Researchers found Chinese and Russian SDKs in Android apps marketed to U.S. military users, highlighting software supply chain and enterprise privacy risks.
The post Third-Party SDKs Raise Privacy Questions for Apps Marketed to U.S. Military appeared first on TechRepublic.
Researchers found Chinese and Russian SDKs in Android apps marketed to U.S. military users, highlighting software supply chain and enterprise privacy risks.
The post Third-Party SDKs Raise Privacy Questions for Apps Marketed to U.S. Military appeared first on TechRepublic.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
In the latest twist on battlefield innovations, Ukraine has used both flying drone carriers and drone boats to send ground robots armed with weapons or explosives into battle.
The drone-assisted deployments have enabled slower wheeled robots to bypass tough terrain and Russian defenses, and to carry out an unusual robotic amphibious assault on a contested position. Such tactics also showcase the Ukrainian military’s ongoing experimentation with using drones and robots to offset a Russian military advantage in manpower while also sparing Ukrainian soldiers from making dangerous assaults.
On July 19, a Russian military Telegram channel posted a video showing a Ukrainian hexacopter drone carrying a ground robot suspended below by a cable, according to the Ukrainian government-run news platform United24. The Russian Telegram channel described the Ukrainian heavy bomber drone as deploying a four-wheeled ARK-1 robot armed with explosive anti-tank mines on the ground where it continued toward Russian military positions—and apparently generated plenty of outraged comments from pro-Kremlin social media users.
© Dmytro Smolienko/ Ukrinform/Future Publishing via Getty Images
A recent examination of hundreds of mobile apps marketed toward US military personnel found more than one in eight contained software built by companies in China, Russia, or other foreign nations, raising fresh concerns that adversary governments could harvest data revealing where service members live, work, and deploy.
According to researchers at Purdue University, the US Military Academy at West Point, and Florida International University, one popular app used by service members to rate living conditions on their own bases include code from Huawei, the Chinese telecom that US regulators flagged as a national security threat in 2020. Two others were built by Russian companies and incorporate the Russian ad service Yandex.
The largely unregulated advertising industry that tracks Americans online treats civilians and service members mostly the same—unless there is profit in telling them apart—despite evidence that exposure can reveal troop deployments, unit movements, and the routines of personnel within intelligence facilities and hardened shelters where nuclear weapons are believed to be stored.
© Tomas Ragina/Getty
America’s battlefield dominance remains unmatched, but Iraq, Afghanistan and now Iran shows that tactical success increasingly fails when military power is not matched by a coherent political strategy.
No military in modern history has possessed the technological reach, global mobility and combat capability of the United States. Yet, its greatest battlefield victories have increasingly produced some of its most difficult strategic dilemmas.
This contradiction lies at the heart of American military intervention over the past several decades. Washington has repeatedly demonstrated its capacity to defeat formidable opponents, overthrow governments and deploy troops across vast distances. But military supremacy has not always produced the stability, legitimacy or political order American policymakers sought.
Afghanistan revealed the limits of occupation and state-building, ending not in lasting transformation but in the return of the Taliban in 2021 after their initial ouster by American forces twenty years earlier. Iraq showed how removing a hostile regime could unintentionally strengthen Iran’s strategic position and deepen regional instability. Iran itself has proven resilient, with external pressure often hardening rather than weakening its strategic posture. Meanwhile, the Arabian Gulf has become an unpredictable region, where security, energy and great-power rivalry intersect with global consequences.
These cases raise a central question: why do tactical victories so often produce strategic setbacks?
The answer lies in the changing character of ‘limited war,’ in which military superiority remains decisive on the battlefield, but political endurance increasingly determines strategic outcomes.
The Post-War Pattern: Tactical Success, Strategic Frustration
The paradox at the heart of American military intervention is neither new nor uniquely American.
Since the end of the Second World War, the United States has repeatedly demonstrated an unparalleled ability to project power globally. From Korea and Vietnam to the Gulf War, Afghanistan, and Iraq, no nation has matched America’s technological sophistication, logistical reach, intelligence capabilities, or ability to sustain expeditionary operations over long distances. This record is well documented in studies published by the RAND Corporation and the U.S. Army War College Press.
Yet history demonstrates that battlefield dominance alone does not guarantee political success.
The Korean War (1950-53) ended in containment rather than reunification, while Vietnam (1965-75) exposed the limitations of overwhelming firepower against an adversary willing to absorb enormous losses in pursuit of political objectives. The Coalition victory in the 1991 Gulf War reinforced the belief that precision-guided weapons, advanced command-and-control systems, and overwhelming technological superiority had fundamentally transformed warfare.
Following the collapse of the Soviet Union (1991), many policymakers concluded that American military superiority could reshape political realities well beyond the battlefield. Historical assessments by the U.S. Department of State Office of the Historian and the U.S. Army Center of Military History trace the evolution of these campaigns and their strategic consequences.
While military force remains highly effective at defeating conventional armies, destroying infrastructure, and removing governments. It has proven considerably less effective at building legitimate political institutions that can endure after foreign forces depart. As Carl von Clausewitz argued in his classic work, On War, war is an extension of politics by other means. Military victory therefore achieves little if political objectives remain undefined, unrealistic, or ultimately unattainable.
The challenge confronting modern intervention is not one of military capability but of strategic translation. Tactical victories increasingly fail to produce durable political outcomes because the post-intervention political environment is often more complex than the military campaign itself. As scholars of strategy, such as Lawrence Freedman, and the research communities at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) have argued, the decisive challenge for modern military power is no longer winning the battle but securing a sustainable political end state.
Iraq: Breaking the Anti-Iran Bulwark
The invasion of Iraq in 2003 removed Saddam Hussein from power but also eliminated Iran’s principal regional counterweight.
What Washington saw as a decisive blow against a hostile regime became, in strategic terms, a gift to Tehran.
The collapse of Iraqi state institutions created a vacuum filled by sectarian competition, militia politics, and external influence. As Iraqi institutions weakened and political fragmentation deepened, sectarian identities grew more powerful, armed groups gained legitimacy, and the state’s monopoly on force eroded.
