the legion of Iraqi men turning up on the frontlines of the war in Ukraine.

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Iran war could save Vladimir Putin’s failing Ukraine invasion

Peter Dickinson — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 22:34:17 +0000

The mood in Moscow was strikingly subdued in late February as the country marked four years since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Kremlin officials made little mention of the anniversary, while the heavily censored Russian media offered only minimal coverage. With no end in sight to the increasingly costly war, this lack of fanfare is easy to understand. However, events currently unfolding in the Middle East may yet rescue Vladimir Putin’s faltering invasion.

When Putin first announced the full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, he vowed to “demilitarize” and “denazify” Ukraine. He has also sought to justify the war as a campaign against NATO expansion and crusade to revive Russia’s great power status. By almost any measure, Putin has failed to achieve these goals.

The Russian leader’s inability to demilitarize Ukraine has been perhaps his most glaring failure. Indeed, few countries have ever looked less demilitarized than today’s Ukraine. As the war with Russia enters a fifth year, Ukraine possesses Europe’s largest army and is a world leader in drone warfare. From NATO members to Gulf petrostates, countries are now queuing up to access Ukraine’s unrivalled expertise. Meanwhile, a consensus is emerging in European capitals that Ukraine has an indispensable role to play in the future security of the continent.

Likewise, Putin’s bid to “denazify” Ukraine has proved spectacularly counterproductive. The entire concept of “denazification” is Kremlin code for the eradication of Ukrainian national identity, but Putin’s invasion has sparked an unprecedented surge in patriotism among the Ukrainian population along with a deep distrust of all things Russian. As a result, it is now virtually impossible to imagine the emergence of a pro-Russian government in Kyiv, unless permanently propped up by Kremlin bayonets.

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Putin has gone to great lengths to blame the war on NATO’s post-1991 eastward expansion beyond the old Iron Curtain. Far from arresting or reversing this process, Russia’s actions have sparked a new and highly significant wave of enlargement. In response to the invasion of Ukraine, both Finland and Sweden opted to abandon decades of neutrality and join NATO. This has more than doubled Russia’s shared border with the alliance, while also transforming the Baltic Sea into a NATO lake.

On the global stage, the invasion of Ukraine has left Russia unable to project strength or justify its claims to great power status. With the vast majority of his military forces deployed in Ukraine, Putin has proved unable to aid a series of international allies during moments of crisis. Syria, Venezuela, and Iran have all learned the hard way that Putin’s promises of partnership are empty.

Russian prestige has taken a further pounding on the battlefields of Ukraine. Like many others in Moscow and elsewhere, Putin fully expected to secure a quick and complete victory in Ukraine. Instead, his armies have been unable to achieve any decisive breakthroughs despite suffering catastrophic losses. More than four years on, they remain bogged down in brutal attritional warfare.

Putin has tried to distract from this underwhelming military performance by projecting confidence in eventual success, but his boasts of relentless Russian advances now ring increasingly hollow. In February 2026, Ukraine actually liberated more territory than the Russian army was able to seize, making a mockery of Kremlin efforts to portray Russian victory as inevitable.

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With Russia’s prospects in Ukraine looking increasingly grim, the joint US-Israeli operation against Iran could hardly have come at a better time for Putin. While Russia’s inability to assist a key ally is undoubtedly embarrassing, the Kremlin could potentially emerge as a major beneficiary of the escalating conflict in the Middle East.

The scope for economic gains is obvious. With the Strait of Hormuz under threat and key energy export routes out of the Middle East facing major disruption, Russia stands to benefit more than most from rising oil and gas prices. This could reinvigorate Putin’s war economy at a time when it was beginning to show signs of serious strain.

The US focus on Iran may also distract the Trump administration from diplomatic efforts to broker a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine. While these US-led peace talks had not resulted in any tangible progress toward a sustainable settlement, they represent a diplomatic challenge to the Kremlin. Putin will now likely be able to breathe a little easier, at least while the United States remains preoccupied with Iran.

Crucially, escalating hostilities in the Middle East may force Washington to limit the supply of weapons to Ukraine. The US, Israel, and the Gulf states are all reportedly struggling to cope with Iranian drones and are already in danger of running low on air defense ammunition.

In particular, the first days of the conflict have reportedly seen unprecedented use of Patriot air defense missiles, which are in limited supply and desperately needed by the Ukrainians to intercept Russian ballistic missiles. If Kyiv finds itself without these missiles in the coming months, Russia will be able to strike critical infrastructure targets across Ukraine with impunity. This could leave large parts of Ukraine unlivable and have a major impact on the country’s ability to maintain the war effort.

None of this is inevitable. If US-Israeli forces succeed in curtailing Iran’s ability to strike back and can conclude their campaign within a matter of weeks, Putin will have little to cheer. However, if the current air offensive escalates into a protracted military conflict, this will likely strengthen Russia economically while weakening Ukraine’s ability to defend itself and prolonging Europe’s largest invasion since World War II.

Peter Dickinson is editor of the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlert service.

Russian army faces comms crisis amid Starlink cut and Kremlin crackdown

Katherine Spencer, Marc Goedemans — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 14:05:45 +0000

The Russian army in Ukraine is facing a growing communications crisis amid recent disruptions to Telegram and Starlink, leaving troops increasingly in the dark and exposing mounting strains inside Russia.

The problems began in early February when Elon Musk imposed restrictions on unauthorized Russian access to Starlink satellites operated by Musk’s SpaceX company that provide high-speed internet. The move came following talks between Musk and recently appointed Ukrainian Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov.

Starlink made headlines in 2022 as a crucial tool for the Ukrainian military during the initial phase of the Russian invasion. More recently, Russia has acquired thousands of Starlink internet terminals and incorporated them as an important element of the invading army’s communications infrastructure.

Efforts to disable unauthorized Russian terminals operating in Ukraine had an immediate impact, with Ukrainian officials reporting a sharp drop in Russian bombardments and drone attacks on front line positions. In one incident on the Zaporizhzhia front, twelve Russian soldiers were reportedly killed by friendly fire after a Starlink terminal failure.

Ukraine appears to have benefited from Russia’s sudden loss of connectivity. In the first five days following the Starlink cutoff, Ukrainian forces reportedly liberated more than two hundred square kilometers of territory, representing an area roughly equivalent to the Russian army’s gains throughout the whole month of December. This trend has continued into early March.

While there is still some debate over the extent to which the areas reclaimed by Ukraine had previously been under Russian control, the advances provided a boost to Ukrainian morale while strengthening the country’s front line position. According to the Institute for the Study of War, this battlefield success owed much to the disruption caused by Russia’s loss of Starlink services.

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With no domestically produced alternative to Starlink technology, Russian units are now scrambling to find alternative ways to communicate. Some have sought to revive access to the Starlink system, with the Ukrainian authorities warning that Russians are now attempting to pressure the families of Ukrainian prisoners to register terminals.

Russia’s own satellite communications system, which is run by Gazprom Space Systems, has been used in a limited capacity during the war. However, it is regarded as far less reliable than Starlink and is not seen as a viable alternative.

The fallout over the loss of Starlink has sparked a scandal in Russia, with many questioning why the army allowed itself to become so dependent on a communications system owned and controlled by an American company. Critics have attacked this development as both a national humiliation and a strategic blunder which left the Russian military dangerously vulnerable.

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Russia’s recent communication woes are not only due to external restrictions. Days after Musk agreed to cut Starlink access, the Kremlin moved to slow down the hugely popular messenger app Telegram, citing the application’s failure to comply with Russian data laws.

This was widely seen as a significant step toward closing one of the few remaining uncensored communications channels in Putin’s Russia. Telegram serves as a leading news platform among Russian audiences with over 93 million users in the country.

The Kremlin decision to restrict Telegram sparked a rare backlash within Russia’s own ranks, with pro-war bloggers particularly vocal in their criticism. The limitations further undermined connectivity between Russian forces fighting in Ukraine, with many soldiers complaining that the loss of Telegram would hamper their ability to share battlefield information and conduct fundraising activities.

Recent measures against Telegram are part of a much larger effort by Putin to exert greater control over all digital communications. The end goal appears to be the establishment of a “sovereign internet” inside Russia sealed off from foreign influence.

Since the start of the full-scale invasion, Russia has banned Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp, and X. Meanwhile, the Kremlin is now actively pushing Russians to use the new state-controlled MAX app, which contains extensive tracking capabilities for surveillance and is now pre-installed on all phones in Russia.

As the war in Ukraine has progressed, Russia has also restricted internet usage through the widespread implementation of mobile internet blackouts. Putin recently signed a law expanding the ability of state bodies to restrict connectivity, essentially handing the security services a kill switch to the internet inside Russia.

Putin’s readiness to target Telegram despite the challenges this creates for the Russian army in Ukraine has led to speculation that he may be prioritizing domestic regime stability over military success. Some have suggested that he could be preparing for a new and politically risky mobilization; others believe the Kremlin fears unrest as the economic situation in Russia worsens.

Whatever the true motives behind recent efforts to throttle Telegram in Russia, the Kremlin’s actions do not project confidence. On the contrary, they hint at a regime seeking to silence critics and prevent any potential grassroots discontent from gaining traction.

Katherine Spencer is a program assistant at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center. Marc Goedemans is a Young Global Professional at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center.

A series of ambitious reforms followed, but it was not until the full-scale invasion of February 2022 that the Ukrainian army truly came of age. Faced with the existential threat of Russia’s invasion, the Ukrainian nation rose up to resist. The ranks of the army swelled to include around one million troops, while the country’s stagnant defense industry was soon taking the first steps toward an unprecedented resurgence that continues to this day.

Over the past four years, much of Ukraine’s defense sector growth has focused on new technologies as Ukrainians have sought ways to counter Russia’s often overwhelming advantages in terms of funding, manpower, and conventional weapons. A thriving domestic ecosystem of defense tech startups has emerged, with a particular emphasis on drone production. Ukrainian developers are able to test new ideas almost immediately in combat conditions, leading to a culture of relentless innovation that has turbo-charged the evolution of drone warfare and reshaped the battlefield.

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Ukraine’s prowess has not gone unnoticed, with numerous European partners seeking to benefit from Ukrainian military know-how. In recent weeks, Germany became the latest NATO country to unveil plans for Ukrainian military instructors to train their troops. Ukrainian trainers are also reportedly sharing their drone warfare insights with multiple other European countries including Poland and Britain.

This represents a striking shift in the relationship between Ukraine and the country’s allies. Throughout the period from 2014 until 2022, Western military trainers routinely traveled to Ukraine to provide instruction, while the defense sector discourse in Kyiv revolved around Ukrainian efforts to adopt and incorporate NATO standards. After four years of defending themselves against the biggest European invasion since World War II, it is now Ukraine that is setting the standards, while NATO commanders try to catch up.

Ukraine’s NATO partners have much to learn, it would seem. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that during a spring 2025 exercise in Estonia involving NATO forces and Ukrainian drone crews, the Ukrainians easily overcame a far larger NATO contingent, sparking considerable alarm and much debate. Meanwhile, many Ukrainian soldiers have noted that the military equipment provided by the country’s Western partners is often now redundant due to the lightning pace of the technological advances taking place on the Ukrainian battlefield.

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Ukraine’s emergence as a major military power is a nightmare scenario for Russia. When Vladimir Putin launched the full-scale invasion four years ago, he identified the “demilitarization” of Ukraine as one of his two key war aims. If demilitarization was the goal, the invasion has failed in spectacular fashion. Far from being demilitarized, today’s Ukraine now boasts the largest and most technologically advanced army in Europe.

Across the continent, there is growing awareness that with the United States seeking to reduce its transatlantic security commitments, Ukraine is destined to play a central role in the future defense of Europe. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine any European security strategy that doesn’t include Ukraine as a core contributor. A country that spent years fruitlessly seeking an invitation to join NATO is now acknowledged as a guarantor of Europe’s security at a time when faith in the effectiveness of the alliance has fallen to record lows.

Zelenskyy’s proposal to send specialists to the Middle East in exchange for a Kremlin ceasefire should probably not be taken literally, but it does reflect the confidence of a man who knows his country is more prepared than most for the realities of twenty-first century warfare. Zelenskyy clearly recognizes that Ukraine’s unrivaled experience is a valuable commodity. This is particularly true in the current context, with Iranian drones saturating existing air defenses and demanding the kind of cost-effective solutions that Ukraine has spent the past four years perfecting.

The Ukrainian leader also well aware that his country’s military strength represents a major trump card as he seeks to negotiate a settlement that will safeguard Ukrainian statehood and secure the country’s European future. The war unleashed by Putin in 2022 was meant to strip Ukraine of its army, its identity, and its sovereignty. Instead, it has transformed Ukraine into one of Europe’s leading military powers and positioned the country at the cutting edge of global defense sector innovation. This new reality will help define Ukraine’s place in the wider world for decades to come, while serving as a formidable obstacle to Russia’s imperial ambitions.

Peter Dickinson is editor of the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlert service.

Missiles made in Ukraine are bringing Putin’s invasion home to Russia

David Kirichenko — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 23:47:55 +0000

Ukraine conducted a landmark airstrike in late February, using domestically produced FP-5 Flamingo cruise missiles to hit a military production facility deep inside Russia. The strike on the Votkinsk complex, which produces a range of ballistic and cruise missiles for the Russian military, marked the first time Kyiv had successfully targeted a strategically significant Russian defense industry site with long-range missiles manufactured in Ukraine.

Surveillance camera footage and satellite images released following the attack appeared to show evidence of a precision hit that caused extensive damage. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy welcomed news of the strike as an indication of Ukraine’s growing capabilities. “We carried out precise strikes with Flamingo missiles at a range of 1,400 kilometers. I believe this is truly a success for our industry,” he commented.

The attack has helped restore the credibility of Ukraine’s Flamingo missile program, which has been subject to much speculation and significant skepticism since first making headlines last summer. The missiles, developed by Ukrainian defense sector startup Fire Point, generated a considerable amount of initial buzz but failed to make any major impact on the battlefield during the second half of 2025. Zelenskyy recently acknowledged that development was delayed by a Russian attack on a production site.

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The emergence of the Flamingo as a credible threat marks a major upgrade in Ukraine’s long-range strike capabilities. With a reported maximum range of around three thousand kilometers and a payload of over one thousand kilograms, the Flamingo is far more powerful than the drones typically used by Ukraine for strikes inside Russia. While long-range drones have been instrumental in puncturing the myth of Russian invulnerability, their relatively small payloads have meant that damage caused in attacks is often easy to repair. As the recent strike in Votkinsk demonstrated, the Flamingo has the potential to be far more destructive.

Much will now depend on Ukraine’s ability to scale up output and produce enough Flamingos to make a difference. While the February attack on the Votkinsk facility was a success, Ukrainian officials have since confirmed that multiple missiles were required in order for one to hit home. It will therefore be crucial to manufacture entire flocks of Flamingos if the Ukrainians wish to make the most of this new weapon.

The Flamingo initiative is one of a number of Ukrainian missile projects currently under development. Ukraine is pouring millions of dollars into a new domestic “missile market” that aims to replicate the success of its rapidly expanding drone industry. Recently appointed Ukrainian Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov has noted that the government is acting like a venture investor by giving large grants to multiple different local companies active in missile production.

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Ukraine’s emphasis on the development domestic missile capabilities makes strategic sense. The front lines of the war have remained largely static for over three years, with Russia unable to secure any decisive breakthroughs despite holding the battlefield initiative throughout this period. Kyiv’s current plan is to reduce any further Russian advances to a bare minimum while inflicting crippling losses. In parallel, Ukraine aims to bring Putin’s invasion home to Russia with an escalating campaign of airstrikes using missiles in combination with drones.

Ukrainian commanders are playing a long game by targeting the Russian oil refineries, energy infrastructure, and military production facilities that support the war effort. This approach is designed to gradually erode Moscow’s ability to generate revenues and fund the invasion. Adding missiles to the mix dramatically increases the challenges facing the Kremlin. As Ukraine’s long-range arsenal expands, Russia’s limited air defenses will be stretched thinner and thinner. The end goal is to transform Russia’s vastness from an asset into a liability.

No single weapon can serve as a silver bullet to stop Russia’s invasion. However, the true significance of Ukraine’s domestic missile program lies in its trajectory. If Kyiv can maintain the current pace of innovation while simultaneously reducing costs and scaling production, this will greatly strengthen the country’s position at the negotiating table.

Putin seems to be well aware of the dangers posed by long-range missiles and has worked hard to prevent Kyiv’s partners from supplying Ukraine with these weapons. When Western leaders mulled lifting restrictions on the use of Western missiles against targets inside Russia in late 2024, Putin warned that this would place NATO “at war” and Russia. More recently, he intervened directly when US President Donald Trump appeared to be on the verge of providing Ukraine with Tomahawk missiles.

There is no denying that Putin has been successful in his efforts to deter Kyiv’s allies, but he cannot stop the Ukrainians from producing their own long-range missiles. If this trend continues, it can help establish a framework for a pragmatic settlement. Many in Ukraine believe a strong arsenal of domestically produced long-range missiles can serve as a meaningful deterrent against future Russian aggression. While Ukrainians have little faith in written security guarantees, they see long-range missile capabilities as something Putin simply cannot ignore.

David Kirichenko is an associate research fellow at the Henry Jackson Society.

Putin’s plan: Make Ukraine unlivable by destroying essential infrastructure

William Dixon, Maksym Beznosiuk — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 22:02:33 +0000

The first signs of spring have been particularly welcome in Ukraine this year as the country begins to emerge from the toughest winter in living memory. Since late 2025, millions of Ukrainians have been plunged into subzero darkness as Russia relentlessly bombed heating and energy networks amid Arctic weather in a bid to freeze the country into submission.

Despite rising temperatures, the Ukrainian civilian population will almost certainly continue to face challenging conditions in the coming months as the strategic emphasis of Russia’s invasion turns increasingly toward destroying Ukraine’s infrastructure and making the country unlivable. This shift reflects changing military realities, with Putin’s invading army unable to achieve any major breakthroughs while suffering catastrophic casualties.

Russia has held the battlefield initiative since late 2023 but has only managed to capture around one percent of additional Ukrainian territory during this period at enormous cost in terms of both manpower and equipment. With drones now dominating the front lines, the potential for conventional large-scale offensive operations has been greatly reduced.

This is forcing Putin and his generals to rethink. The Kremlin dictator remains determined to extinguish Ukrainian independence and force Ukraine permanently back into the Russian orbit. However, he knows that there is little prospect of achieving his ambitious objectives via the bloody battles currently taking place over the rust belt towns and villages of eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region.

In order to break this strategic deadlock, Russia aims to systematically dismantle the conditions that allow Ukraine to function as a state. This means the continued bombardment of energy infrastructure throughout the country; it is also likely to involve expanded attacks on other crucial public utilities, such as municipal water services and sewage treatment. In parallel, Russia will increase strikes on civilian transport with an emphasis on Ukraine’s logistically vital rail network.

The end goal is to deprive Ukraine of the industrial capacity to defend itself and destroy the basic amenities to sustain even a minimum standard of living. Kremlin officials hope this will break Ukrainian morale and enable Putin to dictate the terms of peace.

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Russia has made no formal declarations regarding its intentions, but the strategic shift toward the bombardment of infrastructure over the past year has been unmistakable. In 2025, Russia launched around 55,000 kamikaze drones at targets in Ukraine, representing a fivefold increase from the total one year earlier. Attacks have sought to deprive individual cities of power while severing Ukraine’s national energy network along the Dnipro River.

The impact of this bombing campaign extends far beyond civilian suffering. By cutting off major power generation assets and disrupting connectivity, Russia is pushing the entire grid into a near-permanent state of emergency. This is placing heavy strain on Ukraine’s defense industry, which is often deprived of the electricity it needs to function. With Kyiv now relying on domestic defense sector output to cover around 50 percent of the country’s military needs, this disruption to production poses a grave threat to national security.

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The coming spring season will be crucial. The next few months of warmer weather should be Ukraine’s window to rebuild and recover lost industrial capacity. However, Moscow will be working hard to slam that window shut with waves of attacks made possible by Russia’s surging domestic drone production.

The continued bombardment of infrastructure targets across Ukraine will also help exhaust the country’s limited air defense ammunition supplies. Every interceptor missile used to defend a Ukrainian city or a power substation is one less available to cover front line positions. This will force Kyiv to prioritize between protecting the civilian population or shielding soldiers in the combat zone.

Another key feature of the war during the first half of 2026 will be escalating Russian attacks on Ukraine’s railways. Recent strikes on key routes linking Ukraine to Poland indicate that this campaign is already well underway. Any major disruption to rail services could cause significant economic damage and prevent millions of Ukrainians from traveling. More importantly, it would leave the army under-supplied and logistically isolated during the height of the summer campaigning season when Russia’s offensive capacity is expected to peak.

It is still not too late to counter the Kremlin’s plans, but the clock is ticking. Kyiv’s partners must urgently enhance Ukraine’s air defense capabilities and provide the country with more systems to protect the expanding list of potential infrastructure targets. Efforts should also be made to fortify strategic sites and anticipate future repair requirements by providing likely replacement components in advance.

Russia’s current strategy should come as no surprise. At the very start of his reign, Putin learned in Chechnya that pulverizing infrastructure was a reliable path to victory in a conflict that conventional military force could not resolve. In 2003, the United Nations reportedly called Chechen capital Grozny “the most destroyed city on earth.”

The Kremlin dictator now plans to secure victory in Ukraine by employing similar tactics. If Ukraine’s electricity grid and critical infrastructure are allowed to fragment further, the authorities in Kyiv may find themselves literally powerless to defend their country.

William Dixon is a senior associate fellow at the Royal United Service Institute specializing in cyber and international security issues. Maksym Beznosiuk is a strategy and security analyst whose work focuses on Russia, Ukraine, and international security.

In Kursk, this advantage proved consequential. Over seven months of fighting, Russian fiber-optic drones helped render Ukraine’s presence in the Kursk region increasingly unsustainable. Ukrainian forces ultimately withdrew back across the border in March 2025.

Open source strike videos published by Russian war bloggers indicate that a disproportionate share of Russian fiber-optic drone attacks from August 2024 to September 2025 took place in the Kursk sector, even though the area represented only a small fraction of the overall front lines of the war during that period.

Strikingly, Russian fiber-optic drone attacks contributed to an unprecedented vehicle loss ratio that saw Ukraine lose 25 percent more vehicles than Russia in Kursk. Many of the vehicles damaged or destroyed were supply trucks and personnel carriers, but targets also included high-value equipment such as Abrams tanks and Bradley infantry fighting vehicles, systems that Ukraine did not have in abundant supply. In the words of a Ukrainian medic who fought during the Kursk campaign: “Our logistics just collapsed; fiber-optic drones were monitoring all routes, leaving no way to deliver ammunition or provisions.”

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After Kursk, the trend soon spread. Fiber-optic drones began proliferating across other areas of the front, graduating from a niche capability to a staple weapon. Their use has since expanded to such an extent that vast swaths of Ukrainian farmland and forest are now littered with fiber-optic cables shed by drones. Fiber-optic drones have also featured prominently in a series of major battles, including the most consequential fighting of the past year in the Pokrovsk region of eastern Ukraine.

By mid-2025, the fiber-optic drone story was no longer so one-sided as Ukraine moved to replicate and adapt the capability. Domestic production surged thanks to Ukraine’s agile ecosystem of innovative defense tech startups. Within months, more than 80 Ukrainian-designed fiber-optic systems had been approved for use, while the number of Ukrainian companies involved in producing or integrating this category of drones has rapidly expanded.

Ukrainian developers are now pushing the boundaries of range, with the country’s famous Birds of Magyar drone unit fielding a fiber-optic drone model capable of reaching approximately forty kilometers. What began as a Russian experiment has evolved into a mutual innovation cycle in which Ukraine is now leading in certain aspects.

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The rapid emergence of fiber-optic drones has caught the attention of NATO officers. In 2025, countering fiber-optic drones became the central theme of NATO’s Innovation Challenge, with participants from Ukraine and the United States taking the podium.

There is no silver bullet to neutralize the threat posed by these unjammable drones. Countermeasures range from last-resort shotgun blasts and physical barriers to radar tripwires, acoustic sensors, and experimental AI-assisted detection systems. Some are improvisations; others are technologically sophisticated solutions with longer development timelines. As with much of the war in Ukraine, adaptation is continuous and ephemeral; what works today may fail tomorrow.

The rise of fiber-optic drones has implications that extend far beyond the battlefields of Ukraine. Sudanese militias, Mexican cartels, and even the Chinese People’s Liberation Army are already reportedly incorporating fiber-optic drones into their growing arsenals. As drone warfare proliferates globally, the ability to avoid jamming will continue to attract attention wherever electronic interference is common or expected.

Ukraine’s experience suggests that militaries relying exclusively on radio-controlled drones and electronic warfare risk catastrophic disruption at critical moments. Fiber-optic drones may not replace conventional systems, but they have established themselves as a durable component of the modern battlefield toolkit. What began in Kursk as an experiment with a seemingly retrograde technology has now reshaped drone warfare.

Vlad Sutea is head of intelligence at Pravo Ventures and an open source intelligence expert focused on defense issues.

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Even before the Russian invasion of Ukraine began with the 2014 seizure of Crimea, Putin was well known for questioning Ukraine’s right to exist as an independent state. Recently declassified transcripts show that in 2008, the Russian leader told US President George W. Bush that Ukraine was an “artificial country.” He was also notorious for promoting an unashamedly imperialistic version of Ukrainian history and insisting that Ukrainians were actually Russians (“one people”).

These trends intensified following the start of Russia’s armed intervention, with Putin becoming openly dismissive of Ukraine’s legitimacy and laying claim to Ukrainian territory. In summer 2021, he took the highly unusual step of publishing a 5000-word history essay that read like a declaration of war against Ukrainian statehood. At around the same time, the Kremlin dictator began referring ominously to independent Ukraine as an “anti-Russia.”

Meanwhile, Putin’s formidable propaganda machine was busy demonizing and dehumanizing Ukrainians. Anyone who rejected the official Kremlin vision of Ukraine as an “inalienable” part of Russia’s own history, culture, and spiritual space was depicted as a Nazi and a traitor. This extreme anti-Ukrainian rhetoric set the stage for the crimes committed following the onset of the full-scale invasion in February 2022.

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The horrors of the past four years have gone far beyond the death and destruction associated with conventional armed conflicts. In areas of Ukraine currently under Kremlin control, the Russian occupation authorities have launched a campaign of national destruction and set out to completely erase all traces of Ukrainian culture, history, language, and identity. Untold thousands have been detained in waves of arrests that United Nations investigators have branded as a crime against humanity.

Those who remain are being subjected to ruthless russification encompassing virtually every aspect of daily life. Anyone who refuses to accept Russian citizenship faces the prospect of deportation from their own homes. Military age men are liable to be conscripted into the Russian army and obliged to fight against their fellow Ukrainians.

Perhaps the single most shocking Russian war crime committed in occupied Ukraine has been the mass abduction of children, who are sent to Russia for indoctrination in order to rob them of their Ukrainian heritage and impose an imperial Russian identity. In 2023, the International Criminal Court in The Hague issued an arrest warrant for Putin in connection with Russia’s large-scale child kidnapping campaign.

These crimes have taken place against a backdrop of genocidal language that is now a routine feature of Russia’s political and media discourse. Kremlin officials and propagandists frequently call for the liquidation of Ukraine and indicate that they intend to extinguish Ukrainian national identity completely. Based on the crimes taking place in Ukraine and the intent on display in Moscow, numerous international experts have concluded that the Russian invasion qualifies as an act of genocide.

Ukrainians are acutely aware of Russia’s genocidal objectives. They know what is happening in the occupied regions of their own country, and are all too familiar with the sickening propaganda emanating from the Kremlin. This awareness is a crucial factor fueling the phenomenon of Ukrainian resilience. Far from being comic book heroes, most Ukrainians are ordinary folk who recognize that if they stop resisting, their country will not survive.

Since 2022, Ukraine’s bravery has captured the imagination of the watching world. But as we marvel at the courage of a nation defying seemingly impossible odds, it is crucial to also act accordingly by increasing international support for the Ukrainian war effort. Too often, vocal cheerleading in Western capitals has not translated into robust backing. This only emboldens Russia and prolongs the war.

As Putin’s invasion enters a fifth year, it is now abundantly clear that Russia aims to destroy Ukraine as a state and as a nation. Ukrainian resilience alone will not be enough to prevent this catastrophe. If Kyiv’s partners fall short, the applause of the past four years will ring very hollow indeed.

Peter Dickinson is editor of the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlert service.

Russia’s blitzkrieg attack failed because it was based on a series of false political and military assumptions. In the political realm, Russia’s leaders had long dismissed Ukraine as an artificial state with no unifying national identity. As a result, they seem to have been genuinely shocked by the scale of popular resistance in spring 2022 as millions of Ukrainians rose up to defend their nation.

On the battlefield, the initial stage of the invasion exposed the underwhelming reality behind Russia’s military superpower pretensions. The Russian army may look impressive when marching unopposed across Red Square, but Putin’s commanders struggled to conduct combined arms operations in Ukraine and demonstrated a distinct lack of imagination. Likewise, the Russian air force was unable to establish control of the skies over Ukraine.

Putin’s plans unraveled because he underestimated Ukraine. After years of dismissing Ukrainian statehood as an accident of history and insisting Ukrainians were really Russians (“one people“), he seems to have convinced himself that Ukraine could not possibly demonstrate the national cohesion necessary for a sustained defense. His commanders appear to have been similarly dismissive, and clearly did not think the Ukrainian military was capable of waging a modern war.

These assumptions were largely the product of wishful thinking. They conveniently ignored Ukraine’s significant nation-building progress during the post-Soviet era, and failed to anticipate the impact of the comprehensive military reforms undertaken in the country following the onset of Russian aggression in 2014.

Putin and his Kremlin colleagues were not the only ones to fall into the trap of underestimating Ukraine. On the eve of the full-scale invasion, military and political leaders throughout the West were also queuing up to write off the country.

While individual forecasts differed, there was a broad consensus that Ukraine had no real chance of resisting the might of the Russian military and would be completely overrun by the Kremlin war machine in a matter of days. Instead, Ukraine won the Battle of Kyiv and stunned the watching world.

This remarkable success set the tone for all that has followed. By the end of 2022, Ukraine had liberated around half of the land seized by Russia during the initial stage of the invasion. Since then, Kyiv has managed to decimate the Russian Black Sea Fleet and has forced Putin to withdraw the bulk of his remaining warships from occupied Crimea. Ukraine is also now increasingly bringing Putin’s invasion home to Russia with long-range drone and missile strikes deep inside the Russian Federation.

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Over the past four years, Russia’s invasion has become the biggest European war since World War II, with a series of game-changing technological advances transforming military doctrine. In 2022, the battlefield was dominated by tanks, armor, and artillery, much as it had been since the early twentieth century. Today, the war is being shaped primarily by drones and small groups of infantry.

The proliferation of these technologies has turned what began as a war of movement into a war of attrition, with a kill zone stretching at least ten kilometers from ground zero on both sides of the front line. Robotic systems can now strike enemy targets on land, in the air, and at sea, and are also being deployed to evacuate the wounded, perform logistics roles, and serve as front line sentries.

Ukraine has proved highly adept at this innovative form of warfare. In many cases, Ukrainian military commanders have sought high tech solutions in order to counter Russia’s overwhelming advantages in manpower and conventional firepower.

Kyiv has also viewed defense tech innovations as an economically viable way to compensate for often unpredictable flows of military supplies from the country’s Western partners. This approach has helped to minimize any negative consequences following the reduction in direct US aid to Ukraine since the return of Donald Trump to the White House last year.

As a result, Ukraine now boasts a large and sophisticated domestic drone industry, with developers constantly upgrading existing models based of real-time combat feedback. Ukraine’s remarkable defense tech progress since 2022 has positioned the country at the cutting edge of drone technologies. Partner countries increasingly acknowledge this status and are seeking to benefit from Ukraine’s expertise, with Ukrainian soldiers training their NATO counterparts in drone warfare.

As the Trump presidency leads to dramatic shifts in the international security landscape, Kyiv is more generally in the geopolitical ascendancy. With America looking to downgrade its transatlantic commitments, the Ukrainian army is recognized as a key contributor to Europe’s future security. A country once seen as militarily insignificant is now regarded as indispensable for the defense of the continent.

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Ukraine’s emergence as the largest and most innovative military in Europe has enabled the country to stem the tide of Russia’s invasion and prevent any major breakthroughs. While Moscow has consistently held the battlefield initiative since late 2023, the Russian army has only managed to seize around one percent of additional Ukrainian territory while suffering hundreds of thousands of casualties.

Faced with a bloody quagmire on the front lines, Putin has resorted to exaggerating his army’s advances as he seeks to maintain the myth of inevitable Russian victory and discourage further support for Ukraine. This tactic was brutally exposed in late 2025 when Putin repeatedly claimed to have captured Kupyansk in northeastern Ukraine, only for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to visit the city personally and record a selfie video revealing the Kremlin dictator’s lies.

Despite Ukraine’s strong record of military innovation and battlefield success since 2022, there are indications that both Russia and some of Kyiv’s Western partners continue to underestimate the country. Putin’s recent public statements reaffirming his determination to fight on, together with Russia’s increasingly open rejection of a compromise peace, suggest that Moscow still expects the Ukrainian army to collapse.

Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump has repeatedly stated that Ukraine has “no cards” and should therefore agree to a Kremlin-friendly peace deal. Others in Europe continue to argue that unfavorable military realities make painful Ukrainian concessions unavoidable in order to end the war.

These pessimistic perspectives ignore the lessons of the past four years. The Russian army is clearly not the irresistible force of Kremlin propaganda, while Ukraine is no longer a military minnow and has multiple trump cards in its possession. The most important conclusion of all is that the human dimension still ultimately determines outcomes on the battlefield. It is here that Ukraine truly excels, with an army of skilled, inventive, and highly motivated personnel defending their homes and families.

The grassroots ingenuity of Ukraine’s military and the country’s readiness to embrace defense sector innovation have undoubtedly been instrumental in sustaining the Ukrainian war effort. But while impressive new weapons systems have often grabbed the headlines, it would be shortsighted to attribute Ukraine’s military strength to technological advances alone.

As the war enters a fifth year, the Ukrainian nation as a whole deserves the respect of the world for defying Russia so emphatically and transforming their country into a formidable military power. Nobody knows this better than Putin, who is paying a very high price for making the mistake of underestimating Ukraine.

Mykola Bielieskov is a research fellow at the National Institute for Strategic Studies and a senior analyst at Ukrainian NGO “Come Back Alive.” The views expressed in this article are the author’s personal position and do not reflect the opinions or views of NISS or Come Back Alive.

The battlefield itself has also changed, with the clearly defined front lines of the early years giving way to a shifting grey zone dominated by ubiquitous drone coverage. As a result, major offensives featuring armored units and massed infantry are now extremely difficult to conduct. Russia has refined its tactics in response to these changes, shifting away from a reliance on human wave assaults toward the use of small infiltration groups that probe Ukrainian defenses while seeking to establish footholds.

With Putin’s commanders under intense political pressure to capture more ground, the impetus is on Russia to continue offensive operations. As the defending force, this places Ukraine in a strong position. According to Ukrainian officials, Russian casualties have recently reached record highs of more than 30,000 per month. For the first time in the war, this means Russia’s losses are now higher than monthly recruitment levels.

The Russian army in Ukraine has recently experienced disruptions to Starlink connectivity, creating further challenges for the coordination of offensive operations. Without stable links between front line units and commanders, Russian forces are likely to become even more vulnerable and easier to eliminate. This has already led to a number of successful Ukrainian counteroffensives and could create the conditions for additional increases in Russian casualty rates.

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Since the onset of the invasion, the Kremlin has been careful to reduce the risk of any backlash over heavy losses in Ukraine. Recruitment has concentrated on Russia’s ethnic minorities and the country’s poorest communities, with prisoners offered amnesties in exchange for military service. For the past few years, the emphasis has increasingly turned to attracting volunteers via large enlistment bonuses and generous salaries. Nevertheless, Russia’s ability to absorb casualties is not limitless. The longer the war drags on, the harder it will be for Moscow to maintain the current tempo, especially if Russian casualties continue to climb.

As part of efforts to maximize Russian losses, Ukraine has established a digital infrastructure to turn drone warfare into a systematic campaign of attrition. Through mechanisms such as the ePoints system, all Russian personnel and equipment losses are logged, verified, and analyzed. Ukrainian commanders can identify which units are most effective and adjust tactics as needed.

Ukraine’s strategy is producing striking results. In December 2025 alone, Ukrainian drone units claim to have hit over one hundred thousand Russian targets, a 31 percent increase compared to the previous month. Russian war blogger Dmitry Rogozin is one of many on the opposing side to acknowledge the effectiveness of this approach, noting that Ukraine is “building a model for the conflict as a long-term project designed to exhaust and exert systematic pressure.”

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The Russian army in Ukraine is already beginning to show signs of strain. According to UK Defense Secretary John Healey, Moscow is becoming increasingly dependent on foreign recruits as Russian commanders lose men faster than they can replace them. “Putin likes to give the impression that they’re making relentless and inevitable progress,” Healey noted recently. “But he’s weaker than he’s been and more reliant than he’s been on foreign fighters.”

Russia’s efforts to attract foreign mercenaries are a clear indication of the country’s mounting manpower challenges. Putin remains deeply reluctant to order a new mobilization due to concerns that this could destabilize the home front and spark a repeat of the exodus of fighting age Russian men that took place in 2022. However, with the Russian economy struggling, paying for new volunteers may become more challenging and lead to budget cuts elsewhere that could also fuel discontent.

If Russian losses continue to outpace recruitment, Putin may find himself with no good options. He could be forced to choose between mobilization, diverting state funds to sustain recruitment incentives, or scaling back offensive operations. All of these choices have the potential to fuel domestic instability. In recent days, there has been widespread speculation that Russian efforts to block the Telegram app may reflect growing Kremlin concerns over the possibility of unrest.

For much of the war, the Russian public has experienced the invasion of Ukraine as a distant conflict. Mounting casualties, particularly if paired with growing economic hardship, may gradually erode this sense of detachment and increase the pressure on the Kremlin. As the war enters a fifth year, Ukraine is hoping escalating Russian losses can finally force Putin to rethink his invasion and seek a meaningful settlement.

David Kirichenko is an associate research fellow at the Henry Jackson Society.

As Russian battlefield losses mount, Putin is turning to Africa for soldiers

Katherine Spencer — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 19:38:58 +0000

At the end of January, CSIS estimated that Russia has suffered approximately 1.2 million casualties during the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. If accurate, this figure would represent the greatest loss incurred by a major power in any war since World War II. The exact number of Russian soldiers killed and wounded in Ukraine remains hotly debated, but nobody would seriously question the fact that the invasion has led to catastrophic losses.

As casualties continue to mount, Russia is seeking to recruit men from abroad to replenish the ranks of its depleted army. The BBC Russian service recently estimated that around 20,000 men from foreign countries have signed up to join Russia’s invasion, with many recruited from former Soviet republics as well as low-income nations in the Middle East, South Asia, and Africa.

Foreign recruitment is increasingly popular with the Putin regime as it allows Moscow to avoid another round of politically risky mobilization, which could easily destabilize Russian society. By paying foreigners to fight in Ukraine, the Kremlin is able to shift the war’s bloodiest burden away from Russian households and minimize any potential backlash on the home front.

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Russia’s military recruitment efforts are global in scope and span many countries. The issue of African recruitment has made headlines in recent weeks following the publication of footage showing the apparent mistreatment of African men in the Russian army. A number of videos surfaced on social media in January that appeared to depict the verbal and physical abuse of Africans by their Russian colleagues, who referred to them as “disposables” and mocked one recruit who was seen with an anti-tank mine strapped to his chest.

Russian military recruiters have targeted Africa with particular intensity. More than 1,400 African nationals have been identified as serving in the Russian army, with one in five reported dead. These confirmed figures may only represent a small portion of the overall total. The Kremlin is accused of sending African men to fight in Ukraine after first attracting them to Russia with false promises of ordinary jobs or non-combat military roles. Many survivors have complained of finding themselves on the front lines of the invasion with little to no military training.

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The growing number of African men serving in the Russian military is sparking international alarm, with a number of African nations voicing their concerns. A Kenyan intelligence report released on February 19 claimed that at least 1,000 Kenyans have been recruited to fight for Russia through clandestine recruitment networks. Officials in Nairobi are now moving to shut down an estimated 600 recruiting agencies, and are pushing Moscow to ban the recruitment of Kenyan soldiers.

South African government officials have entered into talks with their Russian counterparts on the issue and are hoping to repatriate 17 of their nationals. These men were reportedly recruited for combat roles in Russia via a scheme involving the daughter of former South African president Jacob Zuma. Nigeria’s foreign ministry has also warned citizens about a rise in illegal recruitment schemes sending fighters to Russia, following reports that two Nigerians were killed in Ukraine.

Meanwhile, women from South Africa and other parts of the continent are reportedly being targeted and tricked into working in Russian drone factories. Most are recruited via social media adverts for jobs in the catering and hospitality industries. The South African authorities have warned citizens about online campaigns promising jobs and study in Russia. As awareness increases across Africa, media coverage is highlighting the dangers facing Africans who seek lucrative employment in Russia.

The Kremlin will likely attempt to enlist more Africans in 2026 as Russia struggles to find sufficient numbers of domestic recruits amid mounting battlefield losses. Around 422,000 Russian nationals signed contracts with the military last year, a 6 percent drop from 2024, according to recent reports. In addition to availability, foreign troops are also cheaper to recruit than Russian citizens, who in many cases now expect unprecedented enlistment bonuses as well as other benefits including salaries far in excess of national averages.

Russia’s growing reliance on African soldiers is a powerful symbol of an invasion that has gone horribly wrong for Vladimir Putin. The Kremlin dictator expected to decapitate and subjugate Ukraine in a matter of days. Instead, as the invasion enters a fifth year, Putin finds himself forced to recruit troops from around the world in order to avoid destabilizing Russia and threatening the survival of his own regime.

Katherine Spencer is a program assistant at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center.

To compete with China in space, the US must form more equitable commercial partnerships with African nations

Maureen Farrell and Matt Petit — Wed, 18 Feb 2026 16:35:16 +0000

Space is a critical domain for US national security, and African nations will play a pivotal role in defining space competition between the United States and China. The United States is sorely underinvested in this area; China is not. But the United States can secure its interests in space through creative, modest investment across multiple sectors of African economies.

US space access and cooperation in Africa was once comprehensive. Now it’s virtually nil. From 1980 to 1991, Somaliland was an alternate landing site for the NASA space shuttle. NASA and the US Air Force maintained telemetry, tracking, Earth station, and data networks across Eritrea, Kenya, Nigeria, Morocco, Gabon, and South Africa through the 1990s. However, through a series of state-backed investments and following a concerted, yearslong strategy, Beijing is gaining control over the entire value chain for critical minerals that are essential for space technologies. This places China in the driver’s seat on prices, timelines, and deployments of its space systems—and US and allied space systems—in the coming years. China’s space-economic diplomacy in Africa is doubly threatening to the United States: It provides China with sharper and nearer offensive capabilities, and it gives Beijing unmatched leverage over US and allied advanced defense and space supply chains.

There is still hope for the United States to regain some of its strategic advantage in space, but it will require rewriting the rules of the game in ways that benefit African states. The US commercial space sector might offer a hidden advantage that could start to reroute critical minerals supply chains from China’s dominance. US companies—with government financing—could start to restructure critical technology supply chains in Africa by growing talent, building equity, and providing end-use of that technology. This would help generate significant political buy-in and start to slowly tilt the space diplomacy playing field back in Washington’s favor.

China’s Africa space strategy is mature and comprehensive. Since China built a telemetry, tracking and command (TT&C) station in Swakopmund, Namibia in 2001, Beijing has been expanding its space diplomacy footprint across the continent. It now accesses a ground station in Windhoek, Namibia’s capital, as well as another TT&C station in Malindi, Kenya. Agreements with Nigeria, Ethiopia, and South Africa provide China up/down-link capability for space data. Algeria, Ethiopia, Egypt, and Sudan use Chinese satellite buses and launch to reach orbit. In 2024, Senegal joined Egypt and South Africa in cooperating on China’s International Lunar Research Station. China is also eying a spaceport in Djibouti just a few miles from a People’s Liberation Army Navy base—and Camp Lemonnier, a US naval expeditionary base.

These sites enable global tracking and safe operation of China’s satellites and manned space operations. But China’s view into space from Africa’s soil is just a small part of the problem. Africa is not only crucial to China’s civilian space program and diplomacy, it’s also part of a global space/military puzzle. China’s space investments in Africa are integral to its advanced missile program and deterrence against the United States. Its space ventures in Africa, combined with infrastructure in South America and Beijing’s efforts in the Arctic, China has almost global coverage on approaches to and from the United States.

China’s dual-use access in Africa restricts US space and defense supply chains

China has been systematically acquiring and building assets that expand its global military readiness and economic advantage. Africa is at the center of this dual-use strategy. Ports, bases, and naval visits in places such as Nigeria, Gabon, and Angola provide China both maritime domain awareness and access to minerals critical to its domes tech and defense industries. Coupled with billion-dollar Chinese investments in rail corridors, roads, and mines, China controls a massive proportion of the upstream critical minerals supply chain.

China has also cornered the downstream market. China’s near-90 percent control of global rare-earth processing allows it to score broader economic wins and advance its domestic technological sovereignty goals. The United States relies on China for 70 percent of its rare earths, according to a 2024 US Geological Survey report. China’s export controls over germanium and gallium refining caused prices for the minerals—vital for space solar cells and advanced radars—to more than double in 2024. The samarium cobalt and neodymium magnets for which China currently dominates production are vital to advanced air systems such as the F-35, as well as ship propulsion and air/space actuators.

According to China’s 11th Five-Year Plan for High-Tech Industrialization, control over these supply chains is both an explicit goal and a means toward pursuing technological sovereignty through indigenous innovation. China uses these supply chains to close gaps for its own advanced systems. Hypersonic missiles such as the Dong Feng 17, advanced fighters such as the J-20, cutting-edge aircraft carriers, and BeiDou satellites rely on minerals sourced primarily from Africa, such as bauxite, tantalum, and niobium.

Put another way, China can mine raw minerals in Zambia, transport them on Chinese trucks and rail, load them in Chinese berths onto Chinese state-owned vessels, and ship them to Chinese ports. On the mainland, China refines these minerals. US companies then source these materials or components made by Chinese technology companies, providing China potential backdoor access on top of market controls.

China benefits from and perpetuates this system, including by engaging with corrupt officials who are willing to reward Chinese businesses with access in exchange for bribes. While this is not a new phenomenon, it poses greater national security risks when tied to mineral access. China has also taken advantage of lacking US engagement in the Sahel to expand its commercial relationships. These include not only security assistance and cooperation, but also data access agreements in places such as Gabon. Although Guinea has canceled a series of Chinese mining concessions due to contract compliance challenges, Guinea alone accounts for around 70 percent of China’s bauxite imports, a mineral needed to produce alumina essential for advanced propulsion systems. Guinea’s stability is therefore critical to China’s supply chains.

Space matters to African countries

African states are acting in their own self-interest in partnering with willing space powers, including China. With rapidly growing populations, African countries have immense internet, telecommunications, and data needs. However, with limited budgets and at times large, ungoverned territories, many African governments struggle to meet these needs. Overhead satellite capabilities could provide African states with the overwatch they need and their mineral wealth provides the means to pay for them.

As Space in Africa founder Temidayo Oniosun wrote in September 2025, African states have viable sovereign uses of their own for space data. In addition to tracking security threats afflicting states such as Burkina Faso, Mozambique, and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), many other states seek to use space assets to tackle issues such as deforestation, water management and hydrology, climate forecasting, migration, and poaching.

The US commercial space sector needs Africa and can offer a new kind of diplomacy

Experts have long proposed expanding space cooperation with African countries as a win-win for the United States, and the continent’s rapidly growing, tech-savvy population has a burgeoning interest in working with space-based capabilities. A long-standing bipartisan consensus holds that the United States needs more options for sourcing critical minerals for the national industrial base. Yet, there are fewer diplomatic and development tools available after last year’s cuts in the US federal service, tools that once positioned the United States to support Africa’s space economy ambitions.

China still trails the United States in commercial space launch and coverage. Despite feverish investment by state-backed venture capital, Chinese companies such as Galactic Energy and LandSpace are still getting off the ground. While Galactic’s reusable Pallas rocket has not yet successfully launched, SpaceX has completed more than five hundred reusable rocket missions, and Blue Origin has recorded dozens of reusable launches.

