Great to talk about the past, present & future of proxy warfare, authoritarian military coordination & military experimentation—from the Spanish Civil War to the war in Ukraine—with our Dutch allies @hcss.bsky.social (especially the same week their F35s shot down marauding Russian drones)

Looking forward to spending some time over the next few weeks engaging with friends & colleagues across the pond. On September 11, I'll be giving a talk at @hcss.bsky.social entitled A “Little World War”: Lessons and Insights from the Spanish Civil War for Contemporary Planners. (1/3)

I just received my first copy of the book!

@stevenerlanger.bsky.social on Europe, the US and security guarantees with my take in the @nytimes.com www.nytimes.com/2025/08/19/w...

The debate about acquiring nuclear weapons in Japan and South Korea is increasingly coming into the mainstream. www.reuters.com/investigatio...

“South Korea &Australia could probably afford to debt-finance any increase to 3.5% into at least the late 2030s without raising taxes, cutting spending or going into debt distress.” Nuanced, balanced piece on the fraught politics of Asian defense spending. economist.com/asia/2025/08...

Fascinating piece on the dark—and largely underexplored—history of tsarist imperialism in Alaska

In his lunch with Trump in June, “Munir essentially offered Pakistan as a trusted back channel between the US and its adversaries Iran and China.”

After a very long hiatus, Iron Imperator will finally be available in kindle format again on Amazon at the end of the month: www.amazon.com/Iron-Imperat...

“Ukraine’s battlefield reality rewards improvisation, rapid decisions, & decentralized execution. As one brigade commander noted about his unit receiving staff training in a SAG-U report: “We appreciate the instruction, but we plan our fights in 3 hours, not 3 days. mwi.westpoint.edu/learn-or-los...

"At the heart of the proposal was an innovative concept: fitting compact, side-mounted rocket boosters to small or medium-sized drones so they can perform instantaneous, high-G maneuvers in the final seconds before a missile impact."

It took a while, but my RAND profile page is now properly up, with my publications since I joined the organization. More soon to come—most notably on the interaction between AI and nuclear issues. www.rand.org/about/people...

"The number of suspected Russian sabotage operations in Europe almost quadrupled between 2023 and 2024, with more than 30 incidents recorded last year." www.economist.com/graphic-deta...

Entertaining monster thread on Thucydides by the indefatigable and unsparing Neville Morley.

South Korea, with its industrial brawn & efficient mass production techniques, has a lot to offer the US's undersized & overstretched shipbuilding industry, as two of my @rand.org colleagues noted in May. It's past time to leverage allied capacity. www.rand.org/pubs/comment...

Due to a rift between my grandfather and his father, I never knew much about my great-great grandfather E.A. Sandford Fawcett’s life & role during WWI. Rooting around in the National Archives, my brother has made some remarkable discoveries (1/3)

"The US cannot sell any Virginia-class nuclear submarines to Australia without doubling its production rate, because it is making too few for its own defence, the navy’s nominee for chief of operations has told Congress." www.theguardian.com/world/2025/j...

"DPRK troops are learning about combined arms warfare and the operation of strike & reconnaissance drones, EW systems, & other technologies. Moscow has helped upgrade North Korea’s KN-23 ballistic missiles, which have since targeted Ukrainian urban centers." www.theguardian.com/world/2025/j...

Best coverage I've seen thus far on the behind-the-scenes divisions and politicking that led to the US-EU trade deal: www.ft.com/content/85d5...

My best guess is this is just the end of the beginning. Both the EU and US will take opposite lessons from this. For the EU, it’s embarrassing, proves the need to stand up for itself. It discredits appeasers and empowers hardliners. For the US, it shows EU weak and will fold. 1/

Since joining RAND, I've been fortunate to be part of its Geopolitics of AGI initiative, a multidisciplinary team of economists, technologists, political scientists & philosophers (among others),all grappling with one of the most fundamental questions of our time-the potential emergence of AGI (1/3)

Making sense of the AI revolution | @irehman.bsky.social engelsbergideas.com/essays/makin...

More cutting-edge, timely work from RAND colleagues on Russia's perceptions of the British and French nuclear deterrents. www.rand.org/pubs/researc...

"The consultations initiated by the two countries don’t aim for anything rivaling Germany’s nuclear-sharing agreement with the U.S.(...) While permanently stationing French warheads in Germany isn’t ruled out, it isn’t likely, at least in the short run." www.wsj.com/world/europe...

"When China hit back by imposing strict controls on exports of rare earths, Europe was caught in the crossfire. “Why aren’t we in Europe getting any gallium, if the goal is to hit the U.S.?” asked Groothuis." Interesting piece. www.politico.eu/article/eu-c...