Iranian influence expanded through political allies, security networks, and Shia militias that embedded themselves in Iraq’s evolving political, post-Saddam order.
In an ironic twist, the U.S. intervention in Iraq was meant to reduce internal danger and violence; instead, it fostered a more favourable environment for Iran and the country’s political influence.
The United States spent enormous blood and treasure removing a regime that had contained Iran for decades. In seeking to eliminate one threat, Washington disrupted the regional balance and inadvertently strengthened another. Historically, Iraq stands not only as an example of a military campaign governed by ‘shock and awe,’ but remains a stark warning about the unintended consequences of overthrowing a state without understanding what will replace it.
The occupation of Iraq damaged U.S. credibility in the Middle East by disrupting power balances without a clear post-war strategy.
It increased uncertainty among allies, created opportunities for rivals, and enabled Iran to expand its influence, reshaping the strategic landscape and contributing to greater instability.
Afghanistan: The Limits of Military Occupation
Nowhere is this paradox of modern limited war intervention more apparent than in Afghanistan.
The United States and its allies rapidly dismantled Taliban rule following the attacks of 11 September 2001. Within months, al-Qaeda’s sanctuary had been destroyed, Taliban formations dispersed, and a new Afghan government established under international protection. Militarily, the campaign was remarkably successful. Contemporary assessments of the campaign and its objectives are documented by the U.S. Department of State Office of the Historian and the CFR.
The challenge emerged only after the battlefield had been won.
Over the next two decades, Coalition forces invested enormous resources attempting to build functioning political institutions, professional security forces, and a democratic state capable of sustaining itself. Yet legitimacy proved far more difficult to establish and sustain than military capability. Extensive investigations by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) repeatedly highlighted the disconnect between military achievements, governance reform, corruption, and institutional resilience.
Corruption, weak governance, factional politics, and ongoing insurgent pressure steadily eroded public confidence in Kabul’s authority. The human, financial and strategic costs of the intervention have been comprehensively documented by the Brown University Costs of War Project.
The Taliban understood a fundamental principle of limited war: they did not need to defeat NATO militarily, only to outlast the West’s commitment to supporting Kabul.
As domestic political support in Coalition capitals diminished, strategic patience shifted in favour of the Taliban-led insurgency. The collapse of the Afghan government in 2021 demonstrated that two decades of military success could not compensate for the absence of enduring political legitimacy. Subsequent analyses by the CFR and the SIGAR conclude that institutional fragility ultimately proved more decisive than Coalition military capability.
Afghanistan, therefore, offers a broader lesson. In modern limited wars, technologically superior powers often discover that destroying hostile forces is considerably easier than replacing the political order those forces once sustained.
The lesson from Afghanistan is not unique.
In modern conflicts, technologically advanced militaries increasingly find that battlefield success is becoming decoupled from political outcomes. This reflects a broader evolution in limited war, where endurance, legitimacy and the capacity to impose continuing costs frequently outweigh conventional military superiority.
Recent assessments by the RUSI, the CSIS and the Modern War Institute at West Point (MWI) increasingly argue that political resilience and strategic endurance have become as important as battlefield dominance in determining the outcomes of contemporary conflicts.
Conclusion: Rethinking Military Success
There is an old regional saying that, rather than killing the snake, repeated attempts to strike it often make it more dangerous.
The 2026 Iran War is the starkest test of that proposition in a generation.
The US-Israeli military campaign that began on 28 February inflicted severe damage on Iran’s nuclear and missile infrastructure and, according to multiple reports, killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Judged by the metrics Washington and Jerusalem set—degrading capability and decapitating leadership—the campaign appeared to succeed.
Yet strategic outcomes are far less straightforward.
Reporting from Reuters, the BBC, and other outlets indicated that despite the shock of the strikes, the Iranian system moved quickly to preserve continuity. The Revolutionary Guard and other coercive institutions positioned themselves as defenders of a nation under attack. This pattern aligns with longstanding scholarship on external pressure and authoritarian resilience, which shows that coercion may consolidate regimes as easily as it weakens them. Iran’s economy was battered, its proxies pressured, and its deterrent credibility damaged, but the outcome Washington most wanted to prevent—regime survival—persisted.
This is not a defence of the regime, nor an argument that the strikes were unjustified.
Rather, it is an argument that force applied without a coherent theory of political aftermath can entrench the very resilience it seeks to break.
Iran has been hit hard, but it has also adapted, hardened, and become more difficult to read strategically. That unpredictability does not stop at Iran's borders; it radiates outward, especially across the waterway connecting Iran to global markets.
The lesson from Iraq, Afghanistan, and Iran is not that military intervention should never occur, nor that the United States should retreat from its global responsibilities.
Instead, the character of limited war is evolving in ways that increasingly favour politically resilient adversaries over technologically superior expeditionary powers.
This shift has become a recurring theme in contemporary strategic analysis published by the RUSI, the CSIS, and the MWI.
Cheap autonomous systems have fundamentally altered the economics of military power.
During the Cold War, technological superiority rested upon expensive platforms fielded by a handful of industrialised states. Today, relatively inexpensive drones, AI-enabled targeting systems and commercial technologies have dramatically lowered the barriers to resistance, enabling weaker actors to impose disproportionate costs upon militarily superior opponents.
Recent assessments by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA), CSIS, and RUSI suggest that the strategic premium once attached to technological superiority is steadily being eroded.
Meanwhile, democratic powers continue to operate under political constraints imposed by public opinion, electoral cycles, international law, alliance commitments, and coalition management.
Their adversaries often face far fewer such limitations.
Victory is therefore no longer determined solely by military technology, but increasingly by which political system can sustain the contest for longer.
This observation reflects the enduring insights of Carl von Clausewitz and later strategic thinkers such as Robert Endicott Osgood, whose work Limited War: The Challenge to American Strategy (1957) emphasised the intimate relationship between military operations and political objectives.
The United States remains the world’s most capable military power.
Nothing in Iraq, Afghanistan, and now Iran diminishes that reality. These conflicts, however, reveal that military superiority alone no longer guarantees strategic success.
The ability to destroy an adversary’s military capability is no longer synonymous with the ability to shape the political environment that follows. As recent analyses by the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) and RUSI continue to argue, the decisive challenge for modern armed forces increasingly lies in translating battlefield success into enduring political outcomes.