The US commercial satellite sector is also dominant, often paired with commercial lift providers. Companies such as Maxar, Umbra, Hawkeye360, CapellaSpace, and PlanetLabs are leading the way in advanced overhead imagery. US companies are also exploring in-space manufacturing, autonomy, and communications, as well as expanding opportunities for the cislunar economy—commercial activities between Earth and the moon. SpaceX has already expanded access to its StarLink network across two dozen African states. Chinese commercial satellite companies still rely on China’s state research apparatus, funding, and launch to reach orbit, though that gap is closing.

A playbook for US government-backed commercial space diplomacy in Africa

US space companies should structure deals with mineral extractors and value chain providers directly with African states to address both US and African needs. US and allied consortia can negotiate provisions with African governments and companies that guarantee access to and/or use of finished technology that African minerals produce. They can also create equity arrangements, such as education and training for African students, a pipeline to advanced technological employment, and agreements for regionally based refining and beneficiation. Such arrangements would give African nations greater control of and access to the benefits of their resources, while US companies would gain an advantage over Chinese competitors to expand markets with secure supply chains.

While it’s unrealistic to expect a strategic realignment of US priorities toward Africa, slowly increasing commercial engagement would give both US and African policymakers more options. Both of the past two US administrations have expanded legislative, diplomatic, and economic frameworks to provide access to friendly overseas mineral sources, while investing in longer-term US mining and refining operations. The Trump administration is working on implementing policies that would help US companies enter African markets and enter into agreements that play to Washington’s strengths. The administration’s willingness to back Department of Defense, Department of Energy, or other agency offtake agreements and leverage the Defense Production Act in support of critical minerals supply chains are key tools that space companies could wield to enhance their access.

The US government can further ease commercial space entry into Africa with a few targeted actions, all achievable in the current government budget climate. The United States should:

Expand International Development Finance Corporation and Export-Import Bank guarantees to include projects that focus on African nations’ beneficiation, transparency, and data sovereignty needs.
Conduct targeted engagement via the African Space Agency, US Department of State, and an expanded pool of US Foreign Commercial Service representatives in countries such as the DRC, Angola, Djibouti, Kenya, and Namibia that demonstrate commitment to expanding their space capacity.
Refocus US State Department training and exchange programs toward space cooperation in Africa, and build on the best practices of programs previously funded by the US Agency for International Development.
Transform defunct State Department environmental, science, technology, and health positions into science and technology roles that include a focus on space.
Expand the role of the Office of Space Commerce at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in diplomatic exchanges to work alongside an empowered Foreign Commercial Service.
Leverage the Pentagon’s Office of Strategic Capital to invest more in US and partner ground and space infrastructure to ease access to these markets.
Sponsor exchanges that build local space talent via US Africa Command’s Space Force Component, SPACEFOREUR-AF, in key partner states to cultivate space expertise in military channels that can help support the commercial space industry and vice versa.

US space companies also don’t need to wait. To secure greater access to essential upstream minerals, they can also help finance in-kind agreements with African countries—either ahead of or instead of US financing. Space companies can also serve as commercial diplomats, both increasing access and expanding their talent pool among Africa’s rising scientific community.

China is already running this playbook. On November 20, China signed over its use of the ground monitoring station outside Windhoek to the Namibian government. African media heralded the transfer as a milestone in China-Africa space cooperation; Namibian officials praised the deal, noting that it would enable the country to better track agricultural growth, climate impacts, and population movements.

China’s dominance in space and over critical mineral supply chains in Africa is a direct threat to US national defense and commercial interests globally. There’s still time to secure US leadership in space with the help of African partners. But not much.

Maureen Farrell is a nonresident senior fellow with the GeoStrategy Initiative at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security. She is also vice president for Valar, a US company based in Nairobi, where she drives global partner engagement on security, counterterrorism, critical minerals, and a range of related issues.

Matt Petit is a mission lead for economic security at Vannevar. He joined the company after seventeen years as a foreign service officer with the US Department of State, working primarily on Africa and strategic competition issues.

Farell and Petit served together as directors for Africa at the US National Security Council.

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Negotiating with Putin’s Russia

Donald N. Jensen, Iuliia Osmolovska — Wed, 18 Feb 2026 14:00:00 +0000

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 challenged much of the common Western understanding of Russia. How can the world better understand Russia? What are the steps forward for Western policy? The Eurasia Center’s “Russia Tomorrow” series seeks to reevaluate conceptions of Russia today and better prepare for its future tomorrow.

Toplines

Russia has a markedly different approach to diplomatic negotiations than the United States. For Russian leaders, negotiations are a form of warfare by nonmilitary means, a competition that they seek to win with few or no compromises.
The Kremlin’s views of negotiations are also powerfully shaped today by the elites’ attitudes toward a rules-based international system, which they view as inimical to Russian interests and in need of a radical overhaul. They see the United States as being in a prolonged period of decline, a view they believe provides opportunities for Russia to exploit.
The United States can significantly empower itself in negotiations by better understanding the sources and range of Moscow’s behaviors at the table and adapting effective counter-measures. It can temper the impact of the Kremlin’s tactics and advance progress toward lasting agreements by selecting and shaping the negotiating environment. Success should not be defined by seeking good relations or a good deal as ends in themselves, but by negotiating in a way that advances US foreign policy goals.

Introduction
Clash of strategic cultures
Russian behavior at the negotiating table: Theory and practice
The current state of play in Ukraine
Lessons learned and reconsidered

A diplomat’s words must contradict his deeds—otherwise what sort of a diplomat is he? Words are one thing, deeds something entirely different. Fine words are a mask to cover shady deeds. A sincere diplomat is like dry water or wooden iron.

—Josef Stalin, “Elections in Petersburg”

The Alaska summit, held in Anchorage on August 15, 2025, brought together Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin for a widely publicized but inconclusive meeting. This was Putin’s first visit to the United States since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The Russian delegation, under Putin’s leadership, used the meeting to define a new relationship between the United States and Russia and showcase Russia’s place in the world.

Putin had specific objectives in Alaska.

He aimed to position Russia as a global power on par with the United States, excluding Ukraine and other European allies.
He intended to use the summit to strengthen Russia’s control over parts of Ukraine, preventing it from hosting Western troops and keeping it locked outside of NATO.
He hoped to leverage the summit to persuade the United States to postpone or defer the implementation of additional sanctions.
He intended to leverage the summit to underscore Russia’s historical and cultural connections to the United States and Ukraine, portraying the conflict as “a family tragedy” rather than an invasion, and to compel Kyiv to capitulate by exhausting its forces.
He sought to effectively engage Trump on a personal level, presenting the talks as a starting point, giving the impression of progress while avoiding any concrete agreements that would require Russian concessions. This narrative could potentially help him exploit potential divisions between the United States and European leaders, who are more aligned with Ukraine’s position.

Russia’s negotiating tactics in pursuit of the objectives were a master class of strategic positioning.

Putin engaged in flattery and appealed to Trump’s stated desire to make deals. By presenting economic and strategic opportunities, such as joint Arctic development, Putin created a dynamic in which Trump focused on a potential deal rather than a clear resolution to the conflict in Ukraine. Putin’s personal approach appealed to his counterpart’s focus on overarching gains, encouraging him to overlook the importance of intermediate details. This psychological tactic appeared intended to give Russia a negotiating advantage.
Putin forwarded maximalist demands—such as Ukraine’s neutrality, recognition of seized territory, and handing over Ukrainian land under Russia’s control—framing them as a basis for peace. He probably expected some of his proposals, like resuming direct flights and major economic deals, to be rejected by the United States. But these proposals helped present a narrative in Russian media that Moscow was seeking normalization of relations.

This approach also had some setbacks. Putin’s extended “history rant” at the summit—offered as a justification for the war and as a dismissal of cease-fire proposals—nearly brought him to failure in talks. According to the Financial Times, Putin launched into a long discourse on Russia’s medieval past, invoking figures such as Rurik of Novgorod, Yaroslav the Wise, and Cossack leader Bohdan Khmelnytsky—names he frequently uses to argue that Russia and Ukraine constitute a single historical nation and that Ukraine should not exist as a sovereign state. Sources familiar with the exchange told the newspaper that Trump, surprised by the lecture, raised his voice several times and at one point even threatened to leave the meeting. It is also not clear why the long agenda for the day was cut short and the Russian delegation left before the planned lunch.

Overall, Putin’s approach to the meeting once again demonstrated a broader tactic of undermining the US-led global order, asserting Russia’s historically driven special place in the international system, and challenging institutions like NATO. By bringing issues affecting European security to negotiate bilaterally with the United States, he implicitly wanted to restore the “big powers’ deals” approach and de-emphasize the role of other important stakeholders, including Europe and multilateral bodies such as NATO.

While Trump publicly described the summit as productive, it resulted in little tangible progress. Despite Trump’s stated goal of securing a cease-fire in Ukraine, one was not reached. Putin refused to back down from Russia’s core demands. As a former KGB officer, Putin views diplomacy as a battle of narratives: Russian state media portrayed the summit as a win for Moscow, showing Putin meeting the US leader as an equal. They hailed the summit as a demonstration that Russia was not isolated. Indeed, simply having a summit with the US president made it a success. It boosted Putin’s international image and pretended to demonstrate Russia’s continued relevance as a global power.

Russia’s negotiating behavior in Alaska was true to Moscow’s long-standing playbook. It demonstrated Moscow’s view that diplomacy is a means to gain an advantage in war (broadly construed), rather than to achieve peace, maintain stability, or compromise with other interested parties.” Indeed, Putin’s activity at the summit aligns with the Kremlin’s broader history of using such meetings not as forums for compromise but as tactical opportunities to advance long-term strategic goals.

This report will examine that negotiating playbook, and not just as it applies to Ukraine. First, it will analyze Russian strategic culture, which provides the broad context for Russian diplomatic activity. Second, it will examine how that culture is reflected at the negotiating table with its adversaries, particularly the United States. Finally, the report will suggest effective countermeasures for the United States to significantly empower itself in negotiations with Russia. It will conclude that success should not be defined by seeking good relations or a good deal as ends in themselves, but by negotiating in a way that advances US foreign policy objectives. Above all, the United States must project firmness and strength in any dealings with the Kremlin.

Clash of strategic culture

The Russian state treats negotiations as political instruments for advancing the country’s strategic objectives. Today, these objectives include increasing Russian power over the countries of the former Soviet empire, dislodging US and Western influence in other strategic regions, enhancing Russia’s influence at a global level, and preserving the Russian regime.

In pursuing these objectives, Russia views diplomacy very differently than the West. Since at least the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia, Western diplomacy—though likely not an approach favored by Trump—has been grounded in three basic concepts: that all states are sovereign and thus nominally equal; that the purpose of negotiations is to reduce the likelihood of conflict by reconciling conflicting interests; and that diplomacy and espionage are separate domains so deception is not part of the negotiator’s tool kit.

Russia shares none of these premises. In the Russian diplomatic tradition, sovereignty is a relative and contingent factor dependent upon size and power (i.e., it is only applicable to the very largest states), as well as geographic and historical factors. It does not apply to former colonial possessions close to the traditional Russian imperial heartland. This long-standing outlook derives from the Russian state’s historical experience of seeking domination over weaker neighbors. Recent articulations of this outlook include Putin’s seven-thousand-word editorial essay on Ukraine in July 2021, his address to the Russian people in June 2022, and his interview with US commentator Tucker Carlson in February 2024. Russian international relations theory and commentary talk about great powers such as Russia as the only truly sovereign states.

Russia’s view of negotiations also stems from its distinctive view of war and peace. The West sees war and peace in black and white—as diametrically opposed ideas. In Russia, war and peace exist on the same continuum. Negotiations are a means to provide the Kremlin with an edge in a competitive process that can, theoretically, lead to conflict.

Russian diplomacy today continues these premises from the imperial era. Russian elites have a long-standing consensus about the state’s legitimate and necessary foreign policy goals—a strategic culture that “is a product of a country’s geography, history, and the shared narratives that shape the prevailing worldview of its national security establishment, which in turn guides its responses to challenges and threats.” Moscow’s diplomatic behavior and policy are thus influenced by a set of shared, deeply ingrained “norms, values, beliefs, assumptions, and narratives” about Russian national security in the broadest sense, both internally and externally.

Narratives under the imperial, Soviet, or current regime have focused on encirclement by external enemies, as well as Russia’s exceptionalism and special mission in the world. The operational codes of different Russian decision-makers over the decades—their personal beliefs and appetite for risk or enrichment—as well as the external environment and chance have also determined how different regimes approached specific policy goals within this general strategic framework. Boris Yeltsin and Putin, for example, both sought to make Russia a great power and to dominate Ukraine, but differed markedly in how to do so.

The impact of strategic culture has ebbed and flowed. After Mikhail Gorbachev, its influence waned, and Soviet foreign policy and negotiating behavior momentarily resembled the win-win approach long practiced by the West. This led to Russia and the United States achieving important arms control agreements and cooperation in other areas. Between 1992–1996 under Yeltsin, a majority of the public and elites accepted ideas that were firmly at odds with traditional Russian strategic culture: that Russia must become a “normal” law-abiding democracy with a market economy; integrate with the West; and maintain a robust Russian military—not for external threats but to prevent internal collapse.

In the final years of Yeltsin’s presidency (i.e., 1996–1999), more Russian elites and the public started to re-embrace traditional strategic culture. Perceptions of threats from the West and resentment about Russia’s lost status grew, partly because of NATO enlargement and intervention in Serbia. Russians blamed Western leaders, advisers, and greedy businesses for the “bandit privatization and capitalism” in the 1990s that left the majority of Russians impoverished and engendered a despised class of wealthy, politically influential oligarchs. The Kremlin’s view of negotiations has always reflected the overall state of its relations with the West—so new agreements became harder to achieve while those already in place began to unravel.

After Putin became president in 2000, some cooperation with the West continued. However, Russian foreign policy continued reverting to its more traditional anti-Western orientation, blurring imperial tsarist and Soviet ideas about Russia’s exceptionalism and invented threats to the state, alongside rising post-Cold War grievances and the increasing militarization of society. The revival of the special services drove this approach. The Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), Federal Security Service (FSB), and Federal Protective Service (FSO)—which reported to Putin directly —and the Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces (the military intelligence organization still widely known by its outdated acronym GRU) increasingly merged power, nationalism, imperialism, secrecy, and business, and did so with the president’s encouragement. These siloviki (men of force) descended from the old Soviet KGB; after all, Putin and his cronies were their products.

With the idealistic goal of building a democracy discredited in the eyes of many Russians, the intelligence services filled an ideological and institutional void by capturing the mantle of legitimacy once held by the discredited Soviet Communist Party. By the mid-2000s, these services were no longer the “sword and shield of the revolution,” in Lubyanka’s famous motto, but the regime’s institutional core—even as competition over power and money persisted. Unlike in the Soviet era, they were unencumbered by bureaucratic oversight because they ultimately reported directly to Putin. His return to the presidency in 2012 strengthened siloviki control over politics, money, the security services, and access to the Kremlin. As domestic repression increased and relations with the West worsened, Russia evolved further into an intelligence state, with Putin acting as the dominant Chekist at its center. He led a small circle of security service veterans who saw themselves as defending Russian civilization, a worldview symbolized by reports that he once kept a statue of secret police founder Felix Dzerzhinsky on his desk.

For Putin and his cronies, the Cold War never ended. Many public statements, such as those by Security Council Secretary Nikolay Patrushev and SVR chief Sergey Naryshkin, suggest that top leaders agree that the United States and Europe are Russia’s main enemies; the war in Ukraine is part of a broader global struggle against the West; the global system is irreversibly changing to the disadvantage of the United States; the United Nations, where Russia has veto power, should play a decisive role in helping great powers manage interstate relations; and Russia is a Eurasian civilization distinctly different from and threatened by the West.

These sentiments have been fertilized with the living Russian concept of psychohistorical warfare, which claims the West has been attempting to destroy Russia’s statehood, national and historical identity, and culture. Notoriously, modern Russian philosophers argue that this psychohistorical warfare of the West against Russia dates back to the sixteenth century and, since the 1820s, has been deliberately focused on ethnohistorical, national, cultural, and state and political components.

These attitudes reflect Russia’s traditional strategic culture. So when the Kremlin now engages in negotiations, it is less to compromise and mitigate conflict and more to invert Carl von Clausewitz’s axiom, to wage war by other means. Moscow engages in negotiations to lock in favorable battlefield outcomes or “stabilize gains;” leverage issues on which Russia has a vital national security interest to pursue wider objectives; offload burdens following a strategic reverse; sideline the United States and interpose Russia as a “peacemaker;” distract opponents while advancing militarily; constrain adversaries while keeping their options open; and advance Russia’s status in multilateral organizations as a great power.

This approach has also backfired. Russia’s cynicism and sharp elbows have undermined international goodwill, and its repeated violation of international agreements has caused concern about the Kremlin’s good faith and durability in negotiations. The blind spots in the Kremlin’s worldview have also caused Russian leaders to overestimate the effects of money, bluster, and overreach—and to pass up chances for better results through good-faith talks.

Still, the Kremlin’s anti-Western worldview does not drive every Russian position—and these views do not prevail among all elites or the entire government apparatus. The Kremlin can be highly pragmatic, transactional, and situational. Assessing which form of Russian behavior appears at the negotiating table and why is critical to shaping future bargaining outcomes in the West’s favor.

Russian behavior at the negotiating table: Theory and practice

How Russia acts at the negotiating table is a product of strategic culture, as well as a policy process involving the presidential administration, the foreign ministry, other government entities, the military, and think tank experts, among other participants. Putin makes the most critical decisions, especially on national security issues and relations with the United States, often relying on an ad hoc network of advisers rather than formal structures.

Russian delegations are well-prepared, but delegation members have been called “rats in a box” by opposing diplomats, as they often have little discretion to interpret instructions from Moscow. One of the most public of them, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov (a major public player on US-Russian affairs), needed to answer “unofficially but completely” to the FSB and SVR, according to US Ambassador John J. Sullivan, who met him often. These two agencies are known for having a major say in negotiations; however, intelligence officers are often given a junior rank as a cover to watch developments and their own delegations. For example, in 2022 those agencies were responsible for undermining an agreement on diplomatic visa reciprocity.

Because the Kremlin believes it is engaged in multidimensional warfare with the West, its conduct admits a broader array of tactics far beyond compromise and win-win outcomes. These tactics are a combination of tsarist, Soviet, and more recent diplomacy and intelligence practices that keep the West off balance: “In preserving the power of the state in the person of Putin, Russian leadership . . . shamelessly advances any position or argument, no matter how counterfactual or ahistorical, that is useful to support Putin (the state) at any given moment.”

At the negotiating table: The Kremlin school

The rules governing how Russian diplomats behave at the table are codified and taught to generations of diplomats. Some of these lessons are contained as sequential steps in Igor Ryzov’s 2016 book, The Kremlin School of Negotiation.

Step 1: Stay quiet and listen attentively to what your opponent says. If one person is silent during a conversation, the other tends to fill the silence and say more than intended. It also allows the Russian interlocutor to focus on finding flaws in the opponent’s logic.
Step 2: Ask questions. Russian negotiators ask questions quickly, in an interrogatory manner, to establish control. Questions point out contradictions to make an opponent look silly and lose control of the agenda.
Step 3: Diminish your opponent. Being passive-aggressive, hostile, direct, and almost rude—or alternatively polite and soft-spoken—can undermine an opponent using fundamental human emotional triggers from positive to harmful extremes.
Step 4: Make magnanimous gestures. The Russian negotiator can then create a sense of relief by giving the opponent an honorable path to escape the unpleasantness by showing his magnanimity and considering a second chance for an opponent to prove he is worth dealing with.
Step 5: Put the opponent in the realm of uncertainty. While the preceding four steps are apparently enough to ensure psychological superiority in more than 90 percent of negotiations, finishing a conversation with constructive or destructive ambiguity is an efficient tool to hook an opponent in conflicting thoughts. Issuing a veiled threat of unspecified dire consequences, or hinting at a potentially good outcome conditioned on certain actions required to prove the opponent’s reliability, is a common practice within this model and is aimed at keeping control and leadership.

Similar themes, reinforcing the major postulates of the Kremlin School, are included in the curriculum at the Foreign Ministry’s Diplomatic Academy and at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations, where young diplomats are trained how to walk into a room, smile, pursue a conversation, frame an argument, and use the media.

Russian negotiation behavior includes additional tactics observed at the negotiating table.

Use legalism and vague legal language. In negotiations, Russian diplomats often have a firmer grasp of the particulars of international agreements than their counterparts. They use the pretense of legalism to burnish claims of legitimacy and play to the “gallery” of international audiences. Equally, while drafting agreements, they tend to leave provisions vague and open to as many interpretations as possible, especially clauses on breach definitions and penalties, in order to tinker with them later and serve Russian interests in the enforcement phase. For example, they did this with an agreement between Ukraine and the Russian Federation on cooperation in the exploitation of the Azov Sea and Kerch Strait, signed in December 2003, and in the Minsk Accords II.
Foster time and energy exhaustion. Russian diplomats aim to leave opponents so exhausted, disoriented, and unable to concentrate that they agree to suboptimal outcomes. The Soviets would overwhelm the other side by not taking restroom breaks or by timing other delegates’ speeches to apply pressure. Other examples include the Normandy format meeting on concluding the ill-fated Minsk-II agreements (which lasted more than sixteen hours), the US-Russia talks on energy, and Black Sea cease-fire in Saudi Arabia on March 25, 2025 (which lasted around twelve hours). Russian negotiators often field two teams of officials while counting on the other side to continue with already exhausted negotiators. Alternatively, they limit even complicated talks to a formal timeline when they are not interested. This occurred with two rounds of the Ukraine-Russia talks on a complex peace settlement on May 16, 2025 (which lasted less than two hours) and on June 2, 2025 (lasting forty-five minutes). Also notorious is a Russian custom to keep interlocutors waiting for hours before talks begin. This is particularly true for Russian leadership, but also for mid-ranking delegations.
Create urgent needs or too much motivation for the other side. The side with the more urgent need to resolve an issue is a priori in a weaker position, and the Russians are determined to create such a situation for the opponent before talks begin. For example, they used the encirclement and ambush of the Ukrainian column exiting Ilovaisk in August 2014 to extort concessions from Ukraine during the Minsk I negotiations. They also capitalized on the dire situation of Ukrainian forces at Debaltseve to secure more concessions at Minsk II, but repeatedly violated the cease-fire to secure advantages prior to formal negotiations. In the current war in Ukraine, Russian shelling and drone and missile attacks on Ukrainian civilians are a regular occurrence before the Ukrainian political leadership makes an important decision about the war.
Seek flexibility and one-way commitments. Russian negotiators relentlessly search for flexibility for themselves, even past the point of nominal agreement. They have a one-sided interpretation of rebus sic stantibus: in their eyes, once an agreement is made the conditions evaporate for Moscow but hold for the other side indefinitely. The Russians calculate that the West is more likely to abide by agreements and less able to cut loose of treaty obligations, even after Russian noncompliance. This likely motivated Russia to insist on NATO honoring the NATO-Russia Founding Act, and similar behavior with the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, and the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START).
Bluff and deceive. Russian negotiators attempt to create the impression that they are the most important, powerful side at the table—even if that is not the objective reality—and use disinformation to supplement this tactic. This approach is deeply embedded in their culture, as reflected in the famous Russian folk saying, “It does not matter who you are, but how you are perceived by others.” Lies and deception are justifiable tools to pursue the course of action. A recent example of this tactic is a fast-cooked fake about attacks by Ukrainian drones on the Valdai residence of the Russian president, which was denied by US intelligence after fact-checking. Nevertheless, the Russians used this as a pretext to change their commitments to a peace settlement and a justification of another deadly missile attack on civilians in Ukraine. The firewall that has existed between diplomats and spies for three hundred years in Western practice is absent in Russia. Spies operate under diplomatic cover, and Russian diplomats are encouraged to utilize the spy’s methods (maskirovka) to conceal, entrap, mislead, or swindle.
Engage in brinkmanship. Bravado is very popular in Russian culture. It is similar to the US macho “chicken” game but grounded in fatalism, blind luck, and the expectation that the other side will blink first. Moscow uses brinkmanship to force an interaction to the threshold of confrontation. For example, the Kremlin has repeatedly threatened to use nuclear weapons since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, even though there is little evidence that it will do so. The same approach has been applied with penetrating drones in Poland, intruding into the airspace of other countries in Northern Europe, and missile targets in Ukraine close to its western borders with NATO countries.
Denigrate an opponent. Rudeness is common to both distract an opponent from the substance of the talks and put them in a highly emotional state, unable to control themself and think clearly. For example, during the MH-17 case hearings in The Hague Court of Justice, a female member of the Ukrainian delegation raised concerns about Russia’s behavior. The head of the Russian delegation replied, “Oh, we see that you have some clear concerns” (using a Russian word with a dual meaning suggesting the woman had some sexual obsession).
Lay a principal-agent trap. Russian negotiators stall discussions by claiming they need extra time for consent from Moscow (which can be linked to the time and energy exhaustion tactic). After the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia put forward a delegation with little authority. When presented with draft proposals for a future framework peace agreement in late March 2022, the Russian delegation took many weeks to respond.
Play the “too busy to be reached” game. Resort to an absent mode in negotiations by claiming to be preoccupied with other things, thus effectively blocking any efforts to move forward. Here Russian negotiators exploit their favorable tactics of “no body, no crime” (in practical terms, with “no person at the table, no progress in negotiations.”) Not responding to phone calls, making references to “no-sense” or “premature,” and avoiding contact seemed to be signatures of the Russian approach to Ukrainian political leadership between 2016 and 2019, when the latter tried to achieve a breakthrough in stalled Normandy and Minsk talks. Moscow also abstained from meetings in the defunct Normandy format before February 2022.
Move talks toward Russian views through deep anchoring. Russian negotiators advance highly unrealistic proposals at the beginning of talks and then press the other party to respond. This anchors the opponent around Russian views, moving discussions and a potential zone of agreement closer to the Russian position. In December 2021, Russia called for a new security order in Europe by submitting two unrealistic drafts to the United States and NATO, forcing them to consider and reflect on the Russian papers instead of quickly offering their own to balance discussions. Similarly, the Russians submitted a peace memorandum to the Ukrainian delegation on July 2, 2025, which was full of ultimatum demands, including the renunciation of territories including some not occupied by the Russian army. In contrast to good-faith diplomatic practice, in which a draft is submitted in advance with sufficient time for the other side to review it and form a preliminary reflection, the memorandum was handed over shortly before the talks, and the Russian delegation demanded the Ukrainian side respond immediately during negotiations.
Alter commitments. Russian diplomacy likes to deliver a low blow, a sudden change of terms when the other party expects a solution. An opponent might pay less attention to the details of an altered deal because it anticipates the completion of talks. In the 1990s, during negotiations over prolonging the stationing of the Russian Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol, the Russian side initialed the agreement but then swapped one page of the original document with another to alter the terms in its favor. The Ukrainian delegation noticed the switch, and the ruse failed. The Russians might also deliver a low blow trick with the principal-agent trap by justifying the sudden withdrawal of previous commitments through appeals to the authority of an unnamed superior official. Alternatively, they might create an artificial pretext to change their commitments, as they did with the fake story of Ukrainian drone attacks on Putin’s Valdai residence as a cause for changing their negotiating position. The actual reason for that was the progress achieved following negotiations between the presidents of Ukraine and the United States at Mar-a-Lago, which the Russian political leadership tried to undermine.
Package a deal or trade-offs. Russia withholds agreement on one issue as a hostage to settling others. In the mid-1980s, the Soviet leadership refused to negotiate agreements on missile reductions without limiting the US Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). Only after bilateral tensions were reduced and Congress cut SDI’s budget did the Kremlin delink SDI from the INF Treaty. In 2023, Ryabkov objected to the United States “compartmentalizing” strategic stability from broader talks on Russia’s relations with the West. In the negotiations over the Black Sea Grain Initiative in 2022, Russia demanded that its agricultural exports, allegedly blocked due to Western sanctions, be eased before signing a new initiative while also increased other demands. In a similar way, in Anchorage, the Russians wanted to tie Trump’s interests to a bigger set of issues by promoting a US-Russian bilateral agenda mixed with issues of strategic stability in Europe and the war in Ukraine in one basket. By doing so, they sought to downplay the war in Ukraine as a minor issue subordinate to the broader picture of future mutual benefits.

The current state of play in Ukraine

With Trump’s reelection in 2024, the Russians were reportedly optimistic about their ability to handle the US political leadership. They then set out to play the United States with the Russian spiderweb of lies, deceits, and other psychological tricks to conceal the genuine goal of subordinating the entirety of Ukraine militarily and politically. Such a calculus was likely based on the assumption that Trump would have a profit-oriented, big-power mindset, coupled with the idea that he could be easily enchanted with flattery and captivated by prospects of prosperity once the issue of Ukraine was solved. Moscow was likely convinced that showing a friendly face and repeating the mantra of acting in good will to stop the war in Ukraine would serve its purpose and be enough to make Trump believe the Russian narrative. They partially succeeded. After a year in power, the US president might still believe that Russia is interested in peace. Fact-checking, however, provides compelling data about Russia’s actual position. All major peace proposals that the United States made in 2025 were rejected by Russia, whereas Ukraine backed every single one, signaling Kyiv’s willingness to engage in both cease-fires and long-term agreements.

In contrast to Ukraine, Russia has so far shown no willingness to compromise or step back from its initial demands. Its public readiness to consider any newly revised draft of a peace deal is offset by the Kremlin’s hardline position since the start of the full-scale invasion in 2022. However, the justification for taking this position has changed constantly, with the fake Valdai attack the most recent example. What hasn’t changed is the Kremlin has stuck to its usual negotiating tactics to ensure that the results of any talks to end the war tilt in its favor, while showing constructive and destructive ambiguity in talks with the United States, Ukraine, and Europe.

Many tricks from Russia’s negotiation toolbox can also be found in its current state of play.

Bluffing. Despite Russia’s manpower shortages, the exorbitant cost of the war, and serious morale problems in the armed forces, Kremlin information operations have stressed the inevitability of its military victory on the battlefield to convince the United States to pressure Ukraine to hand over the parts of the Donbas region that Russia has little chance of capturing on its own anytime soon.
Deception. Kremlin officials have claimed that Russia and the United States reached an understanding based on Putin’s June 2024 demands during the August 2025 summit in Alaska, but no evidence of any agreement has emerged since the summit.
Time and energy exhaustion. Ryabkov has stated that the Kremlin will not sign any peace agreements to end the war in Ukraine “right now,” even though US officials have repeatedly stated that an agreement is near and that Putin is interested in a settlement.
Deal packaging or trade-offs. Russia has held out the prospect of future economic cooperation and progress on arms control if the United States meets its demands regarding Ukraine.
Brinkmanship. Despite their own dangerous nuclear war rhetoric, Putin and Russian officials have repeatedly issued warnings that a direct conflict between Russia and NATO could lead to World War III or a global catastrophe, especially if the West continues to escalate support for Ukraine.
Hidden and explicit threats. During the last direct Ukraine-Russia talks on May 16, 2025, in Turkey, the head of the Russian delegation, Vladimir Medinsky, pushed Ukrainians to agree on the suggested terms of Russia claiming just four regions of Ukraine by saying that next time Russia would raise its demands and claim six. He also warned the Ukrainian delegation that “Russia was ready for an endless war against Ukraine” and that “some delegation members [of Ukraine] may lose more relatives” by the next time they meet.

Lessons learned and reconsidered

Above all, the West should understand that history, culture, and worldview make Moscow’s diplomatic theory and practice markedly different—including even the meanings of “war” and “peace.” The Kremlin is fully aware of these disparities and employs both traditionally Western and Russian strategies. The West is still largely illiterate regarding Russian tactics and does not play as equals—yet. But it is not too late to learn, and it is high time that countries engaging with Russia do so before becoming trapped in another prolonged diplomatic deadlock.

The recent US military operation in Venezuela opens an opportunity to force Russia to reconsider its strategic calculus of military adventurism in Ukraine. In military terms, this US projection of power in the Western Hemisphere could send a signal to the Russians that the United States can act in a decisive and harsh manner to ensure a desired outcome. Trump is determined to put an end to the war in Ukraine, but for this he would need the willingness of both parties in the conflict to engage and act in goodwill. Ultimately, the process is about personal political credentials and Trump’s promise to deliver a peace deal. Further testing of the US president could cost Russia not just its military and economic positioning, but the fate of the political regime.

At the same time, the shift in US focus to the Western Hemisphere might embolden Russia to tighten its grip on Ukraine. Russia might interpret this as a green light to act without accountability for promises made to the US side, as the latter might be preoccupied with security challenges other than what is happening in Ukraine. Recent brutal combined drone and missile attacks on Kyiv, the launch of a hypersonic Oreshnik missile on Lviv, and the rejection of any proposal for the presence of international reassurance force troops in Ukraine are all signs that Moscow is inclined to interpret the US stance on Ukraine as encouragement for further Russian aggression. This calculus could lead to a vicious circle of unfulfilled commitments and the inevitable failure of the peace talks, severely undermining Trump’s political prestige.

The tightening of sanctions under the Sanctioning Russia Act of 2025, which is still awaiting final passage, and resolute US actions against the Russian shadow fleet, providing Ukraine with means to advance militarily, might become the best US incentives to discourage Russia from playing dangerous games and to act responsibly.

Putin will only engage constructively in Ukraine when his strategic calculus indicates that it is in his best interest to do so. That calculus would be most effectively altered by a shift in US policy toward Kyiv’s empowerment. Ukraine should have the capability to disrupt Russian forces across air, land, and maritime domains at operational depths of roughly 30 kilometers (km) to 300 km behind the front. Such neutralization would make continued Russian offensive action increasingly ineffective. At the same time, this approach would free the United States to shift more of its military attention and resources toward defending the first island chain in the Indo-Pacific region: Japan, the Ryukyu Islands, Taiwan, and the northern Philippines.

Russia would experience a decline in power if Europe’s partnership with Ukraine intensifies. Secondary sanctions on states that purchase Russian oil, which funds the conflict, would exacerbate the diplomatic, informational, military, and economic pressure that erodes the intangible aspects of Russia’s great-power status. Additionally, societal disturbances inside Russia might result from the freezing or unreliability of banking transactions and the economic effects at home of secondary sanctions on the Russian energy sector. Three of Russia’s thirteen systemically important banks are presently pursuing bailout negotiations with the Central Bank of Russia, according to one report. Putin would also consider the potential social instability that could result. He might then see the conflict as effectively over and irrelevant, especially as Russia would be experiencing losses across the board and could conclude that negotiations are the least detrimental alternative. Or Putin could nonetheless continue to favor the certainty of a bad conflict over the unpredictability and perils of a good peace.

Being nice to Putin will likely yield few results and send the message that the United States is weak. Instead, the United States will need to apply a proactive approach to selecting and shaping the environment for negotiations with a clear tool kit and determination regarding the when, how, who, and what. The United States should also take advantage of the shortcomings and vulnerabilities in the Russian approach. Moscow’s sense of supremacy over rivals sometimes contributes to overestimating its strengths, leading to misreading and strategic mistakes. The Kremlin also values top-down coercion and does not fully understand civil society’s central role in shaping a country’s ability to sustain an agreement. Clear-eyed awareness of these weaknesses will help the United States make the most of its opportunities.

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About the authors

Donald N. Jensen is an adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University’s Krieger School of Arts and Sciences and an adjunct fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington, DC, and the Gino Germani Institute in Rome. A former US diplomat in Moscow, Jensen provided technical support for the START, INF, and SDI negotiations and was a member of the first ten-person US inspection team to inspect Soviet missiles under the INF Treaty in 1988. From 1996–2008, he was associate director of broadcasting and head of the research division at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, where he helped lead that organization’s expansion into new broadcast regions after the end of the Cold War and the adaptation of multimedia technology to deal with the broadcasting challenges of the twenty-first century. In 2016, he was a visiting scholar at the NATO Defense College in Rome.

From 2020–2025, he was senior fellow and director of Russia and Europe at the United States Institute of Peace.
Jensen writes extensively on the domestic, foreign, and security policies of Russia, Ukraine, and the other post-Soviet states, with a special emphasis on Russian negotiating behavior and national security policy. He also regularly appears as a commentator on domestic and international media. He has lectured at a variety of universities in the United States and abroad.

An award-winning baseball historian specializing in the Deadball Era and the nineteenth-century game, Jensen has written or co-authored numerous books and articles on the sport. He is a regular lecturer at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York.

He is fluent in Russian and Italian and received his PhD and MA from Harvard and a BA from Columbia.

Iuliia Osmolovska is a director of the Kyiv office of GLOBSEC and a member of the Civil Council of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine. She was a career diplomat with fifteen years of diplomatic service at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, with particular focus on EU integration and European security. Her past work for the governmental sector of Ukraine includes working for the Office of the President of Ukraine, as well as with the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine, channeling the communication between the government, the expert community, and civil society with regard to reforms in Ukraine.

Osmolovska has also done professional consulting and training in negotiations, for both political and commercial clients. Her experience also includes an advisory role with the Ukrainian state company Ukrspecexport, where she advised the top management on cooperation with NATO member states.

Her areas of expertise include geopolitics, geoeconomics, international relations, negotiations and diplomacy, Ukrainian foreign policy, foreign economic policy, EU integration, European security and defense policy, and the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement

Osmolovska is a recognized media expert on international relations, diplomacy, and Russian-Ukrainian conflict. She appears regularly on TV and radio channels in Ukraine and internationally.

She holds a master’s of philosophy in European Studies from the University of Cambridge, a master’s in foreign policy from the Diplomatic Academy in Ukraine, and a master’s of international management from Kyiv State Economic University. Before the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2014, Osmolovska studied psychology and mediation of negotiations at St. Petersburg State University in Russia.

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Ukrainian defense tech companies must prepare for export opportunities

Michael Druckman — Tue, 17 Feb 2026 22:18:27 +0000

Ukrainian defense tech companies received the country’s first export permits in early February as Ukraine looks to capitalize on the dramatic recent expansion of the defense sector and boost the wartime economy. The news came days after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy confirmed the decision to allow international weapons sales and unveiled plans to establish ten export centers across Europe in 2026.

The move to permit Ukrainian arms exports has been a long time coming, with defense tech companies arguing that they have spare production capacity due to the Ukrainian state’s limited purchasing power. With foreign sales now on the agenda, potential participating companies must make sure they are in a position to make the most of the emerging opportunities.

Since the onset of the full-scale Russian invasion in February 2022, Ukraine’s defense tech sector has proved itself in the most demanding conditions imaginable. Ukrainian companies, many of them young, resource-constrained, and operating under constant attack, have designed, adapted, and deployed weapons systems at a pace rarely seen in peacetime industries.

Crucially, these firms have been able to produce and refine innovative products in combat conditions based on real-time battlefield feedback. In practice, this has meant development cycles that can often be measured in days or weeks, rather than the multi-year acquisition cycles typical of traditional defense procurement.

The performance of Ukraine’s defense tech industry has generated significant international interest and a spate of early seed investments. As the war continues and the Ukrainian government moves to open up foreign markets, ambitious defense sector companies will need to focus on maximizing their export readiness.

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In the context of the Ukrainian defense tech industry, export readiness refers to a company’s ability to navigate the complex legal, regulatory, and compliance frameworks governing the international sale of defense and dual-use technologies. This includes securing the necessary export licenses from the Ukrainian authorities, understanding and complying with destination country import controls, adhering to multilateral export control regimes, implementing robust end-use monitoring and supply chain security, and demonstrating transparency in ownership and governance to satisfy due diligence requirements of foreign buyers and investors.

For Ukrainian companies, export readiness also means turning battlefield innovation into compliant, scalable products for global markets and converting their tactical advantage into strategic economic growth. The Ukrainian businesses building these weapons systems and the investors backing them must begin this work now, not after the first export opportunity appears. Waiting until a deal is on the table could result in losing momentum, credibility, and valuation.

International defense markets operate under strict and unforgiving rules. Compliance with frameworks such as the US International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), Export Administration Regulations (EAR), the EU’s Dual-Use Regulation, and related NATO-aligned regimes is not optional.

These rules apply not only to finished products, but also to components, software, technical data, and even the nationality of personnel involved in development. Under the incorporation principle, foreign-origin controlled parts integrated into Ukrainian products can subject the final system to external jurisdiction and re-export restrictions.

Some US export rules allow limited flexibility when controlled components are only a small part of a system. ITAR does not. Even minor integration of ITAR-controlled items can trigger full US export licensing obligations. Companies that treat export controls as an afterthought often discover too late that they have painted themselves into a regulatory corner.

A critical but often underestimated component of export readiness is supply chain integrity. Many modern defense and dual-use systems rely on electronics, sensors, chips, and subcomponents sourced through global markets.

Supply chains with hidden or poorly documented tails that run back to China or other high-risk jurisdictions can quietly disqualify an otherwise competitive product from Western export markets. In some cases, these dependencies can trigger outright prohibitions; in others, they impose licensing requirements so onerous that customers walk away.

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Export readiness also requires institutional maturity inside companies. This includes appointing dedicated export control and compliance officers; implementing comprehensive trade compliance policies and procedures that govern every stage of the product lifecycle from design and procurement to production, marketing, and after-sales support; and building internal capability to identify, classify, and manage controlled items and technologies.

Ukrainian companies need to understand which products fall under which regulatory regimes, which export markets are realistically accessible, and what licensing pathways exist. Filing for licenses proactively, engaging early with national authorities, conducting internal compliance audits, and mapping obligations in advance can prevent costly delays, enforcement actions, and reputational damage that investors, partners, and customers alike are increasingly unwilling to tolerate.

Mistakes can be costly, with the compliance failures or unauthorized exports of a single private company capable of triggering diplomatic incidents, sanctions, or restrictions that jeopardize market access and credibility for Ukraine’s entire defense industrial base. This makes institutional discipline a matter of national security, not merely corporate risk management.

The implications are equally clear for international investors. As capital becomes more selective and diligence more rigorous, shareholder value will increasingly favor Ukrainian defense companies that are compliant, transparent, and forward-looking. Funds that encourage early investment in governance, compliance infrastructure, and supply chain resilience are not being overly cautious; they are protecting downside risk and enhancing upside potential. In future funding rounds and exit scenarios, export readiness will be a differentiator that directly affects valuation.

There is also a broader strategic dimension. Ukraine’s integration into Western defense and industrial ecosystems will depend not only on political alignment, but also on regulatory compatibility. Companies that are export-ready today will be in a position to participate in joint development programs and contribute to trusted supply chains tomorrow.

Ukraine’s defense sector has already demonstrated enormous battlefield credibility. The next phase is commercial and institutional credibility. Companies and investors who act now by auditing supply chains, implementing compliance frameworks, and preparing for regulated exports will be the ones best placed to lead the global defense market.

Michael Druckman is the founder and managing director of Trident Forward.

In practice, however, these markets are often thin, sometimes dominated by a relatively small pool of sophisticated bettors, enthusiasts, and speculators. Treating their movements as transparent reflections of public belief risks granting disproportionate narrative power to actors with both the capital and the incentive to shape prices for reasons that may have little to do with forecasting accuracy. This dynamic is particularly concerning when the topics at stake intersect with homeland security, national security, or cybersecurity.

A widening attack surface

The logic of narrative manipulation via markets is already visible in benign commercial contexts. Consider a prediction market on whether a blockbuster film will exceed a $100 million opening weekend. A studio could rationally allocate a portion of its marketing budget to buy the “yes” side to move the price upward, and then cite that movement to entertainment reporters as evidence of strong anticipated performance. The market becomes both a promotional tool and a self-referential signal that justifies its own engineered optimism.

In sports, similar dynamics apply. If newsrooms begin to lean on prediction markets the way they rely on performance analytics, then those markets become attractive tools for agents or teams seeking to influence awards or contract-linked incentives. A concentrated position in a market related to a “most valuable player” award, paired with a coordinated media push, could subtly shape perceptions among voters and fans. While such behavior may resemble traditional public relations and be within the bounds of the law, it expands the surface area on which questions of fairness, integrity, and legitimacy can be raised.

From sports integrity to national security

These seemingly narrow examples matter because they help normalize skepticism about the fairness of outcomes in domains that have historically served as relatively apolitical spaces of shared experience. If fans repeatedly encounter allegations—substantiated or not—that betting lines, awards, or game outcomes are being manipulated, their baseline trust in the integrity of sport erodes. That erosion is not easily contained. It can spill over into attitudes toward other large-scale events and institutions, including elections, financial markets, and government processes or geopolitical maneuvering. You don’t have to look any further than the recent case in the Israeli military. In February 2026, at least two people were indicted on charges of using classified national security intelligence to place wagers on Polymarket to reap as much as $100,000 in profits. To its credit, the Israeli security forces acted swiftly with a first-of-its-kind legal action to maintain civic trust in the military.

Foreign adversaries have already demonstrated the capacity to pair cyber intrusions with information operations, exploiting stolen data to shape narratives for strategic effect. In a world where liquid prediction markets exist on sensitive geopolitical topics—such as regime stability, military escalation, or sanctions decisions—access to privileged information and the ability to move markets provide powerful tools. For example, an intelligence service that has compromised a Fortune 500 firm’s email system or a government agency’s internal communications could simultaneously profit from and weaponize that information by taking positions in relevant markets and then amplifying the resulting price movements as “evidence” of impending events.

Cyber-enabled financial and narrative operations

Even in the absence of cyber espionage, adversaries can use capital and content to similar effect. For example, a thinly traded market on whether a particular regime will fall by a given date could be meaningfully shifted by a single six-figure trade. Once the price moves, coordinated networks of accounts and media proxies might then point to the market as an apparently neutral indicator that the regime’s stability is in serious peril. This approach turns a small financial outlay into a lever for shaping news coverage, investor sentiment, and public expectations.

The same model applies domestically. Markets tied to divisive social or political issues could be used to amplify polarization, with foreign actors selectively moving prices and then framing those moves as proof that “everyone knows” a certain controversial outcome is likely or inevitable. When combined with cheap artificial intelligence–generated content—audio, video, or text—these efforts could be supplemented by fabricated “evidence,” such as manipulated footage further undermining confidence in institutional neutrality.

Policy, governance, and security responses

The goal is not to abolish prediction markets (or sports wagering), which can offer genuine informational and economic value, but rather to recognize and mitigate the security risks they introduce. As these markets proliferate and integrate more deeply into the information environment, policymakers, regulators, and industry leaders should treat them as dual-use infrastructures that require deliberate guardrails.

Several lines of effort merit consideration:

First, media organizations should adopt transparent standards for when and how prediction market data are cited, emphasizing that prices reflect the beliefs and incentives of a limited set of participants rather than objective truths. CNBC, for example, has added a disclosure of its investment in Kalshi when it reports on the platform both on its website and on air.

Second, regulators and platforms should develop disclosure requirements for large or coordinated positions in markets linked to elections, major national security events, or systemically important firms, along with enhanced scrutiny of foreign participation in such markets.

Third, prediction platforms should invest in robust market integrity monitoring, including mechanisms to detect anomalous trading patterns that coincide with coordinated information campaigns.

Fourth, homeland and cybersecurity authorities should incorporate prediction markets into broader threat assessments of the information environment, recognizing that the same tools that can improve forecasting can also be weaponized to erode trust in the fairness and legitimacy of core democratic processes.

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The road to the AI Impact Summit: How to build AI infrastructure from the ground up

Ryan Pan, Coley Felt, Raul Brens Jr. — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 22:44:43 +0000

The central question for AI in 2026 is not whether governments have an artificial intelligence (AI) strategy—it’s whether they can operationalize it and quickly deliver the benefits to their citizens. Governments are increasingly treating AI as an essential capability for economic competitiveness, public service delivery, and political legitimacy. The United States and China may frame the global narrative most loudly, but other countries are feeling the same pressure in a more practical way. They are increasingly confronted with the difficulties of building AI-enabled infrastructure from the ground up, including the dependencies that come with it.

What does it take to build a comprehensive AI infrastructure and policy environment for widespread adoption? Last month, the Atlantic Council GeoTech Center, the Internal Telecommunication Union, and Access Partnership convened a roundtable titled “Laying the Digital Foundations” to address this question. For many countries, the answer carries significant geopolitical weight. It can narrow gaps between the Global North and Global South when it comes to the ability to adopt and benefit from AI technologies. It can also create space for transatlantic cooperation on ensuring the AI models of the future are embedded with human-centered values.

The discussion touched on several main areas: energy supply, data centers, cultural-specific models, network equipment, data authentication regimes, and other innovative technologies that could shape infrastructure choices over the next several years. The consensus was that AI readiness does not mean building an “AI Stack” that can be easily copied and pasted from country to country, because the enabling conditions for AI readiness in each country often vary significantly. Instead, it will require a set of interoperable choices that must be adapted to local conditions. Below are more takeaways from last month’s roundtable, which should be top of mind for policymakers as they convene for the AI Impact Summit in New Delhi, India, from February 16 to 20.