An excellent review by @peterdombrowski.bsky.social of an excellent book on British grand strategy by @wdjames.bsky.social networks.h-net.org/group/discus...

More evidence that US efforts to coerce China in a Taiwan conflict by closing Straits of Malacca unlikely to be successful www.wsj.com/world/china/...

"You might disperse 1,000,000 men over these immense areas & yet only provide more prey to the dominant Power. On the other hand, these conditions will be reversed when the balance of sea power and air power changes.." Churchill discussing the dire situation in the Asian theater in early 1942.

"The highest-rated language for attractiveness? Despite the supposed allure (at least among Anglophones) of French and Italian, it was Tok Pisin, an English creole spoken in Papua New Guinea. The lowest? Chechen." www.economist.com/graphic-deta...

Australian friends--what would be the best book on the evolution of Australia's threat perceptions during the interwar years?

In addition to 49 Abrams tanks, Australia will also deploy a Wedgetail to protect aid corridors to Ukraine. Time for Europeans to think about what they would do to support Australian, Japanese & Korean friends, should a major military conflagration erupt in Asia. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/j...

The EU unveiled “one of its strongest” packages of sanctions against Russia over the war in Ukraine, with measures that include targeting Rosneft’s refinery operations in India and restricting refined oil imports produced from Russian crude by third countries www.thehindu.com/business/Ind...

Sully and early modern Western Europeans on seventeenth century Russia. I will confess this was a fun section to write. warontherocks.com/2025/07/towa...

"Australia’s maritime domain, about 8.2 million square kms, actually exceeds its landmass (...)Australia holds barely 50 days of refined fuel;a cut-off would paralyze transport" Fascinating debate underway in Oz on some of its most fundamental national security questions www.afr.com/policy/forei...

"This was a strategy which relied upon burying their opponents under a weight of artillery fire & airpower, which recognized that material could be replaced but men could not, & which let mechanization rather than raw numbers play a decisive role." Excellent piece engelsbergideas.com/essays/logis...

The year was 1610. The king was killed. The war was called off. The design was never finished. warontherocks.com/20...

The year was 1610. The king was killed. The war was called off. The design was never finished. warontherocks.com/20...

Buried in the past is a vision for Europe that was never put to the test. Its echoes are getting harder to ignore. warontherocks.com/20...

From the current issue of @tnsr.org: Anderson and Press on war and escalation in Korea, @jcaverley.bsky.social on Chinese control of Taiwan, @richardmaass.bsky.social on legal deterrence, Lonergan and Snyder on military culture, and Herb Lin on AI and nuclear weapons tnsr.org/latest-print...

Who was Sully? Why was this grizzled warrior & early seventeenth century statesman admired by figures ranging from Kant to Tsar Alexander I & Winston Churchill? Why was his vision of European unity so influential over the centuries? And what insights can it provide us today? (1/9)

Good to see this amount of strategically-minded cooperation and general momentum in Franco-British defense ties. It’s been a long time coming. breakingdefense.com/2025/07/fran...

Terrific piece on the Battle of Cannae, which was studied and dissected by commanders and strategists ranging from Von Schlieffen to J.F.C Fuller and George S. Patton, but which is now depressingly absent from most security studies curricula.

"China has more capacity to generate electricity than the US and the EU combined. China’s massive investment in electrification has positioned the country for success in a key front in its competition with Washington: AI." www.foreignaffairs.com/united-state...

I have a piece out with Engelsberg Ideas on Russia-Iran relations: some history, and a reflection on Putin's current dilemma.

Happy Canada Day to the finest of allies. 🇨🇦 www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/discover...

Will the race for advanced artificial intelligence (AI) increase the likelihood of preventive war? Check out this incisive and insightful working paper from my RAND colleagues Zachary Burdette & Hiwot Demelash www.rand.org/pubs/working...

Good explainer of why conscription works in Finland and may not elsewhere by @alanderminna.bsky.social. I would add to the “social contract” analysis that it is seen in Finland’s education, work culture and child services. Imperfect though they are there is a sense we all need each other.

Terrific weekend workshop on the lessons from WWII campaigns in the Indo-Pacific for contemporary defense planners. Many thanks to Aaron MacLean & Dan Blumenthal for the invite. (I discussed the fall of Singapore)

"Over 8 decades of leadership born of gratitude from a destroyed Europe, generations of 🇺🇸 officials have gotten used to European concessions to U.S. priorities. Now, they will have to get better at dealmaking & compromise." Smart piece by Celeste Wallander: www.foreignaffairs.com/europe/bewar...

Video of the event now available here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1Kf...