The challenge for American policymakers is therefore not simply how to strike harder or faster, but how to ensure that military action serves coherent political objectives capable of enduring long after the shooting stops.
Great powers rarely decline because they lose battles.
More often, they decline because they mistake military victory for strategic success.
Military technology can destroy armies. It cannot, by itself, create political legitimacy.
Until strategy gives equal weight to what happens after the battlefield falls silent, even the most technologically advanced militaries will continue to confuse tactical victory with strategic success.
The Cipher Brief is committed to publishing a range of perspectives on national security issues submitted by deeply experienced national security professionals. Opinions expressed are those of the author and do not represent the views or opinions of The Cipher Brief.
Have a perspective to share based on your experience in the national security field? Send it to Editor@thecipherbrief.com for publication consideration.
Read more expert-driven national security insights, perspective and analysis in The Cipher Brief
Chinese cybersecurity firms are facing action from the country’s military, but it’s not due to product or technical failures.
The post China’s Top Cybersecurity Firms Hit by Mounting Military Procurement Bans appeared first on SecurityWeek.
For the first time in its history, the US military sent explosive-laden drone boats into combat by attacking an Iranian midget submarine and naval port. The unprecedented use of such kamikaze sea drones by the United States comes nearly a decade after Iranian and Houthi forces first demonstrated such weapons.
The US military shared a video showing three “one-way attack surface drones” exploding after approaching an Iranian midget submarine and ship maintenance facility at Iran’s Bandar Abbas Naval Base on the night of July 12. US Central Command, the US military combat command responsible for Middle East operations, described the strikes in a social media post as the “first time American forces have employed sea drones in combat operations.”
The US drone boats were able to “make a low-speed, uncontested approach” to their targets before exploding, according to USNI News, a news service from the nonprofit US Naval Institute. USNI News also identified one of the targets as an Iranian Ghadir-class midget submarine that was out of the water while being suspended from a gantry.
© US Central Command
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Bellevue, Wash.-based Pulse Space says it has received a $40 million award from the U.S. Space Force to develop technologies for laser-based power beaming and orbital tracking systems.
The startup, founded in 2022, is working on a system that would collect energy using solar arrays and send that energy via a laser beam to remote nodes in space. The technologies developed for the system could also be used to track objects in orbit and transmit data.
“This historic $40 million award is a defining moment for Pulse Space, and I am exceptionally proud of our team for making it happen,” Karl Stedman, Pulse Space’s founder and CEO, said today in a news release. “We are honored to partner with the United States Space Force to mature our laser-based technologies and are proud to share this massive step forward with our investors and shareholders. Pulse’s technical development platform is helping pave the way toward that future.”
Pulse Space was previously awarded a $1.9 million Air Force contract in support of its work on laser-based military communications systems. The company said its proposed satellite constellation would support “secure, high-bandwidth optical communication and energy delivery,” with the ability to transmit 29.7 kilowatts of power to a 3-meter (10-foot) target from 1,000 kilometers (621 miles).
The company is also on the Missile Defense Agency’s list of potential vendors for SHIELD contracts, with a ceiling of $151 billion. SHIELD — which stands for Scalable Homeland Innovative Enterprise Layered Defense — is a program that encompasses a broad range of work areas for the Pentagon’s Golden Dome missile defense initiative.
Pulse Space was one of the startups selected in 2024 for the Techstars Space Accelerator program, and last year the company partnered with Virginia-based Scout Space to work toward an in-orbit demonstration of laser power transmission.
In February, Pulse Space completed a $5.72 million seed investment round, according to Pitchbook. Its investors include Divergent Capital, GrayArch Partners, Shake and Bake Productions and Techstars.
The US military has lost dozens of Reaper drones collectively worth more than $1 billion while carrying out surveillance and attack missions over Iran. Now the Pentagon is seeking large numbers of cheaper drones that can perform such missions despite the expectation that many will be lost in combat.
In a call for industry pitches, the Defense Innovation Unit’s notice described the US military’s current reliance on drones and crewed aircraft, each costing more than $30 million, as being “unsustainable against adversaries utilizing layered defenses enabled by increasingly low-cost antiaircraft capabilities.” It envisions deploying more “cost-effective” drones to “overwhelm enemy air defenses even while experiencing numerous [drone] losses.”
That is, in practice, what Ukraine’s military has been demonstrating with its long- and mid-range strike campaign against Russian supply lines, oil refineries, and various energy or industrial targets within Russia or occupied Ukraine. The Ukrainian campaign has been overwhelming Russia’s overstretched air defense capabilities by launching hundreds of relatively inexpensive drones and missiles on a daily basis to attack targets far behind the frontlines, while continuing to damage or destroy Russia’s most sophisticated air defense systems.
© AP Photo/Chris Carlson
Author’s Note: This article is not about ‘endless wars’ as a critique of U.S. military interventions — that debate belongs elsewhere. It examines a distinct and increasingly visible pattern: how U.S. adversaries wage continuous, long-term conflict against the United States across peace and war, both below and above the threshold of open conflict. The aim is to clarify the nature of the competition we are already in.
Countering Endless Warfare and its Networks
The United States is not at peace. As I argued in Part I, the United States is already in a continuous, long-term conflict with determined adversaries who are waging warfare without crossing the threshold into open conflict. Endless Warfare is a framework for understanding how those adversaries pursue an enduring approach to erode and supplant U.S. power, influence, and global leadership over time.
Endless Warfare is not simply another label for the gray zone or cognitive warfare. Both are important elements and merit their own approaches, but Endless Warfare describes the adversary’s persistent, long-term strategy, not just the elements that enable it.
Given this operating environment, this is about far more than terminology. It is about how we understand conflict, how we achieve deterrence, how we protect decision autonomy, how we retain leverage, and, most importantly, how we disrupt the networks that fuel Endless Warfare.
What are the essential next steps?