Electricity is becoming a binding constraint

The growing demand for data centers arising from AI is creating immediate pressure on electricity grids. Demand for data centers globally could triple by 2030. This means that even if governments can’t add power capacity, they will struggle to keep pace with demand even if they have strong policy ambitions. Finding ways to decentralize the power supply from the grid without destabilizing local systems may be a critical pathway to supporting and connecting a larger number of data centers.

At the roundtable, there was cautious optimism that AI can support parts of the energy transition over time, including by improving system efficiency and accelerating pathways for renewable energy sources such as nuclear fusion and geothermal energy. Yet, these pathways have little to no impact on near-term delivery dependence, and novel and efficient approaches are needed to reduce the current bottlenecks.

Infrastructure patterns are diversifying beyond data centers

Building data centers may not be the only answer, as such facilities cannot realistically be built everywhere. Distributed AI infrastructure that can overcome data latency or disconnection may be within reach. Edge devices, such as smartphones, tablets, smart cars, and smart glasses, have been seen as emerging tools to complement data centers by distributing workloads away from centralized data infrastructure. These devices can reduce latency for data transmission and optimize output. Edge devices don’t just distribute data; they also create new data and analyze it in real time. Such “inference on the cloud”—running a trained machine learning model on the cloud to generate data close to or at the source—is on the rise with the proliferation of generative AI on smart devices. China has been developing a competitive market for edge devices; enterprises are also bringing data to on-premises facilities rather than relying on centralized data centers. This is a good reminder that capability is not defined by one layer alone. A comprehensive strategy for transatlantic and Global South tech diplomacy must consider multiple options, including data centers, edge devices, and on-premises services to shape the global AI ecosystem.

Connectivity still determines who benefits

Beyond data center considerations, connectivity for populations in lower- and middle-income countries remains a critical determinant of access. Online access is still a prerequisite for using AI. Investing in the right kind of networks beyond data centers or edge devices matters. A key issue is modernizing network equipment, as outdated equipment not only hinders users from being digitally connected effectively but also creates security risks. Governments must identify, segment, or replace that equipment for it to remain secure. Network access and security are also increasingly confronted with another issue: the rise of AI agents. The market for agentic AI is expected to reach $103.28 billion by 2034. Some participants stressed that governments would need to adapt to the new challenges from agentic AI with its always-on capabilities, which allow it to constantly make automatic decisions for systems and users.

Data governance, sovereignty, and the cooperation problem

The discussion surfaced a set of geopolitical tensions underlying infrastructure decisions. There was concern at the roundtable about global data governance being shaped by the European Union. The bloc’s regulatory environment for data, as well as its ambition for AI sovereignty, could complicate transatlantic cooperation. At the same time, fragmentation of data sharing remains a barrier to building and improving systems across border—a clear area of need for mutual cooperation. Respecting user rights continues to be a critical part of discussions of transatlantic AI governance. Meanwhile, middle powers, such as India, are caught in the middle of these pressures. That is because India faces the question from partners of whether to adopt US or Chinese AI models, even as its domestic priorities focus on services for the most economically vulnerable communities, language inclusion, and data ownership.

Six pathways to lay the digital foundations for AI

Participants at the roundtable proposed six practical pathways that policymakers can treat as general rules for 2026.

Treat financing as infrastructure policy. Governments and the private sector should restructure financing approaches that support data center construction and related capacity. This should include making permitting more predictable and providing clearer incentives for construction where appropriate.
Reduce grid pressure through practical energy planning. As data center demand grows, decentralizing parts of the power supply, where feasible, can help reduce the energy burden on the grids and speed connections for new loads.
Plan for multiple deployment models. Beyond centralized data centers, policymakers should also invest in edge devices and on-premises services to widen adoption pathways and reduce latency.
Modernize networks as a core AI requirement. Closing connectivity gaps and upgrading network equipment is essential for performance and security, especially as automated and persistent systems increase baseline network demand.
Build content governance alongside infrastructure. Governments should enact policies to ensure that AI models reflect local cultural context and language, support standards for the verification of AI-generated content, and strengthen media literacy to protect information integrity.
Cooperate on cross-border data rules that protect rights and reduce fragmentation. Governments should develop practical approaches for cross-border data sharing that preserve user rights and accountability while enabling legitimate access for system improvements and public interest use cases.

What to watch in the year ahead

In the year ahead, expect to see AI infrastructure gain momentum as more countries move beyond the simplistic debate around innovation versus regulation and adopt more pragmatic approaches to AI competitiveness. Several global fora this year, such as the AI Impact Summit, the Group of Seven (G7), Group of Twenty (G20), and the United Nations General Assembly, will also dedicate time to understanding what it will take to build more AI infrastructure. It is important to keep in mind that there is still no consensus on what a “complete AI stack” includes, and that is partly because it spans both physical and digital layers. Policymakers would do well to opt for flexibility, whether it is policy frameworks, physical and digital requirements, or end users, rather than adopting a one-size-fits-all approach. However, following the steps above can allow nations to strengthen their AI infrastructure muscles, allowing them to become not just AI-ready, but AI-competent—able to deliver systems that work, earn trust, and can endure real-world conditions.

Ryan Pan is a program assistant at the Atlantic Council GeoTech Center.

Coley Felt is an assistant director at the Atlantic Council GeoTech Center.

Raul Brens Jr. is the director of the Atlantic Council GeoTech Center.

The GeoTech Center champions positive paths forward that societies can pursue to ensure new technologies and data empower people, prosperity, and peace.

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Vladimir Putin is trapped in a war he cannot win but dare not end

Peter Dickinson — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 22:50:16 +0000

More than a year since he returned to the White House vowing to end the Russia-Ukraine War within 24 hours, US President Donald Trump remains upbeat about the prospects for peace. “Very, very good talks today,” Trump stated on February 6 following the latest round of negotiations in Abu Dhabi. “Something could be happening.”

Few in Kyiv share this optimism. While Ukrainian officials are loathe to dismiss Trump’s peace efforts for fear incurring his displeasure, a majority of Ukrainians remain utterly unconvinced that Russian President Vladimir Putin has any interest whatsoever in ending hostilities. A poll conducted by Kyiv’s International Institute of Sociology in late January found that only 20 percent of Ukrainians think the war will end by July, while 43 percent expect fighting to continue into 2027 or beyond.

Such skepticism is easy to understand. Ukraine agreed to an unconditional ceasefire way back in March 2025, but Putin has so far refused to follow suit. Instead, he has spent much of the past year engaging in blatant stalling tactics while constantly moving the diplomatic goalposts in a transparent bid to prevent any progress toward a lasting settlement. This has resulted in what most Ukrainians and many others regard as a phony peace process.

As fruitless US-led negotiations rumble on, Putin has underlined his true intentions by dramatically increasing Russian attacks on the Ukrainian population, leading to a 31 percent surge in civilian casualties during 2025. The most recent escalation saw Russia attempt to freeze millions of Ukrainians in their own homes by systematically bombing critical heating and power infrastructure amid Arctic conditions. Some believe this ruthless winter bombing campaign qualifies as an act of genocide; it is most certainly not the act of a man seeking a compromise peace.

Trump has difficulty reading Putin’s true intentions because he fundamentally misunderstands the motivations behind the Russian invasion of Ukraine. To Trump, the current negotiations are a geopolitical real estate deal, with the Russians playing hardball to secure better terms. In reality, Putin is operating on a completely different wavelength altogether.

The Kremlin dictator is not looking to make deals, acquire additional land, or push the Russian border a few hundred kilometers to the west. Instead, he wants to secure his place in history. Putin genuinely believes he is on an historic mission to reverse the injustice of the Soviet collapse and revive the Russian Empire. In order to achieve this, he has convinced himself that he must erase Ukraine as a state and as a nation.

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For more than two decades, Putin’s Ukraine obsession has shaped his reign and defined Russian foreign policy. His relationship with the West first became openly hostile in the aftermath of Ukraine’s 2004 Orange Revolution, which Putin bitterly denounced as a Western plot to destabilize Russia.

Since that watershed moment, Ukraine has been at the heart of virtually every single new crisis in relations between Moscow and the democratic world, from the 2014 seizure of Crimea to the full-scale invasion of 2022. Throughout this period, Putin has repeatedly demonstrated his readiness to sacrifice Russia’s other national interests in pursuit of his anti-Ukrainian crusade.

Meanwhile, he has used the full weight of the formidable Kremlin propaganda machine to poison Russian society against all things Ukrainian and prepare the ground for a war of national extermination. Putin has become notorious for insisting that Ukrainians are actually Russians (“one people”), and has repeatedly dismissed independent Ukraine as an illegitimate state and an artificial “anti-Russia.”

Anyone in Ukraine who dares to disagree with Putin’s claims has been dehumanized and branded a Nazi or a stooge of the West. This hate campaign has proved remarkably successful and has contributed to the almost complete absence of visible anti-war sentiment in today’s Russia, despite widespread public knowledge of the atrocities taking place in Ukraine.

Ukraine’s importance to Putin is twofold. As the largest non-Russian former Soviet republic by population and the closest to Russia in terms of shared heritage, Putin sees Ukraine as the key to undoing the verdict of 1991. If he can end what he regards as the aberration of Ukrainian statehood, this will redeem Russia and reestablish the country’s credentials as a great power.

Likewise, Ukraine’s perceived closeness means that the further consolidation of an independent and democratic Ukrainian state represents an existential threat to authoritarian Russia. As a KGB officer in East Germany during the late 1980s, Putin witnessed firsthand how grassroots movements can topple empires. If Ukraine’s transition from Kremlin vassal to European democracy continues, he fears this could serve as a catalyst for the next stage in a Russian imperial retreat that began in 1989 with the fall of the Berlin Wall.

This helps to explain why Putin has shown so little interest in the seemingly generous peace terms proposed by Trump. The US leader has indicated that Russia would be allowed to keep the territories it has captured in Ukraine while facing no meaningful consequences for launching the largest European invasion since World War II. At first glance, these terms might appear to represent a major Russian victory, but Putin himself obviously does not think so.

Putin’s reluctance to accept Trump’s offer makes perfect sense when viewed from the perspective of the Russian ruler’s revisionist worldview and imperial ambitions. Crucially, Putin is well aware that any peace deal based on the current front lines of the war would leave 80 percent of Ukraine beyond Kremlin control and free to integrate into the democratic world. That is exactly what he is fighting to prevent.

In line with the present proposals, the Kremlin would retain control over the rust belt towns of the Donbas, but would cede iconic Odesa and sacred Kyiv, the mother city of all Russia, to a hostile neighbor. Most Russians would regard this as a defeat of historic proportions. Instead of being remembered as a new Peter the Great, Putin would be doomed to enter Russian history as the man who lost Ukraine.

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With a compromise peace out of the question, Putin has no real choice but to fight on. Doing so offers some obvious advantages. As long as the war continues, Putin can delay a reckoning over the huge Russian losses in Ukraine and the damage done to the country’s international standing. But as the fourth anniversary of the invasion draws near, it is becoming increasingly difficult to disguise the fact that the war is not going according to plan.

Putin’s problems are most immediately apparent on the battlefield. When he launched the full-scale invasion in February 2022, Putin vowed to “demilitarize” Ukraine. Four years on, Ukraine now boasts the largest army in Europe and has emerged as a world leader in drone warfare.

The radically upgraded Ukrainian military has already defeated Russia in multiple major engagements and is now seeking to gain the upper hand in a grueling high-tech war of attrition. Putin’s army suffered hundreds of thousands of casualties in 2025, while seizing less than one percent of Ukraine. At the current glacial pace, it would take the Russian military decades to conquer the country.

In public, at least, Putin continues to project confidence and insist that the goals of Russia’s invasion will be unconditionally met. However, his boasts of battlefield dominance are now starting to ring hollow. With so few actual victories to cheer, he has recently resorted to inventing imaginary advances.

Putin’s habit of exaggerating Russian gains came back to haunt him in late 2025 when he repeatedly claimed to have captured the Ukrainian city of Kupyansk, only for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to personally visit the city and record a selfie video exposing the Russian ruler’s lies. This embarrassing episode underlined the growing credibility gap between Putin’s bold talk of inevitable Russian victory and the far less impressive battlefield reality of his faltering invasion.

Putin’s other stated war aim was the “denazification” of Ukraine. This is Kremlin code for the erasure of a separate Ukrainian national identity and the imposition of Russian imperial doctrine in every sphere of public life, from education and culture to politics and religion. If this was the intention, it has backfired disastrously.

The war unleashed by Putin in 2022 has fueled an unprecedented consolidation of Ukrainian patriotism alongside a wholesale rejection of all things Russian throughout Ukrainian society. As a result, the entire notion of a pro-Kremlin government in Kyiv is now inconceivable unless propped up indefinitely by Russian bayonets, which would be ruinously expensive for the Kremlin.

This geopolitical divorce is also evident in the international arena. For centuries, Ukraine was widely seen by the outside world as indivisible from Russia itself. Putin still clings to this imperial mythology, but his propaganda slogans of “brotherly nations” now sound absurdly outdated. Instead, today’s Ukraine is widely recognized as an emerging democracy and a member of the wider European community of nations.

It would be extremely reckless to underestimate the Russian military, of course. Russia’s sheer size means that it remains a formidable threat and will likely continue to grind forward in Ukraine. However, after nearly four years of limited progress and staggering losses, it is now difficult to imagine how Putin could achieve the maximalist goals of his invasion on the battlefield.

Many Russians had pinned their hopes on a new Trump presidency, but even the dramatic reduction in US military aid to Ukraine over the past year has failed to produce any significant Russian breakthroughs. Furthermore, US weapons continue to flow to Ukraine via the PURL initiative, with indications that the White House has also relaxed earlier restrictions on strikes inside Russia.

America’s withdrawal from transatlantic commitments also means European leaders are more motivated than ever to maintain their support for Ukraine in the coming years. In a rapidly changing security environment, they are acutely aware that the Ukrainian army is now indispensable for the defense of Europe. With Ukraine’s own revitalized defense industry meeting around half of the country’s military needs domestically, Kyiv looks well positioned to continue defending itself despite the decline in support from the United States.

As the war enters a fifth year, Putin finds himself in an unenviable predicament. He has no obvious pathway to victory but cannot agree to a compromise peace without acknowledging what would amount to an historic defeat and placing his own political survival in question.

Faced with a bloody quagmire on the front lines, Putin will likely seek to break Ukrainian resistance in the coming months by expanding Russian attacks on the general population and making as much of the country as possible unlivable. In parallel, he will continue to play for time on the diplomatic stage, while attempting to bribe the United States with wild proposals and bully Europe into inaction with thinly-veiled threats of escalation.

If President Trump is serious about ending the war, he needs to recognize that his Russian counterpart currently dare not risk any peace that safeguards Ukrainian independence. Putin knows that if Ukraine survives, he loses. A sustainable settlement will therefore only be possible if he comes under significantly more pressure and is confronted with the prospect of a fate far worse than failure in Ukraine.

Putin will abandon his invasion when he begins to fear that continuing the war could threaten the future of his regime and the stability of Russia itself. The current occupant of the Kremlin still dreams of emulating Stalin and Katherine the Great, but he has no desire to become the next Tsar Nicholas II.

Peter Dickinson is editor of the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlert service.

A logic model for AI adoption

Frontier AI capabilities are gradually becoming more accessible, albeit only in pockets. For instance, Anthropic announced in November that it has partnered with the Rwandan government on an initiative aimed at making a Claude-enabled learning assistant available to thousands of people across Africa. Similarly, OpenAI announced last month that it’s collaborating with the Gates Foundation to deploy AI capabilities for health in low-resource environments across Africa.

However, ensuring that AI diffusion is inclusive on the scale of entire populations requires a coordinated strategy. Most of the developing world remains in what could be called AI pilot purgatory. Reaching the next billion people—including populations living in villages, small towns, and low-connectivity regions, as well as those operating in informal economies—demands a deliberate shift from isolated experiments to systemic orchestration. Such an approach will require emerging “middle powers” such as India to demonstrate new pathways of collaboration that support sovereign needs while not relying on building duplicative infrastructure at prohibitive costs.

AI adoption does not follow a simple linear model. Rather, it follows a matrix structure, consisting of “vertical” uses and “horizontal” enablers. Verticals include sector-specific applications: for instance, precision rain advisories for farmers or maternal health decision support. Horizontals make these verticals viable at scale. They consist of capabilities, such as multilingual models, voice interfaces, data pipelines, safeguards, and affordable compute.

Without these shared horizontals, every vertical initiative is forced to rebuild the same foundations. The resulting duplication is expensive and ultimately limits scale. But when horizontals exist as open, interoperable layers, the cost of innovation drops sharply, and the pace of adoption increases. For instance, AI voice interfaces remove barriers surrounding literacy and device access, multilingual models can become shared resources, and safety benchmarks improve through shared feedback. Crane AI Labs, a Ugandan startup, built a finetuned version of Gemma 3 1B, a Google model, using its own hybrid datasets, which include synthetically generated text, checked by Swahili experts. Crane AI then built a Ugandan Cultural Context Benchmark, a technical standard that became part of the UK government’s official AI evaluation library. With such open and interoperable models, thousands of public and private applications can then build on top of existing layers without having to recreate the basics each time.

This is the same logic that powered digital transformations in countries such as India, Uganda, Singapore, and Estonia. Once the digital public infrastructure was built, the ecosystem expanded rapidly and governance improved through real-time feedback loops with users. When the horizontals are in place, vertical solutions in agriculture, health, education, and governance can scale quickly.

Moreover, successful use cases can leave behind reusable assets that become digital public goods for AI. AI4Bharat, an open-source research lab based in the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, created open-language speech models and datasets for twenty-two Indian languages, significantly lowering the barrier to entry for voice and language-first AI applications. Both AI4Bharat’s language models and Crane AI Labs’ initiatives represent vertical use cases that also created open-source infrastructure, which makes AI adoption easier for subsequent implementers.

However, no single institution, whether a government, a large tech company, a university, or philanthropy, can build all the shared horizontals while also deploying vertical use cases, with safeguards, across diverse sectors and countries. Rather, it takes networks of organizations collaborating on specific problems to bring the right capabilities together at the right moment.

From summit to impact

The AI Impact Summit in New Delhi offers a rare opportunity to move from an AI ecosystem made up of fragmented experiments to a purposeful, more collaborative diffusion architecture. The summit’s greatest potential lies in catalyzing the organizational structures that enable scalable adoption.

To achieve this, the summit’s participants should bring together developers, government agencies, researchers, civil society, and philanthropies so they can work in coordination on diffusion. These stakeholders should align investments in shared building blocks (such as multilingual models, safety standards, and data systems) so efforts reinforce each other instead of being duplicated. Over time, this collaborative effort could set common standards and share knowledge with countries that are earlier in their AI development journey.

These shared pathways can be documented in the form of a digital public infrastructure-AI playbook that documents AI adoption pathways, highlighting how governments, private sector actors, or other stakeholders have built shared “horizontals” and how these have supported AI use cases. The playbook would illustrate concrete tools and frameworks showing what worked, what failed, and how others can adapt proven strategies to their own contexts.

A real commitment to scaling up AI adoption should involve:

Collaboration: Multiple institutions are needed to collaborate to build safe, scalable diffusion for use cases.
Shared infrastructure: A digital public infrastructure approach creates compounding, reusable assets upon which other organizations can build use cases.
Shared pathways: The gap between a promising demo and a durable system isn’t more technology, it’s the full adoption pathway—operating models, incentives, governance, data readiness, evaluation, procurement, training, and incident response.

The next billion AI users, primarily from developing countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America, do not need more headline-grabbing AI breakthroughs. They need practical infrastructure that is open, affordable, and reliable, backed by partnerships and governance systems that build trust rather than demand it.

Trisha Ray is an associate director and resident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s GeoTech Center.

Keyzom Ngodup Massally is is director of the AI Hub for Sustainable Development and head of digital at the United Nations Development Programme’s Chief Digital Office.

Shalini Kapoor is chief strategist, data and AI, at Ekstep Foundation.

The GeoTech Center champions positive paths forward that societies can pursue to ensure new technologies and data empower people, prosperity, and peace.

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Global Foresight 2036

Andrea Ratiu — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Global Foresight 2036

The authoritative forecast for the decade ahead

Welcome to the fifth edition of Global Foresight. Produced by the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, home to one of the world’s premier strategic foresight shops, Global Foresight gathers the best thinking about how the coming decade could unfold.

In this year’s installment, a part of the Atlantic Council Strategy Papers series, our experts analyze exclusive new findings from a survey of leading strategists and foresight practitioners around the world on how human affairs could unfold over the coming decade across geopolitics, diplomacy, the global economy, technological disruption, changing Earth systems, and other domains. Our team scans the horizon for hidden or under-the-radar phenomena—which we call “snow leopards”—that could have significant consequences in the future. And the Atlantic Council’s best tech minds take a critical look at how artificial intelligence could reshape not only the future, but our ability to predict it.

Welcome to 2036

What the world could look like in ten years, according to nearly 450 experts

To survey the future, we polled geostrategists and foresight experts on our most burning questions about the biggest drivers of change over the next decade. Check out their forecasts on everything from the future of NATO to the rise of cryptocurrency.

Six snow leopards to watch for in the decade ahead

The underappreciated phenomena that could have outsize global impact

Receiving relatively little attention in the press, these phenomena can be hard to spot as drivers of change. Yet just like the stealthy big cats, they could sneak up and vividly remind us of their power.

AI and the future

Can artificial intelligence predict global affairs?

Our experts on the ability of artificial intelligence to forecast the decade ahead—and how AI itself will change over that time.

Interact with Global Foresight 2036

We’ve partnered with BanterBox, an artificial-intelligence platform that creates interactive reading experiences, to produce a special edition of Global Foresight 2036 tailored to you. Ask questions, dig deeper, and explore what you’re most interested in.

Launch the adaptive briefing

Meet your expert guides to the future

Full survey results

Atlantic Council Strategy Paper Series

Feb 10, 2026

The Global Foresight 2036 survey: Full results

In the fall of 2025, the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security surveyed the future, asking leading geostrategists and foresight experts around the world to answer our most burning questions about the biggest drivers of change over the next ten years. Here are the full results. 

Africa China

Strategy Paper Editorial Board

Executive editors

Frederick Kempe
Alexander V. Mirtchev

Editor-in-chief

Matthew Kroenig

Editorial board members

James L. Jones
Odeh Aburdene
Paula Dobriansky
Stephen J. Hadley
Jane Holl Lute
Ginny Mulberger
Stephanie Murphy
Dan Poneman
Arnold Punaro

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Welcome to 2036: What the world could look like in ten years, according to nearly 450 experts

Mary Kate Aylward, Peter Engelke, Uri Friedman, and Paul Kielstra — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Welcome to 2036

What the world could look like in ten years, according to nearly 450 experts

By Mary Kate Aylward, Peter Engelke, Uri Friedman, and Paul Kielstra

Explore findings on…

1. China’s power

2. NATO’s future

3. The fate of Ukraine—and Russia

4. Human-like AI

5. Nuclear proliferation

6. European autonomy

7. Water wars

8. Weakening multilateralism and democracy

9. Crypto versus the dollar

10. The view from the Global South

China eclipses the United States economically. A diminished Russia’s war in Ukraine becomes a frozen one, while conflict over Taiwan turns hot and threatens world war. More countries acquire nuclear weapons. A democratic depression coincides with the decline of today’s multilateral system. Cryptocurrencies challenge the dollar. Artificial intelligence matches or even surpasses human capabilities. NATO endures, but fundamentally changes.

These are just some of the future scenarios that geostrategists and foresight practitioners pointed to when the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security surveyed them in November and December 2025 on how they expect the world to change over the next ten years.

We found respondents generally in a dark mood, with 63 percent expecting the world in 2036 to be worse off than it is now. Just 37 percent think that it will be better off ten years hence—roughly on par with the results of this temperature-check question in the previous year’s survey.

The 447 survey respondents were citizens of 72 countries—the highest number of countries represented in the four years we’ve been conducting our annual Global Foresight survey. Roughly half were citizens of the United States, more than one-fifth were from Europe, and just under a fifth were from countries in the so-called Global South. Respondents skewed male and older (roughly three-quarters were male and a similar proportion were over 50 years of age) and were dispersed across the private sector, nonprofits (think tanks, advocacy groups, non-governmental organizations), government, academic or educational institutions, independent consultancies, and multilateral institutions.

So what kind of world do these forecasters envision in 2036? Below are the survey’s ten biggest findings.

Atlantic Council Strategy Paper Series

Feb 10, 2026

The Global Foresight 2036 survey: Full results

Africa China

1. Most respondents think China will surpass the US economically, as concern about a Taiwan conflict rises and 40 percent foresee another world war

Most survey respondents do not believe that the United States will be the world’s dominant power in 2036, with only seven percent saying that it will be. And while an even smaller percentage (four percent) believe that China will be the dominant global power, the great majority of polled experts (around nine in ten) believe that these powers will compete for supremacy either in a bipolar world largely divided into China-aligned and US-aligned blocs or in a multipolar one with multiple centers of power.

The survey results indicate widespread perceptions that China will wield considerable power over the coming decade. While nearly three-quarters of respondents predict that the United States will be the world’s leading military power in 2036, most respondents (58 percent) expect China to be the world’s top economic power within the next decade—with only 33 percent saying the same about the United States. Similarly sized minorities expect either China or the United States to be the leading power in technological innovation (47 percent for the United States, 44 percent for China) and diplomatic influence (38 percent for the United States, 33 percent for China), suggesting they could be peer competitors in these domains. The message respondents appear to be sending is that, by 2036, the “China rising” era will have given way to a “China risen” one, characterized by a significant erosion in relative US power in certain respects and an end to the US-dominated world order. (A deeper dive into the data reveals that Global South respondents rate China’s future power higher than respondents from other regions do; see finding 10 below.)

More than two-thirds of respondents (70 percent) believe that China will try to forcibly take Taiwan in the next decade—up from 65 percent in our previous year’s survey and 50 percent two years ago, signaling an increasing likelihood of this scenario materializing. The intensity of this concern seems to be growing as well: Twenty-one percent of respondents “strongly agree” that China will attempt to forcibly retake Taiwan over the next decade, up from 15 percent who felt this way in our previous two surveys.

And what starts in Taiwan wouldn’t necessarily end in Taiwan. In keeping with the top finding from our previous year’s survey, more than 40 percent of respondents envision another world war, involving a multifront conflict among great powers, erupting over the next decade. And within that group, 43 percent think the likely trigger will be in Taiwan or the East/South China Seas—the most-cited origin point for such a conflict, with Eastern Europe (25 percent) and the Middle East (13 percent) in second and third place. This result suggests that growing competition between China and the United States, if improperly managed, will become a global powder keg.

Expert insight by Dexter Tiff Roberts: China “could easily be derailed”

It’s clear that most respondents believe that China is poised to unseat the United States as the global economic superpower over the next ten years, challenging the United States on multiple fronts from currency to international institutions to political stability.

It’s also obvious that Beijing is feeling a newfound confidence as it leverages the international trade chaos wrought by President Donald Trump’s tariffs to position itself as a global leader advocating for a more open international trading system. Of course, Beijing continues to use a host of protectionist measures—from industrial subsidies to non-tariff barriers favoring domestic companies—to tilt the field in its favor.

But China’s ascent to economic supremacy could easily be derailed by its limited progress in shifting from export-driven growth to a more sustainable, consumption-driven economy. China’s present model is facing ever larger challenges as countries push back against a flood of Chinese electric vehicles, solar panels, and electronics.

— Dexter Tiff Roberts, founder and publisher of the newsletter Trade War on Chinese economics and politics, former China bureau chief and Asia News Editor at Bloomberg Businessweek, and nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Global China Hub

Expert insight by Markus Garlauskas: Military power alone won’t deter China

The clear majority of respondents who assessed that China will attempt to take Taiwan by force in the next decade included those respondents who also assessed that the United States would be the strongest military power at the time—suggesting many respondents believe overall military power alone is insufficient to deter Beijing.

Given that Beijing has ramped up its aggressive rhetoric and military exercises against Taiwan, which are starting to look like dress rehearsals for an attack, now is the time for action. To strengthen deterrence, the United States and its allies should improve intelligence to provide timely attack warning, posture forces to decisively win a first battle against China, and establish a victory plan to prepare for a long war. Meanwhile, the United States should encourage Taiwan to further strengthen its defenses and mobilize the whole of its society to deter China.

While Taiwan was most commonly cited as the flashpoint for a potential global multifront war in the coming decade, only one respondent cited the Korean peninsula, which suggests respondents are underestimating the potential for a larger war to start with North Korean aggression there. As we explored in a report based on a tabletop exercise, either a conflict in the Taiwan Strait or on the Korean Peninsula could escalate into a broader war, including nuclear escalation.

— Markus Garlauskas, former National Intelligence Officer for North Korea on the US National Intelligence Council and director of the Indo-Pacific Security Initiative of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

Expert insight by Josh Lipsky and Jessie Yin:
A day may come when the United States
is not the world’s largest economy, but it won’t be in 2036

The experts are very likely wrong on this one—or at least, they’re missing crucial context.

This idea that China was on track to take over the United States as the world’s largest economy was conventional wisdom in Washington (and New York) before the COVID-19 pandemic. Before 2020, Bloomberg Economics expected China to surpass US nominal GDP by the early 2030s. Even during the pandemic, many were impressed by the resilience of China’s economic growth when other major economies faltered. As late as 2022, Goldman Sachs predicted that China would overtake the US economy around 2035. But economists have been re-adjusting their predictions across the board. In 2023, Bloomberg Economics changed its forecast and projected that it would take until the mid-2040s for China’s economy to catch up to that of the United States. Simply put, Beijing’s economy in 2026 isn’t what it was in 2020.

While China’s growth has slowed down from pre-pandemic expectations, the United States has actually outperformed previous growth projections. In 2019, the International Monetary Fund projected that China’s GDP growth would hit 5.5 percent in 2024, while the United States would only grow by 1.6 percent. In 2024, however, the United States grew by 2.8 percent, while China grew by 5 percent. It’s definitely strong growth coming out of Beijing, but the United States’ nominal GDP was $10 trillion more than China’s in 2024. This makes it less likely, as China’s growth slows, that it will surpass the United States in 10 years. Assuming that 2025 growth rates continue, China would surpass the United States in nominal GDP in 2041. And some experts question the veracity of the growth numbers China releases, with some suggesting a 2025 growth rate as low as 2.5 percent.

Economic forecasting is not a precise science, but there are a few factors to look at when it comes to forecasting China’s economic growth vis-a-vis the United States. Let’s break down some of these factors behind China’s economic slowdown. Beijing is dealing with the sticky negative effects of its prolonged real estate slump—a sector which used to be a major driver of economic growth and investment. As the housing market struggles, consumer confidence remains low, and local governments are bogged down by debt. The country also has a population crisis on the horizon. By 2060, it’s projected that there will be around 70 elderly dependents for every 100 working-age people. China remains a strong export-driven economy with a high-tech sector that is continuing to innovate, but Chinese high-tech firms are only one sliver of its overall economy, and we’re still seeing the vast majority of AI investments worldwide being directed towards the United States. Indeed, it’s the United States that is leading the development of the most important technology of the twenty-first century.

None of this is to downplay the strengths of China’s economy or to neglect the headwinds that are facing the United States, but so far, the data doesn’t suggest that China will overtake the United States as the world’s largest economy by 2036.

— Josh Lipsky is chair, international economics at the Atlantic Council and the senior director of the Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Center.

— Jessie Yin is an assistant director with the Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Center.

2. Expect NATO to endure but undergo fundamental changes

Amid major ups and downs for NATO in the first year of the second Trump administration—from commitments to ramp up defense spending at The Hague summit in 2025 to the standoff between Denmark and the United States over the status of Greenland—survey respondents are split evenly on whether the Alliance will grow more influential (35 percent) or less (35 percent) in ten years’ time. Behind these equivocal answers about NATO’s future power, however, is a clear and substantial measure of doubt regarding the future of the Alliance itself: Nearly half of respondents (44 percent) believe that NATO will no longer exist in its current form in 2036. Among this group expecting fundamental change, half (51 percent) anticipate that a reconfigured NATO will be less influential than the current alliance.

This finding likely relates to the part that the United States is expected to play in the Alliance going forward. A significant minority of respondents—39 percent—don’t envision the United States, by the year 2036, still having the central, commanding role in NATO that it has had since the Alliance’s founding, though the majority (61 percent) believe the United States will remain in this position. Among the group that envisions the United States no longer retaining its dominant role in the Alliance, 65 percent expect a coalition of states to take a leading role in NATO if Washington steps back, with smaller but still significant percentages citing Germany (33 percent), Poland (20 percent), France (19 percent), and the United Kingdom (18 percent) as potential Alliance leaders. (Respondents could choose more than one answer.)

Respondents also indicated that several NATO member states without nuclear weapons might acquire them by 2036. Among the 85 percent of survey respondents who think that at least one new country or territory will obtain nuclear weapons within the next decade, about 30 percent expect Turkey to acquire these weapons, 24 percent believe Germany will do so, and 15 percent anticipate Poland doing the same. This may reflect an assessment that a possible US withdrawal of its nuclear umbrella from Europe or from its leading role in the Alliance could prompt these NATO member states to go nuclear.

Notably, of the respondents who believe that the United States will be the world’s leading military power a decade from now, 70 percent think that the United States will retain its security alliances and partnerships in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East; among those who think another power will lead in the military field , that figure drops to 49 percent. Similarly, among those in the camp of the United States as the leading military power in 2036, 67 percent expect Washington to maintain a central role in NATO relative to just 39 percent who see another country or bloc leading militarily. These findings indicate a link between US military leadership and the maintenance of the country’s alliances and partnerships around the world.

Expert insight by Ian Brzezinski: NATO “will not function” without Washington

The polling serves as a troubling warning sign. It reflects frustration with the long-term failure of European allies to fulfill their defense obligations and the Alliance’s failure to leverage its massive overmatch in power over Russia to end Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine on just and enduring terms. Another factor is surely the Trump administration’s determination to dilute US military commitment to and leadership in NATO. The Alliance simply will not function in the absence of robust leadership from Washington and a demonstrable commitment of force that inspires confidence in US allies and fear in US adversaries.

The good news for NATO is that the Europeans are now finally increasing their defense spending with haste, the United States continues to have vital interests in Europe that justify the aforementioned leadership and commitment, and the American public expect that of their government. Polls consistently show that some 65 to 75 percent of the American public believe that the United States should sustain or increase its commitment to NATO. That is what gives me an optimistic outlook about NATO’s future.

— Ian Brzezinski, former US deputy assistant secretary of defense for Europe and NATO policy and resident senior fellow with the Transatlantic Security Initiative in the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

Trackers and Data Visualizations

Jun 20, 2025

NATO Defense Spending Tracker

By Kristen Taylor, Julia Salabert

The Transatlantic Security Initiative’s NATO defense spending tracker delves into data and figures to analyze current defense spending trends.

Europe & Eurasia NATO

3. Many respondents envision a diminished Russia heading toward a frozen conflict in Ukraine

A high-profile, US-led push for a final negotiated settlement to the war in Ukraine dominated headlines while this year’s survey was in the field. Despite that, respondents shifted in the direction of anticipating a frozen conflict. Just 34 percent of respondents think that the war will end on terms largely favorable to Russia, down substantially from the nearly half of respondents (47 percent) who answered that way in our previous year’s survey. Conversely, slightly more than half of respondents (52 percent) now think the war ultimately will turn into a frozen conflict, up from 43 percent a year ago.

Meanwhile, respondents believe that Russia is destined to be a lesser power. By 2036, respondents expect minimal Russian clout across all five metrics of power tested in the survey. Just 2 percent of those surveyed believe that Russia will be the world’s leading country in cultural or soft power by 2036 and 1 percent say the same regarding military power. In all other areas, the figure rounds down to 0 percent. Respondents also cited Russia more than any other world power as a candidate to break up internally as a result of developments such as revolution, civil war, or political disintegration, with 36 percent expecting such an outcome relative to 30 percent in the previous year’s survey. (The latest figure is only slightly below this question’s high of 40 percent of respondents forecasting Russia’s breakup a few years ago, shortly before Yevgeny Prigozhin staged a rebellion against the Kremlin.)

Russian weakness, however, doesn’t necessarily reduce the danger it poses in Ukraine and beyond; in fact, it could increase the threat. Among the minority of respondents (22 percent) who expect a state or terrorist group to use nuclear weapons in the coming decade, 60 percent believe that Russia will do so, making it the most-cited actor.

Expert insight by John Herbst: Only pressure on Putin will lead to durable peace

Contrary to pundit chatter, in 2025 US policy largely did not veer in Putin’s direction. It has jumped back and forth between criticizing and placing pressure on Ukraine and Russia. It is fair to say that the US president seems reluctant to hammer Putin for his clear rejection of numerous American ceasefire and peace proposals, and rarely criticizes Putin without also hitting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Yet Trump still has sanctioned Rosneft and Lukoil, Russia’s two largest oil firms. And he continues to provide essential military intelligence to Ukraine that has enhanced the effectiveness of Ukraine’s very successful attacks on Russia’s hydrocarbon production, with serious impact on Russia’s revenue and its staggering economy.

If the White House policy continues, it is safe to expect another year like 2025—at most minor gains for Putin on the battlefield, at a terrible cost in casualties, and with no strategic success and more strain on the Russian economy. The Ukrainians will muddle through because Western support will be at least adequate, and because they have no other choice if they want to live freely as Ukrainians.

If Team Trump is able to digest the lessons of the past year, the United States will provide more support for Ukraine—with the sale of more advanced weapons, including Tomahawks—and put more pressure on the Kremlin in the form of sanctions. The administration would also embrace the position some of its members spoke about publicly a year ago and use its influence to persuade Belgium and other influential players to provide remaining frozen Russian state assets to Ukraine. This combination of measures, if pursued consistently for many months, would 1) weaken Moscow’s position on the battlefield and 2) increase the odds of Putin accepting terms to establish a durable peace, which is Trump’s stated aim and something Putin would only agree to under duress.

— John Herbst, former US ambassador to Ukraine and senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center

4. AI could match human capabilities within a decade, as concerns about the technology’s impact mount

Survey respondents expect artificial intelligence (AI) to progress rapidly over the coming decade. A clear majority (58 percent) believe that, by 2036, the world will have gone beyond today’s predictive and generative AI systems to achieve artificial general intelligence (AGI), which is defined in the survey as “an artificial intelligence system matching or exceeding the cognitive abilities of human beings across any task”—one of the most ambitious goals AI companies are currently pursuing.

More than half of respondents (56 percent) expect that, on balance, AI will have a positive effect on global affairs over the next decade, while less than a third (32 percent) believe it will have a negative effect. These results suggest that the polled experts generally are more optimistic about the technology’s future impact than, for example, the general public in the United States is. But notably, expectations of AI’s negative impact are increasing, rising three percentage points relative to the previous year’s results.

Similarly, while worries about AI’s economic impact remain low among respondents, they are growing. Fourteen percent of respondents now see job losses and economic disruption due to advancements in technology such as AI as the single biggest threat to global prosperity in the coming decade. That’s more than double the previous year’s figure of 6 percent.

When it comes to social media, our survey respondents have expressed consistently negative views about the technology’s impact on the world—perhaps because social media is now a mature technology with clear downsides, in contrast with the positive expectations people had for the technology fifteen or twenty years ago. Views about AI could follow a similar course if its downside impacts ultimately outweigh its positive ones.

Expert insight by Tess deBlanc-Knowles: We don’t know if we’re on track for AGI

It is not certain that we’re going to get to artificial general intelligence with current trajectories, and there’s also a tremendous amount of uncertainty about which approaches would get us to more generalizable and true reasoning capabilities—or whether those capabilities are even possible to achieve. What we’re seeing with each generation of the current models is higher performance, but it is not clear that training on larger and larger swaths of data, using more compute, is necessarily going to get us to that breakthrough capability of true artificial thinking.

— Tess deBlanc-Knowles, senior director of Atlantic Council Technology Programs

5. Brace for more countries with nuclear weapons—including Iran despite the Israel-Iran war—though not necessarily nuclear use

Our respondents overwhelmingly expect greater proliferation of nuclear weapons over the next decade, with 85 percent believing additional countries or territories will acquire these arms during that timeframe. The most-cited next entrant in the nuclear club is Iran, selected by 66 percent of those anticipating the spread of nuclear weapons—indicating a widespread assumption that the war waged this past summer by Israel and the United States to destroy Iran’s nuclear program did not definitively extinguish that program or Tehran’s nuclear ambitions. This finding may also explain why the second-most-cited actor to obtain nukes in the next ten years (chosen by 53 percent of those expected nuclear spread) is Iran’s rival and neighbor Saudi Arabia.

But many surveyed experts also foresee nuclear proliferation beyond the Middle East. Those who imagine additional nuclear powers emerging also point to East Asia (with 47 percent citing South Korea, 37 percent Japan, and 11 percent Taiwan) and to non-nuclear NATO members as mentioned in our second finding above.

Respondents appear to believe that this nuclear proliferation will occur in the absence of global governance to curb the spread of these weapons, with only 4 percent expecting the greatest expansion of global cooperation over the next decade to occur in the realm of nuclear nonproliferation.

Even with this likelihood of proliferation, however, respondents seem less concerned that nuclear weapons will actually be used over the next ten years, with 78 percent of respondents predicting no nuclear use relative to 52 percent who said the same in the previous year’s survey. Among the fifth of respondents who are forecasting nuclear use, 60 percent envision Russia employing such weapons, with 42 percent pointing to North Korea and, notably, 34 percent citing the United States.

The reduced expectation of nuclear use may stem from assessments that particular actors seem less likely to take such a drastic step relative to assessments a year earlier. For example, 15 percent of all respondents expect Russia to use nuclear weapons in the next ten years—down from 26 percent in the previous year’s survey. For North Korea those numbers dropped from 24 to 10 percent, for terrorist groups 19 to 8 percent, and for Israel 12 to 5 percent. The only actor registering a notable increase is the United States, with 8 percent of all respondents foreseeing US nuclear use. That’s up from 5 percent in the previous year’s survey.

Expert insight by Amy Woolf: Growing concern about China’s nuclear arsenal—and US deterrence

The results present a somewhat contradictory picture. More than 80 percent of the participants expect more nations to acquire nuclear weapons in the coming decade, but nearly the same percentage (78 percent) expect that nuclear weapons will not be used in conflict. It’s possible these responses reflect reduced concern about Russia potentially using nuclear weapons in Ukraine. It does, however, raise questions about why respondents believe more nations would seek nuclear weapons in the absence of circumstances where they might need to employ them in a conflict.

The answer to this conundrum may be evident in respondents’ concerns about the potential for proliferation in Asia, where 47 percent of those anticipating nuclear proliferation expect South Korea to acquire nuclear weapons and 37 percent expect Japan to do so. These numbers likely reflect continuing concerns about a threat environment that includes China’s regional ambitions and the growing nuclear arsenals of both China and North Korea.

They may also reflect concerns about the reliability of US extended nuclear deterrence and credibility of the US commitment to come to the defense of allies. In Europe, this concern has led to occasional discussions among US allies about developing an independent nuclear deterrent. Respondents may have considered whether the nuclear threat environment and proliferation risks might evolve in response to ongoing changes in US national security goals and frequent threats of US military intervention. If the United States is seen as a threat to stability, it could become a source of nuclear risk rather than the foundation of a stable nuclear order.

— Amy F. Woolf, former specialist in nuclear weapons policy at the Congressional Research Service of the US Library of Congress and nonresident senior fellow with Forward Defense in the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

6. Respondents are forecasting a more autonomous Europe, but one that still lags behind China and the US across most measures of power

Our latest survey offers mixed results for Europe and the European Union (EU). Respondents are bearish on the EU’s prospects for joining the top tier of global powers. No respondents forecast the EU becoming the world’s foremost military power in 2036, which isn’t surprising given its history as an economic union. Yet respondents are also pessimistic about the EU’s prospects for becoming the world’s foremost economic power (only 3 percent expected this) or tech power (5 percent) in ten years’ time. Just 8 percent of respondents predict that the euro will make the biggest inroads into the US dollar’s dominance over the next decade. Cryptocurrency, the renminbi, and gold all rated higher as challengers to the dollar. A significant minority of respondents (22 percent) foresee the EU breaking apart by 2036.

However, there is another more bullish side to the ledger. A substantial portion of respondents envision the EU as an important player in the diplomatic arena (17 percent say the EU will be the world’s foremost diplomatic actor in 2036). Thirty percent believe the EU will be the leading power in cultural or soft power, just below the percentage that say the same of the United States and nearly twice the percentage that foresee China occupying this position. For three years now, Global Foresight survey results have also shown steadily rising expectations that Europe—not necessarily defined in this instance as the EU—will have achieved “strategic autonomy” by 2036 through taking more responsibility for its own security, with 57 percent of respondents answering to that effect in our latest survey. That’s up from 48 percent in the previous year’s survey and just 31 percent the year before that.

Expert insight by Jörn Fleck: Europe is facing “simultaneous abandonment and entrapment”

The survey results about Europe’s quest for strategic autonomy seem to track the prevailing sentiment on the continent about its future in a brave new world of power politics.

A year into the Trump administration’s second term, the terms of Europe’s debate about greater sovereignty have changed under the impression of simultaneous abandonment and entrapment by the United States. Europeans still remember last year’s disconcerting Oval Office meeting with the Ukrainian president and the freeze of US military and intelligence support for Kyiv—even if it was ultimately temporary. That episode accelerated a fundamental shift for Europeans as they faced up to some deeply uncomfortable and costly realities about the continent’s posture in a new geopolitical era without predictable US support. French politicians and strategists could hardly hold back their collective “told you so.” But even among former skeptics of “strategic autonomy” in Central and Northern Europe, there has been a growing realization that Europe has to rapidly address capability gaps and grow its independent military, economic, and technological means to confront an aggressive Russia, an exploitative China, and a disruptive America.

In fact, we can see this already happening. In her September 2025 State of the European Union speech, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen called for Europe’s “independence moment” after launching a slew of defense-related initiatives including the “Rearm Europe 2030” plan and “Security Action for Europe” to mobilize fresh cash for European defense spending.

The policy follow-up to this realization has been more mixed. Europe has stepped up financially and politically to keep Ukraine in the fight against Russia. It has proposed a package for €800 billion in new defense spending. European NATO countries have committed to new spending and capability targets. Some, like Poland, are already meeting them. Others are obliterating long-held orthodoxies—for example, Germany with its half-trillion-euro surge in defense investment. Beyond defense, the EU has sought to address its economic competitiveness, diversify its trade relations, counter China’s unfair economic practices, boost investment in technology and research and development through a restructured multi-annual budget, and more. But as so often happens in Europe, fragmentation, national interests, and pet projects, plus weak leadership from Brussels to Berlin to Paris, are holding back a more ambitious and concerted drive toward greater autonomy in any one area.

The survey responses share the contradictions and ambiguities of Europe’s political realities around strategic autonomy. Over a fifth of respondents believe the EU could break up over the next decade—not exactly a boost for building up European capacity. Even more strikingly, only miniscule minorities see the EU becoming the leading global power when it comes to diplomatic influence, the economy, or technology. Without Europe-wide coordination and leadership in at least some of these categories, European sovereignty will remain little more than an aspiration.

— Jörn Fleck, senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Europe Center

7. Respondents see water wars coming, as global warming surpasses key thresholds and climate cooperation cools

Our polling results surfaced some warning signs for climate change as a priority item on the global policy agenda. For the first time in three years of asking this question in Global Foresight surveys, climate change is not the leading perceived threat to global prosperity over the next decade. In our latest survey, just 17 percent of respondents cite climate change as the single biggest threat, relative to the 30 percent who mention war between major powers. That’s roughly half of the percentage of respondents who identified climate change as the biggest threat in our past two surveys. Moreover, only 19 percent of respondents now believe that climate change will generate the greatest increase in international cooperation over the coming decade, just behind technology governance (20 percent) and well down from the 49 percent of respondents who listed climate change just two years ago.

These findings on international climate action contrast with respondents’ forecasts about the changing climate itself. More than 80 percent of respondents expect the world to become hotter, including at least one year over the next decade where the global average temperature is 2 degrees Celsius (or more) warmer than preindustrial levels. The 2-degree increase is a threshold beyond which scientists believe the climate will become less stable; the central goal of the Paris climate accord, negotiated a decade ago, was to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius—a temperature level that was passed in 2024.

This pessimism about limiting global warming may be connected to another finding: Only 40 percent of respondents think that global greenhouse-gas emissions will have peaked and begun to decline by 2036 (up only slightly from our prior year’s survey). Perhaps because of the expectation of rising temperatures, 57 percent of respondents think that public support for action to counter climate change will have increased by 2036. But as our findings indicate, that surge in public support may not correspond with more cooperation at the global level on these issues.

Likely anticipating this hotter, drier, and more unstable climate, two-thirds of respondents (64 percent) expect a war to be fought, at least in part, over access to fresh water in the next decade.

