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National Security
The Tension Between Secrecy and Innovation
One of the most harmful effects of China’s cyber espionage and from whistleblowers who publish classified information is the bureaucratic response that it triggers. Most agencies double down on secrecy. They install software to track access, monitor online behavior,...
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U.S. Force Structure Changes in Europe: Necessary, but not Sufficient
The recently announced decision to increase the U.S. military presence in Europe by sending 500 additional troops to Germany in the coming months is the right move at the right time in the right place. This announcement implements President...
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The Evolution and Escalation of the Islamic State Threat to Mozambique
When Islamist insurgents laid siege to the coastal town of Palma in gas-rich northeastern Mozambique on March 24, leaving dozens dead, including several foreigners, the story received international attention. The insurgency in Mozambique is being waged by a group...
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Building Soft Power Back Better?
The Biden administration has multiple competing priorities: COVID-19 and its economic impacts, long-ignored racial fissures, and a growing tenuous relationship with truth, reality, and trust among the populace, just to name a few. President Joseph Biden also has the...
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Jihadist Groups in Sub-Saharan Africa: Assessing the Threat
As the Biden administration surveys the litany of foreign policy challenges that exist—Iran, China, Russia, and North Korea, to name a few—counterterrorism in sub-Saharan Africa likely falls outside of its top priorities. Throughout the Trump administration, there were high-level...
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Thank You for Being a Friend: NATO, Iraq, and the Benefits of the Alliance
After a recent meeting of defense ministers in Brussels, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg announced that the Alliance would expand the size of its security training mission in Iraq, increasing troop levels from 500 to 4,000. The move comes less...
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Will U.S.-China Competition Divide South Asia Along Great Power Fault Lines?
On February 8, 2021, U.S. President Joseph Biden and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi agreed in a call to continue “close cooperation to promote a free and open Indo-Pacific.” U.S.-Indian cooperation has strengthened considerably in the past year against...
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Biden Connects NATO to the China Challenge
Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Strategy and Force Development Elbridge Colby and Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Europe and NATO Policy Ian Brzezinski discussed how the transatlantic alliance would need to pivot to cope with...
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The Intelligence Community and Open-Source Information in the Digital Age
On January 22, 2021, the New York Times reported that the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) was acquiring commercially available databases from vendors containing U.S. person location data generated by smartphone applications, and the DIA was periodically using that data...
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Trends in Terrorism: What’s on the Horizon in 2021?
The year 2020 was unprecedented in many ways. Just three days into the year, U.S. President Donald Trump ordered the assassination of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force (IRGC-QF) commander Qasem Soleimani. That news was soon eclipsed by the...
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