Endless Warfare Requires a Different Strategic Mindset
Militaries are often criticized for planning to fight the last war. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was undermined by Russia’s underestimation of how much warfare had evolved since Georgia in 2008 and Crimea in 2014. The United States potentially faces that same risk today. It is important that we are prepared to fight and win the next conventional war, but there are risks in a focus on only that strategy. We must also prepare to fight and win—with the appropriate instruments of national power—the Endless Warfare being waged on the United States by its adversaries; warfare that incorporates gray zone activity, cognitive warfare, weaponized negotiations, proxies and surrogates, and other subversive networks.
This change in strategic mindset is not because of a lack of capability. The United States has considerable experience, resources, and capabilities in this space. Endless Warfare is conceptually different from conventional war—particularly given the ambiguous nature of gray-zone activity and cognitive warfare—and therefore demands a different approach.
Yet because it is a continuous state of conflict, it also requires the same level of national leadership and vision, organization, critical thinking, sense of urgency, and collaboration with allies that we apply to conventional conflict. This is achievable but will take some effort. It may require a senior White House official, such as a Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Competition, to integrate interagency action and coordinate a sustained national response to this threat.
That Deputy National Security Advisor would not replace existing responsibilities of Departments and Agencies. The role would be to ensure that strategic deterrence in the gray zone, cognitive advantage, conflict negotiations when adversaries seek to extend rather than resolve conflict, and network disruptions are integrated into a coherent and sustained national response to the threat of Endless Warfare against the United States.
Strategic Deterrence in the Gray Zone
Strategic deterrence is one component of a broader approach to countering Endless Warfare. Gray zone activity is a powerful enabler of Endless Warfare because it gives our adversaries a space to undermine the United States while avoiding armed conflict.
Our adversaries have calculated that there are more gains than risks in the gray zone and that any risks they do face are acceptable. Actions that seek to counter or defend against gray zone activity but that do not impose meaningful costs or create credible deterrence may simply reward gray zone activity.
An effective strategy for achieving strategic deterrence in the gray zone rests on deliberate preparation, clear communication, a national approach, and the resolve to change the risk calculus of our adversaries.
Deliberate preparation means collecting and analyzing information on adversary gray zone trends, capabilities, and intent before they act; routinely coordinating at the national level so roles, responsibilities, and decision paths are clear; and reorienting institutions and the interagency to maintain effective balanced capability in both conventional and gray domains.
We also must communicate clearly domestically, to our allies, and particularly to our adversaries. A simple but clear message for our adversaries: “We will see what you’re doing, we will publicly attribute it to you, and we will impose costs that exceed your gains.”
This message is credible only if it is backed by action over time. The United States must convincingly demonstrate its resolve to proactively and persistently employ national capabilities to change the risk calculus and behavior of our adversaries.
This range of national capabilities includes coordinated diplomatic and allied action, economic sanctions and restrictions, cyber operations, legal and financial disruption, public attribution, denying access to critical technologies, cognitive measures, military posture and partner capability-building and—when necessary—kinetic responses. Recent examples illustrate that imposing costs is possible.
In 2021, the United States publicly attributed the SolarWinds supply-chain compromise to Russia, expelled Russian Intelligence Officers, and imposed broad financial penalties under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.
In early 2025, the U.S. Treasury sanctioned Sichuan Juxinhe Network Technology Company and associated individuals for their role in Salt Typhoon for attacks on network infrastructure of multiple major U.S. telecommunication and internet service providers.
These were hard-earned wins for U.S. Departments and Agencies involved, but Russia and China appear to have absorbed the costs and continued their operations. Achieving strategic deterrence means that actions like these must become the norm, not the exception.
The goal of strategic deterrence in the gray zone is to shape adversary decision-making before action is taken. It means proactively shaping the environment so adversaries hesitate before they act—a critical step in disrupting the cycle of Endless Warfare.
Gaining a Cognitive Advantage
Countering the impacts of cognitive warfare is essential to countering Endless Warfare. My colleague, Austin Branch, and I argued in The Cipher Brief that it was possible—and necessary—for the U.S. to seize a 21st-century cognitive advantage.
That argument is even more urgent today given the central role of cognitive warfare in our adversaries’ strategies of Endless Warfare. Cognitive Security, at its core, is the protection of human cognition and decision autonomy—our individual and collective ability to accurately perceive global events, to trust the knowledge we have and the information we receive, and to make confident, independent decisions free from external manipulation, influence, or coercion.
Cognitive Security is also about offense—outthinking, outpacing, and outmaneuvering our adversaries in the cognitive domain.
Our adversaries should understand that their leaders, institutions, networks, proxies—and decision-making—are vulnerable to cognitive pressure and influence. The goal is to force them—not the United States—to confront the uncertainties and risks of cognitive warfare and to weaken their ability to wage Endless Warfare.
There are some positive steps at the national level.
We now have a first-ever NSC Cognitive Advantage Director, and the FY26 NDAA directs the Secretary of Defense to formally define cognitive warfare for the Department. The Department’s Strategic Capabilities Office recently launched a Cognitive Warfare Project to advance the military’s cognitive warfare capabilities. There is clearly opportunity here.
Yet, these early steps remain fragmented. In contrast, China’s United Front Work Department, Russia’s Active Measures networks, and Iran’s diverse network of surrogates reflect centralized national direction and a long-term horizon as elements of a national strategy.
In this vital process, America’s approach has to be equally well-coordinated and strategic. It is essential that these new efforts avoid bureaucratic hurdles, over-prescription that may stifle innovation, and creating silos. Our adversaries will not wait for us to catch up.
Our national narrative—America’s Story—also plays an important role. As Branch and I argued in the Cipher Brief, our national narrative is both sword and shield. It projects power, influence, and advances our interests. It tells the story of our values, history, aspirations, and view of the world. It supports confidence in our actions, our institutions, and our global commitments.
Importantly, America’s Story counters adversary narratives and actions that seek to undermine America at home and abroad. It can serve as a powerful antidote to adversary campaigns that use cognitive warfare to sustain prolonged conflict. America’s Story was built at a time when much of the world saw America as liberator, peacemaker, builder, global diplomat, and above all, a powerful symbol of sacrifice, freedom, and self-determination. The long arc of America’s Story is its strength.
The United States cannot let this national narrative get lost in episodic political turbulence—its role in countering our adversaries is too vital.