Expert insight by Kathleen Euler: When climate impacts feel “remote,” effective action gets harder

Climate change remains a threat—whether or not it is perceived as an urgent one. This is clear from the science and the 80 percent of respondents who anticipate a hotter world, which will mean more deaths, illnesses, and dramatic, untenable changes to our infrastructure, economies, and way of life.

Yet climate change is increasingly absent from the global news cycle. Headlines are crowded with concerns about AI, immigration debates, and extreme weather events that are ironically often climate-driven but rarely identified as such. Climate change, as a result, feels to some like an abstract, remote threat rather than an immediate one. We can only process so many crises each day, but climate change is a constant undercurrent. Unfortunately, deprioritizing climate change only intensifies its consequences, leading to more costly disasters and losses in the not-far-off future.

— Kathleen Euler, deputy director of the Atlantic Council’s Climate Resilience Center

8. Many experts anticipate international institutions decaying as democracy weakens

There’s been a lot of speculation recently about whether the decades-old rules-based international order is collapsing. Our survey respondents suggest we should prepare for such a reality. They express little confidence that today’s multilateral architecture will be influential a decade hence.

The international system put in place at the Congress of Vienna in 1815 endured, with modifications, for nearly a century. The international system associated with the Treaty of Versailles and related treaties ending World War I lasted a much shorter time. The international infrastructure that arose after World War II, including the United Nations (UN), regional security arrangements and alliances such as NATO, and the Bretton Woods economic institutions not only weathered the Cold War but came through it with enhanced authority.

Eighty years on, respondents seem to assess these bodies as increasingly creaky. An overwhelming majority of respondents (71 percent) believe that the UN will become less influential in the coming decade, compared with just 6 percent who say the opposite. For the Security Council, the UN’s most powerful body, 58 percent expect a decline in influence by 2036 and only 9 percent a rise.

On the economic front, survey participants also are much more likely to expect the post-World War II global financial institutions to grow less influential by 2036 than they are to anticipate them becoming more influential. A majority of respondents (65 percent) foresee the World Trade Organization losing influence relative to only 11 percent who imagine it gaining influence. For the World Bank, the equivalent figures are 50 percent and 14 percent; for the International Monetary Fund, 41 percent and 14 percent. Perhaps even more remarkable, only 5 percent of respondents cite declining trade as a result of protectionism as the biggest threat to global prosperity over the next ten years—a decline from the 14 percent who said the same in the previous year’s survey. The fact that this decline occurred after Trump dramatically increased tariffs on countries around the world indicates, apparently, minimal concern about the decline of free trade as a challenge to global prosperity.

This year’s survey also shows that nearly half of respondents (44 percent) believe that over the coming decade the current democratic recession will deepen into a democratic depression. In contrast, only 24 percent foresee a democratic renaissance during that timeframe.

Predictions about the decline of the international order intersect with those of global democratic decline. Respondents expecting a democratic depression are more likely to foresee core international bodies losing influence over the coming decade than those who forecast a democratic renaissance: from the UN (77 percent vs. 60 percent) and UN Security Council (64 percent vs. 53 percent) to the World Trade Organization (71 percent vs. 48 percent), International Monetary Fund (50 percent vs. 27 percent), and World Bank (53 percent vs. 44 percent).

Respondents who envision continued democratic decline have less faith that over the coming decade major-power war will be avoided, global cooperation will expand, and minority rights around the world will be protected. The vast majority of those anticipating a worsening democratic recession (83 percent) believe that the world overall will be worse off in ten years’ time, whereas 66 percent of those expecting a democratic renaissance think the world will be better off a decade from now.

Expert insight by Matthew Kroenig: US leadership and the strength of democracy worldwide are intertwined

Many respondents predict democratic decline, decaying international institutions, a risk of major-power war, and generally fear the world will be worse off in ten years’ time. These findings make sense given emerging challenges to US global leadership coming from both without and within.

The US-led, liberal international system has produced unprecedented levels of global peace, prosperity, and freedom over the past eighty years. In this timeframe, we have witnessed zero great power wars, a quintupling of per capita gross domestic product in the United States and dramatic growth in global GDP, and a tenfold increase in the number of people living in liberal democracies. Contrary to a common perception that US grand strategy went off the rails in the post-Cold War world, the data show that the world was safest, richest, and freest during America’s unipolar moment in the 1990s and 2000s.

Unfortunately, these indicators have leveled off and begun to decline in the 2010s and 2020s. Global democracy, for example, has declined in each of the past nineteen years. Our respondents project a continued diminution of US leadership and a corresponding acceleration of these negative trends in the decade to come.

— Matthew Kroenig, former US official in the Department of Defense and the intelligence community during the Bush, Obama, and Trump administrations, and vice president and senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

9. The dollar is likely to remain the world’s currency of choice, but keep an eye on crypto

Economists are engaged in an intense debate right now about whether the US dollar can hold on to its status as the world’s leading reserve currency—a position it’s held since World War II. (The Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Center tracks the dominance of the dollar on an ongoing basis.) Although the dollar is likely to remain the world’s currency of choice in 2036, our survey results indicate that it won’t go unchallenged. About 80 percent of respondents expect other currencies, commodities, or assets to make inroads into the dollar’s dominance over the next ten years.

The most-cited asset expected to make the biggest inroads into the dollar’s dominance is not a national currency but rather cryptocurrency (34 percent of respondents), with a further 11 percent saying that a commodity—gold—will pose the greatest challenge (we conducted the survey before Bitcoin suffered a precipitous decline in value, dimming optimism about crypto’s future prospects—for the time being at least). Contrast those findings with those for other national currencies besides the dollar: Twenty-one percent of respondents predict that China’s renminbi will make the biggest gains relative to the dollar, while just 8 percent say the same for the euro and 5 percent for the Japanese yen, with no votes for the British pound.

Respondents who foresee China as the world’s leading economic power a decade from now are more likely to imagine the dollar’s dominance eroding. But they are split on its most formidable challengers, with higher figures for China’s currency but also the Japanese yen and gold.

Expert insight by Alisha Chhangani: Dollar dominance under increasing threat

The dollar has had a turbulent year, down more than 9 percent against major currencies in 2025. Against that backdrop, it is interesting that survey respondents see cryptocurrency as the greatest threat to dollar dominance.

The concern is understandable. Crypto’s volatility and recurring crises have coincided with the growth of a “grey economy” where crypto-assets increasingly facilitate sanctions evasion, tax avoidance, and illicit trade beyond US oversight. This undermines the effectiveness of US financial sanctions, a cornerstone of dollar dominance. At the same time, the rise of dollar-backed stablecoins, alongside the United States’ first stablecoin regulation (the 2025 GENIUS Act), suggests Washington increasingly sees these crypto-assets as a way to preserve dollar dominance and bolster demand for dollar assets such as US Treasuries, even as the long-term risks and global spillovers are not yet fully understood.

When it comes to China, the survey results align with reality. While Beijing has been discreet about diversifying away from the dollar, it continues to do so methodically. Its wholesale central bank digital currency (CBDC) project has tested transactions in the digital renminbi, and China’s Cross-Border Interbank Payment System (CIPS) has expanded significantly over the past five years, reducing reliance on dollar-based payment infrastructure.

Still, the dollar’s status remains stable. Data from the Bank for International Settlements shows the dollar on one side of 89 percent of all foreign-exchange trades. Its liquidity keeps it embedded in the plumbing of global markets. Ultimately, the foundations of dollar dominance still lie in trust in US political and legal institutions, including the preservation of central bank independence, which has come under increasing threat.

— Alisha Chhangani, associate director at the Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Center

Dollar Dominance Monitor

This monitor analyzes the strength of the dollar relative to other major currencies. The project presents interactive indicators to track BRICS and China’s progress in developing an alternative financial infrastructure.

10. The Global South sees the future differently

Roughly one-fifth (18 percent) of this year’s survey responses came from citizens of countries located in what is often called the Global South. Although it’s an inexact and contested term, the Global South is a useful shorthand to describe countries that are outside the wealthiest group of industrialized nations. While respondents in this category are heavily weighted toward Latin America and the Caribbean (54 percent of the Global South group), forecasts from geostrategists and foresight practitioners across the Global South countries differ from those in the Global North in significant ways.

For example, respondents from Global South countries are much more likely to rate Russia’s chances in its war in Ukraine higher than other survey participants: Forty-six percent say that the outcome will be on terms favorable to Russia, versus 31 percent who say the same among the rest of the pool. Those from the Global South are also much more likely to see China as a leader in key fields, with 76 percent expecting it to be the top economic power by 2036 compared with 54 percent who feel that way among the rest of the respondents. Global South experts also are more skeptical about the longevity of US power, with only 60 percent of this group expecting the US to retain military dominance over the next ten years relative to 76 percent of other respondents. Remarkably, 22 percent of respondents in the Global South expect the United States to break up internally in the next ten years, compared with 10 percent of other respondents. Those from the Global South are more likely than respondents from elsewhere to expect a global multifront war in the coming decade (48 percent relative to 40 percent) as well, with a larger proportion expecting such a conflict to be sparked by events in the Middle East (35 percent compared with 8 percent).

Expert insight by James Mazzarella: Concerns about US stability may reflect Global South history

The percentage of respondents from the Global South who expect the United States to break up internally in the next ten years is more than twice as high as that of respondents from outside the Global South. Similarly, 76 percent of Global South respondents expect China to overtake the United States as the world’s dominant economy, compared with 54 percent for the rest of the respondents.

These expectations may be due to a combination of factors. One is the US withdrawal to a position of greater economic isolation. Another is the perception that the United States is pulling back from humanitarian engagement in the Global South, and that it is undergoing a period of political discord—an assessment that may reflect the Global South’s own experiences with weak institutions.

Perceptions aside, political discord as a factor is measurable, especially when examined alongside data from the Freedom and Prosperity Indexes. Among “high freedom” countries since 1995, no country has experienced a greater decline in freedom than the United States. The decline is driven by institutional erosion and executive aggrandizement. Because some developing countries in the Global South have more recent history with political discord and breakdown than others, it is very possible that Global South respondents view political developments in the United States as existential threats to America’s unity, while others living in countries with stronger institutions have different understandings of and greater faith in the resilience of American democracy.

— James Mazzarella, former senior director for global economics and development at the National Security Council, now senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Freedom and Prosperity Center.

About the authors

Mary Kate Aylward, Publications Editor, Atlantic Council

Aylward was an editor at War on the Rocks and Army AL&T before joining the Council. She was previously a junior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Peter Engelke, Senior Fellow, GeoStrategy Initiative

Engelke is on the adjunct faculty at Georgetown University’s School of Continuing Studies and is a frequent lecturer to the US Department of State’s Foreign Service Institute. He was previously a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Complex Risks, an executive-in-residence at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy, a Bosch fellow with the Robert Bosch Foundation, and a visiting fellow at the Stimson Center.

Uri Friedman, Senior Editorial Director, Atlantic Council

Friedman is also a contributing writer at The Atlantic, where he writes a regular column on international affairs. He was previously a senior staff writer at The Atlantic covering national security and global affairs, the editor of The Atlantic’s Global section, and the deputy managing editor of Foreign Policy magazine.

Paul Kielstra, Freelance Analyst

Kielstra is a freelance author who has published extensively in fields including business analysis, healthcare, energy policy, fraud control, international trade, and international relations. His work regularly includes the drafting and analysis of large surveys, along with desk research, expert interviews, and scenario building. His clients have included the Atlantic Council, the Economist Group, the Financial Times Group, the World Health Organization, and Kroll. Kielstra holds a doctorate in modern history from the University of Oxford, a graduate diploma in economics from the London School of Economics, and a bachelor of arts from the University of Toronto. He is also a published historian.

Atlantic Council Strategy Paper Series Feb 10, 2026

Welcome to 2036: What the world could look like in ten years, according to nearly 450 experts

We polled geostrategists and foresight practitioners on our most burning questions about the biggest drivers of change over the next decade. Check out their forecasts on everything from the future of NATO to the rise of cryptocurrency.

Atlantic Council Strategy Paper Series Feb 9, 2026

Six ‘snow leopards’ to watch for in the decade ahead

By Uliana Certan, Nikita Shah, Ginger Matchett, Sarah Wallace, Dominique Ramsawak, Tatevik Khachatryan

Our scholars scan the horizon for the underappreciated phenomena that could have outsize impact on the world, driving global change and shaping the future.

Artificial Intelligence Climate Change & Climate Action

Atlantic Council Strategy Paper Series Feb 10, 2026

AI and the future

What does the next year, decade, and beyond hold for AI? We interviewed the Atlantic Council’s tech experts to learn more about AI’s future, and whether it can help us better understand our own.

Artificial Intelligence Technology & Innovation

The post Welcome to 2036: What the world could look like in ten years, according to nearly 450 experts appeared first on Atlantic Council.

The Global Foresight 2036 survey: Full results

Andrea Ratiu — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 10:00:00 +0000

The Global Foresight 2036 survey

Full results

This survey was conducted from November 14, 2025, through December 5, 2025.

Demographic data

Survey questions

Atlantic Council Strategy Paper Series Feb 10, 2026

Welcome to 2036: What the world could look like in ten years, according to nearly 450 experts

Atlantic Council Strategy Paper Series Feb 9, 2026

Six ‘snow leopards’ to watch for in the decade ahead

By Uliana Certan, Nikita Shah, Ginger Matchett, Sarah Wallace, Dominique Ramsawak, Tatevik Khachatryan

Our scholars scan the horizon for the underappreciated phenomena that could have outsize impact on the world, driving global change and shaping the future.

Artificial Intelligence Climate Change & Climate Action

Atlantic Council Strategy Paper Series Feb 10, 2026

AI and the future

What does the next year, decade, and beyond hold for AI? We interviewed the Atlantic Council’s tech experts to learn more about AI’s future, and whether it can help us better understand our own.

Artificial Intelligence Technology & Innovation

The post The Global Foresight 2036 survey: Full results appeared first on Atlantic Council.

AI and the future

Andrea Ratiu — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 10:00:00 +0000

AI and the future

Our experts on the ability of artificial intelligence to forecast the decade ahead—and how AI itself will change over that time

Three years since ChatGPT launched, a combination of hype and fear has made it hard to think clearly about our new age of artificial intelligence (AI). But AI has the potential to change the world—from energy to geopolitics to the global economy to the very production and application of human knowledge. If ever we needed clear-eyed analysis, it’s now.

At the Atlantic Council, our experts in the Atlantic Council Technology Programs spend a lot of their time thinking about how AI will shape our future—and they have the technical literacy essential to the task. So, as part of our annual Global Foresight report on the decade to come, we asked them our most pressing questions: How will AI evolve over the next ten years and beyond? How can we use AI to forecast global affairs? And—let’s be real—will this thing replace us?

Then our experts put AI chatbots through their paces, presenting them with questions from our Global Foresight survey of (human) geostrategists and foresight practitioners about what the world will look like by 2036. Check out the results of this experiment and our experts’ broader insights in the short videos below, along with edited and condensed highlights from our conversations.

How good is AI at predicting the future?

I would not trust today’s AI systems to reliably forecast global affairs. I think that comes down to the fact that, so often, global events don’t follow predictable patterns. That’s because so much of global geopolitics is driven by human decisions.

— Tess deBlanc-Knowles, senior director of Atlantic Council Technology Programs

When you’re asking [AI] to predict the future, you’re asking it a big, unbounded question. What large language models (or LLMs), which is what the current generation of generative artificial intelligence is built on, are good at doing is next-word or next-token prediction.

— Trey Herr, senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Cyber Statecraft Initiative

Right now, I think any policymaker would be very poorly served by, say, pulling up an LLM and asking, “What’s going to happen next?” That’s not really the strength of these modern systems.

— Emerson Brooking, director of strategy and resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab

It is not a crystal ball. In technical terms, AI is probabilistic. It is not predictive or deterministic. A fundamental barrier for artificial intelligence is that it cannot experience the real world. Some of us may be familiar with Plato’s allegory of the cave. AI is kind of like those cave dwellers experiencing the world as shadows and echoes. They’re not living real experiences, and so are limited in that sense. We can, however, envision a world where AI models and human forecasters work together to make better predictions.

— Trisha Ray, associate director and resident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s GeoTech Center

If you asked an AI system to predict the outcome of the Super Bowl, you could equip the model with data from past seasons, the teams, the performance of the players, and the trajectory of those teams over the course of the season. Feed it all of the accurate data of today’s teams and players, and it might come out with some kind of approximation of the top contenders to win the Super Bowl. But the system is not going to be able to predict that rogue tackle that creates a season-ending injury for a star player, or the interpersonal dynamics among the team that can either supercharge their pathway to the championship or totally derail it.

— Tess deBlanc-Knowles, senior director of Atlantic Council Technology Programs

AI’s limitation is that it cannot produce new information. It can’t expand the universe of knowledge that we’re currently training on. What it can do is identify novel insights, identify trends that may have taken humans a lot of time to manually produce or see.

— Graham Brookie, Atlantic Council vice president for technology programs and strategy

Today’s AI systems are well-suited for predictive tasks where there are stable patterns and there’s a good amount of historical data to train the systems on. So this bears out in near-term weather prediction, traffic patterns, predicting maintenance needs for an airplane or some other complex manufacturing system.

— Tess deBlanc-Knowles, senior director of Atlantic Council Technology Programs

How will AI evolve over the next decade?

The growth of AI capability over the past few years has essentially been predictable: It continues to increase exponentially as we devote exponentially more processing power and energy to its needs. But that can’t go on indefinitely. I think soon there will be something that feels like a ceiling.

— Emerson Brooking, director of strategy and resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab

The bubble that is this market is going to pop, and we’re going to see some of these firms fail. You’re going to see others rise up and succeed. Now this could have some really harmful financial consequences for real people, as well as markets in the US, in Western Europe, and elsewhere. But the side effect of that is likely that there is a lot of infrastructure, a lot of computing resources, a lot of talent that’s suddenly available and looking for work and looking for ways to be useful. And that kind of thing can be a really powerful driver of innovation.

— Trey Herr, senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Cyber Statecraft Initiative

Another very significant risk to the progress of AI is trust. I think this is particularly salient in the United States, where recent polls have shown that 60 percent of American adults don’t trust the output of an AI system to be fair and unbiased. I think there’s a scenario where with that baseline level of distrust, if that’s then followed by, say, a series of accidents that could be blamed on AI, or destructive news around AI, then consumers will lose confidence in the technology and businesses will [assume] a higher level of risk in adopting the technology, which will then lead to a cooling in investment and in markets.

— Tess deBlanc-Knowles, senior director of Atlantic Council Technology Programs

You could imagine in ten years an absolutely fantastical, extremely powerful tool assisting you in every aspect of daily life and essentially knowing what you want at all times. But my greater concern, if that is the future, is then who will have access to this tool? Because for AI [tools] to be this capable, they will be immensely energy intensive. They will be extremely expensive. And the current moment we’re in now—in which there’s been a real focus on making AI as accessible to as many people as possible—I wonder how much longer that will last and if we might create these exquisite systems but have them accessible only to a very few people. 

— Emerson Brooking, director of strategy and resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab

We’re seeing a lot of attention today on building what are called “world models.” Instead of predicting the next word, these models are predicting the next action in the world. If we’re able to move in that direction, then we’re really going to see the true impact of AI across society by breaking AI out of this computer interface into robotics that can take on more tasks.

— Tess deBlanc-Knowles, senior director of Atlantic Council Technology Programs

What is possible is that in the future, we’re going to see a larger application of small language models that are built for specific purposes and have that contextual knowledge, or are hooked up to a very relevant database, so that when you log in, you’re logging into a geopolitical chatbot as opposed to a general purpose tool. [There is] a much higher likelihood that it’ll be able to give you good answers. We’re a ways off from that, though.

— Trey Herr, senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Cyber Statecraft Initiative

Any predictions for how AI will change over the next year specifically?

One of the trends I would look out for in 2026 is countries going all in on sovereign AI. The principle driving this trend toward sovereign AI is quite simple: It’s governments saying we need to control AI before it controls us. Now, what is sovereign AI? It is a model of AI development, driven by four characteristics: One, adherence to national laws. The second is national security. The third is economic competitiveness, where there’s a desire for the development and deployment of these models to benefit the home economies. And then the fourth and most interesting one is value alignment—the belief that these models have to adhere to a certain set of ideological and constitutional rules. But here’s a not-so-well-kept secret: It is not possible for a country to build the entire AI stack indigenously.

— Trisha Ray, associate director and resident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s GeoTech Center

There are two trends we should look out for. The first [is] indicators of the continuing sophistication of these tools. In particular I would focus on the context window—the amount of information that [these tools] have direct access to at any one time. When ChatGPT launched, the context window was about 4,000 characters, not very much. A year later, it was 100,000. Today some of the most popular consumer-grade models have a context window of up to 2 million. That is still a drop in the bucket next to the information that these machines will need to actively hold in order to be truly revolutionary and effective. If we can start to see somehow, through maybe some clever engineering, exponential growth in that context window, then we might actually be on a path to something we describe as artificial general intelligence.

The other [trend involves] the financing, political conditions, and even the actual energy costs that are associated with these systems. As these elements begin to shift, some of the AI companies that so far have been able to have these continuing rounds of open financing with ever-higher valuations, if they start to reach some sort of ceiling—that will start to send shocks through this whole system, which may affect AI development in a very different way.

— Emerson Brooking, director of strategy and resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab

How revolutionary is AI?

AI is changing the way that we interact with things that we touch every single day. In ten years, I think that you will see more AI in commercial landscapes, in security landscapes, or even in warfare. I think it’s highly likely that we achieve general artificial intelligence. That doesn’t necessarily mean that killer robots are going to govern all of us.

— Graham Brookie, Atlantic Council vice president for technology programs and strategy

What we’re seeing is one of the most significant changes in digital technology easily in the last fifty years, probably since the creation of the personal computer. Before the PC, you had to go somewhere to an institution and ask for time on a computer. And then suddenly with personal computers, you had them in your office, in your living room. You didn’t need an institution. It just inverted the relationship and inverted a huge power dynamic. AI has done the same thing. It’s put the ability to do complex research and production of knowledge into every single person’s hands.

— Trey Herr, senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Cyber Statecraft Initiative

Artificial intelligence, the way we use it now, is not transformational yet. I would say AI is more a continuation of the digital revolution. It’s exciting for sure, but not society-shaking as of yet. If we think about the industrial revolution, it changed the way we live, changed the way we work, and even changed our politics. It shifted the nexus of economic growth from farms to cities. And if we just reflect on the role that AI plays in our economy right now, it is not at the stage to be called an AI revolution. Yet.

— Trisha Ray, associate director and resident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s GeoTech Center

Will AI replace humans?

Humans can think. Generative artificial intelligence models can’t think. That’s a really, really crucial distinction. It’s easy to anthropomorphize something that will chat with you.

— Trey Herr, senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Cyber Statecraft Initiative

Humans understand context. They understand cause and effect. Humans also have creativity to think through different scenarios that might not be present in prior events, where an AI system is not going to be able to creatively think of a new event.

— Tess deBlanc-Knowles, senior director of Atlantic Council Technology Programs

As more and more time passes and the use of these tools becomes normalized, it may be that AI is never all that good at predicting the future, but that it feels good enough at doing it—and predicting the future is so hard anyway—that we turn that task over to AI; that human beings, with our extraordinarily capable and irreplaceable brains, give up on some of that higher-order thinking and try to let these machines do more and more of the job. And no matter how capable AI becomes, I see that as a tragedy.

We could reach a really strange point where people are using these tools and basically relying on them to tell them what to do and how to live their lives, and they’ve essentially outsourced a lot of higher-order and critical thinking to these tools, having forgotten or having never known that no matter how omniscient these tools seem to be, they themselves are creations from limited human-created data sets and human processes designed in a particular moment in time.

We could find ourselves trapped in some kind of recursive loop where the future and the horizon of possibilities keeps getting narrower and narrower, because that is what the machine is telling us is possible—that machine that was only trained on what humans knew to be possible.

— Emerson Brooking, director of strategy and resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab

Atlantic Council Strategy Paper Series Feb 10, 2026

Welcome to 2036: What the world could look like in ten years, according to nearly 450 experts

Atlantic Council Strategy Paper Series Feb 9, 2026

Six ‘snow leopards’ to watch for in the decade ahead

By Uliana Certan, Nikita Shah, Ginger Matchett, Sarah Wallace, Dominique Ramsawak, Tatevik Khachatryan

Our scholars scan the horizon for the underappreciated phenomena that could have outsize impact on the world, driving global change and shaping the future.

Artificial Intelligence Climate Change & Climate Action

Atlantic Council Strategy Paper Series Feb 10, 2026

AI and the future

What does the next year, decade, and beyond hold for AI? We interviewed the Atlantic Council’s tech experts to learn more about AI’s future, and whether it can help us better understand our own.

Artificial Intelligence Technology & Innovation

The post AI and the future appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Six ‘snow leopards’ to watch for in the decade ahead

Mon, 09 Feb 2026 21:00:00 +0000

Six ‘snow leopards’ to watch for in the decade ahead

Panthera uncia—the snow leopard that inhabits high mountain ranges in Central and South Asia—is one of nature’s best-camouflaged animals. The majestic cat’s beautiful white coat, with gray and black spots, blends seamlessly into the rocky and snowy landscape in which it lives. Known as “the ghost of the mountains,” it seems to appear out of thin air. The reality, of course, is the snow leopard has been there all along, an unseen sight.

In world affairs, there are numerous under-the-radar phenomena that are difficult to spot but crucial to understand given their capacity for disruption and transformation. Like the Himalayan cat, these metaphorical “snow leopards” may appear invisible but in fact are all around us: early-stage technologies that, if developed and scaled, might yield revolutionary results; social movements that, while just beginning to gather strength, could have enormous political consequences in the years to come; demographic trends that only a few experts study but that could overhaul societies in the long run; ecological changes that are not yet fully understood by scientists but could portend disaster ahead should they worsen. These phenomena present underrated risks or opportunities. Each of them could reshape the future. Some already are. We just need to know where to look.

Each year, our Global Foresight series identifies a new set of snow leopards. In this year’s edition, as in previous editions, this challenging task fell to the Atlantic Council’s younger staff, who are well-positioned to identify trends, events, technologies, and forces that their older colleagues might overlook. They scrutinized the world around them and came up with a list of underappreciated but potentially world-changing phenomena.

In the years to come, keep an eye on these six snow leopards.

The tech companies altering the course of conflicts

When businesses are first movers on the battlefield

When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, among the first responders were a conglomeration of cyber and tech companies of all sizes. These companies did critical work to ensure that Ukraine’s cyber defenses held up against an unprecedented onslaught of Russian cyberattacks. Combined with assistance from allied governments, such efforts helped keep the lights on in Ukraine. But the companies’ interventions amounted to entering a conflict of their own volition, without a state’s authorization or direction—which triggered profound geopolitical risks.

The private sector participating in conflict is nothing new; governments have contracted with private companies in war and peacetime for centuries. But three elements are new: First, cybersecurity companies have begun entering interstate conflicts without the authorization of or at least direction from states. Second, these companies effectively possess state-grade capabilities—and, with that, the ability to make world-changing decisions—but without the policy, legal, or risk frameworks states erect around such capabilities to constrain their use. Third, states, citizens, and businesses are increasingly dependent on these companies’ infrastructure and services in peacetime and for cyber defense in conflict. Microsoft recognized this in a June 2022 reflection on the company’s assistance to Ukraine, declaring that the technology sector has an “inevitable” role to play in the “cyber defense of nations.”

The risks of this kind of private-sector involvement in conflict are already emerging. Civil society has raised questions about whether cyber and tech companies constitute combatants under international humanitarian law, particularly where their capabilities intersect with state capabilities—as when, for example, private firms identify exploitable vulnerabilities (or “zero days”) in other companies’ software code. As states and others increasingly contest privately owned digital infrastructure, ideologically motivated cyberattacks (“hacktivism”) have also risen—creating heightened risks of retaliation. The whims of tech executives also have geopolitical consequence. In September 2022, for example, Elon Musk reportedly cut internet access in Ukraine provided via his Starlink satellite technology, disrupting a key Ukrainian counteroffensive. In response, a British member of parliament decried the “dangers of concentrated power in unregulated domains.”

Where these risks could amount to world-changing impact is during a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan, and both Taipei and Beijing are clearly paying attention. Musk’s reported decision to cut Ukraine’s internet access was one reason Taiwan set up its own satellite internet infrastructure. There is some evidence that the Chinese state also is learning lessons from Russia’s war in Ukraine about the role of US cyber and tech companies as a source of advantage in conflict. This development might not be so concerning were it not for the significant business dependencies that Apple and other US tech giants have in China, which could muddy decision-making during any period of conflict. The clarity and unity of purpose seen in cyber companies’ efforts to help Ukraine cannot be guaranteed in the future.

This is an issue that the international security community must address through dialogue and policy development with the private sector. Goals should include firmer guardrails and improved accountability mechanisms—or outright deference to states as primary decision-makers. Such dialogue will prepare states and industry to jointly navigate future conflicts and collective preparedness without generating unintended consequences when the private sector jumps ahead of states.

Nikita Shah is a former senior resident fellow in the Atlantic Council’s Cyber Statecraft Initiative with ten years’ experience as a national security professional in the UK government specializing in cyber security.

The migrants moving in loops, not lines

Leave, learn, return—and start a business?

Many countries have experienced migration as a driver of “brain drain”—a one-way outflow of human capital. But a more dynamic pattern is reshaping global talent flows in some parts of the world. A growing number of migrants who work or study overseas are returning to their home countries with new skills—a pattern known as “brain circulation”—or staying closely connected to their home countries and turning their global experiences into new opportunities there.

Brain drain refers to the loss that occurs when a country’s citizens, especially highly skilled and educated workers, pursue opportunities abroad. Host countries often gain productivity, tax revenue, and innovation—except when migrants are pushed into low-skilled work (such as when immigrants holding master’s degrees work at jobs requiring a high-school diploma), a phenomenon known as “brain waste.”

Another concept, “brain gain,” captures the positive effects of emigration for sending countries: The prospect of opportunities abroad motivates more people to pursue higher education, most of whom remain at home. Those who do leave often continue to contribute through remittances and stronger trade ties.

But these concepts overlook the circulation of talent that is quietly changing the geography of opportunity worldwide. “Brain circulation” first became visible in countries such as India and China, where engineers and entrepreneurs who had lived and worked in the United States returned and used their US career experience to start businesses at home.

What began as a modest trend in the early 2000s is accelerating as travel and digital connectivity become more accessible. The circulation of skilled, educated workers is now remaking national and regional economies. Studies show that returning immigrants tend to be more entrepreneurial and resilient than their peers and are significantly more likely to start businesses. Migrants return with expertise and global exposure they could not have acquired domestically.

Central and Eastern Europe illustrate how transformative this loop can be. After experiencing decades of outward migration, Central and Eastern European countries are now registering rising return flows. Romania, for example, has had three consecutive years of positive net migration driven by returning citizens. They launch startups, invest in local ecosystems, and open doors to new practices and global markets, sometimes with the support of government financing programs. Such ventures are helping power a regional boom. In 2024, startups in the region raised nearly €3.7 billion, a 56 percent increase from the previous year. Nearly half of that total—more than a billion euros—came from companies whose founders studied or worked abroad, or worked at big multinational companies.

At a time when many countries are grappling with aging populations, talent shortages, and relentless competition, this loop of leaving, learning, and returning is becoming a critical source of national advantage. Brain circulation offers a replicable model for countries that need to catalyze growth and sustain innovation. Countries that recognize this opportunity build policies and institutions that drive people, skills, and capital to move in loops, not lines, so that yesterday’s emigrants become tomorrow’s nation-builders. The future belongs to dynamic societies that treat mobility as a renewable resource, turning migration into a story of shared prosperity and, ultimately, into the backbone of a global innovation system that can respond to challenges and opportunities no country can tackle alone.

Uliana Certan is an assistant director for European engagement at the Atlantic Council’s Global Energy Center and Atlantic Council Romania.

The underwater forests helping heal the climate

Big seaweed could be big business

In the waters off one-third of the world’s coastlines grows a powerhouse plant: kelp. Towering kelp forests capture twenty times more carbon dioxide (CO₂) than do land forests of equivalent size. They promise lower-cost and lower-carbon ways to feed the world’s population, and they protect coastlines from the effects of more powerful storms. As scientists and policymakers increasingly turn to nature-based solutions to take on climate change, these colorful stalks of algae may be the next big thing.

Kelp forests can remove one ton of carbon emissions from the atmosphere for somewhere between $20 and $85. To do the same with direct-air-capture machines costs $1,000 per ton. Not only is kelp an incredible carbon sink, it drives other forms of environmental conservation and protection. The stalks reduce the size of tidal waves by up to 60 percent, prevent soil erosion, and absorb agricultural runoff. Studies show that kelp supports the development of the biogenic aerosols that help clouds form, reducing the temperature of water, soil, and air. Kelp also is an ingredient in biodegradable biopolymers, which can replace petroleum-based plastics.

In the food and agriculture sectors, kelp is both a nutritional food source and a protective habitat for hundreds of plant and animal species, including commercial fish such as cod, crab, octopus, and lobster.

And it doesn’t stop at seafood: Sprinkling seaweed on cattle feed can reduce cows’ methane emissions by between 40 and 80 percent. Kelp can be processed into natural, liquid biostimulants for agriculture, which can reduce the need for artificial fertilizers that release greenhouse gases. These kelp-based treatments also could reduce the large amounts of water required by many high-value cash crops such as almonds, avocados, strawberries, and grapes.

Beyond the environment and agri-food industries, kelp generates health and cosmetic products, attractive tourist destinations for snorkeling, and critical supplies for indigenous communities.

Kelp, however, faces an uncertain future due to predators, pollution, and marine heatwaves induced by climate change. Efforts to regrow damaged kelp forests off the coast of California offer a prime example for other coastal governments. Scientists and conservationists are planting specific kelp varieties that grow three times faster and absorb double the amount of CO₂ compared with other kelp. When this kelp matures, by some calculations it could absorb as much CO₂ as the global aviation sector emits. Kelp could help the state meet its target of reaching net-zero emissions by 2045—five years sooner than the target set in the 2015 Paris Agreement.

To help kelp survive in warmer oceans, scientists use remotely operated vehicles and motorized growing lattices, raising the kelp toward the water’s surface during the day to absorb sunlight and lowering it into deeper, more nutrient-rich water at night.

The effects of climate change on the world’s coral reefs have grabbed headlines. The United Nations Decade on Environmental Restoration has increased attention on coral-reef, mangrove, and seagrass restoration efforts. But so far, there has been limited funding focused specifically on kelp growth and management.

Global cooperation on kelp will be crucial for future climate efforts, as new research proves that oceanic carbon sinks are 15 percent larger than land sinks. But even in the absence of such coordination, expect continued momentum for work on kelp. Kelp and seaweed farming is the fastest-growing global aquaculture industry, increasing 6.2 percent per year over the last twenty years. Countries in Asia, particularly China and Indonesia, produce 98 percent of farmed seaweed by volume globally, but there is enormous potential for growth and applications in Europe, Africa, and the Americas. And with a $500 billion market, kelp has plenty of potential to combat climate change, mitigate the biodiversity crisis around the world, and develop a more profitable and sustainable “blue economy.”

Ginger Matchett is an assistant director for the GeoStrategy Initiative in the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security.

The crumbling human rights order

Are we going back to the bad old days?

In recent years, an alarming number of countries have withdrawn from or defied human rights treaties and humanitarian conventions. Global norms about how human beings should be treated were a key part of the international system that arose after World War II, including the 1948 adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Specialists have said for years that this postwar system is under stress. But the consequences for individuals are underappreciated. If the postwar order was a bulwark against the horrors of the twentieth century, the idea that ordinary citizens should be protected from unrestrained state power was a load-bearing pillar. The weakening of that pillar is ominous and risks a future with fewer human rights than exist today.

The retreat from human rights is happening at two levels: through actors exiting treaties, and through changes in the societal expectations that those treaties both reflect and reinforce.

Consider the developments of just this past year. In 2025, the United States, Israel, and Nicaragua withdrew from the United Nations Human Rights Council, reducing the reach and legitimacy of one of the few multilateral bodies tasked with universal monitoring of rights.

That same year, Lithuania, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, and Poland withdrew from the 1997 Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Treaty, while Lithuania separately pulled out of the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions. Proposals for other NATO members to take similar steps further highlight the erosion of norms against weapons that can indiscriminately harm civilians long after conflicts end. These shifts are coming as countries facing new security pressures increasingly prioritize military flexibility over humanitarian restrictions. The withdrawing states—all of which border Russia or Belarus—have cited the dangers they are confronting in the wake of the Kremlin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which has been rife with human rights abuses. In light of the withdrawing countries’ statements, it seems unlikely that any would have withdrawn had Russia not invaded Ukraine—which underscores the snowball effect of diminishing postwar humanitarian norms, and why each violation matters.

Norms may be intangible, but after 1945 countries codified many of them into binding commitments in an effort to build a better world with such norms at its core. Once these norms are weakened, as appears to be occurring now, they may never recover. This diminishes international law, emboldens perpetrators of human rights violations and war crimes, fuels cycles of impunity, and leaves civilians increasingly vulnerable. The cumulative effect is a weakened global system of accountability at precisely the moment when conflicts and authoritarian forces are on the rise.

Sarah Wallace is a former program assistant for the GeoStrategy Initiative and Adrienne Arsht National Security Resilience Initiative in the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security.

The cultural erasure driven by AI

Out of the dataset, out of mind

We know who we are because of our memories, our history, and our stories. Today, artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming an important part of how people store information, as generative AI tools are woven into search engines, social media platforms, and everyday interfaces like virtual assistants. The data these generative AI tools draw on to answer our questions or summarize our emails shapes how people understand the world.

The current generation of AI, however, is built on Western-centric datasets that are disproportionately produced, curated, and governed in North America and Western Europe, largely in English. Knowledge that is oral, community-held, locally archived, or produced outside these systems is far less likely to be captured. Optimized for volume rather than nuance, these systems put cultures that fall outside dominant data flows at risk.

The phenomenon of cultural erasure can take two forms: omission, where cultures fail to appear entirely, and simplification, where complex traditions are reduced to stereotypes. The cases of small and developing states illustrate these risks most vividly. Much of the intangible heritage of the world’s island states, for instance, remains under-digitized, preserved instead through oral storytelling, music, ritual, and collective memory. When generative AI encounters such cultures, it often only reflects what can be easily retrieved from training data. For example, AI-generated media depicting “Caribbean culture” tends to reproduce a narrow canon of beaches, rum, and steelpan. Missing are the complexities: linguistic diversity and multi-ethnic histories that define the region’s melting-pot identity. Pre-AI search engines didn’t return a complete, nuanced picture of these small cultures either. But generative AI can process so much data so quickly that the speed and scale of the threat have changed. The kind of responses AI tools offer can also create the impression of a more definitive answer. Where search engines returned a page of links or a variety of pictures for the user to browse and evaluate, generative AI products offer a more finished-looking result: complete sentences and paragraphs, or a single composite image. For the people living in these smaller states, AI-driven “data colonialism” shapes how the world sees them and, potentially, how they see themselves.

If AI advances to a point where it becomes the default lens through which people encounter culture, then nations and groups underrepresented in AI training data risk losing authorship of their own stories. The version that survives may be the one defined by external markets. Indigenous groups, minority-language speakers, and marginalized communities around the world all face this threat.

But small island states can use their position at the United Nations and elsewhere to elevate concerns around cultural data representation and press for international standards, compelling actors who can shape the global AI ecosystem to take action. These nations can play a catalytic role in making cultural representation a priority for technology governance, even if the power to execute change lies elsewhere.

Preventing cultural erasure means embedding diverse heritage into datasets, creating frameworks and metrics that assess cultural harm through an interdisciplinary lens, and ensuring AI governance treats cultural erasure as seriously as information manipulation or digital privacy. The question is not just whether AI models are accurate, but also whether they reinforce or erode the cultural foundations communities rely on. As AI increasingly shapes what the world finds, learns, and imagines, we must confront a pressing question: If a culture isn’t in the dataset, can it survive the AI era?

Dominique Ramsawak is the associate director of communications at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab.

The neurotechnology that could read your mind

Whether you want it to or not

The next tech disruption could be the human mind paired with cutting-edge neurotechnology. New kinds of neurotech create pathways for communications between the human brain and external devices, some implanted in the brain. Recent developments in neurotech that don’t require an implant—and could eventually even be portable—signal a future in which there could be ways to read someone’s thoughts, with or without their permission.

One such development is a semantic decoder that translates the brain’s electromagnetic waves into a continuous stream of text capturing what someone is thinking about, with varying degrees of precision. Currently, the decoder works with a trained model—a version of the large language models powering chatbots—using brain activity measured on a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanner. Earlier versions required a user to lie down in an MRI machine for the better part of a day to train the system. In 2025, researchers tested a version of the decoder that only requires an hour of training. Developments like these, coupled with investments expected to surpass four billion dollars in 2025, indicate the potential for additional advances in the field. And if neurotech follows the trajectory that computers did—the first computers took up an entire room; now billions of people carry one in their pocket—it’s possible there will be portable systems in the future.

While the idea of something invading your thoughts might be alarming, there are both positive and negative potential applications of this technology. Any patient with a medical condition that makes it difficult or impossible for them to speak—Parkinson’s disease, aphasia, the aftereffects of a stroke—could benefit. So could patients suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder who find it difficult to speak about their trauma.

Ethical considerations must also be taken into account. While it’s hard to predict exactly how this technology will evolve, laws protecting neural data privacy will be needed. In November 2025, UNESCO adopted the first global ethical framework for neurotechnology, seeking to ensure that “neurotechnological innovation benefits those in need without compromising mental privacy.”

In 1992, the physicist and theologian Ian Barbour observed that all technological advances are multifaceted in nature, acting as a liberator, a threat, and an instrument of power. That framework will hold true for the neurotech transformations we’ll experience in the years ahead.

Tatevik Khachatryan is an assistant director for events at the Atlantic Council.

Atlantic Council Strategy Paper Series Feb 10, 2026

Welcome to 2036: What the world could look like in ten years, according to nearly 450 experts

Atlantic Council Strategy Paper Series Feb 9, 2026

Six ‘snow leopards’ to watch for in the decade ahead

By Uliana Certan, Nikita Shah, Ginger Matchett, Sarah Wallace, Dominique Ramsawak, Tatevik Khachatryan

Our scholars scan the horizon for the underappreciated phenomena that could have outsize impact on the world, driving global change and shaping the future.

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Atlantic Council Strategy Paper Series Feb 10, 2026

AI and the future

What does the next year, decade, and beyond hold for AI? We interviewed the Atlantic Council’s tech experts to learn more about AI’s future, and whether it can help us better understand our own.

Artificial Intelligence Technology & Innovation

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The Putin regime faces mounting pressure but is still far from collapse

Will Dixon, Maksym Beznosiuk — Mon, 09 Feb 2026 11:07:49 +0000

With the full-scale invasion of Ukraine set to enter a fifth year, there are growing indications that things are not going according to plan for Russian President Vladimir Putin. On the front lines of the war, Russia continues to suffer catastrophic casualties while failing to achieve any meaningful breakthroughs. Despite holding the battlefield initiative throughout 2025, the invading Russian army managed to capture less than 1 percent of additional Ukrainian territory.

Putin also has cause for mounting concern on the home front. The Russian economy is showing signs of strain amid sanctions pressure and other negative factors including falling oil prices and declining energy export revenues. Meanwhile, the recent US raid in Venezuela and subsequent seizure of a Russian-flagged oil tanker in the Atlantic Ocean have underlined how the war in Ukraine is diminishing Moscow’s ability to project power internationally.

This deteriorating picture is now fueling debate over how much longer Russia can maintain the current invasion. It is also raising more fundamental questions about the fragility of the Putin regime. Given the Russian state’s multiple twentieth century implosions, such speculation is inevitable. However, there is currently little to indicate that the country is close to repeating the collapses of 1917 and 1991.

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Most studies of autocracies have concluded that the biggest single threat to regime stability comes from existing elites. Putin is apparently well aware of this and has worked hard to minimize the danger of a potential palace coup. While dissent is still possible among Kremlin powerbrokers, Russia’s current ruling class is too closely tied to Putin to mount any serious challenge. One of the Russian ruler’s longstanding allies, Dmitry Kozak, reportedly opposed the full-scale invasion of Ukraine and advocated for de-escalation. But rather than triggering open resistance, this disagreement led to Kozak’s quiet removal from office.

There have also been reports of disagreements within the Kremlin over the handling of the war economy, with diverging opinions on key issues such as financial policy and attracting international investment. However, these differences of opinion have not translated into a serious public split.

The single biggest wartime test for the regime so far came in summer 2023 with the Wagner mutiny. This dramatic episode exposed a potential regime vulnerability, but the uprising ultimately proved short-lived due to a lack of defections from within the Russian military and political establishment.

Crucially, while there was little evidence of any rallying around the flag during the brief mutiny, no major security institutions or regional authorities sided with the Wagner rebels. Instead, most chose to wait rather than commit. Once the initial threat had been contained, Putin was able to reassert his authority. This was widely seen as vindication of the highly personalized style of government established during Putin’s reign, with no rival power bases capable of presenting a direct challenge.

Further opposition from disgruntled military personnel cannot be ruled out, but there appears to be virtually no prospect of a broader anti-regime protest movement emerging within Russia. A number of protests took place during the first weeks of the full-scale invasion but failed to gain momentum. Draconian new legislation is now in place, increasing the penalties for any public opposition to the war. An unprecedented round of mobilization in September 2022 proved deeply unpopular among the Russian public, but most opponents chose to flee the country rather than protest.

The degree of Russian public support for the invasion remains disputed. While polling data consistently demonstrates strong pro-war sentiment, skeptics point to obvious issues regarding the credibility of opinion surveys conducted in military dictatorships. Nevertheless, it seems clear that the organizational capacity for any meaningful opposition in today’s Russia is weak, while the information environment is tightly controlled.

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The Putin regime has been careful to minimize the risk of any backlash over heavy Russian losses in Ukraine. During the last decade of the Soviet era, public anger over the deaths of conscript soldiers in Afghanistan helped destabilize the USSR. Similar processes were also evident during the Chechen wars of the early post-Soviet period.

Putin has tailored his military recruitment policies with this threat very much in mind. Rather than relying on conscripts, he has focused on enlisting men predominantly drawn from ethnic minorities and the prison population. The Russian army also depends heavily on volunteers enticed by the promise of large initial bounties and generous salaries.

Despite the Kremlin’s best efforts, risks remain. Russia’s disproportionate use of ethnic minority troops could lead to a surge in anti-regime moods and separatist sentiment in places like Ingushetia and Dagestan. If current downward economic trends continue, Moscow may also find it increasingly challenging to fund the big payouts necessary to secure a steady flow of new volunteers. The war will inevitably remain Putin’s top priority, but money diverted to the army from other sectors will create the potential for discontent elsewhere.

The same logic could also apply to Russian losses in Ukraine. So far, the huge human cost of the invasion has not sparked a major domestic backlash, but with monthly casualty figures now reportedly reaching record highs, public dismay may yet become a destabilizing factor.

Western policymakers need to be aware that while there is no reason to expect an imminent collapse of the Putin regime, the end could come suddenly. Few were predicting the demise of the Tsarist Empire in 1916, or the fall of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s. Putin has constructed formidable defenses during his twenty-six years in power and has done much to anticipate any possible sources of internal opposition. Nevertheless, the costs of maintaining this system could spiral out of control amid a fifth year of war, leading to dangerous consequences that he may be unable to contain.

An awareness of the Putin regime’s weaknesses and vulnerabilities should inform the Western approach to the war and help shape the faltering peace process. Western leaders will also likely be guided by concerns that if Putin does fall, this could lead to a future Russia that may be far darker and even less predictable than the current regime.

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Russia’s current attacks on Ukraine’s critical civilian infrastructure are neither accidental nor isolated. Power plants, transmission lines, substations, and heating systems have been repeatedly targeted throughout the entire country in a methodical manner to inflict maximum damage. These strikes have intensified in recent weeks as temperatures plunged, underlining the Kremlin’s deadly intent. During the coldest months of the Ukrainian winter, heating and power are not mere conveniences; they are essential for survival.

The present talk of a “kholodomor” in Ukraine not only captures the essence of Russia’s winter bombing campaign. This language also consciously echoes the term “Holodomor” (“death by hunger”), which is used to describe the artificially induced famine of the early 1930s that killed at least four million Ukrainians. Then as now, the Kremlin objective was the destruction of the conditions necessary for life in Ukraine.

