Commentary

References by Pentagon officials, the think tank world, and various world leaders to autonomous weapon systems often cite a U.S. military policy requirement that doesn’t even exist. Published in 2012 and updated in 2023, Department of…

Russian forces in Ukraine are suffering casualties at more than 400,000 per year — enough to pack the house at the world’s four largest stadiums. Losses like these have been fuel for simultaneous talk of inevitable Russian defeat or victory…

Within months of the Cuban Missile Crisis, weapons designers at Los Alamos National Laboratory began engineering what would become the longest-serving and most adaptable weapon in America’s nuclear arsenal. Although it was ballistic…

Wow, what a lovely backyard! It sure was kind of that family to hoist me so high into the air so I could enjoy swaying back and forth in the breeze and taking in this beautiful view. From way up here, I can’t help but notice all the sparkly…

Panic wouldn’t help. Anger would make things worse. So, I stared out at the endless fields of northern Nigeria and thought, “I’m a pawn in their chess game. They were never rooks in mine.” In 2014, I served as an embedded advisor to…

Once more unto the breach, India struck inside Pakistan in response to a terrorist attack. Once more, the two sides escalated — again to unprecedented levels — before agreeing to a ceasefire. It is tempting to consider this latest crisis as…

Since spring 2022, Russia has been prevented from reinforcing its navy in the Black Sea by a near-antique international convention and some very contemporary Turkish politics. A ceasefire could change that. After more than three years of…

By some estimates, 60 to 70 percent of casualties in Ukraine now come from drones — cheap, disposable first-person view drones piloted from miles away. They dive into trenches, slip through windows, and snake into hatches of armored…

I’ve loved movies ever since I was a little kid. Just stepping into that dark theater, with the smell of fresh popcorn, was like being transported to a whole other world. It used to be so magical. But now I’m thinking about boycotting…

“I have come to talk to you about Europe. ‘Again,’ some might exclaim.” These were the words with which French President Emmanuel Macron, just a few months after taking office, opened his famous Sorbonne speech in September 2017. He called…