Countering Weaponized Negotiations
In the era of Endless Warfare, adversaries often use negotiations as a continuation of conflict by other means—not as instruments of resolution. Negotiations can play an outsized role in Endless Warfare even though they only occur periodically. The central challenge is distinguishing when talks aim to legitimately resolve a conflict versus when they are designed to shape its next phase.
Today, drawing lessons directly from Russia’s behavior—from Georgia to Ukraine—and from Iran, several principles emerge that can strengthen our negotiating posture when facing adversaries that practice weaponized negotiations.
Those key principles include:
No upfront concessions. Make no upfront concessions to get an adversary to the negotiating table. Such actions erode diplomatic, economic, and military leverage and can shape the entire negotiations on unfavorable terms.
Establish clear overarching objectives and non-negotiable redlines early. This preserves decision autonomy, provides a framework for decision-making, and prevents adversaries from reshaping objectives to their advantage.
Proactively counter narratives. During negotiations over Ukraine, Russia repeatedly pushed narratives, such as “Ukraine can never win” and “territory concessions are inevitable,” to shape Western perceptions of what constituted a realistic outcome. Anticipating and countering false narratives ensures negotiations are not manipulated.
Concessions must be conditions-based. Any concessions given during negotiations must be based on measurable, verifiable actions with automatic snap-back mechanisms if commitments are violated.
Be willing to walk away. The desire for any agreement should never outweigh core national security interests. Suspending or ending talks is better than enabling or accepting a settlement that resets the conflict in an adversary’s favor.
Chester Karrass put it plainly, in life you don’t get what you deserve, you get what you negotiate. This is a powerful counter to American assumptions that raw power or battlefield success will carry the day at the negotiating table.
Countering Endless Warfare Networks
These measures—deterrence, cognitive advantage, and managing weaponized negotiations—greatly improve America’s posture, but they do not by themselves disrupt Endless Warfare networks.
The ultimate goal is systematically confronting the adversary networks that pose an enduring threat to the U.S. These networks fall into two broad categories: state institutional structures and more ambiguous structures that blur the line between state and non-state activity.
Institutional networks include military organizations, intelligence services, party organizations, proxy structures, and state-directed organizations such as IRGC-QF, MSS, GRU, and FSB, as well as the specialized units responsible for assassinations and sabotage, influence operations, and cyber-attacks as a few examples.
Ambiguous networks include ghost fleets, shell and front companies, criminal organizations, illicit financial systems, logistics systems influence networks, cyber hacktivists, proxy militias, smuggling organizations, and other similar entities.
These networks are not abstract. Iran, Russia, and China employ different approaches to Endless Warfare, but each illustrates how adversaries develop and employ both institutional and ambiguous networks to achieve persistent strategic objectives over a long timeframe. Just as a few examples:
Iran’s network of proxies and surrogates, built over decades, allows Iran to project power, coerce and intimidate its neighbors, and get inside the decision space of its adversaries at relatively low cost. The IRGC is an enabler of Iran’s distributed networks with global reach.
Russia’s networks conduct cognitive warfare against the U.S. and the West and conduct sabotage, assassinations, and political coercion across Europe. Russia’s “ghost fleets” have allowed it to generate billions in revenue despite Western sanctions.
China’s Cyber networks probe and penetrate U.S. critical infrastructure to sustain access, collect information, and provide a disruption capability during a crisis. Its networks enable sophisticated influence operations inside the U.S. and the transfer of critical technologies that directly enhance its military capabilities.
Shared and overlapping networks in gray and ambiguous spaces play a critical role. Ghost fleets, front companies, terror networks, illicit financial organizations, and criminal enterprises allow adversaries to bypass sanctions, sustain operations, and reduce international pressure.
Some of these networks are visible and attributable, others are intentionally obscured and decentralized to complicate attribution and defy sovereignty, international law, and national laws, including those of the U.S. We should expect our adversaries to fiercely protect these resilient, adaptive, and self-recovering networks they have carefully developed over time, often over decades, to gain and sustain a strategic advantage.
The critical question is how the U.S. can systematically reduce the effectiveness of these networks.
To paraphrase H.L. Mencken, for every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. That is the dilemma facing the U.S. now. Overly simplistic approaches or single solutions that do not take into account the complexities of Endless Warfare and the commitment of our adversaries to that approach will consume time and resources but ultimately fail.
Countering Endless Warfare requires a sustained, network-centric strategy employing the instruments of national power—diplomatic, military, economic, technological, informational, cognitive, and kinetic—rather than a series of independent actions. This strategy consists of three mutually reinforcing lines of effort built on one foundational principle.
First, identify and prioritize the networks that pose the greatest long-term threat to the United States. There are no official estimates of this ecosystem of networks—and what constitutes a network has not been clearly defined—but Iran, Russia, and China, collectively direct or enable a very large number institutional, commercial, criminal, cyber, intelligence, influence, and proxy networks worldwide.
Second, sustain campaigns to daylight, degrade, disrupt, and impose costs on institutional networks that conduct and oversee attacks on the United States and our allies. It is unlikely that the U.S. can dismantle foreign institutional networks, but those networks can be degraded, constrained, and made costly and less effective.
Third, dismantle, disrupt, and prevent the regeneration of ambiguous networks by severing the financial, logistical, technological, and organizational systems that support them. This is not a one-time activity. Ambiguous networks are more vulnerable, but they are often adaptive and can regenerate or be replaced.
Cognitive Security and Cyber Defenses have a combined vital role to play. None of these efforts will succeed unless American citizens, business leaders, military commanders, and policy makers are less vulnerable to influence, manipulation, and coercion—preserving America’s decision autonomy—and unless governments, institutions, organizations, and critical infrastructure are less vulnerable to technological exploitation and disruption.
Summary
The concepts in this paper are difficult to neatly categorize because they describe a form of warfare that is not fully defined. As conventional warfare evolves, so do the more nuanced aspects of warfare that take place below and above the threshold of conflict and in the ambiguous space between peace and war. I offer four takeaways.
First, Endless Warfare is a distinct adversary strategy already underway by China, Russia, and Iran and should be treated as a current strategic threat—not just a future one.