Since the onset of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, Ukrainian analysts and other experts have been warning that history is in danger of repeating itself. By December 2022, humanitarian agencies assessed that 17.7 million Ukrainians would need emergency aid simply to survive the first winter of the war amid the large-scale bombardment of the country’s power grid, a campaign that later resulted in International Criminal Court arrest warrants for the Russian military commanders who orchestrated it.

Putin’s escalating weaponization of winter mirrors Stalin’s use of famine against Ukrainians almost one century earlier. Both atrocities are rooted in genocidal logic that treats the existence of a separate Ukrainian nation as an existential threat to Kremlin imperialism. However, unlike the Soviet authorities during the Holodomor, Putin has made no real effort to disguise or conceal the current targeting of Ukraine’s civilian population. On the contrary, Russian officials and media personalities have praised the destruction of civilian infrastructure and the suffering this inflicts.

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Russia’s winter bombing campaign is not only about depriving Ukrainians of the conditions to sustain life. It is also part of a broader strategy to reshape Ukrainian society and force the country to accept an artificially imposed Russian identity. This goal is most immediately apparent in occupied regions of Ukraine, where schools and social services have been repurposed to indoctrinate the population and erase all traces of Ukrainian identity. Rendering large parts of Ukraine unlivable is the first step; remaking the country on Moscow’s terms is the second.

Russian attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure cannot be dismissed as an example of ordinary wartime brutality. Instead, the current bombing campaign must be viewed as part of a deliberate plot to destroy the conditions necessary for Ukrainian society to endure. Genocide is not defined only by mass killing; it is also defined by the deliberate destruction of the conditions of life required for a group’s survival.

As US-led peace talks continue, it is vital that the international community now avoid repeating the mistake of ignoring Ukraine’s warnings about Russia’s true intentions. In 2014 and 2022, Ukrainians were not taken seriously when they tried to alert the outside world to the danger. They are now once again raising the alarm over calls for Kyiv to cede heavily fortified areas of the Donbas to Russia in exchange for ambiguous promises of peace. Ukrainians warn that this would only encourage Moscow and create the ideal conditions for the next stage of Putin’s invasion.

When Ukrainians speak of facing death by cold, they are not attempting to shock or provoke. On the contrary, they are describing the latest stage in a Russian strategy that is historically all too familiar, and one that has become increasingly apparent since 2022.

The sheer scale of Russia’s current winter bombing campaign makes a mockery of attempts to broker a compromise peace and underlines the Kremlin’s determination to destroy Ukraine as a state and as a nation. While international audiences rightly acknowledge the remarkable resilience of the Ukrainian population, they must also recognize the need to address the sense of impunity driving Russia’s invasion. This impunity has convinced Putin that he can now freeze millions of Ukrainians in front of the watching world. Failure to hold him accountable for this crime will condemn other European countries to face a similar fate.

Kristina Hook is assistant professor of conflict management at Kennesaw State University and a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center.

After almost four years of full-scale war, Ukraine now leads in the development of inexpensive and highly accurate drones and cruise missiles. By fully embracing this revolution, Ukraine and its allies stand a good chance of regaining the battlefield initiative and obliging Russia to compromise on its objectives.

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Historians have long known that the development of warfare is not linear. For long periods of time, weaponry and tactics tend to develop only incrementally. European armies in 1780, for example, looked almost identical to those of 1680. Likewise, little distinguished the medieval forces of 1300 from the armies that fought two centuries earlier.

At specific junctures, however, a confluence of new weapons, tactics, and forms of organization can fundamentally transform how wars are waged. In the late medieval period, a military revolution saw disciplined, salaried infantry displace mounted knights. Then came the early modern military revolution characterized by cannons, star-shaped forts, and oceanic warships. Centuries later, the industrial revolution empowered those states able to master the new technologies of railways, steel artillery, and mass conscription.

Not all military revolutions are the same. Some have led to the introduction of new technologies that only the wealthiest states can afford, while others have seen new military capabilities become more readily available to a wider range of states.

These two trends can clearly be seen in the military history of early modern Europe. In the late fifteenth century, the emergence of bronze artillery and star-shaped fortresses fundamentally changed the nature of war. Bronze cannon meant that armies could demolish castles and city walls in a matter of days rather than mounting lengthy sieges. To counter these new cannons, defenders developed star-shaped fortresses. Both technologies were exceedingly costly and were initially only accessible to a handful of leading powers such as France, Spain, and the Ottoman Empire.

It was a small state that kicked off the next wave of military revolution. This began in 1568 when the Dutch revolted against Imperial Spain. By almost any measure, the rebellious Dutch provinces should have lost. Spain was flush with silver from the Americas and had a far larger population base. Spain was also the indisputable military superpower of the period, having humbled France in the 1551-59 Italian War and crushed the Ottoman navy in 1571.

Initially, the war went as expected, with the Spanish conquering key cities such as Antwerp. However, the Dutch then began innovating. They discovered that the expensive and complex masonry employed in the construction of star-shaped fortresses was superfluous in wartime. Once they realized this, they started mass producing star-shaped fortifications out of earth and timber. Paid laborers or conscripted peasants could now build fortresses, so long as a trained engineer was present to supervise.

Likewise, the Dutch also pioneered casting cannon from iron. In many respects, these iron cannon were inferior to bronze; they weighed more and were prone to bursting. Iron guns, however, cost only one-tenth as much to manufacture. The Dutch used these cheaper cannons to equip larger fleets than the Spanish and to supply their many earthen fortifications with plentiful guns.

Dutch innovation in the late sixteenth century enabled the Netherlands to record one of the greatest military upsets in history. By 1609, they had obliged Spain to sign a truce. In 1648, The Spanish granted the Netherlands full independence. This military revolution did not introduce intrinsically different technologies. Instead, the Dutch developed ways of accessing capabilities that had hitherto only be available to great powers. What we are seeing in Ukraine today is a modern iteration of this dynamic.

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In the modern era, the United States has led the way in another military revolution by pioneering the development and deployment of precision-guided long-range strike weapons. Once again, the cost and complexity of these new weapons meant that only the world’s wealthiest and most technologically capable states could initially embrace this revolution.

Ukraine now stands on the brink of replicating the success of the Dutch more than four centuries ago. As the fourth anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion approaches, Ukraine is manufacturing large quantities of attack drones and developing its own cruise missiles, with plans to expand domestic production further. This ambitious objective is realistic, particularly if Ukraine’s allies provide sufficient support.

The conditions that have enabled Ukraine to achieve such innovations are unique in modern history. The existential nature of the war for Ukraine has meant that a vast talent pool of individuals hitherto uninvolved in the arms industry such as software engineers, tech entrepreneurs, and physicists have all embraced the task of developing novel solutions for Ukraine’s defense.

The funding of Ukraine’s war effort, with multiple Ukrainian ministries and foreign partners all financing projects, has created a remarkably pluralistic environment. In other words, entrepreneurs with promising products and potential backers are perpetually in search of one another. Meanwhile, Ukraine’s wartime circumstances have swept away many of the bureaucratic barriers and regulations that typically impede the testing and evaluation of weapons. The upshot is an innovation ecosystem more akin to Silicon Valley that typical military-industrial complexes.

Ukraine’s unique defense sector ecosystem has made it possible to produce an extraordinary number of long-range strike systems with unprecedented cost effectiveness. This is democratizing the long-range weapons technologies first pioneered by the United States in the final decades of the twentieth century. Ukraine’s progress is reminiscent of Dutch achievements in the sixteenth century, when they developed cheaper versions of existing technologies that had shaped Renaissance Europe’s earlier military revolution.

By leaning into this progress, Ukraine’s allies can help the country regain the initiative in the war against Russia. Ukraine currently lacks the resources to fund the production of cruise missiles and drones at the necessary scale, but Ukrainian defense sector companies do have spare capacity to produce more. By financing additional output of drones and missiles in Ukraine, partner countries can help transform the military situation.

Increased volumes of long-range strike weapons can enable a strategically successful campaign with an operational depth stretching hundreds of kilometers behind the front lines. In conditions of modern warfare, infantry and armored units are comparatively brittle and ineffective if they are denied supplies and long-range fire support. Ukraine’s expanding arsenal of deep strike assets provides a plausible means of achieving this, especially if supported with real-time intelligence from the country’s partners.

Ukraine’s long-range strike systems can also be used effectively in tandem with Western sanctions measures to increase the pressure on Russia’s overstretched wartime economy. A combined policy of tightening sanctions on Russian energy exports and escalating Ukrainian strikes on refineries and pipelines can seriously damage the strategically crucial Russian oil and gas industry.

The military revolution that Ukraine is currently leading has already succeeded in democratizing the production of long-range strike systems. With sufficient support from Kyiv’s partners, this revolution offers a viable pathway to Russia’s battlefield defeat and can set the stage for an acceptable peace agreement.

Dr Marc De Vore is a senior lecturer at the School of International Relations at the University of St. Andrews.

Drone superpower Ukraine can teach Europe how to defend itself

Lesia Orobets — Fri, 30 Jan 2026 22:54:12 +0000

Ever since US President Donald Trump returned to the White House just over a year ago, it has become increasingly apparent that the world is now entering a new and unpredictable era of international relations. For Europe, this has meant coming to terms with the idea that continued US military support can no longer be taken for granted. After decades of outsourcing their security to the Americans, Europeans must once again learn to defend themselves.

Throughout the past twelve months, there has been much talk in European capitals of wake-up calls but relatively little actual action. While many European countries have vowed to dramatically increase defense spending, the debate over a new European security architecture still lacks a sense of urgency and remains hampered by competing national interests.

One of the few things that a majority of European policymakers appear to agree on is the importance of Ukraine in the continent’s emerging security strategy. This recognition of Ukraine’s role underlines the scale of the changes that have taken place over the past four years.

When Russia’s full-scale invasion first began in February 2022, Ukraine was heavily reliant on Western military aid as the country fought for survival. Since those early days, the Ukrainian army has expanded dramatically and evolved into the largest and most experienced fighting force in Europe. As a result of this transformation, a country that many had previously dismissed as a minor military player is now widely regarded as indispensable for the future defense of Europe.

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Ukraine’s potential to shape Europe’s new security architecture is most immediately obvious in the field of drone warfare. The Russian invasion of Ukraine is widely acknowledged as the world’s first full-scale drone war, with huge quantities of drones dominating the battlefield and operating deep inside enemy territory. Over the past four years, Ukraine has established itself as a “drone superpower” with an annual output of around four million drones, Bloomberg reported in November 2025.

Western security experts are no doubt acutely aware that alongside Ukraine, the two other nations currently driving the international development of drone warfare are Russia and China. This underlines Kyiv’s strategic importance as the democratic world adjusts to the challenges posed by an emerging alliance of authoritarian powers centered on Moscow and Beijing.

A growing number of US and EU defense companies have already sought to establish a presence in Ukraine in order to capitalize on the country’s technological expertize. This approach is understandable but may be shortsighted. In reality, Ukraine’s value extends far beyond access to existing military drone technologies.

Since 2022, Ukrainian drone developers and military units specializing in unmanned operations have learned to solve problems and adapt to new battlefield realities at lightning speed. Out of necessity, they have become accustomed to upgrading individual drone models and counter-drone systems within ever-decreasing innovation cycles that can now be measured in weeks.

Ukrainian forces have pioneered the use of combat drones on the front lines of the war. The country has also led the way at sea, with Ukrainian naval drones sinking multiple Russian warships and forcing Putin to withdraw the bulk of his remaining fleet from occupied Crimea to the relative safety of Russia itself. Meanwhile, long-range Ukrainian drones now routinely strike targets deep inside Russia. This Ukrainian success can serve as the foundation for a wider European security strategy as the world moves into a new era of drone-based warfare.

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Ukraine’s most immediate contribution to European security is likely to be in terms of helping countries defend against the mounting threat posed by Russian drones. The Kremlin’s current harassing activities around airports and other strategic sites across Europe are essentially an annoyance, but even such small-scale drone operations have exposed an alarming lack of readiness. At present, it seems safe to say that the continent as a whole is utterly unprepared for the kind of large-scale Russian drone attacks that have become a routine feature of the war in Ukraine.

Europe has responded to escalating Russian drone activity by developing plans to establish a “drone wall” along the continent’s exposed eastern flank. So far, however, this initiative remains somewhat fragmented with no unified concept or central coordination. While a collective response could eventually prove effective, pursuing this goal without learning from Ukraine’s unique experience makes little sense. Only Kyiv has the data and insights necessary to build layered defensive networks capable of combating waves of Russian drones.

In recent months, a growing number of European countries have taken the practical step of seeking to tap into Ukraine’s drone warfare prowess by working with Ukrainian trainers or establishing joint production initiatives. “Ukraine’s experience is the most relevant in Europe right now. Our specialists and technologies can become a key element of the future European drone wall, a large-scale project that will ensure safety in the skies,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy commented in September 2025.

In addition to drone tactics and technologies, Ukraine can also offer its European partners an unrivaled environment for drone operator training and weapons development. The whole of Ukraine is now a vast drone warfare laboratory where novel threats are identified and addressed on a daily basis. As a result, new drone models and upgraded designs can move from the drawing board to the battlefield at a pace that is unheard of in peacetime Europe.

Drone warfare is just one of the many areas where Europe can learn from Ukraine. As European leaders explore new security strategies in a rapidly shifting geopolitical environment, it should be abundantly clear that Kyiv has a crucial role to play. No other European country has such a battle-hardened army or intimate knowledge of modern warfare. In an increasingly unpredictable world, that makes Ukraine a vital partner.

Lesia Orobets is the founder of the Price of Freedom air defense initiative and a former member of the Ukrainian parliament.

Currently in India, a monthly ChatGPT or Perplexity Pro subscription costs ₹1,999 ($22.17) and a monthly Google AI subscription costs ₹1950 ($21.62). AI companies do recognize the need for less expensive and more accessible options, as the low-tier subscription services ChatGPT Go and Google AI Plus both cost ₹399 ($4.42) per month. Moreover, Google AI Pro and Perplexity Pro are also available for free for a year to eligible college students. And Perplexity AI partnered with telecom giant Airtel to offer a year’s free access to Perplexity Pro to Airtel’s 360 million subscribers. But this still leaves a huge portion of the potential Indian consumer market for AI untapped.

To make AI accessible to the widest possible swath of the population, AI developers should offer not just cheaper monthly subscription models but also sell the equivalent of a sachet of AI. This means offering small-scale uses of AI tools and applications for low fees. For example, one notable approach that has already been adopted is the IndiaAI Compute Pillar, which allows scholars, researchers, and startups to utilize computational power for less than a dollar per hour. To make this a scalable consumer product, however, the private sector would need data from the government on how the Compute Pillar is being used. Such data could make Compute Pillar a proof of concept for the AI sachet model. Under India’s AI Governance Guidelines, metrics for both the scale of adoption and how consistently the service is used could set the bar for whether this proof of concept should spur a larger-scale investment in such services.

India also has ample experience with scaling up such society- and accessibility-driven models. The Aadhaar biometric ID system, the Unified Payments Interface instant payment system, and the country’s digital public infrastructure (DPI) buildout were bottom-up models. For example, from 2011 to 2021, the number of Indian adults (ages fifteen and up) with a bank account rose from 35 percent to 80 percent thanks to this approach.

As an illustration for how this sachet model could be of use, think of the places where shampoo and other kinds of sachets are sold in India—usually small mom-and-pop stores run by one person or family. For such small stores, bookkeeping can be a laborious, time-consuming task. But with a ₹15 AI sachet, a shopkeeper could take photos of that day’s transactions, prompt an AI to parse the handwriting, and calculate revenue and inventory figures. If small business owners were to widely adopt AI sachets for such tasks, it would be a significant step toward demonstrating the scalability of the AI sachet model. This is how shampoos and other consumer goods expanded their footprints using the sachet model.

During my trip to Pune, many of the people I spoke with were curious about how AI can help improve efficiency in areas including business, scholarship, research, management, and farming practices. When it comes to harnessing this demand for wider AI adoption, the government can play a major role in bringing stakeholders such as unions, cooperatives, and trade associations together with private sector AI developers to demonstrate the utility of AI for their respective fields.

At the AI Impact Summit, centering on the three sutras of “people, planet, and progress,” policymakers and tech company leaders should meet with small business owners, farmers (most of whom are small-scale), students, and others to discuss the benefits of AI adoption. Moreover, an AI impact case study in Pune or the wider state of Maharashtra could serve this purpose further, allowing the private sector and India’s AI governance model to bring more proofs of concept to empower society-driven, value-based AI adoption in India.

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How India’s AI talent playbook can provide a blueprint for aspiring AI powers

Trisha Ray — Fri, 30 Jan 2026 17:49:25 +0000

In February, New Delhi will host the AI Impact Summit, a gathering of policymakers, industry leaders, and researchers, with the tagline “People, Planet, Progress.” This summit arrives at a turning point, as the center of gravity on artificial intelligence (AI) adoption shifts toward emerging economies, home to three-quarters of the world’s population. With the summit, India, already a leader in AI skill penetration, is positioning itself as a “shaper” rather than a mere “adopter” of these technologies.

But the success of the New Delhi summit will depend on how effectively it moves beyond rhetoric to address the realities of AI adoption, including the need for workforce development. To this end, on January 23, the Atlantic Council hosted an official pre-summit event in partnership with the Indian embassy in Washington, DC. The event opened with remarks by Ajay Kumar, minister (commerce) at the Indian embassy in Washington, DC, as well as Tess DeBlanc-Knowles, senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Technology Programs. This was followed by a panel discussion with Martijn Rasser, vice president for technology leadership at the Special Competitive Studies Project; Nicole Isaac, vice president for global public policy at Cisco; and Peter Lovelock, chief consultancy and innovation officer at Access Partnership. Below are some of the key takeaways from that discussion, as well as several of the panelists’ recommendations for how to approach these issues heading into the AI Impact Summit. The discussion underscored that while the potential for AI-driven growth is immense, the hurdles, ranging from a global talent shortage to fragmented labor data, require more than just market forces to overcome.

The global AI talent gap

The current global AI talent landscape can be viewed as a pyramid, according to Rasser. At the apex, he said, sits a cohort of around ten thousand elite PhD-level researchers and machine learning engineers. While the United States and China currently dominate this top layer of researchers, the real opportunity for emerging powers lies at the applied level. India possesses significant depth in its service sector, but the true challenge is building institutional readiness, ensuring that organizations can effectively channel available talent into high-value applications.

The most underappreciated deficit is not in raw coding but in AI-adjacent skills. There is a pressing need for product managers and domain experts who can bridge the gap between technical tools and organizational needs. For emerging economies, said Lovelock, the goal should not be to replicate Silicon Valley’s research labs, but to build an ecosystem where AI is “burned into” industrial applications such as supply chain management and export-import calculations.

AI infrastructure as workforce policy

“At its core, AI is designed, built, and deployed by humans,” noted Knowles. Indeed, a persistent theme for the global majority is that connectivity cannot be separated from workforce policy. Without reliable digital access, Isaac noted, billions remain excluded from the transformative benefits of AI. Security is another foundational layer; as AI environments become more complex, training in cybersecurity and digital resilience becomes essential to protect vulnerable populations from bad actors.

Trisha Ray, Martijn Rasser, Nicole Isaac, and Peter Lovelock at the Atlantic Council’s public panel, “Road to Impact Summit 2026: India’s AI talent playbook,” hosted on January 23, 2026.

Kumar, the Indian embassy official, laid out India’s strategy for a comprehensive five-layer “AI stack,” including sovereign models, semiconductors, and data centers. By providing compute power to educational institutions at a fraction of the global market rate, he argued, the government aims to democratize access across smaller cities. However, the widening digital divide remains a threat. If certain segments of the population are left behind, the resulting “have and have-not” divide could persist for generations, he said.

The other data problem

We cannot manage what we cannot measure. Policymakers, said Lovelock, are currently operating with “static” data that looks in the rearview mirror. Traditional labor statistics, often based on outdated surveys, are ill-suited for a fast-moving technology. Furthermore, labor data is often fragmented across various ministries, making it difficult to understand where the actual skill gaps lie.

Standard adoption metrics are increasingly irrelevant because individual AI use is highly varied. Instead of tracking who is using the technology, said Lovelock, governments need a “diffusion framework” that measures the actual impact of AI use on the economy. Only then can they make the strategic bets required for a long-term return on investment.

Four pillars for the summit’s AI talent agenda

Following from the panelists’ insights, the AI Impact Summit can deliver a scalable and inclusive AI talent framework by coalescing the global community around four primary actions:

Modernize education through personalized AI tools. Rather than sticking to the “one-to-many” broadcast model of traditional schooling, curricula should be reformed to put AI tools directly in the hands of students. This shift allows for personalized learning and ensures that students learn by doing, preparing them for a rapidly changing job market.
Create an AI Diffusion Index to measure actual adoption. Policymakers should move away from static adoption statistics and toward real-time data signals that measure how AI is being embedded into industrial and public services. This requires supplementing government surveys with nontraditional data sources to better align educational output with actual labor market demand.
Treat connectivity and security as foundational workforce issues. Investment in fiber and satellite infrastructure must be paired with training in digital resilience and cybersecurity. This ensures that the benefits of AI are shared broadly and that new users are protected from the heightened risks of an AI-ready environment.
Position government as the “first user” of new technologies. The public sector should take the lead in adopting AI for the delivery of public services in agriculture, healthcare, and education. By demonstrating the usefulness and accessibility of these tools within government, the state can send a powerful signal to the broader population and help accelerate national adoption.

The success of the AI Impact Summit will be measured not just by the declarations its participants make, but by the structural cooperation that survives past February. The summit offers a rare opportunity to pool global resources to solve the AI workforce crisis, replacing anecdotal evidence of AI adoption with rigorous data and flexible approaches to meet shifting workforce needs. At the summit, New Delhi has the opportunity to transform a week of dialogue into a sustained, collaborative framework that can help enable emerging economies to tap the benefits of AI adoption.

Trisha Ray is an associate director and resident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s GeoTech Center.

#AtlanticDebrief – What was the geopolitical significance of the EU-India summit? | A Debrief from Rachel Rizzo

nlawler — Fri, 30 Jan 2026 17:06:26 +0000

IN THIS EPISODE

The EU-India summit came at a pivotal moment with both powers concluding the largest trade agreement either has ever signed, paired with a new security and defence partnership, elevating the relationship to a new strategic level. This marks a major shift in how both sides think about economic resilience and security cooperation, especially in a time of rising global and transatlantic uncertainty.

On this episode of the #AtlanticDebrief, Jörn Fleck sits down with Senior Fellow with ORF’s Strategic Studies Programme Rachel Rizzo to debrief on the EU-India summit and the strategic rationale of increased bilateral cooperation.

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Abdillahi in Le Monde on artificial intelligence (AI) in Africa

Atlantic Council — Fri, 30 Jan 2026 14:00:00 +0000

Original source

On January 30, Yasmine Abdillahi, a nonresident senior fellow with the Africa Center published an article in Le Monde arguing that although Africa accounts for nearly 20% of the world’s population, it contributes less than 1% of the data used to train AI systems. This imbalance, she warns, risks excluding African languages, cultures, and lived realities from artificial intelligence.

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The US needs a cybersecurity roadmap

Franklin D. Kramer, Robert J. Butler, and Melanie J. Teplinsky — Thu, 29 Jan 2026 20:24:20 +0000

A fundamental approach of the Trump administration is ensuring and enhancing the defense of the United States homeland. Border security has accordingly been prioritized, and a “Golden Dome” missile defense has been proposed. But equivalent to the challenges of the border and of missile defense is the defense of the information and operational technology systems upon which the national security, economy, and public safety of the United States depend. This report focuses on operations and its companion report focuses on technology and architectures; together they identify the challenges facing the United States and describe a proposed national cybersecurity strategy that encompasses key roles for government and for the private sector.

A national cybersecurity strategy will require an operational road map for offensive and defensive campaigning and significantly enhanced resilience for key critical infrastructures built upon the development and adoption of safe coding and the implementation of zero trust architectures. Establishment of such capabilities will provide the president and the national leadership with the necessary capabilities to deter and defeat nation-state and criminal activities in cyberspace.

read part one

read part two

About the authors

Franklin D. Kramer is a distinguished fellow and board director at the Atlantic Council. Kramer has served as a senior political appointee in two administrations, including as assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs.

Robert J. Butler serves as the Managing Director for Cyber Strategies LLC.

Melanie J. Teplinsky is a cyber law and policy expert with over thirty years of experience spanning the private sector, government, and academia. She is an adjunct professor at American University, Washington College of Law (WCL); a senior fellow in the Technology, Law and Security Program at WCL; and a faculty fellow at American University’s Internet Governance Laboratory.

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The Atlantic Council Technology Programs comprises five existing efforts—the Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab), the GeoTech Center, the Cyber Statecraft Initiative, the Democracy + Tech Initiative, and the Capacity Building Initiative. These operations work together to address the geopolitical implications of technology and provide policymakers and global stakeholders necessary research, insights, and convenings to address challenges around global technology and ensure its responsible advancement.

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Ukraine’s defense tech sector can play a key role in economic security

Eric K. Hontz — Thu, 29 Jan 2026 20:22:33 +0000

Ukraine’s defense tech and dual-use sector is a rare wartime success story, with over six hundred innovative and combat‑tested firms becoming increasingly attractive to international investors. However, the future growth of this sector is constrained by obstacles including export licensing bottlenecks, currency controls, weak intellectual property protection, inconsistent consultation between government and business, and fears that old problems including corruption and rent-seeking could re‑emerge.

The Ukrainian government has an obvious interest in supporting the growth of the defense tech sector, but many officials believe the top priority remains preventing strategic vulnerabilities. The list of potential threats includes infiltration by corrosive capital, a loss of sensitive technologies, and systemic risks arising from insufficiently regulated markets. Experts emphasize the need for new policy instruments, clearer definitions, monitoring systems, and alignment with G7‑style economic security practices. So far, discussion of these issues remains mostly conceptual, leaving businesses uncertain about rules, timelines, and risks.

Ukraine’s economic security debate is currently being shaped by three overlapping realities. First, the global economy has shifted away from maximum trade liberalization toward a more security-based paradigm, particularly in strategic sectors such as defense, energy, critical minerals, and advanced technology. Second, Ukraine is fighting a full‑scale war, making economic resilience and industrial capacity existential concerns rather than abstract policy goals. Lastly, Ukraine’s defense and dual‑use sectors have undergone an unprecedented transformation since 2022, emerging from a prewar model dominated by state enterprises to become one of the most dynamic segments of the Ukrainian economy.

The core question now is not whether the state should intervene, but how to design intervention that protects national interests without suffocating private initiative or driving away international investors. This means finding the middle ground between security and economic freedom. Democratic Ukraine must seek to strike a better balance than its authoritarian adversary in order to enable the kind of continued defense tech innovation necessary to prevail on the battlefield and increase deterrence.

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There are currently concerns that Ukraine’s fast‑growing defense tech sector risks inheriting longstanding governance problems including opaque procedures, slow decision‑making, and uneven enforcement. Recent corruption scandals in Kyiv have already damaged trust, creating what some businesses have described as “negative expectations.”

From the Ukrainian government’s side, there is recognition that institutions are still adapting, with many of the available economic security tools still fragmented or not yet fully operational. This represents an opportunity for Ukraine if the country is able to build governance structures tailored to strategic sectors rather than retrofitting existing and outdated bureaucratic models. Creating a new generation of transparent institutions to address defense sector exports, investment screening, and procurement could become a competitive advantage for Ukraine if designed with private sector input from the outset.

Export licensing is one of the most acute potential bottlenecks. Ukraine’s defense tech businesses currently face a process requiring excessive approvals from multiple institutions, with little accountability or predictability. There is also a perception of unequal treatment, undermining confidence in the system. Ukrainian officials, meanwhile, tend to stress the necessity of strict controls to prevent leakage of sensitive technologies.

A risk‑based and tiered export control regime could address these concerns. By clearly defining a narrow list of highly sensitive technologies requiring strict oversight, the Ukrainian authorities could create faster and more predictable export pathways for less sensitive defense and dual‑use products. This would support economic growth while preserving core security interests.

Wartime currency controls and capital movement restrictions severely limit the ability of Ukrainian defense sector companies to expand internationally. Multiple investors have noted the paradox of profitable Ukrainian firms being unable to deploy their own capital abroad, forcing them to raise funds outside the country simply to operate globally.

From the perspective of Ukrainian policymakers, currency restrictions are viewed as necessary to preserve macro‑financial stability and to prevent capital flight. Targeted exemptions for vetted defense and dual‑use companies, particularly those pursuing foreign acquisitions or joint ventures aligned with national priorities, could unlock growth without undermining financial stability. Such a mechanism would signal trust in compliant firms and reward transparency.

Another key issue is intellectual property (IP). Standard IP processes are too slow for wartime innovation cycles. In the dynamic current environment, Ukrainian companies rely on trade secrets and know‑how rather than formal patents, but this increases risks when partnering internationally.

Ukrainian officials acknowledge the importance of innovation but have so far only been able to offer limited concrete solutions. Accelerated IP pathways for defense and dual‑use technologies, combined with support for joint research and development frameworks with trusted foreign partners, could help Ukrainian firms secure protection in allied jurisdictions while strengthening international integration.

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There is a degree of uncertainty in Ukraine’s expanding defense tech sector that can be seen in inconsistent terminology, unclear boundaries, and undefined red lines. A shared vocabulary and published strategic framework, co‑developed by the public and private sectors, could help reduce this uncertainty.

Different priorities lead to diverging visions. Defense tech industry executives and investors tend to view the issue of economic security primarily through the lens of scalability, competitiveness, and speed. Their key assumptions include the notion that innovation thrives in predictable, transparent environments.

Many also argue that Ukraine’s combat‑tested technologies represent a unique global opportunity, while cautioning that excessive controls risk pushing talent, capital, and IP abroad. With this in mind, industry representatives and investors generally support targeted security measures but fear blanket restrictions that treat all technologies and companies as equally sensitive.

Ukrainian officials tend to frame economic security primarily as a defensive necessity. They warn that adversaries actively use markets, investment, and technology transfer as weapons. Many are also concerned that under‑regulation could result in irreversible strategic losses. Naturally, their perspective prioritizes caution, monitoring, and alignment with allied security frameworks, even at the cost of slower growth.

The central tension here is time-based and risk‑based. Businesses operate on market timelines and accept calculated risk, while governments operate on security timelines and seek to minimize worst‑case scenarios. Without structured dialogue, these differences manifest as mistrust rather than complementary roles.

If managed effectively, wartime Ukraine’s approach to economic security in the defense tech and dual-use sectors could become a model for the country’s broader postwar reconstruction. Ukraine has the opportunity to redesign institutions in a strategic sector that already commands global attention. Success may depend on whether government policy is seen by businesses as a partnership or as an obstacle.

Constructive cooperation grounded in transparency, risk‑based policy, and continuous dialogue can transform economic security from a constraint into a catalyst for Ukraine’s long‑term strength and sovereignty, providing significant security benefits for allies and partners along the way. This is a realistic objective. After all, industry, investors, and government all ultimately seek the common goal of a resilient, innovative Ukrainian economy integrated with democratic allies and protected from adversarial exploitation.

Bridging the gap between perspectives is less a matter of ideology than of process, trust, and execution. Ukraine is currently in a period of transition that is marked by many significant challenges but no irreconcilable obstacles. Industry and investors are ready to scale globally while the government is racing to build safeguards against unprecedented threats. The task now is to synchronize these efforts.

Eric K. Hontz is director of the Accountable Investment Practice Area at the Center for International Private Enterprise.

On disinformation and influence operations, the deal is unlikely to be transformative. As we argued in a 2024 report examining TikTok’s national security implications, Beijing’s ability to conduct influence operations does not depend on ownership of a single platform. While the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) could theoretically attempt to shape content via TikTok’s recommendation algorithm, it already engages in influence campaigns across US-based social media platforms and will continue to do so even with TikTok’s structural reorganization. Restricting TikTok does not dismantle the broader information ecosystem in which foreign influence campaigns operate.

The data security case is even more revealing. The type of data generated by TikTok is not fundamentally different from that collected across the digital advertising ecosystem, which over the past decade has evolved into a system capable of extremely granular micro-targeting. Data brokers routinely aggregate information from mobile advertising identifiers, cookies, location data, and online activity to build detailed dossiers on individuals. Although these identifiers are often described as “anonymized,” it is widely understood that combining multiple datasets makes re-identification fairly straightforward.

This ecosystem enables the creation of highly specific audience segments—such as military personnel with financial vulnerabilities, politically active voters, or individuals likely to participate in protests—drawing on data that includes location histories, credit card transactions, employment records, social media activity, and government filings. Investigations by civil society organizations and journalists have repeatedly demonstrated how easy it is to access such data, often with minimal vetting, and how readily it could be exploited by foreign intelligence services or malign actors.

Importantly, this data is not confined to fringe actors. Major US technology platforms continue to earn significant revenue from foreign advertisers, including Chinese firms, even as they attempt to place guardrails on data flows. While companies such as Google have introduced measures to limit the sharing of certain identifiers with Chinese entities, advertising experts note that these restrictions are often porous. Once an ad is served, advertisers can still infer sensitive information—such as IP addresses and device characteristics—and real-time bidding systems offer no technical guarantee that data will not be misused after it is received.

Compared to this sprawling and still inadequately regulated market, TikTok’s data practices are not uniquely dangerous. Focusing narrowly on this one app risks obscuring the far more consequential vulnerabilities embedded in the broader data economy.

Finally, it is worth underscoring how little ByteDance has conceded in the deal. If ByteDance has in fact licensed the algorithm, as subsequent reporting has indicated, the company has preserved control over its most valuable intellectual property. The principal concession—that is, the loss of majority ownership in the entity overseeing data security—imposes limited strategic costs.

In addition, depending on how the actual licensing deal is laid out, this structure could still hypothetically leave room for PRC influence over the algorithm—though it will likely be more difficult than it would be if ByteDance retained full ownership. The licensed algorithm is a continuously trained system shaped by design choices, training data, model updates, and operational parameters. If ByteDance is retaining control over that core intellectual property, in theory, the PRC government could exert some influence over how the system evolves, even if day-to-day content moderation or data security oversight is localized. Once further details of the licensing agreement are released, this risk will be better understood.

At the same time, it is important not to overstate what that influence could look like in practice. Rather than eliminate the risk of manipulation, this structure redistributes it among a different set of actors. Algorithmic manipulation is unlikely to take the form of overt, platform-wide promotion of pro-CCP content. Should manipulation occur, it would likely take the form of more subtle interventions that would be difficult to attribute to PRC influence or parse out from how the recommender system is working on US user data. This is especially the case now as the handover gets under way and the algorithm is being trained on US user data from scratch; in the short term, the app could exhibit high variability in terms of the content it surfaces while the system learns what users want and curates their “For You” page accordingly.

In essence, this structure largely shifts visible forms of control from Beijing to other actors without eliminating the underlying vulnerabilities inherent in the US social media ecosystem. While the deal may reduce political pressure in Washington and be framed as a decisive step to protect the US information environment from PRC interference, it does little to resolve the systemic challenges of information manipulation, foreign influence, and data exploitation. Those risks are embedded in the architecture of the digital ecosystem itself, and mitigating them will require far more than rearranging the ownership of a single platform.

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Unable to win on the battlefield, Putin escalates war on Ukrainian civilians

Peter Dickinson — Tue, 27 Jan 2026 22:05:41 +0000

Russian strikes against Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure are nothing new, of course. On the contrary, such attacks have been a routine feature since the onset of the full-scale invasion nearly four years ago. However, the current bombing campaign is by far the most comprehensive of the war. In recent months, Russia’s attacks on civilian targets have expanded dramatically in scope as the Kremlin seeks to inflict maximum harm on Ukraine’s population by denying them access to heating, electricity, gas, and water during the coldest period of the winter season.

The impact has been devastating, particularly as most residential districts in Ukrainian cities continue to rely on Soviet-era central heating systems powered by huge plants that are almost impossible to defend. The Kremlin has ruthlessly exploited this weakness with repeated bombardments of the same facilities to disrupt repair efforts. While teams of Ukrainian engineers continue to work miracles, each successive attack makes their task more difficult.

Ukrainians have responded to plummeting temperatures and freezing apartments with a range of improvised solutions such as erecting tents indoors and heating bricks on gas stoves to generate some precious warmth. There has also been plenty of trademark Ukrainian wartime defiance on display, with local communities rallying in support of one another, posting lighthearted videos on social media, and holding street parties in the snow.

At the same time, many have expressed frustration over the continued media emphasis on Ukrainian resilience amid a mounting humanitarian crisis that has left much of the country in desperate need of help. “Resilience doesn’t mean immunity. Ukraine cannot withstand everything indefinitely,” wrote Ukrainian commentator Iryna Voichuk on January 16. “Framing this as only a story of strength risks dulling the urgency of what’s happening.”

Others have echoed this sentiment, including some of Ukraine’s most prominent international supporters. “Mythologizing endurance is a quiet form of abandonment. Resilience does not mean invulnerability,” cautioned R.T. Weatherman Foundation president Meaghan Mobbs in a recent post. “When we speak as if Ukrainians can simply ‘take it,’ we absolve ourselves of responsibility.”

With the present arctic weather conditions expected to continue well into February, the situation in Ukraine is critical. In the high-rise apartment blocks that dominate Ukraine’s cities, many less mobile residents have already been housebound for weeks and will likely remain trapped in frigid darkness throughout the coming month. The outlook is particularly grave for the elderly, those with young families, and people in need of medical care. In other words, Russia’s present bombing strategy appears to have been specifically tailored to target the most vulnerable members of Ukrainian society.

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As the potential for large-scale loss of life becomes increasingly apparent, international audiences are waking up to the true extent of Russia’s criminal intentions. Wall Street Journal chief foreign affairs correspondent Yaroslav Trofimov recently referred to Russia’s winter bombing campaign as “Putin’s genocidal effort to make Kyiv unlivable.” It is easy to see why such terms are now being employed. The 1948 UN Genocide Convention identifies “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part,” as one of five recognized acts of genocide. At the very least, Russia’s current actions closely resemble this definition.

The current winter bombing campaign reflects a broader trend of mounting Russian attacks against Ukraine’s civilian population. According to UN data, 2025 was the deadliest year of the war for Ukrainian civilians since 2022, with more than 2,500 people killed and over twelve thousand injured. This was 31 percent higher than the figure for the previous year and 70 percent more than in 2023. Many of these deaths were due to a spike in Russian missile and drone strikes on civilian targets including residential buildings, hospitals, and a children’s playground.

Russia also stands accused of conducting a systematic campaign of drone strikes targeting members of the public in the front line regions of southern Ukraine. These attacks have been dubbed a “human safari” by terrified locals. They involve the use of drones with video camera guidance systems to hunt individual victims, underlining the deliberate nature of the killings. An October 2025 United Nations investigation into this drone terror found that Russia was guilty of “systematically coordinated actions designed to drive Ukrainians out of their homes,” and concluded that the Kremlin’s actions in southern Ukraine qualified as the crimes against humanity of murder and of forcible transfer of civilians.

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Putin is dramatically escalating attacks on Ukraine’s civilian population because he cannot win the war on the battlefield. When he first launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Putin was expecting a quick and complete victory. Instead, his army has become bogged down in a brutal war of attrition that will soon enter a fifth year.

Despite pouring vast resources into the invasion and placing his entire country on a war footing, the Kremlin dictator has been unable to secure a decisive breakthrough. Many in Moscow had hoped the return of Donald Trump to the White House would transform the military situation, but even a dramatic decline in US aid for Ukraine over the past year has failed to turn the tide in Russia’s favor. Putin’s army captured less than one percent of Ukrainian territory during 2025, while suffering hundreds of thousands of casualties. At the present glacial pace, it would take Russia decades and millions of men to fully subjugate Ukraine.

In his official statements, Putin continues to project confidence and boast of his invading army’s success. However, with so few genuine victories to toast, this has often meant inventing imaginary advances. Putin’s habit of exaggerating Russian gains came back to haunt him in late 2025 when he repeatedly claimed to have captured the Ukrainian city of Kupyansk, only for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to personally visit the city and record a selfie video exposing the Russian ruler’s lies. This embarrassing episode underlined the growing credibility gap between Putin’s bold talk of inevitable Russian victory and the far more sobering battlefield reality of minimal Russian gains and disastrous losses.

With no obvious route to military victory, Putin is now openly embracing a strategy of terror tactics against Ukraine’s civilian population. He hopes that by weaponizing winter and putting millions of lives at risk, he can finally break Ukrainian resistance and force Kyiv to capitulate. Europe has not witnessed criminality on such a grand and terrible scale since the days of Hitler and Stalin.

So far, the international response to Russia’s winter bombing campaign has been utterly inadequate. While many of Kyiv’s partners have rushed to provide humanitarian aid, no additional costs whatsoever have been imposed on the Kremlin. Instead, it is Ukraine and not Russia that is reportedly being asked to make concessions. Unless this changes, the normalization of Russian war crimes will continue and Putin’s sense of impunity will become even more deeply entrenched. It will then only be a matter of time before other civilian populations experience the horrors currently taking place in Ukraine.

Peter Dickinson is editor of the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlert service.

The two Davoses

Davos is always two different things at once. “Business Davos” is the place where executives huddle in Swiss office buildings negotiating deals far away from the TV cameras. This is, actually, what brings most people to the mountain year after year. That Davos traditionally operated independently from “geopolitical Davos.” That’s the Davos most people are familiar with—leaders from around the world speaking in the Congress Center, and academics, journalists, and think tankers debating on panels.

Most years, those two Davoses can operate in their own spheres. But not this year. Last Monday, as markets swung sharply negative on the Greenland news, business Davos had its eyes glued to the Congress Center. Leaders of some of the largest companies in the world lined up and waited just like everyone else to get a seat. Suddenly, everyone was an expert on Nuuk, the Arctic, and whether military leases were a viable compromise. It was a reminder of a big lesson of the past few years—from the COVID-19 pandemic to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine—that finance and national security are deeply interconnected. In fact, there’s a good word for that—geoeconomics.

The new reality of tariffs

One year ago Davos attendees watched Trump’s inaugural address and then listened to him virtually address the forum. He hardly said the word “tariffs” once between the two speeches, and the delegates decided that his threats during the campaign were just threats. What a difference a year makes. After twelve months of the biggest shock to the global trading system in decades, which left the world facing the long-term prospect of the US economy having a 10 percent or higher tariff rate, reality settled in on the mountain. Gone was the optimistic talk about how deregulation was going to lead to an investment boom. In its place was chatter about finding new trade arrangements with emerging markets, and forecasting what would happen if the Supreme Court rules against Trump in the tariff case.

The risk and rewards of artificial intelligence

Few topics were more in the air in Davos than artificial intelligence (AI). Almost every billboard and storefront had a reference to AI—whether for supply-chain efficiency or content creation. On the surface, businesses wanted to project confidence, with AI positioned as the engine of future growth. But step inside these company events and a different picture emerged. Many featured chief risk officers or chief ethics officers, titles that barely existed a few years ago, grappling with questions around the different types of “risks,” whether those were geopolitical risks, economic risks, or climate risks. There was a stark contrast between the glossy AI optimism outside and the sober risk assessment on the inside of these conversations, and a reminder that for all the promise of growth, the industry knows the hard questions are just beginning.

More than a transatlantic affair

On the main stage and in the global news cycle, this Davos felt like a US–Europe affair. Tariffs announced and abandoned on European allies. French President Emmanuel Macron responding directly. US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent outlining the health of the US economy. California Governor Gavin Newsom sparring rhetorically with Washington. For audiences watching from afar, it was easy to conclude this was a narrow, transatlantic Davos.

On the ground, however, the picture was far more global. Brazil House, India House, Indonesia House, and a dozen country pavilions were packed with programming all day. A large Pakistani delegation arrived on its own official shuttle bus. Philippines House ran cultural programs, including concerts featuring traditional music, alongside policy panels.

India, in particular, projected quiet confidence. Officials framed the country as a durable pillar of global growth, especially on AI. China maintained a low profile, with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng offering brief remarks about Beijing’s willingness to buy more foreign goods and services—a notably muted presence compared to previous years.

Yet the US footprint on the promenade was impossible to miss. The US delegation was one of the largest in Davos, anchored by a sprawling USA House with a dense schedule of events and receptions. From the number of officials and security on the ground to the symbolic bald eagle overlooking the promenade, the message was clear: US influence loomed over nearly every discussion. For all the activity in country pavilions, this remained a global forum shaped by great-power rivalry.

From Canada, a clarion call

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney delivered one of the most consequential addresses during Davos, declaring that the post–Cold War rules-based international order is “in the midst of a rupture, not a transition.” Carney argued that great-power rivalry, economic coercion, and unilateral actions by dominant states (not mentioning Trump by name) have weakened longstanding global norms and institutions. He called on middle powers to work together to protect their interests and build new cooperative frameworks rooted in shared values. Simply going along to get along is no longer the answer, he argued. Whether other middle powers respond to that message may be the single most important question from this year’s forum.

Descending the mountain

As delegates packed their bags and headed down the mountain, few were under any illusions. The convergence between business Davos and geopolitical Davos is the new reality. The tightrope that companies are walking is not getting any less precarious. And the question of whether economic cooperation can survive an era of rising geopolitics remains very much unanswered.

Next year’s forum may face these same tensions. The key question is whether the world will have found ways to navigate them successfully or whether the rupture Carney described will have deepened further.

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Surrender or freeze: Putin’s winter blitz targets Ukrainian civilians

Yuliya Kazdobina — Tue, 20 Jan 2026 21:16:26 +0000

Millions of Ukrainians have spent much of January without electricity and heating amid subzero winter temperatures, sparking fears that the country is on the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe. This desperate situation has been deliberately provoked by a sustained Russian bombing campaign against Ukraine’s critical infrastructure, as Kremlin dictator Vladimir Putin targets the civilian population in order to pressure Kyiv into capitulation.

Russia’s attacks have led to dramatically deteriorating living conditions across Ukraine. Thousands of high-rise apartment buildings in large cities as well as smaller rural homes have been cut off from power, heating, and water for days at a time. As a result, indoor temperatures have dropped to dangerous levels. For the elderly, those with young children, and people suffering from health issues, the risks are particularly grave.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has declared a state of emergency in the country’s energy sector, while other Ukrainian officials have appealed to partners for urgent support. While international aid has begun arriving, the sheer scale of the crisis means that much may depend on weather conditions in the coming weeks.

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Attacks on Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure have been a routine feature of the war ever since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022. According to Ukrainian Energy Minister Denys Shmyhal, every single energy-generating facility in the country has been bombed. “There is not a single power plant in Ukraine that has not been hit by the enemy since the beginning of the war,” he commented last week. “Thousands of megawatts of generation capacity have been knocked out. Nobody else in the world has ever faced a challenge like this.”

Russia’s current aerial offensive began to escalate noticeably during the final months of 2025 ahead of the cold season. As temperatures plummeted in early January, there was a further intensification of attacks on Ukraine’s power and heating infrastructure, with large numbers of drones and missiles concentrated on specific cities to overwhelm air defenses. The timing of Russia’s bombing campaign leaves no room for reasonable doubt; this was a premeditated attempt to target the Ukrainian population by weaponizing the winter weather.

The Kremlin’s goal is easy enough to decipher. By making Ukrainian cities unlivable and threatening to freeze millions of civilians, Moscow aims to break Ukraine’s resistance and force the Kyiv authorities to accept peace on Russian terms. In other words, the present bombing offensive is Putin’s response to US President Donald Trump’s peace efforts. Rather than agree to a ceasefire or offer concessions, Putin uses terror as a negotiating tool to secure Ukraine’s surrender.

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The targeting of Ukrainian civilians is not limited to attacks on critical infrastructure. According to the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, 2025 was the deadliest year of the invasion for Ukrainian civilians since 2022. In a report released in early January, United Nations officials confirmed that more than 2500 Ukrainian civilians were killed in 2025. This was 31 percent higher than the figure for the previous year and 70 percent more than in 2023. A separate assessment by European governments reached similar conclusions and found that the scale of Russian attacks on Ukrainian civilians increased whenever the Trump administration attempted to advance peace negotiations.

The rising civilian death toll in Ukraine is largely due to increased Russian bombing of Ukrainian cities. Moscow’s mounting air offensive owed much to a spike in domestic drone production, which has made it possible to launch hundreds of drones at Ukraine in a single night. Russia has also been accused of conducting a large-scale campaign of individual drone strikes against civilians in southern Ukraine that terrified locals have branded a “human safari.” UN investigators reported in October 2025 that Russia’s targeted drone strikes on civilians were a crime against humanity.

Russian attacks on Ukrainian civilians have increased amid mounting frustration in Moscow over the slow pace of the invasion. Despite holding the battlefield initiative throughout 2025, Putin’s army failed to achieve any significant breakthroughs and gained less than one percent of Ukrainian territory while suffering heavy losses. With little immediate prospect of military success, Putin seems to have decided that his best chance of victory lies in terrorizing the civilian population.