Second, endless Warfare is sustained by sophisticated and interconnected networks that must become a primary target for U.S. and allied efforts.
Third, countering Endless Warfare requires a proactive, persistent, and network-centric approach backed by national-level leadership, a new framework for strategic planning, a sense of urgency, and coordinated interagency action. Is ittime to consider a senior White House official, such as a Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Competition, to integrate interagency action and coordinate a sustained national response to this threat?
Fourth, strategic deterrence in the gray zone, cognitive advantage, disciplined negotiations, and network-focused disruption are core tools of that sustained national response to make Endless Warfare increasingly ineffective, costly, and ultimately unsustainable for China, Russia, and Iran.
Endless Warfare will not end because our adversaries choose peace. It will end when it is no longer effective.
All statements of fact, opinion, or analysis expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official positions or views of the U.S. Government. Nothing in the contents should be construed as asserting or implying U.S. Government authentication of information or endorsement of the author’s views.
The Cipher Brief is committed to publishing a range of perspectives on national security issues submitted by deeply experienced national security professionals. Opinions expressed are those of the author and do not represent the views or opinions of The Cipher Brief.
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“We [the Joint Chiefs of Staff] often times in the national security decision-making process or White House meetings -- outside of the Pentagon process -- will go back and forth between military issues and political issues. And I think it's incumbent upon us to kind of stay in, you know, what the current [Joint Chiefs] Chairman [Air Force Gen. Dan] Caine describes as ‘the midfield’ in that regard. So we have to be aware of the political environment within which we're operating, but we have to be nonpartisan. And as long as we stick to addressing the military dimension of the problem, and not fall to the temptation to start participating and waxing eloquently about issues that are not in our purview, I think we can maintain that character.”
That was ret.-Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford, former-Joint Chiefs Chairman during the second Obama and first Trump administrations, speaking last Tuesday on a panel entitled Inside the Pentagon: The Chairman, Congress & Combatant Commands, as part of the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ (CSIS) 2026 Global Security Forum.
Also on the panel were ret.-Navy Adm. John Aqualino, former-Commander of Indo-Pacific Command and former-Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Texas), a one-time Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.
The panel’s hour-long discussion covered a variety of current issues and also at times provided a behind-the-scenes look at past Pentagon leaders’ thinking.
For example, Dunford said at one point, “I can't think of a time when I was participating in the National Security Council where I was dealing with a military problem. We were dealing with strategic problems that had a military dimension. And that's really important because in that capacity, you are providing advice about the military dimension and how the military dimension can best support the political objective that's been articulated by the President.”
Dunford further explained, “It's not the [Joint Chief] Chairman's role to go to the National Security Council and advocate for a particular policy that involves much more than just the military dimension. It's the Chairman's role to represent the other Joint Chiefs and provide military advice, again in a way that's integrated with all the other elements of national power to accomplish a particular objective.” And he repeated, “I think it's really important both in public and private that we be seen as advisors and not advocates.”
In Dunford’s view, discussions at the National Security Council “ought to remain private and most often they're very highly classified.” He added, “Even today, I don't feel at liberty to discuss what went on inside the National Security Council or what I specifically recommended.”
I quote these Dunford views because these days, for example. many Trump critics who disagree with the President’s decision last February to attack Iran, have wondered why no top military commander has yet to publicly voice opposition to that decision.
As Dunford explained his view, “Number one, it's the elected official who gets to decide. And number two, the best military option, in other words, the option that I might have offered that would provide the best military outcome may in fact not be the best option for the President when he looks at it from a broader strategic perspective."
He went on that his military option “may or may not be in a broader strategic context when you take into account our diplomatic, our economic interests and the other competing demands that the President may have at a given time strategically, whether they be in the security realm or elsewhere”
Dunford continued: “As I used to say, the President looks through this with a much bigger soda straw than those of us in uniform. And we need to be attentive to that in the public space and not put pressure on the Executive Branch to make a decision one way or another because of what military advice may be out there in the public domain.”
However, when Dunford went to see a Chairman of the House or Senate Armed Services Committee, he said, “Obviously you know the Legislative Branch of our government has a need to be informed about these issues and so the way I would approach it is less would I address specifically the advice I gave to the President, or again advocate a specific military option to be adopted. More often than not, what I would try to do is highlight the interdependent variables that went into the recommendation; talk about the risks; perhaps walk through each of the options that might be available from military perspective and the pros and cons of each, but then not be in a position publicly to say it should be this option or that option.”
As a former Committee Chairman, Thornberry said, “One branch [the Legislative] is responsible for raising and supporting; providing and maintaining; approving all the money, declaring war; and the other branch [the Executive] for the operations of the military. So we divide the authority. We have civilian control of the military, which is an important principle, but we make sure that it's a professional [military], nonpartisan, not taking sides.”
Thornberry also said, “It's important for Congress to hear from that professional military and to hear directly. Now, sometimes that'll need to be behind closed doors in classified sessions and some you can get franker that way, but it's not just Congress hearing. It's the American people hearing from the chairman or the combatant commanders or whoever.”
When it comes to congressional hearings, Adm. Aqualino spoke of a suggestion he had made that’s worth repeating.
He said, “I made a request of the chairman [of the Armed Services Committee] on the House side and the Senate side that said, ‘Hey, let's have a classified session first. Let me answer everything that I can in the classified space that will give you the understanding and oh, by the way, I think it'll help shape your questions for the public side.’ That ended up being very, very, I think effective both for Congress and certainly for me because it really made sure they understood where we were, why we were doing what we were doing and how it was going to deliver. And again, I thank all of the members of Congress for accepting that position because I found it very helpful.”
Actually, however, most closed-session hearings of those Armed Services Committees are still held after the public ones, although Aqualino’s approach is much more rational.
Dunford talked about how warfare has been changing.
“If you think about conflict,” he said, “this go back to the 1990s, you could assume that a conflict would be isolated to particular geographic area. It didn't involve largely sea, air, and space, and the homeland was protected. We didn't have the homeland issues…So, when you think about managing risk, you could manage risk within a specific geographic area. As the character of war began to change, threats to the homeland increased. We're now operating in sea, air, land, space, and cyberspace. We know now that there's no conflict that can be isolated to a specific geographic area.”
These days, Dunford said, “We can see the conflict in Iran and Ukraine and the global implications of those two conflicts. There needed to be somebody that could help the Secretary of Defense think about risk across all geographic combatant commands and in all of those domains and in the context of broader strategic issues like service readiness and being prepared for the conflict or crisis that that was going to come even as we were dealing with one that may be ongoing.”
Planning has also changed.
“When it came to planning,” Dunford said, “we used to have single numbered plans. You'd be familiar with those, where plans were focused on the Korea plan or the Iran plan. Well, there's again if you agree with me that there's no conflict [now] that doesn't have broad global implications. Planning needs to be done, not in a geographic combatant commander’s region, it needs to be done globally. Certainly informed by the supported combatant commander if it's a Indo-Pacom (India-Pacific) or not Pacom (Pacific) commander perspective. But while he's fighting the fight against China, there are certainly things happening globally that are going to require the prioritization and allocation of resources again back to foundationally defense of the homeland.”
Adm. Aqualino’s views of the Joint Chiefs system are worth repeating.
“When you talk about the [military] service chiefs as members of the Joint Chiefs,” he said, “that is an incredible thoughtful bunch to help the Chairman shape best military advice to remove blind spots that may be missing, and to get an incredibly broad perspective. So he [also] gets it from the Combatant Commander operational required to provide options through the lens of a single theater.”
Aqualino added, “Then the Joint Chiefs are able to put a layer on top of that and say, ‘Hey, more broadly, here's what I think it looks like globally. Here's what it looks like through the [separate military] service lens.’ And all that information informed the chairman to ultimately take the best option to the President. And then whenever I brief the [Service] Secretary, the [Joint Chiefs] Chairman was sitting in the room and sometimes we agreed, sometimes we disagreed…My advice was taken sometimes, and other times I got thanked for my interest in national defense. That's just the way it works.”
Looking back, Aqualino said, “I do think it has worked pretty well to have the [Joint Chiefs] Chairman speak for the whole military and yet not be directly in the chain-of-command. So far it has given him an objectivity where he didn't have to necessarily defend a decision, because they are political decisions, but he [the Chairman] can look at that broader picture about the state of our military, about the threats that we face, and I think those discussions for Congress to understand have been really important.”
One other point came up from former-Congressman Thornberry that also needs to be recorded, because neither Dunford nor Aqualino mentioned it.
“I got to say I think today there's a strain on between civil military relations,” Thornberry said, adding, “Part of the professionalism of the military is that it's a meritocracy. It's based on who does their job well, who can excel. And there have been some universally respected officers who've been fired recently with no explanation. And I think that leads to questions about what's really going on here. Is it still a meritocracy?”
At another point Thornberry said, “We were concerned…about using the military for law enforcement responsibilities, especially on the border during my time and now it's more broadly. I think that creates tensions, too. And so maybe this 250th anniversary is a good time for us to kind of remember, okay, what are the protections in our Constitution and in our system? And do we need to remember and maybe refresh some of them to make sure that the military continues the sort of respect that it has.”
With that background, I want to close with something Dunford pointed out early in his remarks that I think is worth consideration.
“Through most my career,” Dunford said, “polling said that about 80% of the American people had confidence in the U.S. military -- and that's 62% plus or minus today. Just in 2016 and 2017, Republicans had an over 90% favorability rating of the U.S. military. It's now somewhere in the 60s, overall about 62 percent. So we can put aside what our own personal judgments are. The data would tell us that there is a decline in the confidence U.S. military which reflects challenging times overall. We live in an incredibly hyper-partisan environment…[and] there is in many corners a declining trust in institutions broadly and one of those institutions has been the U.S. military. I think we can't be complacent about that.”
Dunford went on, “Why is it important: Number one, for recruiting and retention. The American people need to see the U.S. military as their military. It can't be partisan. Number two, when we're sending men and women in this harm's way, they have to have the support of the American people. And it can't be seen as a Republican or a Democrat decision to send people to war. These are Americans that got to be supported by the American people at home.”
We all should agree with that.
The Cipher Brief is committed to publishing a range of perspectives on national security issues submitted by deeply experienced national security professionals. Opinions expressed are those of the author and do not represent the views or opinions of The Cipher Brief.
Have a perspective to share based on your experience in the national security field? Send it to Editor@thecipherbrief.com for publication consideration.
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“I’m deeply concerned that the Presidential proposal for $350 billion mandatory funding [to be carried in a reconciliation bill and not an appropriations bill] for defense will have no Appropriations [Committee] input on the enactment. That’s not the right way to fund the Department of Defense, because it took the Department ten months to explain to Congress how they were going to spend the $150 billion in mandatory funding they received last year. It’s unacceptable, and I have no confidence the Department will do a better job responding to us in the future. There’s also no guarantee that a reconciliation bill will pass.”
That was Rep. Betty McCollum (D-Minn.) speaking last Wednesday at the House Appropriations Committee meeting that marked up the Fiscal Year 2027 Defense Appropriations Bill.
Ranking Democrat on the panel’s Defense Subcommittee, McCollum was questioning the Trump administration’s second year of seeking to put a major chunk of proposed defense spending in a reconciliation bill, where it could avoid both pre-passage congressional review and require only a majority vote for Senate approval.
It turned out that McCollum had bipartisan support for her view.
The House Appropriations Committee, in its report on the bill it later approved that day, included several examples of problems caused by using mandatory spending in a reconciliation bill, along with remedies it proposed..
I will discuss them below, along with one other critical issue – problems in U.S. Navy shipbuilding -- that the House committee also raised in its report.
Remember, however, these are just one committee’s suggestions and they still have a way to go to be adopted by the full House and Senate.
One mandatory spending example in the Committee report relates to the controversial F-35 Lightning joint fighter program.
The President’s fiscal year 2027 budget request includes $7 billion in discretionary funding for 32 F–35 aircraft and $10 billion in mandatory funding for 53 F–35s. Additional modernization funds sought for the F-35 program includes $2 billion in discretionary funding and $2.4 billion in mandatory funding.