So far, Russia’s terror tactics do not appear to be working. A nationwide poll conducted in mid-January by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology found that a majority of Ukrainians continue to reject the Kremlin’s territorial demands in eastern Ukraine. Meanwhile, more than two-thirds of Ukrainians do not believe the present round of US-led negotiations will result in a lasting peace. Instead, most Ukrainians remain convinced that Russia aims to continue the war.

Today’s arctic conditions will eventually give way to milder weather, but the damage done to Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure in recent weeks will take months to repair. Nor is there any reason to believe that Russian attacks on Ukrainian civilians will abate. On the contrary, the Kremlin is likely to escalate further in a bid to demoralize, destabilize, and depopulate the country. By seeking to freeze millions of Ukrainians, Putin has underlined his readiness to target civilians as he seeks to impose an imperialistic vision of peace through submission.

Yuliya Kazdobina is a senior fellow at the “Ukrainian Prism” nongovernmental analytical center.

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Ukraine’s arsenal of long-range weapons has evolved significantly since 2022. Over the past four years, the country has managed to develop a variety of strike drones with the capacity to reach targets located well over a thousand kilometers from the Ukrainian border. Ukraine also now boasts an expanding selection of domestically produced cruise missiles. This enhanced long-range firepower has made it possible for Ukraine to conduct an escalating bombing campaign inside Russia that has already changed the geography of the war.

Since summer 2025, long-range Ukrainian attacks on Russian territory have reached record highs. Ukraine has struck dozens of military facilities and defense industry enterprises, while also paying special attention to the oil and gas infrastructure that fuels the Russian war economy. Ukraine has hit refineries, pipelines, oil rigs, ports, and a number of tankers belonging to the Kremlin’s so-called shadow fleet. These strikes have complicated the logistics of the invasion while contributing to a significant decline in Russia’s energy export revenues.

In addition to hampering the Kremlin war machine and causing economic damage, Ukraine’s mounting campaign of long-range strikes has also had a major psychological impact that is helping to bring home the reality of the war to the Russian public. Since the start of the full-scale invasion, the Kremlin has worked hard to shield ordinary Russians and contain the conflict within the borders of Ukraine. However, with air raid sirens becoming an increasingly routine feature of daily life in Russian towns and cities, the Putin regime is no longer able to control the narrative.

A recent survey conducted by Russia’s only remaining independent pollster, the Levada Center, has highlighted the impact Ukrainian strikes are having on Russian public sentiment. Asked to name the most notable event of the past year, 28 percent of respondents cited Ukrainian drone attacks on Russian cities and industrial facilities, making this the third most popular answer. Clearly, Ukraine’s long-range bombing campaign has succeeded in breaking through the Kremlin propaganda bubble and has made a strong impression on the Russian population.

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For Ukraine’s partners, the objective now should be to boost Ukraine’s long-range capabilities to the maximum in order to equip the country with the kind of strike power that can deter Russia. Numerous Western leaders have shied away from providing Kyiv with long-range missiles from their own arsenals due to escalation fears. The solution is simple: Western partners should focus their efforts on helping Ukraine produce sufficient quantities of drones and missiles domestically.

Ukrainian officials are well aware that the ability to hit targets across the Russian Federation may be their country’s most effective security guarantee against further Kremlin aggression. They are now appealing to Kyiv’s international partners for increased support as they seek to exploit the country’s considerable spare defense industry production capacity and crank up output.

“The modern arms race is not about nukes. It is about millions of cheap drones. Those who can scale up production quicker will secure peace,” commented Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha in late 2025. “This requires quick and sufficient funding for Ukraine’s defense industry, which is now the greatest source of defense innovation in the world. We can produce up to twenty million drones next year if we get sufficient funding.”

Throughout the past year of faltering US-led peace efforts, Vladimir Putin has repeatedly demonstrated that he has no intention of ending the invasion. As long as the war is being fought predominantly inside Ukraine, he is unlikely to change his position, regardless of Russian combat losses. However, if Ukrainian drone and missile strikes inside Russia continue to expand during 2026, the economic and social impact may become too serious to ignore. This could force Putin to abandon his stalling tactics and finally enter into genuine negotiations. It would also oblige him to think carefully before restarting his invasion in the years ahead.

Serhii Kuzan is chairman of the Ukrainian Security and Cooperation Center (USCC). He formerly served as an adviser to the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense (2022-2023) and as an advisor to the Secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council (2014).

Eight ways AI will shape geopolitics in 2026

Atlantic Council experts — Thu, 15 Jan 2026 23:35:20 +0000

The events of 2025 made clear that the question is no longer whether artificial intelligence (AI) will reshape the global order, but how quickly—and at what cost.

Throughout the year, technological breakthroughs from both the United States and China ratcheted up the competition for AI dominance between the superpowers. Countries and companies raced to build vast data centers and energy infrastructure to support AI development and use. The scramble for cutting-edge chips pushed Nvidia’s valuation past five trillion dollars—the first company to reach that milestone—even as concerns mounted over circular financing and the question of how much the AI boom is founded on hype versus reality. Meanwhile, policymakers grappled with the balance between safety, security, and innovation and how to manage possible labor disruptions on the horizon.

As 2026 begins, rapid AI integration threatens to inject even more unpredictability into an already fragmented global order. Below, experts from the Atlantic Council Technology Programs share their perspectives on what to expect from AI around the globe in the year ahead.

Click to jump to an expert prediction:

Tess deBlanc-Knowles: The US pushes AI tech exports to counter China

Konstantinos Komaitis: AI governance turns global

Ryan Pan: The US-China AI race intensifies in a multipolar world

Esteban Ponce de León: AI challenges human judgment

Trisha Ray: Countries go all in on ‘sovereign AI’

Mark Scott: The battle of the AI stacks escalates

Kenton Thibaut: China doubles down on AI-powered influence operations

AI poisoning goes mainstream

Russia’s Pravda network of websites has published millions of articles targeting more than eighty countries. These sites launder and amplify content from Russian state media, seeking to legitimize Russian military aggression while casting doubt on Western support for Ukraine. Most of these articles will never be viewed by a human. Instead, they seem intended to target the web crawlers that scour the internet for training data to feed to insatiable AI models.

And the strategy is working. Last year, the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab) and CheckFirst demonstrated how mass-produced Pravda articles were cited in Wikipedia, X Community Notes, and responses from major chatbots. Parallel research by Anthropic and the United Kingdom’s AI Safety Institute has shown how trace amounts of faulty data can effectively “poison” even very large models. People increasingly turn to AI systems to understand current events. If an AI model’s knowledge has been altered by sources intended to deceive, then the users’ will be, too.

In 2026, the issue of AI poisoning will break into the mainstream. Because of a roughly two-year lag in AI training data (many AI models are still waiting for the results of the 2024 US presidential election, for instance), these AI-targeted propaganda campaigns are about to start manifesting more often. And because one cannot reliably audit what’s inside a deployed AI model, the result will be a staggering research and policy challenge.

Digital policy experts, including the DFRLab, have spent a decade learning to identify, explain, and expose online disinformation where people can see it. This is online disinformation where they can’t.

—Emerson Brooking is the director of strategy and a resident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab.

The US pushes AI tech exports to counter China

In 2026, the United States will double down on exporting the US tech stack as the cornerstone of its international AI strategy. In December 2025, US President Donald Trump set the tone with his decision to allow Nvidia to export its advanced H200 chips to China, a clear endorsement of the view that the United States wins when the world builds and deploys AI using US technology.

Published days before the Nvidia decision, the Trump administration’s National Security Strategy makes this explicit: “We want to ensure that US technology and US standards—particularly in AI, biotech, and quantum computing—drive the world forward.” This framing echoes the AI Action Plan the administration released in July 2025, which stated that the “United States must meet global demand for AI by exporting its full AI technology stack,” warning that a failure to do so would be an “unforced error.”

In 2026, expect to see the United States sign more AI-focused partnerships like those forged with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in 2025, alongside efforts to counter China’s growing influence in emerging markets. But as the United States makes this push, China holds some key advantages. Its lead in open-source AI models and focus on applied AI could prove to be the winning formula for capturing global market share with free models and deployment-ready technologies.

—Tess deBlanc-Knowles is the senior director of Atlantic Council Technology Programs.

AI governance turns global

In 2026, AI governance enters its first truly global phase with the United Nations–backed Global Dialogue on AI Governance and Independent International Scientific Panel on AI. For the first time, nearly all states have a forum to debate AI’s risks, norms, and coordination mechanisms, signaling that AI has crossed into the realm of shared global concern.

Yet this ambition unfolds amid acute geopolitical tension: The European Union pushes a rights- and risk-based regulatory model, while the United States favors voluntary standards to preserve innovation and security flexibility. For its part, China promotes inclusive cooperation while defending state control over data and AI deployment. Smaller and developing states gain a voice but remain structurally dependent on the major powers that control the bulk of AI talent, capital, and computing power.

The result is a fragile, uneven global framework. States converge on scientific assessments, transparency norms, and voluntary principles, but they avoid binding limits on high-risk AI uses such as autonomous weapons, mass surveillance, or information manipulation. Coordination emerges, but the core strategic competition remains unresolved, producing a governance architecture that manages risks at the margins while leaving rival models largely intact.

By the end of 2026, the Global Dialogue will likely have made AI governance global in form but geopolitical in substance—a first test of whether international cooperation can meaningfully shape the future of AI or merely coexist alongside competing national strategies. This juncture offers states an opportunity to demonstrate leadership by strengthening institutional capabilities and collaborative mechanisms, fostering a global AI governance framework that is more coherent, equitable, and universally engaged.

—Konstantinos Komaitis is a resident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Democracy + Tech Initiative.

The US-China AI race intensifies in a multipolar world

The year ahead will see an even fiercer competition over AI dominance between the world’s two largest powers—the United States and China—while middle powers gradually close the gap in the race. China’s DeepSeek started off this year with a research paper on a new AI training method to efficiently scale foundational models and reduce costs. This publication comes almost exactly a year after the headline-making paper it released in January 2025, which was followed by the launch of DeekSeek-R1. The timing of this year’s new publication signals that the company will launch new models and continue shaping the world’s AI industry this year.

In 2026, expect China to double down on its open-source AI strategy to influence the world’s AI infrastructure. (Several major US tech companies are already using Chinese large language models in their applications.) The United States and China may also engage in further trade retaliation in the AI supply chains in light of recent developments in Venezuela, from which Chinese companies had gained access to rare earth minerals crucial to developing the AI stack. The Trump administration’s recent claims regarding Colombia, from which China also sources rare earth elements, could make Latin America the next technology battleground between the two powers.

But what about powers beyond the United States and China? In 2026, look for Europe to increase its AI defense investments even more than it did in 2025. Middle powers, notably India, will see their AI capability greatly improved this year, as US tech giants have recently pledged billions in investments in India’s AI capabilities.

The AI race in 2026 will still be defined by a multipolar order. Nevertheless, the United States and China will continue to yield the greatest influence.

—Ryan Pan is a program assistant with the Atlantic Council’s GeoTech Center.

AI challenges human judgment

In 2026, human–AI interaction will likely challenge human judgment and identity more deeply than in any year to date. This is not only because AI models are demonstrating increasingly complex capabilities, but also because AI-generated content can be so emotionally charged in today’s polarized information environment.

Online sources and social media have shown how polarization can be deliberately targeted, and the use of AI to generate fabricated or distorted content adds a new layer to how social and political events are interpreted. AI content is reshaping the dynamics of both manipulation and what could be described as a “misinformation game,” in which techniques such as the deployment of AI slop and the memeification of events are used to mock adversaries and amplify key propaganda narratives. For example, in June 2025, amid the Israel-Iran escalation, AI became the new face of propaganda. This included graphic and sensational AI-generated fake content, such as fabricated missile strikes, military hardware, religious and national symbols, and memes. But it also included more sophisticated fabrications of CCTV footage that became increasingly difficult to debunk.

In the first days of 2026, as the Trump administration captured Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro, the use of AI to generate media content increased drastically. While much of this content was humorous or satirical in nature, it nonetheless illustrates emerging usage patterns, as playful AI-generated media can still shape perceptions of power and blur the line between satire, manipulation, and propaganda. Whether fabricated content aims to provoke humor or confusion, human judgment will face new challenges in the year ahead.

This challenge to human judgment and identity extends beyond misinformation. In 2026, the AI landscape may begin to show early signs of benchmark saturation, in which models converge at near-maximum scores on established capability tests, collapsing the measurable differences between them. This matters for the information environment because the same logic applies: If distinguishing real from fabricated content becomes difficult, then so too does distinguishing what humans uniquely contribute from what AI can replicate. The implications extend to professional identity and how to understand individual value and competence.

—Esteban Ponce de León is a resident fellow with the Digital Forensic Research Lab.

Countries go all in on ‘sovereign AI’

There are unprecedented amounts of capital flowing in to meet the anticipated demand for AI. Last year, for instance, kicked off with Trump’s announcement of Stargate, with the aim of investing $500 billion in AI infrastructure over five years. The principle driving this trend is straightforward: Countries think they must control AI before it controls them. Consequently, there was a wave of sovereign AI announcements in 2024 and 2025.

That momentum will only grow in 2026, starting with the launch of India’s sovereign large language model at the AI Impact Summit in February. Nations are seeking sovereign AI to strengthen their domestic economies, protect national security, mitigate geopolitical shocks, and reflect national values. However, there’s a catch: Not every country can, or should, try to build every part of the AI stack on its own. Trying to recreate from scratch everything from data centers to models is expensive, redundant, and impractical. Nations will need to choose what to build, what to buy, and where partnerships make more sense than going solo.

—Trisha Ray is an associate director and resident fellow with the GeoTech Center.

The battle of the AI stacks escalates

As AI becomes more central to countries’ economic prospects, national policymakers will likely seek to impose greater control over critical digital infrastructure. This infrastructure includes compute power, cloud storage, microchips, and regulation, and it is central to how emerging AI technology will develop in 2026. For the world’s largest digital powers—the United States, the European Union, and China—the push to control this infrastructure will likely evolve into a battle of the “AI stacks”—increasingly opposing approaches to how such core digital AI-enabling infrastructure functions at home and abroad.

The White House’s AI Action Plan, published in July 2025, made it the stated policy of the federal government to export the US stack to third-party countries, including via potential funding support from the US Department of Commerce for other governments to purchase offerings from the likes of Microsoft, OpenAI, and Nvidia. The European Commission has earmarked billions of euros for so-called AI gigafactories, or high-performance computing infrastructure, from Estonia to Spain, while national leaders also vocally called for a “Euro stack.” The Chinese Communist Party is urging local firms to forgo Western AI know-how and rely instead on domestic alternatives from companies such as Alibaba or Huawei.

The rest of the world will have to navigate these increasingly rivalrous approaches to AI infrastructure at a time when all countries seek greater control of so-called digital public infrastructure—that is, the underlying hardware and, increasingly, software needed to power complex AI systems. How these different AI stacks interact with each other will be critical to how the technology develops over the next twelve months.

—Mark Scott is a senior resident fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Democracy + Tech Initiative.

China doubles down on AI-powered influence operations

In 2026, the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC’s) AI-enabled disinformation efforts are likely to intensify in scale, persistence, and technical sophistication, particularly those targeting Taiwan. PRC actors are already using AI-generated audio, video, and text, distributed through networks of fake accounts and contracted private firms, to conduct “cognitive warfare” campaigns aimed at shaping political perceptions and voter behavior. These campaigns prioritize volume, localization, and algorithmic exploitation, and they are increasingly designed to be continuous rather than episodic. As AI-generated content is blended with human-curated messaging and commercial infrastructure, PRC-linked operations will become harder to detect and attribute, reflecting a shift toward more deniable, adaptive, and professionalized influence operations.

At the same time, Beijing is expected to pair these activities with defensive diplomatic messaging that rejects allegations of PRC-linked disinformation or cyber operations and reframes such claims as politically motivated attacks. This pattern reinforces a broader hybrid strategy in which AI-enabled influence operations, cyber activity, and diplomatic signaling are tightly integrated. In 2026, PRC disinformation campaigns are likely to focus less on overt propaganda and more on shaping narratives around crises and cyber incidents, contesting blame, eroding trust in attribution, and influencing strategic decision-making outcomes.

—Kenton Thibaut is a senior resident fellow with the Democracy + Tech Initiative.

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Ukraine’s enhanced fortifications are increasing the cost of Putin’s invasion

David Kirichenko — Thu, 15 Jan 2026 22:01:39 +0000

Russian forces continued to gradually advance in Ukraine during 2025, but suffered huge losses in exchange for minimal gains. This unfavorable ratio reflects the increasing effectiveness of Ukraine’s defensive lines, which now feature a combination of layered fortifications backed by deadly drone coverage. Together, these elements have turned much of the front line into a controlled kill zone that makes large-scale offensive operations extremely challenging while dramatically raising the cost of each new assault.

As Ukraine focuses on preventing further Russian advances and solidifying the front lines of the war, Kyiv has invested consideration resources in a major upgrade of the country’s defenses. This has resulted in what Britain’s The Economist recently described as a “massive fortification system” up to two hundred meters in depth covering much of the Ukrainian battlefield. “Ukraine now has the fortress belt it wishes it had in 2022,” the publication reported in early January.

Physical obstacles play an important role in this approach. Anti-tank ditches, razor wire, and concrete obstacles are layered to slow Russian advances. Defensive lines are often spaced within mortar range of one another, allowing Ukrainian units to trade space for time and counterattack against exposed enemy assault groups before they have had an opportunity to consolidate. The emphasis is on attrition and disruption rather than rigid territorial defense.

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Ukraine’s defensive strategy goes far beyond a reliance on traditional static barriers. Over the past year, there has also been a growing emphasis on dispersed, concealed, and flexible defensive networks. These small-scale fortified positions are often located underground or embedded in tree lines at strategic locations, and are supported by remote fires and decoys. Each individual node in these networks is designed to shape enemy movement rather than stop it outright, channeling attackers into deliberately prepared kill pockets without exposing defenders. By creating choke points for Russian troops, Ukraine aims to maximize Kremlin casualties and capitalize on its in-built advantages as the defending party in a war of attrition.

There are growing signs that this approach is working. Ukraine’s top military commander Oleksandr Syrskyi commented recently that the current strategy has proved particularly effective on the Pokrovsk front, which has witnessed some of the heaviest fighting of the entire war over the past year. According to Syrskyi, “timely and high-quality fortifications and engineering obstacles” enabled Ukrainian forces to inflict maximum losses on Russian units close to Pokrovsk and disrupt their plans, even when facing numerical superiority.

Where Ukrainian defenses have failed, the reasons are instructive. In areas such as Toretsk and parts of the Kharkiv front, troop rotations occurred without sufficient time or equipment to construct proper fortifications, leading to Russian gains. Constant Russian drone surveillance made the use of heavy engineering machinery dangerous, leaving units unprepared when assaults followed. These cases serve as confirmation that fortifications are not optional enhancements but foundational to battlefield survival under drone saturated conditions.

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Drones are at the heart of Ukraine’s defensive strategy, serving as a ubiquitous presence over kill zones and preventing localized Russian advances from consolidating into more substantial breakthroughs. Meanwhile, in some sectors of the front such as Pokrovsk, ground robotic systems are now being used to deliver the vast majority of supplies to troops. With this in mind, Ukrainian commanders argue that all future defensive lines should be optimized for both aerial and ground drones.

These technological advances do not eliminate the need for manpower. Even the most sophisticated fortifications require soldiers to react to emerging threats. When Russian units manage to infiltrate defensive lines or push into urban areas, infantry forces remain essential in order to clear and secure ground. While Ukraine’s improved fortifications are an encouraging development for the war-weary nation, no physical barrier can realistically stop Russia unless it is supported by sufficient quantities of well-trained troops.

Strengthening Ukraine’s fortifications and addressing manpower shortages will be among the top priorities for incoming Ukrainian Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov, who took up his post this week. Fedorov made his name in government as Minister of Digital Transformation. Since 2022, he has been one of the driving forces behind Ukraine’s rapidly expanding drone warfare capabilities.

Fedorov’s extensive defense tech background, along with his reputation as a modernizer who has countered institutional corruption through the digitalization of state services, has led to considerable optimism over his appointment. He is now faced with the twin challenges of improving Ukraine’s front line defenses while addressing the mobilization and desertion problems hindering the Ukrainian war effort. If he is able to make progress on these two fronts, Ukraine’s prospects for 2026 and beyond will begin to look a lot better.

David Kirichenko is an associate research fellow at the Henry Jackson Society.

Putin is weaponizing winter as Russia tries to freeze Ukraine into submission

Peter Dickinson — Tue, 13 Jan 2026 22:39:41 +0000

Russia is “going all in” to destroy Ukraine’s power system, Ukrainian Deputy Energy Minister Mykola Kolisnyk said on January 13 following the latest in a series of major bombardments targeting civilian energy infrastructure in cities across the country. “Today, Russia launched an attack just five days after the previous bombardment, using drones and ballistic missiles. We see that the enemy is going all in, deploying its forces to destroy Ukraine’s energy infrastructure,” he commented.

The current wave of attacks have hit the Ukrainian capital Kyiv particularly hard. “The Russians are trying to disconnect the city and force people to move outside Kyiv,” Ukrenergo CEO Vitaliy Zaichenko told the Kyiv Independent. According to Zaichenko, around 70 percent of the Ukrainian capital’s approximately 3.5 million residents were left without electricity on Tuesday. Meanwhile, large numbers of apartments also had no heating amid subzero winter conditions.

Kyiv is one of multiple Ukrainian population centers currently facing rolling blackouts that in many cases can last for over 24 hours. Russia’s air offensive has also struck energy infrastructure supplying Odesa, Kharkiv, Dnipro, Zaporizhzhia, Sumy, Chernihiv, and many other major cities.

Teams of engineers are working around the clock to repair damaged facilities, fix power lines, and reconnect Ukrainian homes and businesses to the electricity grid. However, repeated Russian attacks are making it increasingly difficult to patch up battered equipment and find the necessary replacement component parts.

The bombing campaign appears to have been timed to coincide with the coldest period in over a year, with temperatures plummeting to minus fifteen Celsius (five degrees Fahrenheit) for extended periods of time. “ They deliberately waited for freezing weather to make things worse for our people. This is cynical Russian terror specifically against civilians,” stated Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

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This is not the first time Russian President Vladimir Putin has attempted to weaponize winter in his war against Ukraine. Russia launched a major air offensive against Ukraine’s civilian energy infrastructure in October 2022, establishing a pattern that would be repeated each year as the cold season approached. While this tactic is not new, the present destruction of the Ukrainian power grid is widely recognized as the most severe of the entire war.

In Kyiv and other cities, the Ukrainian authorities have established so-called Points of Invincibility in heavily populated areas featuring heating and internet access along with electricity sources that can be used to charge up personal devices and power banks. Visitors can also expect hot drinks and a warm welcome.

Throughout Ukraine the buzz of generators has become the background noise of the winter season. Many Ukrainians have installed backup power sources in their homes, which are typically able to provide electricity for a limited period of time. Portable gas stoves are also a common feature as people adapt and improvise in the extreme conditions caused by Russia’s bombardment.

With millions of Ukrainian civilians at risk of being trapped in freezing darkness for days at a time, the potential for a humanitarian catastrophe is obvious. Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko has already urged residents of the Ukrainian capital to temporarily leave the city if they are able to and move to less affected areas where power and heating are more readily available. With the present cold snap set to last for at least another week and further Russian attacks widely expected, fears are now mounting over a possible winter exodus to neighboring EU countries.

That may be exactly what Putin has in mind. Since the start of the full-scale invasion, Russia has repeatedly targeted Ukrainian civilians in a bid to break Ukraine’s resistance and depopulate large parts of the country. In addition to attacks on energy, heating, and other critical infrastructure, Russia has also launched large-scale drone strike campaigns designed to make entire towns and cities unlivable. A recent United Nations probe into Russia’s campaign of drone attacks throughout southern Ukraine’s front line regions concluded that Moscow’s actions amounted to the crimes against humanity of “murder and forcible transfer of population.”

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As Russia attempts to freeze Ukrainians into submission, Kyiv desperately needs a wide range of international support. This includes alternative energy supplies to replace domestic gas production damaged in Russia’s attacks, along with spare parts to mend the country’s power stations and associated infrastructure.

Ukraine also urgently requires additional air defense systems and interceptor missiles. At present, Ukraine’s existing air defenses are struggling to cope with the dramatically increased intensity of Russia’s aerial attacks, which now routinely feature hundreds of drones along with dozens of cruise and ballistic missiles.

Most of all, Ukraine needs to be able to strike back. However much Ukraine’s network of air defenses improves, the sheer scale of the Russian bombardment means that a percentage of missiles and drones will inevitably reach their targets. The only truly effective defense is deterrence. In other words, Russia’s attacks will continue until Putin is restrained by the knowledge that Ukraine has the capacity to reply in kind.

The next few weeks will be among the most challenging of the war for Ukraine’s civilian population that will test the country’s famed resilience to the limit. “I think the Russians want to break us. They want to make Ukrainians angry and unhappy. They think this will make us go out on the streets and protest but that won’t happen,” Kyiv resident Valentina Verteletska told Britain’s Guardian newspaper. “This makes us tougher and more determined. War doesn’t make people bad or good but it amplifies who you are. It allows people to show who they are inside and we have seen a lot of people volunteering to help their neighbors.”

Many believe Russia’s wintertime bombardment of Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure now represents Putin’s best chance to achieve some kind of breakthrough at a time when his army is struggling to advance on the battlefield. Russia gained less than one percent of Ukrainian territory in 2025 despite suffering hundreds of thousands of casualties, and is still fighting over villages located within walking distance of the front lines at the start of the invasion in February 2022.

Despite this lack of progress, Putin remains committed to his original invasion objective of extinguishing Ukrainian independence and forcing the country permanently back into the Kremlin orbit. He clearly has no qualms about targeting millions of Ukrainian civilians in pursuit of this criminal goal. “You can see with your own eyes what is going on,” commented Kyiv building manager Oleksandr Matienko. “They are trying to kill us. They can’t win any other way. So they are willing to do anything to destroy Ukraine.”

Peter Dickinson is editor of the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlert service.

Over the past year, Russian attacks on Ukraine’s agricultural sector have escalated alarmingly. According to research conducted by the University of Strasbourg, the University of Maryland, and NASA’s Harvest program, the number of farmland fires identified in Ukrainian-controlled areas of the Kherson region during 2025 rose by 87.5 percent.

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The Kherson farming community’s wartime experience is mirrored throughout Ukraine, particularly in areas close to the front lines of the invasion. By attacking agricultural infrastructure, Russia seeks to undermine Ukraine’s food security, just as it targets the country’s energy infrastructure to deprive Ukraine’s civilian population of access to electricity and heating.

The implications of Russia’s war on Ukrainian farmers are international in scope. Known historically as the breadbasket of Europe, Ukraine is home to around one quarter of the world’s black soil, the most fertile farmland on the planet. This makes Ukraine a potential agricultural superpower and a key contributor to global food security. Ukrainian farmers are among the leading exporters of foodstuffs to the European Union, with Ukrainian produce also playing a prominent role in aid programs to counter hunger throughout the developing world.

Russia’s invasion has had a devastating impact on Ukrainian agricultural output. In addition to mined fields, burned crops, and bombed facilities, large numbers of Ukrainian farms are currently in Kremlin-controlled regions, leading to seized harvests.

Kherson region farmers received a further blow in summer 2023 when a suspected Russian sabotage operation destroyed the Kakhovka Dam in Russian-occupied southern Ukraine. This act of ecocide undermined one of Europe’s largest irrigation systems, leaving hundreds of thousands of hectares without access to water. The impact on the environment was catastrophic, leading to drought conditions, failed crops, and the loss of farmland.

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Despite the unprecedented challenges posed by Russia’s ongoing invasion, Kherson’s farmers continue to work. In 2025, they managed to harvest a remarkable quantity of the watermelons that serve as the region’s unofficial calling card. Other key Kherson crops include wheat and potatoes.

Since 2022, domestic and international support programs have proved instrumental in bolstering the resilience of the Kherson agricultural industry. Initiatives in recent years have included subsidies for farmers and technical assistance focused on areas such as irrigation, with the goal of helping farmers adapt to the new wartime realities.

Kherson agricultural businesses are also responding to the changing conditions. Due to water scarcity and rising temperatures, some farms have reduced planting areas and turned to cultivating crops that utilize soil moisture more efficiently. Research is also underway to develop additional drought-resistant crops better suited to the current environment.

Further international support for Ukrainian farmers will be critically important during 2026. Ukraine’s agricultural industry is one of the cornerstones of the national economy and a major exporter to global markets. By targeting farmers and their land, Russia aims to make Ukraine unlivable and break the country’s resistance. This strategy poses a significant threat to international food security and must be addressed.

Oleksandr Tolokonnikov is Deputy Head of the Kherson Regional Military Administration.

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The current emphasis on UGVs is part of a broader technological transformation taking place on the battlefields of Ukraine. This generational shift in military tech is redefining how modern wars are fought.

Since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, homegrown innovation has played a critical role in Ukraine’s defense. Early in the war, Ukrainian troops deployed cheap commercial drones to conduct reconnaissance. These platforms were soon being adapted to carry explosives, dramatically expanding their combat role. By the second year of the war, Ukraine had developed a powerful domestic drone industry capable of producing millions of units per year while rapidly adapting to the ever-changing requirements of the battlefield.

A similar process has also been underway at sea, with Ukraine deploying domestically produced naval drones to sink or damage more than a dozen Russian warships. This has forced Putin to withdraw the remainder of the Black Sea Fleet from occupied Crimea to Russia itself. Recent successes have included the downing of Russian helicopters over the Black Sea using naval drones armed with missiles, and an audacious strike on a Russian submarine by an underwater Ukrainian drone.

By late 2023, drones were dominating the skies over the Ukrainian battlefield, making it extremely dangerous to use vehicles or armor close to the front lines. In response to this changing dynamic, Ukrainian forces began experimenting with wheeled and tracked land drones to handle logistical tasks such as the delivery of food and ammunition to front line positions and the evacuation of wounded troops.

Over the past year, Russia’s expanding use of fiber-optic drones and tactical focus on disrupting Ukrainian supply lines has further underlined the importance of UGVs. Fiber-optic drones have expanded the kill zone deep into the Ukrainian rear, complicating the task of resupplying combat units and leading to shortages that weaken Ukraine’s defenses. Robotic systems help counter this threat.

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Remote controlled land drones offer a range of practical advantages. They are more difficult to jam electronically than aerial drones, and are far harder to spot than trucks or cars. These benefits are making them increasingly indispensable for the Ukrainian military. In November 2025, the BBC reported that up to 90 percent of all supplies to Ukrainian front line positions around Pokrovsk were being delivered by UGVs.

In addition to logistical functions, the Ukrainian military is also pioneering the use of land drones in combat roles. It is easy to see why this is appealing. After all, Ukrainian commanders are being asked to defend a front line stretching more than one thousand kilometers with limited numbers of troops against a far larger and better equipped enemy.

Experts caution that while UGVs can serve as a key element of Ukraine’s defenses, they are not a realistic alternative to boots on the ground. Former Ukrainian commander in chief Valerii Zaluzhnyi has acknowledged that robotic systems are already making it possible to remove personnel from the front lines and reduce casualties, but stressed that current technology remains insufficient to replace humans at scale.

Despite the advances of the past four years, Ukraine’s expanding robot army remains incapable of carrying out many military functions that require infantry. When small groups of Russian troops infiltrate Ukrainian positions and push into urban areas, for example, soldiers are needed to clear and hold terrain. Advocates of drone warfare need to recognize these limitations when making the case for greater reliance on unmanned systems.

UGVs will likely prove vital for Ukraine in 2026, but they are not wonder weapons and cannot serve as a miracle cure for Kyiv’s manpower challenges. Instead, Ukraine’s robot army should be viewed as an important part of the country’s constantly evolving defenses that can help save lives while raising the cost of Russia’s invasion.

David Kirichenko is an associate research fellow at the Henry Jackson Society.

The art of war is undergoing a technological revolution in Ukraine

Oleg Dunda — Wed, 24 Dec 2025 23:52:17 +0000

Ukraine is currently at the epicenter of radical changes taking place in the way modern wars are fought. However, much of the world is still busy preparing for the wars of yesterday. European armies are only combat-ready on paper, while the invincibility of the United States military is based largely on past victories.

The current state of affairs is far from unprecedented. In early 1940, Polish officers tried to warn their French counterparts about Nazi Germany’s new blitzkrieg tactics but were ignored. France surrendered soon after. There is still time to adapt to the transformations that are now underway, but the clock is ticking.

One of the key lessons from the war in Ukraine is the evolving role of soldiers. People are now the most expensive, vulnerable, and difficult resource to replace on the battlefield. Meanwhile, many of the core weapons systems that dominated military doctrines in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries are becoming less relevant. Tanks, artillery, and other traditional systems are simply too expensive and are unsuited to the challenges created by newer technologies.

Unmanned systems of all kinds have emerged since 2022 as a fundamental element of modern military doctrine. This is radically changing everything from the structure of armies to the role of the individual soldier. Remotely controlled equipment no longer needs a large crew to support it, while individual models are becoming more compact and maneuverable. As a result, the power of unmanned weapons systems is increasing exponentially, while production is expanding to industrial scale and becoming significantly cheaper.

More and more soldiers now serve as unmanned systems operators. Those who remain in more traditional roles perform tasks such as special operations, guard duties, or logistical functions. The war being waged by Ukraine has demonstrated that the modern battlefield features a kill zone up to 25 miles deep and spanning the entire front line. This zone is controlled by drones that destroy any infantry or equipment. Combat operations are increasingly conducted by drone operators located deep in the rear or in underground bunkers.

In these conditions of drone dominance over the battlefield, any attempts to stage major breakthroughs are doomed to failure. Instead of tank columns and artillery duels, offensive operations require maximum dispersal of forces and the greatest possible camouflage. The main task of troops is to gradually shift the kill zone deeper into the enemy’s rear.

Success depends upon the ability to rapidly produce large quantities of inexpensive combat drones and continually update their control systems. Initial tactics involving single drones and individual targets are already becoming a thing of a past. Instead, operators can now use artificial intelligence to control entire fleets featuring large numbers of drones deployed simultaneously. This approach allows a single soldier to manage kilometers of front line space rather than just a few hundred meters. The result is a reduction in the need for mass mobilization and an emphasis on the professionalism and technical skills of each operator manning the front.

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Combat operations now boil down to two main scenarios: Either the collapse of an enemy who is not prepared for the new intensity of combat, or a positional struggle in the style of World War I. In a protracted positional war, it is crucial to ensure control over the kill zone and maintain sufficient supplies while depriving the enemy of similar capabilities. The protection of logistics networks and the infliction of maximum damage on the enemy’s rear areas is of decisive importance.

First and foremost, this means cutting off ground supply routes. To protect logistics, armies must develop fleets of maneuverable transport drones that are not dependent on road quality and can navigate minefields. Meanwhile, to ensure the steady supply of ammunition and spare parts to underground storage points along the front lines, a mobile air defense system featuring interceptor drones is necessary.

At the strategic level, key targets are now weapons factories, logistics centers, and command posts, which are often hidden deep in the rear or located inside underground bunkers close to the front lines. Destroying these high-value targets requires guided missiles or other air strike capabilities. Military planners are therefore faced with the challenge of moving away from expensive manned aircraft toward reusable strategic drones.

Testing of fully-fledged unmanned aircraft is already underway. The transition toward unmanned aviation will open up the mass deployment of guided aerial bombs, which are significantly cheaper than missiles. In addition, strategic drones will themselves be able to act as “aircraft carriers” for kamikaze drones.

The same principles apply equally to the maritime theater of operations. Ukrainian Sea Baby naval drones have already proven themselves by destroying numerous warships from Russia’s Black Sea Fleet and carrying out attacks on Russia’s shadow fleet of oil tankers.

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To ensure their future national security, states must focus on the mass production of unmanned systems and their components. China currently accounts for the lion’s share of component parts. This is a challenge for any country that seeks to play a role in global affairs. China must be deprived of the strategic advantages it enjoys due to its status as the leading producer of components for unmanned systems.

Many NATO generals appear to think that recent technological advances are making war cheaper and creating a more level military playing field. This is a mistake. In reality, any reduction in the cost of weapons is more than offset by the need for increased quantities.

It is also important to stress that unmanned technologies alone are not enough. Another key factor is an army’s access to reliable digital communications similar to Starlink. Without this capability, it is impossible to coordinate combat operations, collect data, and maintain connections between individual units and command structures. It is no coincidence that China is already investing billions to address this issue.

The transformation currently underway in the military sphere also increases the role of cyber warfare. Disruption to logistics, power outages, and communications breakdowns can all provide the enemy with the opportunity to advance. A hacked cyber system can expose vital defenses or dramatically reduce the possibility of recovery.

Looking ahead, technological innovation in the military must be recognized as a national priority when allocating defense budgets. This applies to everything from unmanned systems to the development of artificial intelligence.

The most important revolution must take place within the minds of today’s military generals. A comprehensive rethink of existing military doctrines is currently needed. Armies must be completely re-equipped. It is time for the top brass to acknowledge that they should either change or give way to a new generation of military strategists.

Ukraine’s experience since 2022 has confirmed that in order to be successful in modern warfare, armies should model themselves on technological giants like Amazon and SpaceX. They must embrace flexible thinking and be capable of competing in terms of implementing new innovations.

In an era of accelerated military change, all countries face a simple choice of adapting or accepting the inevitability of defeat. The winners will be those who embrace the lessons from the technological revolution currently underway on the battlefields of Ukraine.

Oleg Dunda is a member of the Ukrainian Parliament from the Servant of the People party.

José Antonio Kast will head to La Moneda in March 2026. Chile’s president-elect won the second round of the election with 58.2 percent of the vote—winning by a margin of more than 16 percentage points. The day after the election, Kast met with outgoing President Gabriel Boric and emphasized afterward that he will advance a “government of national unity on priority issues: security, health, education, and housing.”

Kast will enter office with a slew of economic pressures in his inbox: slow growth, weak investment, stagnant productivity, high inequality, limited social mobility, and regional gaps. The labor market remains segmented, with low female participation and high informality. Along with these economic pressures, security and rising crime rates dominated the electoral campaign and addressing them will be central to Kast’s government plan.

In 2024, Chile’s economy showed signs of stable but uneven recovery, with moderate 2.6-percent gross domestic product (GDP) growth driven largely by mining, easing inflation, and falling poverty, while unemployment and informality remained elevated and investment growth lagged. Looking ahead to 2026, growth is expected to remain steady at 2.6 percent. Alongside a narrowing fiscal deficit and inflation stabilizing, this suggests a macroeconomic environment that is steady but still dependent on restoring investment momentum.

Chileans want to see changes and expect Kast to deliver some economic wins quickly. But the ability to do so goes hand in hand with addressing the increased rates of crime and violence. Kast’s campaign focused on the security of the country with proposals such as his Plan Implacable, which aims to “restore state authority and curb organized crime” through tougher penalties, more federal control over prisons, and stronger security operations, while also reasserting state authority in areas where criminal networks have expanded. This plan might be among the things on which Chileans want Kast to take action first. However, Kast and his administration need to balance what they want and what they can actually get done, especially regarding migration and deportation.

A challenging congress

The first one hundred days of the Kast administration will test the executive’s ability to move legislation that supports faster growth, rebuilds investor confidence that has been weakened by security concerns and political fragmentation, and signals a clearer economic direction.

That said, Kast takes office with a congress that leans right but does not give him full control. Right and far-right parties aligned with Kast hold seventy-six of the 155 seats in the Chamber of Deputies, with his second-round opponent Jeannette Jara’s left and far-left coalition of Unidad por Chile controlling sixty-one. The swing party of Franco Parisi, Partido de la Gente, holds fourteen seats.

Kast will need a simple majority to pass most legislation. But constitutional amendments and reforms of the electoral system would require two-thirds of votes in the congress. Kast’s coalition cannot reach either threshold on its own, and must work with partners to move any major bill forward. This makes the Partido de la Gente especially important. Because no bloc controls a majority, its fourteen deputies are in position to decide whether a proposal advances or fails. Its votes can tilt negotiations, shape the final text of legislation, and determine how governable the next term becomes.

Passing legislation through the lower house will be easier, but major legislation such as Kast’s proposed mass deportations will need broader support. The evenly split senate will require him to work with the traditional right as well as swing actors to move legislation. As such, Kast will be faced with increased pressure to deliver short-term results on crime and economic growth, signaling early whether his administration can translate public demand for order and stability into a more predictable environment for investment, something US investors typically look for before committing capital in Chile.

How Chile’s investment environment has shifted

Since the mid-1980s, Chile has implemented significant reforms that opened its economy and encouraged foreign investment. These included changes in the financial and social markets, such as Law No. 20.848 of 2015 establishing the framework for foreign direct investment (FDI), as well as other tax and labor reforms. However, social unrest in 2019, the COVID-19 pandemic, two failed constitutional reform attempts, and rising crime have affected investor confidence.

The trade relationship between Chile and the United States is one of the deepest and most strategic for our country. Since the Free Trade Agreement came into effect in 2004—which allowed 100 percent of bilateral trade to be duty-free by 2015—trade between the two countries has more than doubled, and Chilean exports to the US have grown steadily. Today, the United States is our second-largest export destination and also the second-largest foreign investor in Chile, reflecting a mutual trust built over time.

The opportunities to deepen this partnership are enormous: sustainable energy, critical minerals, green hydrogen, water and digital infrastructure, and advanced technologies. Chile contributes stability, legal certainty, and strategic resources; the United States brings innovation and capital. Strengthening this cooperation is key to driving investment, productivity, and new opportunities for both countries.

—Susana Jiménez Schuster, president, Confederation of Production and Trade (CPC)

The foundation for investment in Chile lies in democracy, rule of law, and a predictable regulatory environment. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has indicated that Chile’s growth might be reaching a ceiling, making continued reforms—such as streamlining permits, encouraging innovation, digitalizing paperwork, simplifying regulations, and removing bottlenecks—essential for reigniting momentum.

Chile has economic sectors with great potential that meet global demand for a wide range of goods and services, as well as developed markets and a stable institutional framework. Just as our country can offer attractive conditions to foreign investors, we can also provide knowledge and talent in those industries where we have developed a high level of know-how and expertise. Chile’s growth has been founded on strong collaboration, and free trade agreements with various economies around the world.

—Francisco Pérez Mackenna, board member, AmCham Chile

What makes Chile an attractive destination for US investors

Several conditions strengthen opportunities for US investment in Chile. Together they shape a more attractive environment for long-term investment is likely to be a priority for the incoming Kast government.

Chile is a key tech hub in Latin America. This is because of its stable economy, strong startup ecosystem, skilled workforce, advanced digital infrastructure, and government-backed innovation programs. Successful tech projects require a strong and solid workforce. According to CBRE’s Scoring Tech Talent 2025 report, Santiago has the third-highest tech talent pool in Latin America, with more than 143,000 professionals. This positions Chile as an attractive hub for companies to expand. That said, most initiatives are heavily concentrated in Santiago, emphasizing the need for additional training in both the northern and southern regions to ensure successful new project implementation.
US companies benefit from working with reliable local partners, in part because Chile has clear rules for contracts and strong institutions and because local firms usually have long experience navigating permitting, local procurement, cultural nuances, and sector-specific regulations. These conditions create an environment where these partnerships give foreign investors a dependable base of support on the ground.
Investors trust Chile because its infrastructure is strong, and its politics stay steady. In 2024, Chile received $15.3 billion in FDI, one of the highest inflows in recent years. A big share of that comes from reinvesting earnings, which shows that companies already in Chile are confident enough to expand. The government agency InvestChile closed 2024 with a portfolio of $56.2 billion in foreign-backed projects, with US companies investing the largest share at $20.5 billion. Major investments target clean energy: green hydrogen, mining, and infrastructure. These numbers show that foreign investors, especially those from the United States, believe in Chile’s long-term stability and the clarity of its rules. They see a country where projects can start quickly and scale up, thanks to predictable regulations and reliable systems. That confidence in both infrastructure and political stability strengthens the case for more investment.

The U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC)’s mandate prioritizes investments in markets that offer predictability, stability, and clear rules, conditions that have historically made countries like Chile attractive for engagement. The DFC, a US federal agency, was created under the 2018 Better Utilization of Investments Leading to Development (BUILD) Act, which merged the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) with USAID’s Development Credit Authority. Its core purpose is to mobilize private capital to advance US development and foreign policy objectives by leveraging financial tools such as loans, equity investments, guarantees, and political risk insurance to support private-sector-led solutions in markets where commercial finance is limited or unavailable.

In December 2025, Congress reauthorized and modernized the DFC through the FY 2026 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), extending its authorization through 2031, and significantly expanding its scope and authorities. Under this reauthorization, the DFC’s investment cap (Maximum Contingent Liability) was raised to $205 billion, and the agency gained new tools, including a $5 billion equity revolving fund and increased equity investment authority. The legislation also broadened DFC’s ability to invest in more countries and sectors while placing limits on financing in the wealthiest countries, ensuring that no more than 10 percent of its portfolio may support high-income markets, with specified sector exceptions such as energy, critical minerals, and information and communications technology.

While Chile’s high-income status means that large-scale DFC engagement is still limited compared with developing markets, the agency can support selected projects in strategic areas, including clean energy, critical minerals, infrastructure, and technology, particularly where there is a clear economic or strategic rationale and consistent with the statutory constraints on participation in wealthy countries.

Addressing bottlenecks to further FDI in Chile

Following the presidential election, Chile enters a new political phase with renewed attention on how the next administration will translate campaign promises into policy. Chile continues to take steps to strengthen its investment environment, while facing persistent bottlenecks that shape foreign investor confidence and will influence the country’s economic direction in the months ahead.

Regulatory delays are a major concern and become impediments. Permitting and environmental review processes can take several years. However, the Framework Law on Sectoral Authorizations (Law 21.770)—better known as the Ley de Permisología, which creates the Framework Law on Sectoral Authorizations (LMAS)—was enacted and posted in September 2025. The goal is to update and speed up the permit process to encourage investment. The law creates a single digital portal called SUPER to manage permits simultaneously, introduces simplified procedures for low-risk projects, and establishes administrative silence. Streamlining and updating procedures are expected to drop processing times between 30 percent and 70 percent without lowering regulatory standards. This will also be a step forward for attracting foreign investment.
Policy uncertainty remains a concern for long-term investors. Over the past decade, shifts between governments of the right and left have created questions about the direction of future regulations. Relations between Santiago and Washington are expected to further deepen under a new administration. Kast will need to show that he can meet public expectations for stronger growth and higher investment. Here, it’s critical to balance the demands of [JF1] parties across the political spectrum as this congressional balancing act is what’s needed to advance legislation reassuring to investors. Although Chile has struggled lately to attract FDI, the United States remains its second-largest source, with a strong presence in energy, data centers, and mining.
The economy also plays a major role in the current political moment. Chile has experienced slow growth for several years and unemployment sits at about 9 percent. Investment remains stagnant, with inflation and high living costs shaping daily choices for many Chileans. Voters widely see the current government as falling short in addressing these issues. The national budget was also a central topic of conversation during the election. The legislative commission in charge of reviewing the annual budget recently rejected the proposal for 2026; Kast will now likely express his approach to next year’s spending plan in the short term. That said, his proposal of gradual elimination of property taxes on primary residences, starting with those on homeowners over sixty-five, would reduce government revenue, meaning the 2026 budget will need to account for this shortfall. The administration will need to balance funding public services and implementing the policy in a fiscally responsible way.
Security is another major risk. While Chile remains relatively safe in comparison to select other countries, crime has risen in recent years—including organized crime, drug trafficking, and violence in northern regions and Santiago. Researchers estimate crime costs the country nearly $8 billion annually, discouraging some foreign investment. Kast made public safety a core part of his platform through the previous mentioned Plan Implacable, which includes tougher penalties for organized crime, high-security prisons, expanded self-defense laws, protections for law enforcement and judicial actors, and targeted border security measures with his Plan Escudo Fronterizo.

American investment has been central to the growth of Chile’s strategic industries, while Chile’s stability, talent, and infrastructure have enabled US companies to scale across Latin America. Significant opportunities remain. Chile is the world’s largest copper producer and holds 25 percent of global lithium output, with growing mineral-processing capacity and emerging resources such as rare earths and cobalt. The country is also becoming a regional digital hub, supported by projects like Google’s Humboldt Cable and expanding data-center infrastructure. Upcoming port concessions and the need for energy storage solutions in a rapidly growing clean-energy system offer additional avenues for deeper US investment.