In its report, the House Appropriations Committee said it “has serious concerns regarding how the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) bifurcated the funding request and questions the rigor that was used to split the request between discretionary and mandatory funding. For example, radars and other critical components were either funded in full on one side of the ledger
or the other, inconsistent with the total flyaway costs for discretionary and mandatory quantities.”
The Committee report continues, “Further, OMB made assumptions on program savings associated with executing a multi-year procurement contract, for which a corresponding legislative proposal has not been submitted, and applied all the savings to the discretionary request. As a result, the discretionary budget request actually procures a quantity of only six aircraft, rather than the 32 it purports to fund.”
Another Committee report example related to more than $43.4 billion for several critical munitions that is included in the $350 billion mandatory package. The committee said, “In many cases entering into MYP (multi-year procurement) contracts will require both discretionary and mandatory funds. The topic of accelerating munitions production has been a priority of the Department and Congress alike, though splitting funding into two funding processes could lead to incongruencies that will not be easily remedied.”
Splitting weapons programs between the discretionary and mandatory funding prevents Congress from considering requests as a whole, the Committee report says, thus preventing “effective oversight and program continuity and also to preserve production lines and commitments to industry partners and allies.”
The report adds that this year the House Committee is only considering the discretionary portion of the request, but will be “working with the [Defense] Department to ensure that budget justification materials submitted for fiscal year 2028 are adequate to evaluate the full-funding profile, regardless of funding mechanism or whether funding was previously enacted or provided in any future reconciliation package.”
The Appropriations panel report also directs attention to problems in the Navy’s shipbuilding program where the President’s fiscal 2027 budget request includes over $60 billion in discretionary funding for the Trump administration’s so-called Golden Fleet Initiative.
As the report puts it, “The Committee remains firm in its conviction that funding alone does not guarantee on-time delivery and is no substitute for sound program management and rigorous oversight. The Committee is concerned that an accelerated pace of investment, absent commensurate accountability, risks repeating the cost growth and schedule slips that have plagued nearly every major shipbuilding program in recent years.”
Getting specific, the report says, “The Committee is particularly troubled that the Navy’s cost-to-complete request for shipbuilding totals $2.6 billion in fiscal year 2027. The cumulative cost of these delays and overruns now rivals the price of the ships themselves, eroding the buying power of every dollar appropriated for new procurement. The Committee believes that the Navy has not consistently demonstrated the ability to identify, report, and correct adverse cost and schedule trends in a timely manner.”
For a remedy, the Committee “directs the Secretary of the Navy to submit a report to the House and Senate Defense Appropriations Subcommittees not later than 90 days after the enactment of this Act, and quarterly thereafter,” on each major shipbuilding program: to include the current delivery schedule, cost-to-complete with drivers of any growth; and actions the Navy has taken or intends to take to recover any schedule and contain cost growth.
The Committee report also directed the Government Accountability Office next year to assess any recurring cost growth and schedule delay across major Navy shipbuilding programs and the adequacy of the Navy’s response to identify and arrest such trends early.
The Committee also took aim at two specific submarine shipbuilding programs, starting with the Columbia-class which is the sea-based leg of the strategic nuclear triad, and the Virginia-class attack submarine.
According to the Committee report, “the lead Columbia-class submarine is delayed by as much as 18 months and that the Virginia-class program is delayed by as much as 42 months,” adding, “Delays of this magnitude present significant risk to strategic deterrence, erode undersea superiority, and degrade long-term operational availability and readiness.”
Because, according to the Committee report, “incremental funding in a constrained industrial environment serves only to introduce further risk,” the panel recommended “full funding for one Columbia-class submarine and two Virginia-class submarines.”
The House Committee report also took aim at the nascent Trump Guided Missile Battleship (BBG(X) program for which the President’s FY 2027 budget seeks $1 billion in advance procurement and $837 million in research and development funds.
The report says, “The Committee notes that the [Trump battleship] program has not finalized ship design, completed a formal analysis of alternatives, or established a stable set of requirements, and that the Congressional Budget Office has estimated the lead ship could cost in excess of $20 billion.”
The report added the Committee has cautioned in the past that “committing funding to construction before achieving design stability and solidifying requirements is a principal cause of the cost growth, schedule delay, and industrial base instability that afflict Navy shipbuilding.”
The Committee report also warned “that BBG(X), as a nuclear-powered surface vessel, will draw on the same finite pool of nuclear-capable shipyard capacity, skilled workforce, reactor components, and supplier base on which the Columbia-class submarine, Virginia-class submarine, and Ford-class aircraft carrier programs depend.”
Given the situation, the Committee said that “introducing a new nuclear surface combatant [the BBG(X)] without careful planning could compound those constraints and place at risk the delivery of [shipbuilding] programs the Committee considers higher priorities for the nuclear-capable industrial base.”
As a result, the Committee requested detailed reports from the Navy Secretary: One that “addresses the validated requirements and key performance parameters for the large surface combatant [BBG(X)]; the status of the analysis of alternatives and ship design, including a design maturity assessment and the criteria the Navy will use to certify design stability prior to any commitment to lead-ship construction.”
And a second report that deals with the “Navy’s strategy to design and construct BBG(X) without interfering with existing nuclear-powered shipbuilding programs,” and also “how the Navy will sequence and resource BBG(X) so as not to jeopardize the delivery schedules of those programs.”
If that were not enough, the Committee also added a section to the actual legislation, Section 8147, which, by law, would limit the Department of the Navy from using funds to contract to build the lead ship of the Trump-class battleship program, BBG(X), until the “Secretary of the Navy certifies to the congressional defense committees that the weapon systems planned for inclusion in such lead ship are at a sufficiently mature technology readiness level.”
In a column last April, I noted some weapons Trump wants to include on BBG(X) are still in development and any design for such a ship was at least two years away. I now repeat what I wrote two months ago, my bet is that none of these Trump-class battleships will ever actually be built.
The Cipher Brief is committed to publishing a range of perspectives on national security issues submitted by deeply experienced national security professionals. Opinions expressed are those of the author and do not represent the views or opinions of The Cipher Brief.
Have a perspective to share based on your experience in the national security field? Send it to Editor@thecipherbrief.com for publication consideration.
Read more expert-driven national security insights, perspective and analysis in The Cipher Brief
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