—Beatriz Herrera, investment commissioner for North America, Embassy of Chile

Sectors in Chile with investment potential

Information technology (IT): Chile’s IT sector is expanding rapidly, driven by high internet penetration, widespread mobile connectivity, and growing demand for digital services. Key emerging sectors include fifth-generation (5G) deployment, big-data analytics, and artificial intelligence (AI) integration, supported by initiatives such as Chile Digital 2035 and the National AI Policy. To accelerate growth, Chile can build on existing programs by expanding Chile Digital 2035 and Digital Talent for Chile, increasing investment in digital infrastructure, scaling training and education initiatives, and deepening public-private partnerships to ensure broader access to advanced IT solutions, close the skills gap, and achieve full digitalization of public services.
Critical minerals (copper and lithium): As the world’s largest copper producer, supplying 24 percent of global output, and home to 41 percent of lithium reserves, Chile is a strategic source of materials essential for clean technologies. These include electric vehicles, energy storage, and digital infrastructure. With public policies promoting sustainability and high environmental standards, Chile is positioning itself to attract investment that advances technological innovation, supports the global energy transition, and fosters inclusive economic growth. China currently dominates global demand for Chilean copper and lithium, but Kast could attract more Western-aligned investment by promoting legal certainty, officering incentives, and fostering partnerships with companies that meet high environmental and governmental standards.
Water management and drought mitigation: Chile is increasingly leveraging public-private partnerships to improve water management and climate resilience. Investments focus on both traditional infrastructure, such as dams, and natural solutions including reforestation and wetland restoration. There is demand for technologies that enhance water efficiency, like advanced treatment and recycling systems, data-driven water management tools, and construction waste reduction. Sustainable agricultural practices that conserve water and lower input costs also present promising opportunities. Water management could become a strategic priority for Kast, with the advancement of such projects allowing the administration to deliver visible results, balance regional needs, and contribute to Chile’s robust agriculture sector.
Seismic-resilient infrastructure: Situated on one of the most active fault lines in the world, Chile experiences frequent earthquakes, including several above magnitudes of eight. Critical infrastructure—such as ports, airports, and energy facilities—requires modern seismic design. There is strong demand for engineering and technology services in risk modeling, resilience planning, and early warning systems. Opportunities include digital twins, smart sensors, and integrated solutions to strengthen utilities, transportation networks, and urban development.

How can the new Kast administration help unlock Chile’s economic potential and attract investment?

Visit Washington before the March 11 inauguration. This would reinforce Chile’s shared interests in economic security and investment cooperation, present project pipelines aligned with DFC priorities and clarify Chile’s commitments in areas such as energy transition and trade. Early engagement would allow Chile to secure a proactive position in shaping US investment decisions, demonstrate commitment to close cooperation with the United States, and build political support in the US Congress and executive branch for stronger bilateral financing ties. When in Washington, use the visit to generate broader public interest in the importance of Chile as a strong US partner.
Identify emerging skills and priority growth sectors in Chile and encourage private-sector programs that link education directly to industry needs. Kast can do this by providing tax incentives and speeding up the processing of paperwork for companies involved in workforce training. Scholarships, vocational training, apprenticeships, and partnerships with universities that teach technical skills can help equip students and current workers with the skills required for mining, technology, energy, and other strategic industries.
Maintain continuity in key policies on permitting reforms. This applies to policies such as the Ley de Permisología, which aims to streamline and coordinate environmental and sectoral permitting across government agencies, and they should be expanded to ensure that the ministries and offices involved are actively collaborating with each other. If government entities are not coordinating—for example, in the processing of environment permits—the procedures for key sectors such as mining and technology will continue to be delayed. Demonstrating consistency will reinforce Chile’s reputation as a stable investment destination and encourage both new and reinvested capital.
Avoid over-centralizing these initiatives in Santiago. This can be done by collaborating with regional partners or established private-sector actors to develop and train local workforces. This could include local recruitment, training programs at regional universities, and ongoing partnerships between the government and private sector.

These measures strengthen security in ways that matter for investors by creating clearer rules, steadier institutions, and stronger local trust. When the government improves workforce training and expands formal job opportunities, it reduces pressures that fuel crime in regions tied to mining and energy. Better coordination on permits lowers chances of corruption or operational disruptions because companies face fewer conflicting decisions from different agencies. Together, these steps create a safer and more predictable environment for investors.

Conclusion

Chile remains a trusted and stable partner for the United States. Its democratic values, institutional strength, and openness to trade make it a strategic destination for US investment. But sustaining and expanding this partnership will require continued economic reforms and political engagement between both countries to ease processes for doing business, improve regulatory efficiency, enhance human capital, and foster political stability toward a robust, long-term strategic partnership. As Kast prepares to take office, he has an opportunity to set a foundation to ignite Chile’s economic growth and attract investment. And with the Western Hemisphere as a top priority for Washington, Chile has the potential to be an even more strategic partner to the United States.

The views expressed in this publication are those of the authors alone. Some of the investment opportunities discussed in this issue brief were informed by an October roundtable discussion on US-Chile investment relations, which included the participation of US and Chilean private-sector leaders, public-sector representatives, and multilateral organizations. The roundtable was organized in partnership with AmCham Chile and with the support of MetLife. Neither were involved in the production of this issue brief.

About the authors

Maite Gonzalez Latorre is program assistant at the Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center of the Atlantic Council.

Jason Marczak is vice president and senior director of the Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center of the Atlantic Council

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Narrating the war: Analyzing Russia’s narratives for its invasion of Ukraine

Casey Michel — Fri, 19 Dec 2025 14:00:00 +0000

Introduction
Russia’s relationship with Ukraine
Russia’s global standing
About the author

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been, by any metric, a strategic nightmare for Moscow. Not only has Russia lost more soldiers in Ukraine than in any war since World War II—and might well end up losing more troops than the United States lost during the entirety of WWII—but the Russian economy has lurched between overheating and stagflation. All the while, the Kremlin’s decision to expand its invasion of Ukraine has resulted in a NATO both enlarged and enhanced; in Russia’s transition from regional hegemon to a “junior partner” (and even potential vassal) of China; in waning influence in places such as the South Caucasus, the Middle East, Africa, and Europe; and the creation of a heavily armed, deeply resentful neighbor in Ukraine, which will see Kyiv nurse both an animus toward Russia and a desire to reclaim much of the occupied territories for years to come.

The entire war has been an exercise in Russian myopia, accelerating Russian decline and leading to a broad range of self-inflicted wounds. Mirroring other neo-colonial wars—France in Algeria, the Netherlands in Indonesia, Portugal in southern Africa—the war has exposed Russia as a pretender to great-power status and a shell of a once-swaggering empire. While Moscow might yet gain more towns scattered throughout Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, any remaining victories will remain pyrrhic, with Russia continuing to sacrifice its future prospects for any present gains.

Much of Russia’s failure rests on Ukrainians’ ongoing sacrifices, as well as on the broader West’s willingness to back Ukraine’s troops. But a great deal of this disaster also stems from a series of muddled narratives that Russia has peddled about precisely why it launched the expanded invasion in the first place. Pushing a sprawling, occasionally contradictory series of goals and rationales, and without a clear narrative push to consolidate either support or success, Moscow has flailed for years, lurching from one rationale to another—all while its troops continue dying en masse and its domestic population continues to feel escalating pain and stress as the war drags on.

Given all of the competing claims Moscow has put forth to defend its invasion of Ukraine, it is worth analyzing how the Kremlin has justified its expanded war and how Moscow has tried to sell the deadliest war Europe has seen since the days of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. Such analysis can not only help Western allies of Ukraine figure out how best to back Kyiv’s efforts but can provide a roadmap for sounder Russia policy in the West overall. In sifting and sorting these narratives, we can identify precisely what is motivating the Kremlin—and, better yet, how to stop it.

Selling the war

The Kremlin’s public rationales for its war in Ukraine fall into two broad buckets.

The first rests directly on Russia’s relationship with Ukraine, focusing specifically on the links, both historic and contemporary, between Moscow and Kyiv. The narratives focused specifically on Ukraine, and on Russians’ relationships with Ukrainians, can be broken down further into three primary prongs.

The Ukraine war is primarily about “rescuing” Russians and Russian speakers, especially (but not exclusively) in eastern and southern Ukraine. This is primarily predicated on the idea that Ukraine is overseen by “fascists” and “Nazis,” who have been in power since the 2014 Euromaidan “coup.”
Russia and Ukraine are actually “brotherly” nations, and Ukrainians are simply “confused” about their relationship as subalterns to Russia. This is primarily predicated on the idea that Ukraine is simply “Little Russia,” part of the “triune state” of Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine—and, naturally, not part of the West. The war is simply about restoring that Ukrainian status. It is also about restoring Russia’s colonial control of Ukraine and keeping Ukraine as an entity subservient to Russia.
“Ukraine” does not actually exist but is a Leninist fabrication. This is predicated on the idea that Vladimir Lenin and other Soviet leadership were mistaken to draw any internal, republican borders within the Soviet Union—and that the entire “near abroad” is rightfully Russian. The war is about rectifying this Leninist mistake.

However, the Kremlin’s rhetoric explaining its war in Ukraine has often expanded far beyond Ukraine itself. Indeed, while the fighting might take place largely on Ukrainian (and occasionally Russian) territory, the Kremlin has often claimed that the war is both global and epochal, linked directly to the second broad bucket of narratives and focused on the status of Russia’s global standing. Those narratives centering on Russia’s role in the broader international context, as well as the creation of a new geopolitical order, can also be broken down into three primary threads.

This war is primarily about beating back NATO and Western expansion. NATO “pledged” in 1990 that it would not expand its borders, and this war is simply about forcing NATO to uphold that pledge. This war is a “defensive” war, aimed at preventing Russian “encirclement.”
This war is about the non-Western world standing up to Western bullying, hypocrisy, and decadence. Russia is at the vanguard of the non-Western world’s fight against Western “colonialism,” trying to restore “traditional values” that the West is attempting to destroy around the world.
This war is about restoring Russia’s status as a “great power,” both in Europe and globally. It is primarily about ushering in a “multipolar” world, with other “civilization-states” such as China and India rising to parity with the United States.

None of the narratives above are mutually exclusive. Indeed, one of the difficulties in assessing these narrative components is the multiple instances of reinforcing themes and topics. For example, the idea that Russia and Ukraine are brotherly nations—or even the notion that Ukraine does not exist—can be directly tethered to the idea that NATO must never extend to Ukraine and that the war is necessarily defensive. The false claim that Ukraine’s 2014 revolution was in reality a coup is also often paired with the idea that the war is about rolling back Western influence and meddling in non-Western nations. These narratives can often work in conjunction—and are often included in the same speeches and writings from Russian President Vladimir Putin and his allies.

Adding to the difficulty, many of these narratives are also in tension with one another. For example, Putin wrote at length about the supposed brotherly relationship between Ukraine and Russia, yet he has simultaneously claimed that Ukraine is a mere fabrication set to be annulled. Likewise, the idea that this is somehow an anti-colonial war grates against the claim that some countries are civilization-states destined to rule over smaller nations.

Still, each of these narratives is worth analyzing on its own. The remainder of this paper will be dedicated to just that: detailing the primary contours of each of these narratives, as well as offering analysis (and often corrections) therein. The paper will also offer a brief conclusion about what these competing and contradictory narratives reveal about Russia’s aims—and how best to combat Russian expansionism in Ukraine and elsewhere.

Russia’s relationship with Ukraine

The Ukraine war is primarily about “rescuing” Russians and Russian speakers, especially (but not exclusively) in eastern and southern Ukraine. This is primarily predicated on the idea that Ukraine is overseen by “fascists” and “Nazis,” who have been in power since the 2014 Euromaidan “coup.”

Details

One of the primary narratives that Russia has relied on since its expanded invasion did not originate in February 2022, or even in the months beforehand. It instead traces back to at least early 2014, when Ukrainian protesters successfully ousted former President Viktor Yanukovych in the democratic Euromaidan Revolution—and when Putin launched Russia’s initial invasion of Ukraine in Crimea and parts of the Donbas.

At its simplest, Russia’s post-Euromaidan narrative boiled down to the idea that the Ukrainian protesters were illegitimate usurpers, ousting a democratically elected leader and instituting a new regime dedicated not only to wresting Ukraine out of Moscow’s orbit but focused especially on the immiseration of Russians and Russian speakers. The “junta” responsible for this “coup” was secretly in hock to its “real masters in the West,” who were simply using Ukraine and its post-2014 government as a means of targeting Russia and Russian interests. In this view, these new Ukrainian leaders—including Volodymyr Zelenskyy—should be considered fascists and Nazis, simply because they were opposed to Russia writ large, whether that meant not recognizing Russia’s claims to Crimea or encouraging the use of the Ukrainian language throughout the country.

According to Russia, this supposed junta continued its persecution for years until things reached a breaking point in early 2022. That February, Moscow was supposedly forced to invade Ukraine for the express protection of Russians in regions like eastern Ukraine. As Putin claimed, Russia did not need to annex any further parts of Ukraine, but authorities in Kyiv needed to recognize the nominal independence of both the Donetsk People’s Republic and Luhansk People’s Republic—building upon previous demands that these entities must also have a veto over Kyiv’s foreign policy decisions. According to Moscow, Ukraine also needed to renounce any fascist or Nazi leaders and sympathies forevermore.

As Putin said during his address announcing the expanded invasion, “The purpose of this operation is to protect people who, for eight years now, have been facing humiliation and genocide perpetrated by the Kiev regime.” As he added in 2025, the crisis did not begin with Russia’s invasion but was the “result of the coup d’etat in Ukraine, which was supported and provoked by the West.” More specifically, Putin said in 2022 that Russia’s expanded invasion was a direct response to the “tragedy” in the Donbas. As Tass reported, Putin told a twelve-year-old girl that Ukraine’s “bombardments, artillery strikes and combat operations” in Donetsk and Luhansk “compelled Russia to start this military operation.”

Putin’s rhetoric also built on this narrative to call for the notion of “denazifying” Ukraine. As he memorably claimed during his February 2022 address, Russia would “seek to demilitarize and denazify Ukraine, as well as bring to trial those who perpetrated numerous bloody crimes against civilians, including against citizens of the Russian Federation.” The Russian Foreign Ministry and the Russian ambassador to the United Nations echoed this language.

Analysis

The idea that Russia needed to invade Ukraine in order to rescue compatriots and remove Nazi elements from Ukraine’s leadership is, to outside observers, perhaps the most farcical of the narratives detailed here. The notion that Ukraine—whose president is Jewish—requires denazification was immediately met with ridicule and mockery. However, this argument also provided a sense of flexibility for Putin. After all, it remains unclear what denazification would actually entail—whether regime change, full lustration, the ending of any pro-Western trajectory policies, a mix of these options, or something else entirely. Likewise, the call has a clear domestic component, with Putin able to sell the war as a battle against a new generation of supposed fascists and a reprise of Moscow’s victory in World War II.

The calls that Moscow must rescue ethnic Russians suffering in Ukraine, especially in the Donbas, also have significant salience for domestic audiences in Russia. For many Russians, the Donbas remains a traditionally Russian land and Moscow maintains a unique role in protecting Russians in neighboring nations—including beyond Ukraine. Given its salience, this line of argument would likely be employed again should Russia launch another invasion of a neighboring nation in the future, with potential usage from Estonia to Kazakhstan.

Russia and Ukraine are actually “brotherly” nations, and Ukrainians are simply “confused” about their relationship as subalterns to Russia. This is primarily predicated on the idea that Ukraine is simply “Little Russia,” part of the “triune state” of Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine—and, naturally, not part of the West. The war is simply about restoring that Ukrainian status. It is also about restoring Russia’s colonial control of Ukraine and keeping Ukraine as an entity subservient to Russia.

Details

As with the narrative on Ukraine suffering a coup via fascists in 2014, the idea that Russia and Ukraine are brotherly nations—and that they are destined for embrace, with Russia lording as the “elder brother” over Little Russia—long predated Russia’s 2022 expanded invasion. Indeed, such a narrative stretches back to at least the middle of the nineteenth century, when young Russian aristocrats “discovered” Ukraine and began “to work intensely to uncover the region’s supposed original Russianness,” wrote Johns Hopkins University’s Eugene Finkel, whose 2024 book traced the origins of such efforts. No longer was Ukraine a separate polity with a distinct history; by the 1830s and 1840s, as Russian Slavophile writer Aleksei Khomiakov noted, Ukraine was “an organic and inseparable part of a single Russian nation.” Russia and Ukraine, alongside Belarus, formed a supposed triune state, in which all three nations were part of one greater Slavic nation headed by Russia.

It is an idea that, nearly two centuries later, remains largely unchanged—and which helped provide the outline for one of Moscow’s prime narratives about why it needed to launch its expanded invasion in 2022. This narrative formed much of the basis for Putin’s lengthy 2021 treatise on the topic, in which he detailed the supposed “historical unity of Russians and Ukrainians.” As Putin wrote:

I am confident that true sovereignty of Ukraine is possible only in partnership with Russia. Our spiritual, human and civilizational ties formed for centuries and have their origins in the same sources, they have been hardened by common trials, achievements and victories. Our kinship has been transmitted from generation to generation. It is in the hearts and the memory of people living in modern Russia and Ukraine, in the blood ties that unite millions of our families. Together we have always been and will be many times stronger and more successful. For we are one people.

If anything, Putin’s beliefs in the historical unity binding Russia and Ukraine have only grown despite the military setbacks and massive casualty rates continuing to climb. In late 2022, Putin announced the supposed “annexation” of further Ukrainian territory, including territory Moscow had not yet even conquered. As a means of getting around this awkward fact, Putin pointed to the supposed unity already extant between Ukraine and Russia—found, naturally, in the land he was now claiming as Russia’s. As Putin said, those in Ukraine were “our compatriots, our brothers and sisters . . . the native part of our united people.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a pro-war concert at Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow, Russia. February 22, 2023. (Sputnik/Maksim Blinov/Kremlin via REUTERS)

Nor is it just Putin who has peddled such tropes. In a malicious, revelatory article originally posted on (and later removed from) RIA Novosti, one Russian writer laid out what Russian victory in Ukraine would look like. “Ukraine has returned to Russia,” the article begins. “It will be reorganized, re-established and returned to its natural state as part of the Russian world . . . [Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine] will now act in geopolitical terms as a single whole.” Thanks to the invasion, “Russia is restoring its unity” via a “de facto civil war” waged by “brothers.” And thanks to Moscow’s victory, “Russia is restoring its historical completeness, gathering the Russian world, the Russian people together—in all its totality of Great Russians, Belarusians and Little Russians [i.e., Ukrainians].”

Analysis

In this narrative, Ukraine and Ukrainians still exist in concept, but only as a nation and people subordinated to Russia and Russian sovereignty. It is, if anything, a vision that posits Ukraine as simply another Belarus: a state that retains nominal independence but is nonetheless tightly embraced by Moscow and subservient to the Kremlin’s demands. This, as Moscow sees it, is the natural state of things—and anything else would simply be a historical anomaly.

This narrative, of course, is chock-full of historic revisionism, outright fabrications, and warmed-over excuses for empire. As Finkel noted, Kyiv’s origins predate Moscow’s founding by centuries, and few if any Russian intellectuals ever considered Ukraine part of their history and identity until the middle of the nineteenth century. Moreover, this narrative grossly ignores what Ukrainians actually think—and blinded Moscow to just how fiercely Ukrainians would fight to preserve both their state and their nation moving forward.

“Ukraine” does not actually exist but is a Leninist fabrication. This is predicated on the idea that Vladimir Lenin and other Soviet leadership were mistaken to draw any internal, republican borders within the Soviet Union—and that the entire “near abroad” is rightfully Russian. The war is about rectifying this Leninist mistake.

Details

This narrative flips the notion of a supposed triune state on its head. Instead of Ukraine being a constituent part of a greater Russia, there is no Ukraine whatsoever—and any claims of a separate Ukrainian nation, language, or identity are simply slander against the one, true, and indivisible Russia. It is a narrative that tips into the genocidal, giving Russia cover to try eliminating Ukrainian identity entirely.

As with other narratives mentioned above, the idea that Ukraine is not a separate polity but is simply a “project” meant to target and undercut Russia has a lengthy lineage. In the 1860s, Russian officials shunted the idea of Ukraine entirely to the side, claiming that the Ukrainian language “never existed, does not exist and cannot exist,” culminating in a tsarist edict banning the teaching of Ukrainian and marking the first instance of Russian authorities trying to stamp out the idea of Ukraine entirely.

The key inflection point in this narrative—that Ukraine is a mere fabrication, rather than a fraternal nation that has lost its way—came in the early 1920s, when Lenin and other Soviet higher-ups began outlining the borders of the new Soviet republics. Given the levels of support in Ukraine for Ukrainian nationhood, Soviet leadership granted Ukraine (and a number of other polities) republican status, effectively placing it on par with the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic. For Putin and others, this decision was a “time bomb” that ultimately detonated in the Soviet Union’s dissolution and is a historic wrong that must be corrected.

We see elements of this narrative throughout Putin’s speeches and writings. In the same essay mentioned above about the supposed historical unity of Russia and Ukraine, Putin claims that “modern Ukraine is entirely the product of the Soviet era,” created “on the lands of historical Russia.” As he added when announcing the expanded invasion, “modern Ukraine was entirely created by Russia or, to be more precise, by Bolshevik, Communist Russia. This process started practically right after the 1917 revolution, and Lenin and his associates did it in a way that was extremely harsh on Russia—by separating, severing what is historically Russian land . . . When it comes to the historical destiny of Russia and its peoples, Lenin’s principles of state development were not just a mistake; they were worse than a mistake.”

As such, the time had come to rectify that “mistake”—even to the point of destroying and subsuming Ukraine entirely.

Analysis

Putin might play-act as a historian, but his reading of history is saturated in grievance and mythmaking, cherry-picking facts and concocting details of his own. The idea that Ukraine is a fabrication or some facile project is, of course, belied by the fact that Ukraine and Ukrainians continue to exist and continue to fight back against Russian forces.

Moreover, Putin’s shoddy history is easily dismissed by those who have actually studied the region. As acclaimed historian Serhii Plokhy noted, the idea that Ukraine exists on historical Russian lands is nonsensical. “Even a cursory acquaintance with the history of the Russian Revolution and fall of the Russian Empire that accompanied it indicates that the modern Ukrainian state came into existence not thanks to Lenin but against his wishes and in direct reaction to the Bolshevik putsch in Petrograd in October . . . of 1917,” Plokhy wrote. “The Bolsheviks tried to take control of Kyiv as well but were defeated, jumpstarting the process of the modern Ukrainian state-building.”

Putin is hardly the only Russian nationalist who has learned the hard way the peril of dismissing Ukrainian identity. During the Russian Civil War, the pro-tsarist White forces refused to grant Ukraine (among other nations) any political freedoms or sovereignty. They instead claimed they were fighting for “Russia, one and indivisible”—a cry that rallied few non-Russians and eventually doomed the White forces to defeat.

Russia’s global standing

This war is primarily about beating back NATO and Western expansion. NATO “pledged” in 1990 that it would not expand its borders, and this war is simply about forcing NATO to uphold that pledge. This war is a “defensive” war, aimed at preventing Russian “encirclement.”

Details

Not all of the Russian narratives backing the expanded invasion center on Ukraine. In fact, a number claim that Ukraine is simply the latest flashpoint in a far broader struggle Russia is waging against a perfidious West, and the United States in particular. A case in point is the claim that the war in Ukraine is not just about toppling Kyiv’s “regime,” or even preventing Ukraine from joining NATO, but that it is about unwinding NATO’s post-1991 gains and preventing the wholesale encirclement of Russia by Western forces.

Such a narrative came to the fore in the weeks leading up to the expanded invasion in early 2022. In December 2021, the Kremlin moved from demanding that Ukraine simply acquiesce to Russian demands (especially foregoing NATO membership) to demanding that NATO deployments leave much of Eastern and Central Europe entirely. Moscow specifically called for the removal of NATO forces and weapons from countries such as Romania and Bulgaria, and formally called for NATO to pull back to its 1997 borders, effectively abandoning Poland, Czechia, the Baltics, and others—and effectively restoring military parity between the United States and Russia in Europe.

The Kremlin has justified these demands by claiming that the United States pledged in the early 1990s not to expand NATO eastward. Putin has regurgitated these claims multiple times, including after Russia first launched its invasion in 2014, when the Russian leader stated that Western leaders “have lied to us many times . . . This happened with NATO’s expansion to the east, as well as the deployment of military infrastructure at our borders.” According to Putin, all NATO enlargement following the Soviet dissolution is invalid and must be rolled back. Preventing Ukraine from NATO membership is simply the first domino in a far broader effort to push NATO out of all of its newest member states.

Analysis

Putin’s claims that the United States pledged not to expand NATO are ahistorical and fabricated. The United States never pledged any such veto. Even Mikhail Gorbachev, then ruling as Soviet premier, attested to this, saying that the “topic of ‘NATO expansion’ was not . . . brought up in those years.” Moreover, the key comment in question, in which Secretary of State James Baker floated the idea of NATO moving “not one inch east,” referred solely to NATO troops from West Germany moving into East Germany. The George H. W. Bush administration, however, never adopted this or any prohibition on NATO expansion as formal policy.

However, such a lie is a handy means of cultivating support among gullible audiences, both domestically and internationally, and helps present Russian aggression as being defensive in nature. Of course, this kind of framing—that invading a neighbor is not imperialism but is actually a defensive move—long predates Putin. It can be found in everything from the US decision to invade Mexico in the 1840s to Japan’s decision to invade much of Asia in the 1940s. This “defensiveness” was also the basis for much of the Soviet Union’s rationale for invading numerous neighbors, from Hungary in 1956 to Czechoslovakia in 1968 and beyond. Putin will almost certainly not be the last imperial leader to claim his country’s expansion is defensive in nature.

Thankfully, the Kremlin’s demands have been roundly dismissed by NATO and Western governments alike, and Ukraine remains dedicated to joining NATO. Yet the demands highlight how Russia has spun the war in Ukraine as a means not simply of thwarting NATO’s enlargement but of restoring a military parity between the United States and Russia on the European continent. It implies, in other words, an effective return to the Cold War military status quo within Europe and an unwinding of all the post-Cold War gains that have helped beat back malign Russian influence and military dominance in Europe, far beyond just Ukraine.

This war is about the non-Western world standing up to Western bullying, hypocrisy, and decadence. Russia is at the vanguard of the non-Western world’s fight against Western “colonialism,” trying to restore “traditional values” that the West is attempting to destroy around the world.

Details

While the war is taking place in Ukraine, this narrative posits that the war is about far more than simple NATO expansion or Ukrainian nationhood. Instead, it is about finally standing up to Western predation and perfidy, and to the West’s attempts to spread supposedly liberal values around the world—including all those elements opposing so-called traditional values.

Russia’s efforts to transform itself into a bastion of these supposed traditional values dates back at least a decade, when the Kremlin first began positioning itself as the primary bulwark for those opposed to liberal democracy. These include those opposed to LGBTQ rights, those opposed to so-called “gender ideology,” and even those opposed to democracy writ large. This effort has been largely successful, with Russia and Putin widely viewed as the lodestar for these anti-democratic forces.

The war in Ukraine, then, is simply a continuation on this theme. Announcing the expanded invasion in 2022, Putin claimed that the West “sought to destroy our traditional values and force on us their false values that would erode us, our people from within.” Patriarch Kirill, one of the key spokesmen for Putin’s regime and the titular head of the Russian Orthodox Church’s Moscow Patriarchate, echoed Putin’s claims that the war was predicated on those in eastern Ukraine “refus[ing] to accept the so-called values that are being offered by” the West, including “the gay parade.” RT editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan, one of the war’s biggest boosters, warned that Ukraine risked becoming “an LGBTQ capital or a venue for the Transgender Olympics.”

More broadly, the Kremlin has attempted to position the war as an effort to stand up to Western “neo-colonialism.” Ignoring centuries of Russian colonialism in Ukraine (and elsewhere), Putin has attempted to sell the war as a means of beating back Western colonial efforts. As he said when announcing the supposed annexations of multiple Ukrainian provinces in late 2022, “The West is ready to step over everything in order to preserve the neo-colonial system that allows it to parasitize, in fact, to plunder . . . Hence their aggression towards independent states, towards traditional values and original cultures[.]”

Analysis

It’s difficult to take seriously Russia’s claims that it is waging a war in Ukraine for traditional values, or that it has some kind of spiritual mission to beat back the encroachment of LGBTQ rights. After all, Russia is a country in which the rate of regular church attendance is in the single digits, while the country’s abortion rate remains higher than that of many other European nations. Moreover, the country routinely persecutes Christian denominations, even in Russia itself. The country is hardly a bastion of traditional values, despite Putin’s claims otherwise.

However, the claim that Russia is supposedly leading an anti-colonial war is perhaps the most farcical. Russia was a constituent part of the broader, ghastly story of European colonization, stealing lands and brutalizing populations from Eastern Europe and the Caucasus to North Asia and Central Asia—and even joining Great Britain, France, and Spain in colonizing North America. Claiming it was spreading “civilization” and “Christianity” to “heathen” groups of “savages,” Russia’s colonialist claims were indistinguishable from those in European empires elsewhere. In other words, Moscow was as much a European colonizer as London, Lisbon, Brussels, or Paris.

This was true not just in Chechnya, Kazakhstan, Sakha, or Finland, but also in Ukraine, where Moscow—during tsarist, Soviet, and now Putin eras—routinely engaged in colonial behavior, from ethnic cleansing to cultural genocide to mass murder, all while claiming non-Russian lands as its own. The war in Ukraine is indeed colonial, but with Russia once more in the role of colonizer.

This war is about restoring Russia’s status as a “great power,” both in Europe and globally. It is primarily about ushering in a “multipolar” world, with other “civilization-states” such as China and India rising to parity with the United States.

Details

Arguably the broadest narrative propounded by Russian authorities is that the war in Ukraine is not about the status of certain Ukrainian provinces, or Ukrainian security arrangements, or even the size and status of NATO in Europe. It is instead about restoring Russia’s role as a supposed great power on par with a small number of other states that make up an exclusive club of nations dominating geopolitics. These nations include the United States, China, and potentially India, with Russia also seen as a natural member.

The Kremlin claims Russia’s rightful status as a great power has been dismissed by the West—and especially by the United States, which has preferred to oversee a unipolar world—but no more. In invading Ukraine, Russia has announced its permanent status as one of the supposed civilization-states in a new multipolar world. This is not to say that Russia is aspiring to global dominance, per se. Rather, Russia is aspiring to—and has already achieved—a role as one of the key geopolitical players internationally, regionally dominant and globally relevant. Ukraine remains firmly within Russia’s supposed sphere of influence and, as such, Russia should have the right to do whatever it wants within Ukraine with no outside interference.

This obsession with great-power status has long pervaded Putin’s rhetoric, infusing and inflaming Russia’s revanchism. In October 2022, when he announced Russia’s supposed annexation of four Ukrainian provinces, Putin claimed that Russia is “a great millennial power” and a “country-civilization” that will follow its own path. In March 2023, Putin signed a strategic blueprint outlining Russia’s “historically unique mission” as a “unique state-civilization.” As Uppsala University’s Igor Torbakov wrote, it was the first time that Russian leadership had “officially stated that Russia is a sui generis civilization.”

Much of this narrative has manifested in specific calls for a “new Yalta,” in which leaders in Moscow, Beijing, and Washington effectively carve up the world, Ukraine included. In such a scenario, Russia would be the modern equivalent of the United Kingdom: an empire that might not be quite as powerful or wealthy as the other two nations, but that nonetheless deserves a place at such a summit. “Putin has never hidden that his dream is a new Yalta . . . [to] establish a new world order,” writes journalist Mikhail Zygar. Russia’s Ukraine war—and its supposedly imminent victory—is merely the opening salvo in a far broader global reordering. As the much-maligned RIA Novosti article mentioned above claimed, the invasion of Ukraine meant that a “new world is being born before our eyes”—a world that Russia will help steer.

Analysis

This pretension to greatness hardly began with Putin. Years before Russia’s expanded invasion, the Kremlin and Russian intellectuals were long obsessed with “the pursuit of derzhavnost,” which scholar Seva Gunitsky translates as “both being a great power and being recognized as such by others.” Not only does this mean acting as a regional hegemon, but it also means being entitled to “an unquestioned sphere of influence.” This rhetoric—of Moscow’s “special mission” and its “historic destiny” as a “great power”—stretches back centuries and was evident in the Kremlin’s tsarist, Soviet, and post-Soviet history.

It is perhaps ironic, then, that little has done more to expose the hollowness of Putin’s claims than his invasion of Ukraine. Rather than restore Russia’s great-power status, the war has led not just to the degradation of the Russian economy and outright military disaster in Ukraine but to Russia’s weakening influence in the South Caucasus, the Middle East, Africa, and, of course, Europe more broadly. It has likewise forced Russia to rely on North Korea to shore up national security, and to lean on China to shore up Russia’s teetering economy.

The war has only accelerated Russian decline and undone, perhaps for good, the potential restoration of Russian greatness. Moscow might still maintain its status on things like the United Nations’ Security Council and might still be the only post-Soviet state with nuclear weapons. But the idea that Russia is, or will soon become, a great power is increasingly laughable—and a testament to what a disaster Putin’s rule has been for Russia.

Conclusion

Wars can often contain multiple narratives. The US invasion of Iraq, for example, was originally pegged to removing Iraq’s supposed weapons of mass destruction program before it shifted to fostering “democracy” for Iraqis. The US Civil War was originally launched to restore the sovereignty of the federal government before it shifted to eliminating slavery within the United States entirely. A war with multiple narratives does not necessarily portend either success or failure.

Rare are those wars, however, that push as many competing narratives as Russia has peddled in Ukraine. Indeed, it’s difficult to think of another war that has seen so many different justifications from the invading party. And it’s difficult to identify another war that has seen such a massive difference in scale of what those narratives are proposing, from simple territorial shifts to the entire reordering of the state of global affairs.

But as we’ve seen above, this is precisely what Russia has attempted with its invasion of Ukraine. From protecting pockets of Russians in the Donbas to ushering in an entirely new geopolitical era, from restoring a supposed Slavic unity to eliminating liberal values, the Kremlin’s justifications for its war have been breathtaking in their breadth.

They have also been a confused, muddled mess and a testament to just what a fiasco Russia’s entire war has been for Moscow. Instead of a clear-cut series of goals and aims, Russia’s leadership has flailed for excuses for its invasion, tossing idea after idea into the ether to see what might succeed. Such narrative confusion has stemmed, in large part, from Russia’s overall failures in Ukraine, forcing the Kremlin to reach for more and more justifications as the war drags on. At the same time, the confusion has played a significant role in Russia’s overall strategic failures in Ukraine and elsewhere; without a clear set of strategic goals, there’s little reason to think that tactical or battlefield successes would follow. Of course, much of this is also predicated on the Kremlin’s historical myopia as it pertains to Ukrainian history and Ukrainian nationhood; rather than a constituent part of some kind of Greater Russia, Ukraine is a distinct polity with a unique, separate history—a reality that hundreds of thousands of Russians have now died to learn. While Russia might continue to occupy sections of Ukrainian territory, the Kremlin has all but assured that a heavily armed Kyiv remains Russia’s greatest geopolitical foe for decades to come, if not longer.

For those looking forward, all this narrative confusion highlights one thing: there’s little reason to think Putin will be satisfied with simple recognition of Russian sovereignty over places such as Donetsk or Kherson. As Russian authorities have claimed, this war is about far more than the status of certain sections of eastern Ukraine, or even about Ukrainian membership in NATO. The Kremlin has far broader, and far more destabilizing, goals than simply dominating Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia, or even necessarily toppling Kyiv. Ukraine is but a stepping stone to Putin’s far more sweeping goals of rolling back US and allied interests, reaffirming Russian dominance over all of its neighbors (China and North Korea excepted), and creating a world in which the rights of smaller nations are subject to the whims of a handful of great powers. Given Putin’s ongoing obstinacy about winding down the war and finding a so-called “off-ramp,” it is clear that, for him, this war is about far more than simply the territorial status of parts of eastern or southern Ukraine.

It is, indeed, a reflection of the Kremlin’s obsession with derzhavnost—an obsession of which Ukrainians have done everything they can to disabuse Russia. And it reflects the fact that what can end this war is not the status of places like Crimea or Donetsk oblasts, but a full and outright defeat of Russia. Anything less would simply tempt the Kremlin to try again—with another effort to upend the global order and another war to try making Russia great again.

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About the authors

Casey Michel is an author and journalist who writes extensively on international corruption, kleptocracy, national security, and Russia policy. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Foreign Affairs, Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, and many other outlets. His 2021 book, American Kleptocracy, was named by the Economist as one of the “best books to read to understand financial crime,” and his 2024 book Foreign Agents was named by Foreign Policy Magazine as one of the “biggest foreign-policy book releases of 2024.” His next book, United States of Oligarchy, will be released in summer 2026.

He is based in New York, and is currently sanctioned by the Russian regime for his work.

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Engaging generative artificial intelligence in African development

William Yancey Brown — Thu, 18 Dec 2025 20:03:45 +0000

Executive summary

From classrooms to farming communities, generative artificial intelligence (gen AI) holds great potential for Africa. The key question is whether its promise of abundance will reach everyone—or only those already well-connected.

The technology should be regulated with both its strengths and weaknesses in mind, and approached with a healthy dose of skepticism toward corporate advocates; but ignoring the obvious value and use of gen AI makes little sense. Those concerned with development in Africa must engage with the technology and consider its potential for reducing poverty and strengthening education, alongside other priorities such as digitizing and preserving languages.

Gen AI poses real risks and requires guardrails, especially for young people. Yet disengagement carries risks of its own: if gen AI is not actively shaped and governed, the very youths and communities it could benefit—or harm without proper controls—risk being left behind. Not engaging with gen AI would be not only harmful but also patronizing. More conversation is needed between those inventing and implementing gen AI models and those who work in development assistance, including actors involved in shaping and advancing the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Two of these SDGs—ending poverty and providing quality education—closely mirror gen AI’s promise, or boast, of future “abundance” and human or even superhuman intelligence. The SDG and gen AI camps must explore what each can realistically offer the other.

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The Africa Center works to promote dynamic geopolitical partnerships with African states and to redirect US and European policy priorities toward strengthening security and bolstering economic growth and prosperity on the continent.

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‘Putin is lying’: Zelenskyy visits front to expose false claims of Russian gains

Peter Dickinson — Tue, 16 Dec 2025 23:00:14 +0000

According to Russian President Vladimir Putin, the invasion of Ukraine is going entirely according to plan, with Russian troops advancing everywhere and conquering all before them. This swaggering stance is intended to bolster Russian support for the war while demoralizing Ukrainians and deterring Kyiv’s partners. Most of all, it is designed to secure US President Donald Trump’s support for a Kremlin-friendly peace by convincing him that Russian victory is inevitable.

In order to maintain this air of inevitability, Putin stands accused of routinely inflating Russian battlefield achievements. At a time when Kyiv is already coming under mounting pressure to make painful concessions, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is clearly conscious of the dangers posed by these exaggerated claims. In a bid to expose the Kremlin’s disinformation efforts, Zelenskyy traveled personally to the front lines in eastern Ukraine last week to visit a city that Putin and his colleagues have repeatedly bragged of seizing.

Zelenskyy’s trip to Kupyansk came amid a successful Ukrainian counteroffensive in the vicinity that resulted in significant gains. The selfie video he recorded during his visit was masterclass in wartime messaging that debunked Putin’s boasts while also underlining Ukraine’s continued ability to defeat Russia on the battlefield. “Putin publicly lied, claiming that Russian forces had already taken the city. So I went to Kupyansk myself to show the world that Putin is lying,” the Ukrainian leader commented. “We must keep exposing every single Russian falsehood because truth restores justice.”

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Kupyansk is a strategically important city located close to the Russian border in northeastern Ukraine’s Kharkiv region. It was occupied by Russian troops in the initial stages of the full-scale invasion before being liberated during Ukraine’s September 2022 counteroffensive. In recent months, the city has once again become a key target for the advancing Russian army, with Putin and his generals announcing the capture of Kupyansk on multiple occasions.

Putin’s proclamations of victory in Kupyansk began in late October, when he issued an invitation to international journalists and promised to provide them with safe passage to witness the encirclement of Ukrainian units trapped in the city. Days later, he told a meeting of Russia’s National Security Council that Kupyansk was “practically in the hands of Russian forces,” with victorious troops engaged in mopping up operations. “The city’s future has already been determined,” Putin stated.

On November 20, Russia’s top general Valery Gerasimov informed Putin that Russian forces had established full control over Kupyansk. The following day, Putin invoked the alleged fall of the city in an attempt to project Russian strength and intimidate Ukraine. “If Kyiv does not want to discuss President Trump’s proposals and refuses it, then both they and the European warmongers should understand the events that took place in Kupyansk will inevitably be repeated in other key areas of the front,” he warned.

Similarly bold Russian statements continued into the current month. On December 2, Putin remarked that Kupyansk had been under Russian occupation “for several weeks now,” and accused the Ukrainian authorities of being completely detached from reality. In fact, it is now apparent that Ukrainian assessments of the battle were broadly accurate, while Putin was guilty of spinning fantasies about the imaginary conquest of Kupyansk. Speaking on the outskirts of the evidently unconquered city, Zelenskyy openly mocked the Kremlin dictator’s dishonesty. “The Russians have had a lot to say about Kupyansk,” he commented. “The reality speaks for itself.”

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Zelenskyy’s latest front line appearance was much more than a high stakes photo opportunity or a chance to troll the Kremlin. In his selfie video, the Ukrainian leader acknowledged the importance of challenging false Russian narratives and stressed the need to shape international perceptions of the war in order to strengthen Ukraine’s negotiating position. “Today, achieving results on the front line is crucial so that Ukraine can achieve results in diplomacy,” he noted. “This is exactly how it works: All our strong positions within the country translate into strong positions in the negotiations to end the war.”

Ukraine’s recent gains in the Battle of Kupyansk do not alter the country’s precarious position at various other points along the vast front lines of Europe’s largest armed conflict since World War II. Nevertheless, Zelenskyy was right to shine a spotlight on the city. His headline-grabbing selfie video served as a timely reminder that Putin is a proven liar whose word cannot be trusted. It also confirmed that contrary to Kremlin propaganda, the Ukrainian army is far from collapse and remains a formidable fighting force.

These are exactly the messages Ukraine needs to convey to the current US administration. Donald Trump seems remarkably susceptible to Putin’s portrayal of Russia as an irresistible military force, and has repeatedly suggested that Ukraine should accept a Kremlin-friendly peace or risk destruction. The facts on the ground simply do not support this defeatist assessment.

While the Russian military holds the overall initiative and is currently advancing, it is grinding forward at glacial pace while suffering catastrophic losses. Nobody understands this better than Putin himself, who must be acutely aware that he would not need to exaggerate Russian gains and invent new triumphs if his invasion had not yielded such underwhelming results at so high a cost.

Last week’s front line visit by the Ukrainian leader underscored the fact that Russian victory is anything but inevitable. The military outlook for 2026 is actually far more nuanced. With enough international support, there is good reason to conclude that the Ukrainian army could replicate its recent Kupyansk success elsewhere and eventually stem the tide of Russia’s invasion. This is a realistic recipe for peace. Indeed, it may be the only way to pressure Moscow into serious negotiations. Putin wants the world to believe he cannot be beaten on the battlefield, but the Russian troops retreating from Kupyansk would likely tell a different story.

Peter Dickinson is editor of the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlert service.

To gain a clearer understanding of how the New York City Cyber 9/12 Strategy Challenge is building cyber talent and crowdsourcing solutions to pressing cyber challenges, we asked teams from this year’s competition, as well as judges and organizers, about their experiences and the lessons learned.

Participating in the Cyber 9/12 competition was an invaluable experience in applying cybersecurity and policy knowledge to a complex, fast-evolving scenario. Our team learned about the importance of being thoroughly familiar with every detail of the situation and considering potential impacts from all angles, whether it be technical, political, economic, or diplomatic, to anticipate the judges’ questions and defend our recommendations.

Future competitors should be prepared to simulate the role of 24/7 cyber crisis advisors, which involves late nights of distilling urgent details into briefs within a short time frame.

Also, future competitors should focus on developing a clear, unified strategy and should practice communicating their analysis under time pressure to present a confident, well-rounded briefing. For example, teams should practice their oral briefing to get their timing down, adapt to any kinks in their presentation, get comfortable with the subject matter, and even consider alternative policy options. Teams should recognize the value of participating in this competition, as the scenario and work product we produced felt very real and reflected current challenges in cyberspace.

—The Cache of Amontillado of the University of Maryland

When the scenario first unfolded, what was your team’s immediate reaction, and how did you prioritize developing your policy responses?

When we were first presented with the scenario, we were shocked. We all had limited knowledge of the tensions in the South China Sea, and as we did our research and became more informed, our surprise did not wane. Our team was adamant about doing thorough research about the situation, and with our diverse backgrounds, we were able to compile a comprehensive situation report.

We prioritized our policies by focusing on a holistic perspective. We wanted to address the immediate issues and halt those that would have cascading effects, no matter how menial. My team also used a temporal approach to list our priorities. We highlighted what our immediate, short-term, and long-term goals were.

—UAlbany Cyber Danes of the University of Albany

Did the scenario force your team to rethink assumptions about the impact of cyberattacks on energy infrastructure?

While competing, our team viewed the cyberattacks on energy systems primarily through technical and operational lenses, with the attacks’ disruptions to power, fuel supply, and critical services. However, the scenario pushed us beyond that. We quickly realized how attacks on energy infrastructure can serve as strategic pressure points in geopolitical crises, shaping diplomacy, public perception, and coordination with allies and partners long before physical impacts fully unfold.

The simulation highlighted how adversaries may target energy assets not just to disable them but to create uncertainty, economic anxiety, and political friction. We found ourselves thinking about the cascading effects: emergency response strain, regional security implications, misinformation risks, and the need for clear public communication to maintain confidence and avoid panic.

Real-world examples like the Colonial Pipeline ransomware incident proved useful in grounding our assessment, reminding us that even short disruptions can trigger outsized reactions on a national scale.

Competing also reinforced lessons in decision-making during a crisis: managing incomplete information, prioritizing actions, and balancing rapid response with strategic restraint. When one teammate had unexpected technical issues during our presentation, we had to adapt on the spot, a small but fitting reminder that resilience is not only about technology; it’s about teamwork, preparation, and the ability to continue operating under pressure.

Overall, the competition broadened our understanding of cyber-energy crises as multidimensional problems that blend national security, diplomacy, technology, and public trust. It challenged us to think like policymakers, not technicians, and taught us how critical a coordinated, cross-sector strategy is in defending modern energy infrastructure.

—Rutgers Cybersecurity Club of Rutgers University

Were there any real-world events or policy frameworks that helped inform your team’s approach to the fictional scenario?

Our team’s approach was influenced by real-world events and existing policy frameworks around international cyber incidents and crisis management. When developing recommendations for the scenario, we drew on actual US government playbooks such as response protocols from the Department of Energy and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which emphasize containment, segmentation, and rapid restoration of infrastructure during cyber emergencies.

We modeled our strategies on past major incidents like the SolarWinds and NotPetya attacks, implementing lessons learned such as network isolation and zero-trust upgrades. International cooperation frameworks—such as those used by countries in Five Eyes, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, and the Group of Seven—inspired our emphasis on cross-border intelligence sharing, joint cyber exercises, and coordinated responses with allies. We also incorporated legal structures for escalation and attribution, referencing US law and multilateral tools in our recommendations. Ultimately, our approach balanced technical resilience, diplomatic caution, and alliance building to reflect best practices from global experience with cyber crises.

—Phish Finders of Columbia University and Fordham University

What was the most complex or unexpected challenge your team faced during the simulation, and how did you navigate it?

This was our first year competing in Cyber 9/12, so we were very nervous when submitting our decision document and written brief. As a team, the most unexpected challenge was quickly adapting our strategy to the new intelligence report that dropped ahead of the semi-final round. After the first round, we received useful feedback about how we should consider international collaboration to mitigate the Volt Typhoon. Therefore, we were ecstatic to move on to the semi-finals and have a chance to apply the feedback we were provided. Our team had both technical and policy-focused members, so we were interested in weaving together our experiences in incident response and governance.

Although challenging to balance the fast-moving and multifaceted nature of policy with the intricacies of cybersecurity, we confronted this challenge head-on by discussing and rethinking existing paradigms. Through collaboration and innovative thinking, we were able to put our best foot forward at the competition.

—Cyber Cats of Northwestern University

As a Cyber 9/12 judge and alumna, what advice would you offer to future teams preparing to compete in a Cyber 9/12 competition?

Cyber 9/12 can feel a lot bigger than it actually is. Before I participated in 2021, I didn’t think I had the know-how to compete. My first inclination was to participate as a volunteer, not a competitor. I believed that I needed to have all the technical and policy expertise first before I could sign up to join a team. Now, as both a former first-place winner and three-time judge, I realize that Cyber 9/12 is, at its core, a team sport. Like on any team, success in this competition is found when a team demonstrates a diversity of skill sets and roles.

The cybersecurity industry works like this, too—it is an amalgamation of technicians, engineers, communicators, policymakers, and program managers. Starting with the right team will make it possible to break up the competition based on each team member’s unique skill sets.

Looking at the strategy as an accumulation of its smaller parts will help a competitor weave together the narrative and then coherently deliver the story to the judges. For example, teams should consider delegating the technical risk factors to the computer science student to analyze and present and having the communicator or marketer present opening and closing remarks for the judges. At the end of the day, the most prepared teams are the ones who perform together the best.

—Danielle Neftin Errant, Cyber 9/12 Strategy Challenge judge and alumna; senior associate at JP Morgan and Chase

In your view, what specific skills are becoming most essential for future cyber leaders, and how can universities, faculty, and mentors better prepare and support students to develop those skills through experiential learning opportunities like Cyber 9/12?

One of the most essential, and often overlooked, skills for future cyber leaders is the ability to discern what they don’t know. Exercises like Cyber 9/12 sharpen that discipline by forcing students to make policy recommendations under pressure, with the perceived weight of national-level consequences attached.

In real decision environments, senior leaders want three things: first, “the situation” and what is known to be fact; second, “the analysis,” which is an interpretation of what those facts mean; and third, “the known unknown,” covering what is not known, which often defines the uncertainty that must be weighed in the decision making process.

Academic settings rarely expose students to that dynamic, yet it mirrors how decisions are actually made by senior leaders in geopolitics and national security.

Universities, faculty, and mentors can better prepare students by creating experiential learning environments like those created in Cyber 9/12 that reward discernment as much as technical precision. When students learn to separate fact from assumption, truth from influence, and confidence from overconfidence, they develop the judgment needed to recognize misinformation, foreign manipulation, and cognitive traps that risk leading to strategic miscalculation. I was fortunate to serve as a judge for two of the top three teams in the New York City competition, and one commonality between them stood out: both teams excelled at diagnosing the situation and clearly articulating what they knew to be true, what was unconfirmed (or, in some cases, possibly conjecture from biased sources), and what they did not know. That level of clarity under pressure reflects exactly the kind of discernment and communication that defines effective decision-making in cyber leadership.

—Fred Bailey, Cyber 9/12 Strategy Challenge judge; managing director at Gideon Arktos

Having transitioned from a competitor to an organizer, what insights have you gained about how scenario design and event structure can best prepare students to think critically under real-world policy and technical pressure?

Transitioning from a competitor to an organizer for Cyber 9/12 completely reshaped my understanding of what the challenge is meant to teach. When I was competing in March 2025, my team was hyper focused on crafting the best decision documents, reviewing and analyzing various frameworks that could guide our response, and anticipating judges’ questions. But once I became an organizer, I realized that the ethos of the competition does not lie in defending one’s recommendations, but instead, it is a test to see how critically one’s team can think on their feet, adapt in a fast-paced environment, and collaborate. The competition is ultimately about making consequential choices in times of uncertainty, and as a student, there’s no better skill to practice than that.

Moreover, the challenge is a logistical feat that few participants have ever seen. I have a deep appreciation for just how much effort it takes to run the show. What looks seamless from the outside (the timed intelligence reports, the brilliant judges, the smooth transitions over Zoom) is, in reality, the product of relentless coordination.

When I speak to Cyber 9/12 alumni, what strikes me most is how many describe the competition as life-changing. They talk about how it opened doors by helping them land jobs, navigate complex policy roles, and even simply think more critically in their professional lives. I can affirm the same now—Cyber 9/12 really is life-changing.

—Amiya Kumar, president, Digital and Cyber Group, Columbia University

About Cyber 9/12

The Cyber Statecraft Initiative’s Cyber 9/12 Strategy Challenge is an annual cyber policy and strategy competition where students from across the globe compete in developing policy recommendations tackling a fictional cyber catastrophe.

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Russia’s insistence on a defenseless Ukraine betrays Putin’s true intentions

Peter Dickinson — Thu, 11 Dec 2025 08:21:08 +0000

As American, Ukrainian, and European officials continue to debate potential peace plans among themselves, there remains very little to indicate that Russia is genuinely interested in ending the war. On the contrary, many of the Kremlin’s key demands during negotiations appear tailored to facilitate a continuation of the invasion on more favorable terms.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s territorial claims alone should be enough to set off alarm bells. He insists that in order to secure a ceasefire, Ukraine must first hand over the remaining 10 percent of the Donbas region that his troops have failed to seize since the invasion first began eleven years ago.

As the ruler of what is by far the largest country in the world, Putin has no pressing need for the approximately 6600 square kilometers of Donbas territory still under Ukrainian control. Nor does the region contain any particularly important natural resources or historic sites that could justify its present position at the very heart of the peace process.

Putin’s true motivation is not difficult to discern. The unoccupied portion of the Donbas that he now so openly covets may seem relatively inconspicuous on the map, but it plays host to some of Ukraine’s strongest fortifications. Developed over the past decade, this fortress belt represents a formidable obstacle to Moscow’s invasion.

Analysts estimate that it could take years for Russia to occupy the area by force, and would likely cost the Kremlin hundreds of thousands of additional casualties. Beyond the fortress belt, the way would be open for further sweeping Russian advances into central Ukraine and toward Kyiv itself. This vital role in Ukraine’s overall defense explains why Putin is prepared to reduce his demands elsewhere but remains so eager for Kyiv to hand over this particular territory without a fight.

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Among Moscow’s many demands, the biggest red flag of all is the Kremlin’s determination to demilitarize Ukraine and deprive the country of international allies. Ever since the first round of peace talks during the initial months of the war, Putin has consistently sought to impose restrictions on the size of the Ukrainian military and the categories of weapons the country can possess. While recent drafts envision a Ukrainian army of 600,000 troops, the fact that Russia remains so keen on limiting Ukraine’s ability to defend itself is an unambiguous signal of Putin’s bad intentions.

Likewise, the Kremlin’s bitter opposition to continued international support for Ukraine betrays the reality behind Moscow’s current peace posturing. This extends far beyond Russia’s well-documented objections to Ukrainian membership of NATO. Putin’s negotiators also seek to block future arms supplies to Kyiv and have completely ruled out the possibility of even a symbolic Western troop presence in postwar Ukraine, while demonstrating a deep reluctance to accept anything resembling credible security guarantees.

Attempts to defend Russian objections on security grounds are unconvincing. Putin has debunked his own claims of a NATO security threat to Russia by reacting with obvious indifference to neighboring Finland’s NATO accession in 2022, just months after using the issue as a convenient pretext for the invasion of Ukraine. According to this bizarre Kremlin logic, Ukraine’s slim hopes of joining NATO in the distant future were sufficient grounds to unleash the largest European war since World War II, but Finland’s almost immediate membership of the alliance was “no problem” for Moscow, despite the fact that both countries share long land borders with Russia.

Putin’s refusal to countenance purely defensive commitments from Kyiv’s allies that are clearly designed to safeguard Ukrainian sovereignty is even harder to justify. If the Russian ruler intended to coexist with an independent Ukraine, he would surely recognize the need for international involvement in efforts to reestablish stability in the region. Instead, he has adopted the opposite approach. While Ukraine appeals for security guarantees, Putin seeks to guarantee Ukraine’s insecurity.

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The insincerity of Russia’s current approach to the US-led peace process should come as no surprise. After all, while Putin may be willing to consider a pause in hostilities if it comes on Kremlin-friendly terms, he simply cannot risk a peace deal that secures the continued existence of an independent Ukrainian state. Any settlement based on the present front lines of the war would leave around 80 percent of Ukraine beyond Kremlin control and free to continue along the path toward greater European integration. That is exactly what Putin is fighting to prevent.

The Kremlin dictator has always viewed his war against Ukraine in the broadest of historical contexts as a crusade to reverse the verdict of 1991 and return Russia to its rightful place as a global superpower. Like many of his contemporaries, Putin remains embittered by the Soviet collapse and determined to avenge what he perceives as modern Russia’s humiliating fall from grace. This has fuelled his obsession with independent Ukraine, which he has come to regard as the ultimate symbol of the historical injustice resulting from the breakup of the USSR.

Putin’s increasingly rabid opposition to Ukrainian independence reflects his Cold War experience as a KGB officer in East Germany, where he witnessed the disintegration of the Soviet Empire firsthand. This traumatic experience has helped to convince him that the Ukrainian state-building project now poses an existential threat to Russia itself. If Ukraine is able to consolidate its statehood and emerge as a recognizably European democracy, Putin fears this could serve as a catalyst for the next phase in a Russian imperial retreat that began with the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Over the past two decades, Putin’s determination to undermine Ukrainian statehood has come to dominate his entire reign and has led directly to a new Cold War. From the 2004 Orange Revolution to the 2014 seizure of Crimea and the full-scale invasion of 2022, Ukraine has been at the epicenter of each new milestone in the deteriorating relationship between Russia and the West.

Time after time, Putin has demonstrated his readiness to sacrifice all other Russian national interests in his quest to subjugate Ukraine and force the country permanently back into the Kremlin orbit. He has reversed decades of integration into Western economies, placed Russian society on a wartime footing, and sent hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers to their deaths. It is deeply delusional to think that he is now suddenly ready to abandon all of this and accept the reality of Ukrainian independence in exchange for the marginal gains of a compromise peace.

Putin’s own position during peace talks betrays his complete lack of interest in ending the war. His territorial demands would rob Ukraine of crucial fortifications and set the stage for further Russian advances, while his calls for restrictions on the Ukrainian armed forces and Kyiv’s ability to maintain military ties with the West would leave postwar Ukraine disarmed and defenseless. In isolation, any of these demands would look deeply suspect. Taken together, they represent overwhelming evidence of Putin’s intention to continue the invasion.

Peter Dickinson is editor of the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlert service.

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As the bombardment of Kharkiv intensifies, events taking place one hundred kilometers to the east are reshaping the city’s broader security outlook. In recent months, advancing Russian troops have attempted to reoccupy Kupiansk. This strategically important city came under Russian occupation during the initial phase of the full-scale invasion before being liberated during Ukraine’s successful September 2022 counteroffensive. Renewed Russian gains in this direction would further strain Ukraine’s defenses and expand the aerial threat looming over Kharkiv.

As the front line creeps closer to Kharkiv, the main threat remains air strikes. Russian attacks focus on civilian targets including energy infrastructure, apartment blocks, schools, hospitals, and shopping malls. The overall intention is clear: Russia aims to degrade municipal infrastructure, disrupt essential services, and make the city unlivable for its inhabitants.

One of the most shocking attacks in recent months took place on October 22, when Russia carried out a targeted drone strike on a Kharkiv kindergarten. On that occasion, images of firefighters carrying young children from the burning building made global headlines. However, the vast majority of attacks targeting the Kharkiv population do not attract the attention of international audiences.

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Alongside drones, Kharkiv residents must also now contend with extended periods of darkness. In early November, a major Russian bombardment caused the city’s energy supply system to collapse, leaving entire districts without electricity, heating, and light. Local residents have had to adapt to the realities of life without power while navigating the city in the winter gloom. For the Kharkiv population, this has meant returning to familiar blackout routines developed during earlier Russian winter bombing campaigns.

Despite these pressures, Kharkiv continues to function and maintain an air of normality. Everyday life in the city is in many ways defined by a culture of resilience that is both practical and disciplined, reflecting years of adaptation under fire.

Utilities crews repair power lines within hours of each new Russian attack. Municipal workers immediately clear away debris from air strikes and make sure the city remains tidy, even in the most extreme of circumstances. Teachers hold classes in specially constructed underground schools or metro stations. Doctors treat patients behind boarded up windows. Each individual demonstration of resilience is a direct rejection of Russia’s efforts to depopulate Kharkiv.

In order to maintain this remarkable resilience, Kharkiv requires continued international support. Most of all, this means additional air defenses. Supporting Kharkiv is not just a matter of humanitarian assistance. It is a strategic investment in European security.

Today, Kharkiv serves as a vital bastion in eastern Ukraine. The city’s endurance makes it possible to reinforce Ukrainian front line units, bolster the country’s defenses, offer a safe haven to the region’s civilian population, and prevent the war from spreading further west. A secure Kharkiv means a stronger Ukraine and a safer Europe, but this will only be possible with help from the international community.

Maria Avdeeva is a Ukrainian security analyst. The views in this article are her own and are expressed in a personal capacity.

Why exporting advanced chips to China endangers US AI leadership

Tess deBlanc-Knowles — Wed, 10 Dec 2025 18:21:15 +0000

WASHINGTON—In a Truth Social post on Monday that shook up the global tech race, US President Donald Trump announced his approval for Nvidia to sell its H200 (“Hopper”) series chips to “approved customers” in China, with the United States receiving a 25 percent cut of the revenues.

This marks the latest pendulum swing in the administration’s approach to export controls on advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chips. In July, Trump allowed the sale of Nvidia’s less powerful H20 chips to China with a 15 percent revenue share requirement, pulling back from an April announcement that his administration would ban the sale of those same chips. Even the same morning of Trump’s announcement, the US attorney’s office in Houston trumpeted the disruption of a smuggling operation focused on exporting H200 and the older H100 chips to China.

In his post on Monday, Trump said that Chinese President Xi Jinping “responded positively” to the decision; on Tuesday a spokesperson for China’s foreign ministry dodged a question about the deal. If Xi is on board, this is significant, since when the H20 controls were lifted, China’s Cyberspace Administration banned Chinese firms from purchasing H20s, citing security concerns. Whether Xi took this step to protect domestic chip manufacturers or as a bet to unlock higher-performing exports (such as the H200s) remains unclear.

While the H200 far surpasses the capabilities of the H20, it’s still a generation behind Nvidia’s cutting-edge Blackwell chips and will soon be overshadowed by the forthcoming Rubin architecture. Prior to meeting with Xi in October, Trump floated the idea of allowing Blackwell exports. But following the meeting, Trump said that the topic did not come up. Notably, Monday’s announcement stops short of allowing the export of Blackwell chips.

The Trump administration’s rationale

The Trump administration’s calculus comes down primarily to economics and the belief that projecting US technology abroad strengthens national power. Allowing the export of H200s to China will provide Nvidia access to the world’s largest single market and likely ensures that the next generation of Chinese AI runs on US hardware.

Proponents of this approach claim this move could slow the development of China’s indigenous AI capabilities by cutting off revenue to companies such as Huawei as sales divert to Nvidia. Under Xi’s leadership, China has undertaken a concerted national strategy to build a domestic chip manufacturing capability and break free from dependence on Western technology.

The 25 percent cut from sales to the US government gives the administration another means to tout benefits to the taxpayer. Still, recent reports of a special security review that the chips will undergo before export raise questions about how processes will be structured to legally charge this fee. Expect more from the administration in the coming days on how it will navigate this novel approach.

By approving exports of H200 chips but not Blackwell chips, the administration is attempting to strike a compromise position between those who see the advantages of strengthening Nvidia’s global market share and those worried about eroding the United States’ AI advantage.

US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping talk as they leave after a bilateral meeting in Busan, South Korea, on October 30, 2025. (REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein)

The real implications

The United States and China are locked in an existential race for AI supremacy. Until now, the United States’ one true advantage has been access to cutting-edge compute.

In recent years, China has proven that it can build frontier models that rival the performance of the leading models in the United States. It produces top AI talent and has cultivated a vibrant AI start-up ecosystem. Chinese companies have access to the same data as their US counterparts while also benefiting from internal data, such as that stemming from China’s surveillance state and widespread AI deployment. China also has a leg up in terms of energy generation, producing more than twice the electricity that the United States did in 2024.

Where the United States maintains a definitive edge is on aggregate computing power. As of mid-2025, the US share of global AI computing power reached 74 percent, with China at only 14 percent. Aggregate computing power is critical for training new frontier models, supporting the widespread use of AI and new applications of the technology, and exploring new architectures and pathways toward more powerful systems. Recent reporting finds that much of the compute used by companies such as OpenAI is in service of research.

Allowing Chinese companies to purchase H200 chips will significantly degrade this advantage. Chinese companies will likely pursue a strategy of scale, networking H200 chips into clusters that could rival the performance of Blackwell chips, albeit with a higher price tag. This is a strategy already widely employed in China to maximize the performance of their domestically produced, lower-end chips. With access to H200 chips, Chinese firms will be positioned to train the next generation of models and provide cloud-computing services beyond their borders. This would put them into competition with US providers for international market share and fundamentally undermine the Trump administration’s goal of establishing the US AI tech stack as the global standard.

Estimates for how far China’s domestic chip manufacturing capability lags that of the United States range from five to fifteen years. Currently, China cannot produce at scale to meet domestic demand. The Trump administration has estimated, for example, that major Chinese tech giant Huawei can only produce 200,000 of its Ascent AI chips this year, which is only 1-2 percent of estimated US production. Access to H200s could bridge this gap, allowing Chinese AI companies to compete globally until domestic manufacturing capability has reached parity. At which point, they would almost certainly move away from Nvidia.

From a national security perspective, many fear that H200 chips will not only bolster Chinese industry but also the People’s Liberation Army’s defense capabilities. Given China’s civil-military fusion doctrine, restricting sales to approved corporate entities likely won’t prevent military use.

Finally, the question remains whether Nvidia has the capacity to serve the Chinese market without eroding its ability to meet demand from US companies. Already, surging demand from data center build-outs is putting stress on the supply chain, and research universities are struggling to procure chips to support crucial research and education efforts.

As China moves forward to aggressively integrate AI into every aspect of its economy and society, as outlined in its recent “AI plus” initiative, providing the computational fuel to realize this vision will supercharge the United States’ strongest AI competitor, significantly endangering the Trump administration’s own global AI ambitions.

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Ukraine’s wartime experience provides blueprint for infrastructure protection

Oleksandr Bakalinskyi, Maggie McDonough — Mon, 08 Dec 2025 15:36:56 +0000

When cyberattacks and missile strikes converge on the same targets, infrastructure resilience becomes more than a technical mandate; it becomes a matter of national survival. For Ukraine, this is not a hypothetical future scenario. On the contrary, it has been daily reality for more than a decade.

Since 2014, Ukraine’s power grid, banking system, telecommunications networks, and digital infrastructure have faced sustained and increasingly sophisticated attacks. Yet these systems continue to function, adapt, and evolve, offering the world one of the most comprehensive case studies for how national infrastructure can endure under unrelenting cyber-kinetic pressure.

Ukraine’s experience reveals clearly that defending critical infrastructure is no longer simply a matter of cybersecurity. It requires a fundamentally different approach grounded in cyber-physical resilience, decentralization, system redundancy, institutional autonomy, and the capacity to sustain essential services, even when networks fail.

Industrial control systems were not designed for modern cyber warfare. The systems that operate electrical substations, power distribution logistics, and grid balancing typically prioritize availability and uptime rather than cyber defense. Russia exploited this structural vulnerability in 2015 and 2016, when Ukraine became the first country in history to suffer a nationwide power outage triggered by a cyberattack.

The same attacks that exposed digital fragility also revealed Ukraine’s greatest source of strength: Analog resilience. Even as digital control systems were compromised, engineers were able to manually isolate impacted grid segments, reroute power, and restore transmission through mechanical overrides and localized network segmentation.

The lessons are clear. While digital modernization delivers efficiency, full digital dependency creates systemic brittleness. Meanwhile, resilience can be enhanced through layered systems that incorporate manual fallbacks, localized control, and the ability to physically outmaneuver a digital attack. And while the ability to manually connect electricity to an electrical substation was not by design, the lack of digitalization at the time of the attacks proved to be an advantage in terms of service restoration speed.

The global takeaway from Ukraine’s grid defense is not a rejection of modernization; it is a rejection of exclusively digital modernization. True resilience requires hybrid architectures in which digital innovation is paired with analog redundancy, segmented control, and last resort options when networks are taken down.

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If the Ukrainian power grid demonstrated the value of technical redundancy, Ukraine’s banking sector has shown the value of institutional autonomy. The National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) has emerged since the onset of Russian aggression as one of the most effective national actors in defending and sustaining critical infrastructure under attack. This has not only been due to advanced cybersecurity measures, but also thanks to operational freedom to act in line with the pace of the threat environment. The NBU has rapidly introduced mandatory security protocols, created a dedicated incident response unit, synchronized directly with law enforcement, and deployed real-time regulatory updates to address emerging vulnerabilities.

This capacity for decisiveness has helped ensure continuity in one of the country’s most essential sectors. Even under sustained digital attack, Ukrainians could still access their bank accounts, make electronic payments, and rely on national financial infrastructure without systemic interruption.

The most innovative aspect of this resilience came in the form of the Power Banking Initiative, a nationwide network of bank branches retrofitted for operational continuity during extended outages. Equipped with alternative energy sources, satellite communications, secure cash storage, and offline transaction capacities, these branches ensured uninterrupted access to currency, transfers, and basic banking services during power blackouts and infrastructure disruptions.

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Ukraine’s experience confirms that the boundary between cyberattacks and conventional warfare is often blurred. In many cases, the two elements are sequenced, synchronized, and structurally interdependent. Cyber operations can blind infrastructure sensors, disrupt communications, compromise operational decision-making, and erode trust in essential systems, often in direct coordination with physical strikes.

Resilience does not depend on preventing breaches, but on the ability to sustain essential services when breaches succeed. This requires a hybrid framework that integrates digital security, infrastructure continuity planning, and decentralized operational responses.

Alignment with EU and NATO standards will accelerate interoperability with allied infrastructure defense systems and enable long-term investment security. Compliance must move beyond voluntary adoption to formal certification, standardized auditing, and enforceable resilience benchmarks for infrastructure operators.

Ukraine’s national bank has shown the importance of sector-specific response units. This model should expand to the energy, telecommunications, transportation, healthcare, and regional government systems. In order to be effective, response units require independent monitoring authority, 24/7 threat detection, digital forensics, and integration into NATO and EU cyber fusion hubs.

Infrastructure resilience also demands institutionalized public-private intelligence sharing. A legally protected, mandatory, real-time intelligence exchange will shorten detection timelines and prevent cascading failures. Critical infrastructure owners must integrate into national security information-sharing with liability protections, rapid alert systems, and reciprocal intelligence flows.

Looking ahead, a national resilience investment fund should pool Ukrainian government resources, EU support, World Bank guarantees, EBRD/EIB financing, and private capital to enable infrastructure segmentation, micro-grid deployment, backup power systems, secure cloud environments, and hardened data centers. However, none of these technical investments will succeed without sufficient human capital. Ukraine should aim to develop a minimum of 10,000 new security specialists through university partnerships, military-civilian pipelines, veteran reskilling programs, and national cyber reserves.

Today, Ukraine possesses infrastructure resilience tested continuously under real cyber-kinetic attack. This unique experience should form the basis of international efforts to enhance critical infrastructure resilience. Ukraine can lead an international training center, host multinational resilience exercises, publish attack anatomy case files, and shape new NATO and EU doctrine. This would allow Kyiv to position itself not only as a defender, but as an architect of resilient infrastructure strategy.

At the start of the full-scale invasion, Ukraine’s vibrant tech sector represented an important asset that the authorities in Kyiv were quick to mobilize. This tech prowess helped cement the country’s strategic focus on drones, which could be designed and produced domestically to compensate for a lack of more conventional weapons.

Since 2022, the number of Ukrainian companies developing drones has skyrocketed, while annual output has risen to millions of units. This has allowed Ukraine to establish a “drone wall” along the front lines of the conflict, making any buildup of enemy forces extremely challenging. Over the past year, around three-quarters of all Russian casualties have been as a result of Ukrainian drones.

At sea, Ukraine has used drones to sink multiple warships and break the Russian navy’s Black Sea blockade, forcing Putin to withdraw the bulk of his remaining fleet from Russian-occupied Crimea. Ukraine’s growing drone capabilities have also made it possible to bring Putin’s invasion home to Russia with an escalating campaign of deep strikes on military and industrial targets across the Russian Federation.

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Russia has responded to Kyiv’s groundbreaking use of drone warfare by studying Ukrainian tactics and technologies, while also dramatically expanding its own domestic drone manufacturing base. The Kremlin has been aided in this by allies including China and Iran, who have provided vital components along with the blueprints for key drone designs.

The Kremlin strategy has focused on mass producing a limited range of models for use on the battlefield and in the bombardment of Ukrainian cities. This methodical approach has paid dividends. By the end of 2024, it was already becoming clear that the drone war was turning in Russia’s favor. This trend has only intensified over the past year.

One of Russia’s most important innovations has been the widespread use of fiber-optic drones. These drones are controlled by a wire connected directly to the operator, making them immune to jamming technologies and extremely difficult to intercept.

Russian commanders first began using large quantities of fiber-optic drones during fighting in late 2024 to push Ukrainian troops out of Russia’s Kursk region. The drones proved highly effective at disrupting Ukrainian logistics by targeting supply vehicles. This was widely seen as a crucial factor behind the success of the operation.

Russia has now replicated and scaled up these tactics throughout southern and eastern Ukraine, creating a drone wall of its own while reaching deeper and deeper into Ukrainian-controlled territory. Fiber-optic drones are being used to ambush supply vehicles far behind the front lines, forcing Ukraine to become increasingly reliant on ground robotics to supply combat units and evacuate the wounded.

In addition to striking Ukrainian logistics, Russian drone forces are also prioritising attacks on their Ukrainian counterparts, forcing Ukrainian drone crews to pull further back from the line of contact to ensure safety. This distance gives Russian operators room to move their own teams forward, increasing their ability to dominate the battlefield.

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Russia’s Rubicon drone unit has emerged during 2025 as a prominent symbol of the Kremlin’s rapidly evolving and increasingly effective drone warfare strategy. Highly trained and well funded Rubicon teams are leading the campaign to cut Ukraine’s supply lines and widen the kill zone.

Crucially, Rubicon pilots pass their experience on to newcomers and provide extensive training that is helping to improve the effectiveness of other Russian army drone units. According to Ukrainian drone commander Yurii Fedorenko, Rubicon can rapidly scale up drone units using manpower and financial advantages that Ukraine cannot replicate.

In the drone war between Russia and Ukraine, the Kremlin is betting on mass and hoping that a combination of smart choices, specialised production, extensive training, and sheer numbers will eventually overwhelm Ukraine’s technological edge. In contrast, Kyiv continues to rely on a highly decentralised ecosystem of volunteer groups, startups, and military workshops producing a wide variety of different drone models. This diversity helps to drive innovation but also creates coordination challenges.

The current effectiveness of Russia’s drone units does not mean the drone war has shifted decisively in Moscow’s favor, but recent trends do expose a gap that Ukraine must urgently close. In order to counter Russia’s increasingly centralised and well-resourced drone formations, Kyiv needs to adopt key elements of the Rubicon model. This means scaling up training pipelines, sharing front line experience more systematically, and ensuring Ukrainian drone units have all the resources they need to hunt down Russian operators and regain the initiative.

Since 2022, the Russian military has been widely mocked for its primitive “human wave” tactics and generally poor performance in Ukraine. However, the progress made by Russia in drone warfare indicates an army that is fully capable of learning, adapting, and innovating. Moscow has not been able to achieve any major technological breakthroughs, but Russian military strategists have significantly strengthened their country’s position by concentrating on scale, training, and relentless battlefield experimentation.

This progress should be a major wake-up call for European leaders. Small numbers of suspected Russian drones are already causing chaos and disruption across Europe. The longer the war in Ukraine lasts, the more advanced Russia’s drone capabilities will become.

David Kirichenko is an associate research fellow at the Henry Jackson Society.

Executive summary

President Donald Trump’s policies are substantially reshaping prospects for transatlantic cooperation across a range of policy areas. In digital competition, the picture is complex. The Trump administration opposes Europe’s competition regulation, but both the European Commission and US federal and state competition enforcers have similar priorities when it comes to competition in digital markets.

US-European Union (EU) dialogue could help make interventions to promote digital competition more effective. It could boost consistency (helping firms adopt the same remedies across both sides of the Atlantic) and help regulators share knowledge and best practices. Beyond technical alignment, EU and US authorities can coordinate on narratives and messaging, ensuring that regulatory measures are perceived as fair and mitigating the risk of digital competition policy fueling foreign policy disputes.

At a recent roundtable hosted by the Centre on Regulation in Europe (CERRE) and the Atlantic Council, we identified the following recommendations for competition enforcers on digital antitrust.

The European Commission and national competition authorities should continue to cooperate with US federal agencies and strengthen their cooperation with US state attorneys general, given their important role in US digital antitrust cases.
To effectively learn from each other’s experience with remedies, and to enhance mutual learning and correct remedies when needed, competition agencies in both the EU and the United States should have a robust, evidence-based assessment about how their remedies have performed.
The European Commission needs to improve its communication strategy when pursuing antitrust cases. Antitrust enforcement must be closely linked to consumer welfare, competitiveness, and economic growth. Enhancing its legitimacy can help ensure European competition enforcers withstand any political pressure.
Europe needs to better highlight how open and competitive markets foster innovation. Tools to open competition are therefore important ways to support US and European global technological leadership.

In relation to merger policy, competition authorities on both sides of the Atlantic are evolving to better tackle the role of innovation in digital markets. Recommendations include the following.

EU and US authorities should develop consistent guidelines setting out how they will assess a merger’s impacts on innovation capabilities (such as chips and computing power, skills, data, and risky and patient capital) and incentives to innovate. Pro-innovation merger control should promote the new innovators and not protect the old ones.
The Directorate-General for Competition (DG-Comp) should aim to learn from the US merger guidelines and US authorities’ recent practices to inform the EU’s current exercise of revising its own guidelines.
As with antitrust remedies, competition authorities in both the EU and the United States must be honest and clear about how their merger remedies have performed, so that different authorities can become better by learning from each other’s successes and mistakes.

Introduction

Trump’s policies have challenged the transatlantic relationship and are reshaping prospects for transatlantic cooperation. On digital competition, the picture is particularly complex. The president and some of his appointees to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) Antitrust Division oppose Europe’s competition regulation, the Digital Markets Act (DMA)—and the president recently threatened to investigate the EU’s nearly €3 billion fine imposed on Google as an unfair trade barrier under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974. Despite this, when it comes to ex post digital antitrust cases, US federal and state competition enforcers and the European Commission have similar priorities. More broadly, competition authorities on both sides of the Atlantic are grappling with how to adopt consistent, principled, and predictable approaches in digital markets. This can better take innovation, investment, and firms’ capabilities into consideration during competitive analysis, and a consistent approach is key for global corporations.

US-EU dialogue could help improve the efficiency and effectiveness of interventions to promote digital competition. It could do the following.

Facilitate mutually consistent approaches to common regulatory challenges, reducing burdens on regulators and making it easier for global firms to adopt the same business models across both sides of the Atlantic.
Even where consistency is not possible, help regulators by sharing knowledge and best practices, or even help authorities to divide and conquer in areas such as ex post antitrust cases in which authorities on both sides of the Atlantic are pursuing similar goals.
Mitigate the risks of foreign policy disputes as digital competition interventions increasingly have cross-border impacts, and as the Trump administration bristles at foreign governments enforcing competition law and pro-competitive regulation against US champions.

But how can this mutually beneficial cooperation be maintained? In 2021, the EU and United States established a Joint Technology Competition Policy Dialogue, supplementing established agreements between the European and US competition agencies, and there is still dialogue between antitrust enforcers. However, given the growing perception of a difference in values between the EU and the United States, and tensions on a range of topics from trade to defense, prospects for cooperation risk becoming narrower in the future.

Cooperation on digital antitrust

European and US authorities have a significant degree of alignment on ex post antitrust enforcement in the digital sector. In digital markets, large firms have often argued that highly innovative digital markets had natural “winner take all” characteristics, but there is nevertheless competition for the market. These firms argue they are subjected to significant competitive pressure from those who might displace them with disruptive innovation and, therefore, have strong incentives to keep innovating. This implies a marginal role for competition agencies. In practice, however, many digital markets have seen little displacement of incumbents in recent years. Effective antitrust remedies not only enforce competition law but also create space for innovation, enabling new entrants and disruptive technologies to challenge incumbents and thrive. While, until recently, innovation in some markets appeared to have slowed, there is an open question about how much artificial intelligence (AI) could disrupt the architecture of digital ecosystems—and whether that implies antitrust authorities should step back or play a role in keeping this possibility open.

In the meantime, competition authorities in the EU and United States have become more assertive. On the US side, the FTC and DOJ are pursuing cases against tech firms brought under previous administrations, despite the Republican Party’s traditional light-touch approach to antitrust. The FTC and DOJ’s approach is fueled by a view that conservative antitrust must not allow “private tyranny,” just as it is opposed to government tyranny.¹ In particular, FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson has applauded that “this administration . . . is rediscovering the wisdom of taking competition enforcement seriously.”²

In Europe, although there have been few new antitrust cases under the new European Commission, a number of ongoing cases are being pursued against the same firms, on similar timeframes and in relation to similar conduct. These cases have been supplemented by enforcement action under the DMA. Some of these cases might have different underlying motivations—with US authorities more concerned with the potential role of large technology firms in stifling plurality of voices online, and the EU more concerned with ensuring market contestability. But they nevertheless illustrate authorities’ common challenges, particularly how to design remedies for highly complex and fast-moving digital markets.

EU and US competition policies increasingly interact. For example, in a case brought by the US DOJ and some states against Google regarding its conduct in the search market, the DOJ sought an extensive list of potential remedies, including data-sharing rules that looked similar to obligations in the EU’s DMA. In September 2025, the district court decided to apply a narrower data-sharing remedy. A similar question about alignment of remedies will arise in the EU and US cases concerning Google’s digital advertising technologies.

However, challenges remain in coordinating antitrust actions on both sides of the Atlantic.

A first challenge is ensuring that the tenets of antitrust analysis remain synchronized. Protecting disruptive innovation in digital markets, for example, might require identifying robust theories of harm closer to market realities and moving away from reliance on static market definitions. However, the US legal system—in which the FTC and DOJ must convince a judge of their case—makes EU-US alignment difficult. Even if EU and US competition authorities agree on a common approach to a particular case, judges might take a different approach. In particular, competition cases in the United States go before generalist US judges, some of whom might be relatively conservative about government intervention. For example, European competition agencies are exploring how large firms can stymie disruptors by preventing their access to inputs to innovate or impacting their access to customers. They have used these concerns to rework the essential facilities doctrine and the tests for when discrimination is anticompetitive (with EU courts often sympathetic to their approaches, as in the Google Shopping and Android Auto cases).³ However, there is limited evidence that US courts are as willing to see principles evolve.

A second challenge is remedy design. Ex post antitrust remedies can have global impacts—for example, by raising costs of operating different business models in different countries, or by requiring structural changes to large firms or technical changes that cannot be implemented at a regional level. Conversely, for firms that can benefit from remedies, a consistent approach to remedy design in the EU and United States could lower costs and allow innovative firms to scale faster. Securing consistent approaches to remedies between the EU, the United States, and third countries such as the United Kingdom could therefore have widespread benefits. There is acceptance that past remedies in tech antitrust cases have sometimes not been very effective, and that innovation seems to have played more of a role than antitrust remedies in promoting competition in digital markets. Both sides seem to be learning from these past experiences, but they have adopted different lessons. The EU has sought to front-end tougher remedies in the DMA while, in the US Google Search case, the judge adopted a narrower set of remedies and instead put more faith in possibilities for AI to disrupt online search markets. Both European and US authorities can benefit from robust and transparent evaluations of past remedies, learning from successes and failures to design more effective interventions in the future.

Thirdly, the EU and United States also take different approaches to the merits of ex ante digital competition regulation. Europe’s DMA has few influential friends among the current US administration. Trump has implied he sees the law as an attack on “the growth or intended operation of United States companies,” and FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson has described the DMA as a “tax on American companies” and one which is “overly rigid,” despite most of the beneficiaries of the DMA being US firms.⁴ The EU’s objectives with the DMA were to foster a competitive and fair digital market, creating opportunities for challenger firms from both Europe and the United States, and supporting the West’s global technological leadership. From a European perspective, there is no appetite to rescind or water down the DMA; Commissioner Teresa Ribera has signaled the European Commission would take a “brave” approach to enforcement and has fined Apple and Meta for noncompliance.⁵ However, there is a widespread perception that the commission is tailoring its enforcement approach to reflect the current environment. For example, the Apple and Meta fines came only after the commission missed its own self-imposed deadlines, seemingly to avoid torpedoing EU-US trade talks.⁶

There is also a question of how European and US regulatory authorities can best cooperate and coordinate in practice, given the different timeframes and processes of their respective cases and concerns in the United States about Europe taking the lead on antitrust matters. Ferguson, for example, has argued, “If we think that Americans are suffering from anticompetitive conduct at home, we should address it here at home . . . I don’t want the Europeans doing it for us.”⁷ The EU and United States have a positive comity agreement, which allows one party affected by anticompetitive behavior originating in the other party to request that said party address the conduct. But this agreement has never been used in practice. Under the Trump presidency, the European Commission has shown a desire to allow the United States to take the lead. For example, in the Google AdTech case, the European Commission has found that Google breached competition law. However, the US federal court also considered remedies in its case regarding the same conduct. The commission has therefore delayed a final decision on remedies, stating that it wanted to “ensure that Google puts in place an effective remedy on both sides of the Atlantic . . . It is in everyone’s interest to achieve a joint outcome, including for Google itself, and for citizens worldwide.”⁸ While in principle such an approach might lead to harmonization, and would provide the EU with political cover, it poses the risk of delaying the imposition of remedies or encouraging the EU to accept remedies that might prove ineffective in the European context.

The broader political backdrop remains challenging. Trump has challenged the independence of numerous public authorities, including the FTC—and there is a risk of the president seeking to change the direction of US digital antitrust policy in the future. On the European side, while the EU secured a trade deal with the United States without needing to change its digital antitrust or digital regulation, the European Commission’s enforcement of the DMA and competition law—both procedurally and substantively—already appears to have been influenced by fears of triggering retaliation by the United States. It is difficult to see how the EU can adopt a rigorous and independent approach while remaining dependent on the United States for its security.

These challenges suggest several lessons for competition enforcers.

The European Commission and national competition authorities should continue cooperating with the US federal agencies and strengthen their cooperation with US state attorneys general, given their important role in US digital antitrust cases.
To effectively learn from each other’s experience with remedies, and to enhance mutual learning and correct remedies when needed, competition agencies in both the EU and the United States should have a robust evidence-based assessment of how their remedies have performed.
The European Commission needs to improve its communication strategy when pursuing antitrust cases. Antitrust enforcement must be closely linked to consumer welfare, competitiveness, and economic growth. Enhancing its legitimacy can help ensure European competition enforcers withstand any political pressure.
Europe needs to better highlight how open and competitive markets foster innovation instead of protection of national champions. Tools to open competition are therefore important ways to support US and European global technological leadership.

Merger policy and innovation

The discussion on antitrust enforcement naturally leads to questions about how merger policy can also protect innovation and competition in digital markets. Both EU and US approaches to competition policy are evolving to better tackle the role of innovation in digital markets. In particular, there is growing unease that competition authorities need to improve how they approach the impacts of a merger on innovation.

Reflecting these concerns, the United States updated its merger guidelines in 2023 after a two-year process. Merger guidelines are traditionally intended to describe the FTC and DOJ practices to the public, businesses, and courts—such as setting out important questions to which the agencies seek answers during the review process, including what type of evidence they are looking for and how that evidence is typically analyzed. However, the updated guidelines have been perceived by some as a more political document and a statement of the agencies’ intent to toughen merger policy, with more mergers likely to be presumed anticompetitive and the introduction of novel theories of harm. These guidelines remain in place for now, despite changes of leadership at the DOJ and FTC.⁹

The European Commission is still in the process of updating its merger guidelines, a process that it aims to finalize in 2027. Recently, both Mario Draghi and Commission President Ursula von den Leyen have pushed for the process to speed up. Much of the debate has centered on the importance of scale. Draghi’s report on European competitiveness—often interpreted as reigniting discussion about the merits of allowing EU firms to merge to create more innovative “European champions”—also proposed an innovation defense to allow mergers that would otherwise be prohibited. While some consider the report to be misunderstood, Draghi’s subsequent speeches have contributed to the perception that he is arguing for a loosening of merger policy. However, the extent to which new guidelines will (or can) represent a significant evolution in approach is unclear.

First, in Europe, different stakeholders have vastly different objectives when they argue that innovation (and other factors such as resilience) should play a bigger role in merger review. For enforcers, taking innovation into account might imply being able to intervene in more mergers; it is difficult to argue that EU merger policy has been too lax given that only a tiny proportion of mergers have ever been prohibited. For other stakeholders, the objective of giving innovation a stronger role in merger policy is to allow more deals. It is unclear how the guidelines can promote European champions while preventing foreign competitors from engaging in similar large-scale mergers.
Second, the recommendations in Draghi’s report are modest. His report has been understood to propose relaxing EU competition law constraints on mergers of major industrial companies. In fact, he acknowledges that a dominant firm would still be precluded from making use of the innovation defense, which would make it inapplicable in almost all cases in which a merger is blocked today. It would also be accompanied by strict safeguards and investment commitments by the merging parties. If Draghi’s proposal is adopted, there might not be much difference from today’s efficiency defense, which has never changed the outcome of a merger review process in Europe (though that might be, in part, because so few mergers are challenged in the first place or because the efficiency defenses have not been clearly articulated or sufficiently convincing). Therefore, there is a significant gap between some of the political rhetoric surrounding the review and the technical reality.
Third, the EU’s existing merger guidelines have already been superseded by changes in the commission’s practices, so the urgency of a new set of guidelines can be overstated. In reality, the guidelines should not be a statement of intent but, rather, a description of current practices and approaches. This means they might not fundamentally change case-specific analysis.
Fourth, it is difficult to see how changes in merger review alone will significantly alter the EU’s innovation trajectory. In the absence of further development of the single market, and greater availability of venture capital, highly innovative European firms will remain more likely to move to the United States or be acquired by foreign companies rather than remain European.

This might mean that—despite the call for a fundamental change in approach in Europe—the EU and the United States will stay relatively aligned.

One area in which divergence remains a risk is adopting predictable approaches to assessing the impact of a merger on capabilities and incentives to innovate, particularly in relation to disruptive innovation. Competition authorities have pursued theories of harm based on how a merger might impact innovation, even in the absence of immediate impacts on price or quality in particular markets. For example, innovation and innovative capabilities (or access to assets considered essential for innovations) featured heavily in cases such as Dow-DuPont, Amazon-iRobot, Facebook-Giphy (in the UK), and Google-FitBit. However, these cases have often (but not exclusively) focused on sustaining innovation rather than disruptive innovation. Where competition authorities have taken disruptive innovation into account (such as the UK authority in Facebook-Giphy) or examined markets for research and development (as the US and EU authorities did in the Illumina/Grail merger) they were highly criticized for making the results of merger reviews unpredictable.

Authorities will need to make decisions when the evolution of markets is not fully certain. An insistence on only acting when the anticompetitive outcome is undeniable will, on the whole, lead to less competition. On one hand, this suggests authorities should be humble. Sources of disruptive innovation are hard to identify beforehand, which suggests some firms might have more vulnerable positions than static markers of market power might imply. On the other hand, if authorities take the need to protect possibilities for disruptive innovation seriously, this might help illuminate previously under-identified types of anticompetitive effects, such as mergers that stymie potentially disruptive firms even if they appear to be in an unconnected market. This might require defining markets for innovation or focusing more on firms’ capabilities, their management practices, and their strategies in merger review.¹⁰ While the outcomes might not always be predictable, EU and US authorities could work together to try to ensure more transatlantic consistency when identifying the impact of a merger on innovation and incentives to innovate. This could increase certainty about the process and framework that competition authorities will adopt.

A second area of potential conflict is whether competition authorities should seek to promote certain types of innovation over others. In line with the Trump administration’s broader deregulatory approach, US competition authorities appear to be taking an agnostic and free-market approach to this question. In contrast, European authorities have emphasized how merger control can contribute to innovation in the area of sustainability and protect incentives for green innovation.¹¹ This includes reflecting customer and government preferences for sustainable products when defining markets. For example, when the European Commission prohibited the Hyundai-Daewoo merger in 2022, it took into account the parties’ incentives to invest in lower-emission liquefied natural gas (LNG) vessels.

A third area of divergence risk relates to politicization of the merger process in both the EU and United States. More than ever, there is a perceived risk of US merger policy and practice being influenced by industry lobbying and top-down political influence. The lack of an institutionally independent competition regulator at the EU means this also remains a risk in Europe. Industry capture could happen at the level of guidelines—where there is a risk of helping today’s largest European companies rather than promoting the growth of disruptive and innovative firms—or on a case-by-case basis. There have been previous merger cases in which the formal technical analysis did not align well with the final decision reached. In this respect, updating the EU’s merger guidelines—by reducing the European Commission’s room for maneuver in response to political pressure—could provide significant cover for taking difficult decisions.

Lessons for merger review authorities include the following.

EU and US authorities should develop consistent guidelines setting out how they will assess the impacts of a merger on innovation capabilities (such as chips and computing power, skills, data, and risky and patient capital) and incentives to innovate. A pro-innovation merger control should promote the new innovators and not protect the old ones.
DG-Comp should aim to identify and adopt positive aspects of the revised US merger guidelines and US authorities’ recent practices to inform the EU’s current exercise of revising its own guidelines. For example, adopting the US approach by combining horizontal guidelines (which signal how a competition authority examines mergers between direct competitors) and vertical guidelines (which signal the approach to mergers between players at different points in the supply chain) would prove useful to ensure the European Commission thinks holistically about the impact of mergers on innovation, including in digital ecosystems in which horizontal and vertical concerns can be closely related. On the other hand, the EU guidelines still need to follow and reflect DG-COMP’s practices and should avoid becoming politically charged or signaling major changes to the EU approach.

As with antitrust remedies, competition authorities in both the EU and the United States must be honest and clear about how their merger remedies have performed, so different authorities can become better by learning from each other’s successes and mistakes. This will be especially important if there is increasing use of long-term investment commitments as a merger remedy (as in the UK with the Vodafone-O2 merger, and as recommended by Draghi). Such an approach can help ensure authorities across the Atlantic can work with each other. DG-COMP’s previous retrospective studies on remedies are an excellent starting point.

About the author

Zach Meyers is the director of research at the Centre on Regulation in Europe (CERRE). Previously the assistant director of the Centre on European Reform, Meyers has a recognized expertise in economic regulation and network industries such as telecoms, energy, payments, financial services and airports. In addition to advising in the private sector, with more than ten years’ experience as a competition and regulatory lawyer, he has consulted to governments, regulators, and multilateral institutions on competition reforms in regulated sectors.

This issue brief benefits from the insights of discussants at an online roundtable on EU-US regulatory co-operation hosted jointly by CERRE and the Atlantic Council. However, the contents of this brief are attributable only to the author.

About CERRE

Providing high-quality studies and dissemination activities, the Centre on Regulation in Europe (CERRE) is a not-for-profit think tank. It promotes robust and consistent regulation in Europe’s network, digital industry, and service sectors. CERRE’s members are regulatory authorities and companies operating in these sectors, as well as universities.

CERRE’s added value is based on

its original, multidisciplinary, and cross-sector approach covering a variety of markets (e.g., energy, mobility, sustainability, technology, media, and telecommunications);
the widely acknowledged academic credentials and policy experience of its research team and associated staff members;
its scientific independence and impartiality; and
the direct relevance and timeliness of its contributions to the policy and regulatory development process impacting network industry players and the markets for their goods and services.

CERRE’s activities include contributions to the development of norms, standards, and policy recommendations related to the regulation of service providers, to the specification of market rules, and to improvements in the management of infrastructure in a changing political, economic, technological, and social environment. CERRE’s work also aims to clarify the respective roles of market operators, governments, and regulatory authorities, as well as contribute to the enhancement of those organizations’ expertise in addressing regulatory issues of relevance to their activities.

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The Atlantic Council promotes constructive leadership and engagement in international affairs based on the Atlantic community’s central role in meeting global challenges. The council provides an essential forum for navigating the dramatic economic and political changes defining the twenty-first century by informing and galvanizing its uniquely influential network of global leaders. The Atlantic Council—through the papers it publishes, the ideas it generates, the future leaders it develops, and the communities it builds—shapes policy choices and strategies to create a more free, secure, and prosperous world.

The Atlantic Council’s Europe Center conducts research and uses real-time analysis to inform the actions and strategies of key transatlantic decision-makers in the face of great-power competition and a geopolitical rewiring of Europe. The center convenes US and European leaders to promote dialogue and make the case for the US-EU partnership as a key asset for the United States and Europe alike. The center’s Transatlantic Digital Marketplace Initiative seeks to foster greater US-EU understanding and collaboration on digital policy matters and makes recommendations for building cooperation and ameliorating differences in this fast-growing area of the transatlantic economy.

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