Nvdium94 published todayIn the days since U.S. President Donald Trump’s highly public falling out with Ukraine and growing rapprochement with Russia, Kyiv’s prospects going into the fifth winter of war look grim. The Trump administration has demanded that Ukraine suspend its attacks on Russian refineries, which have been one of Ukraine’s most
When Israelis go to the polls on October 27, much of the world will be rooting for the defeat of the country’s longtime prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Under his nearly two decades of rule, Israel has become steadily more aggressive. It has abandoned any pretense of supporting a two-state solution; started construc
On October 8, the USS Abraham Lincoln and its accompanying strike group returned to the United States after 320 days at sea. The deployment—a near record for the modern American military—had become controversial. As the group’s ships went month after month without a port call, conditions deteriorated precipitously. Sai
On October 5, the day after the first round of Brazil’s general elections, the country’s financial markets were euphoric. Brazil is struggling with high debt and low growth, and investors are eager for leaders to reduce budget deficits, deregulate, cut taxes, and perhaps even privatize state assets. After nearly four y
In 2022, when Russia launched its full-scale war in Ukraine, the Kremlin’s strategic thinking was shaped around several core ideas. It viewed the United States as its principal geopolitical rival, an adversary that had encouraged Kyiv to impose strategic defeat on Moscow. It considered Europe and NATO largely as an ext
At a time when debates about national security tend to be polarized along partisan and ideological lines, there is one thing analysts and policymakers across the political spectrum seem to agree on: the future of warfare will be determined by technology. Hypersonic missiles, quantum computing, drone swarms, and artific
Few technologies in history have matched the potential of artificial intelligence to transform the economic landscape in which they emerged. Deployed broadly and effectively, AI can make workers more efficient, enable more dynamic entrepreneurship, and lift economic growth, all of which could be necessary bulwarks agai
The war in Iran is far from the first time that U.S. policymakers have failed to appreciate the limits of American power. But the Trump administration’s use of military force against the Islamic Republic since February 28 offers a particularly glaring example of a mistake that has often characterized American strategy
From the vantage point of 2100 A.D., the year 1957 will most certainly stand in history as the year of man’s progression from a two-dimensional to a three-dimensional geography. It may well stand, also, as the point in time at which intellectual achievement forged ahead of weapons and national wealth as instruments of
The second Trump administration’s National Security Strategy declared that “the days of the United States propping up the entire world order like Atlas are over.” That sentiment has animated much of the administration’s foreign policy over the past two years, and its approach to Europe has been no exception. In 2025, t
At a meeting earlier this year, top foreign ministry officials from several European countries were asked who among them still believed that the United States would come to their defense if they were attacked. Not a single hand went up. It was a stark indication of the extent to which European governments have conclude
On July 17, an Iranian missile struck Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan, killing three American soldiers and wounding four others. The strike was unusually precise. In the weeks that followed, U.S. officials discovered that before the attack, Tehran had received high-resolution satellite images of the base that could a
The idea that the Middle East is becoming more liberal may sound counterintuitive. Nearly 50 years ago, a revolution in Iran dismantled the country’s secular order and ushered in an absolutist clerical regime grounded in Shiite fundamentalism whose battle cry was “Death to America.” The region has since been an incubat
India is in rebellion. At stake is the very future of the country’s democracy and the potential of its renewal. The mass protests that have unfolded in Delhi since July and flared again this month are nothing less than a contest over the foundations of the Indian state and whether it lives up to its constitutional comm
Ukraine is facing its most precarious moment since the early days of the war. Since late July, Russia has used its growing stockpile of ballistic missiles and a new generation of jet-powered drones to dramatically intensify its long-range attacks. It is now targeting Ukrainian population centers all over the country, w
On the morning of August 19, China’s space industry crossed a major threshold. Shortly after the Chinese aerospace company LandSpace launched a rocket in northwestern China, its booster—the part needed to thrust the rocket into orbit—successfully detached and landed back on earth. It was the first time a Chinese firm r
For months, Iran’s resilience in its war with two of the world’s most capable militaries has perplexed many politicians and confounded public expectations. Israel and the United States have hit thousands of Iranian targets, systematically destroying much of the country’s military infrastructure and killing many of its
Few people doubt that AI is among the most transformative technologies to emerge in the past century. By many measures, it is spreading faster and more widely than any innovation since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. Steam engines came into common use in the nineteenth century and electricity in the early twenti
Michael Corleone’s famous lament in The Godfather, Part III could serve as a motto for every American president of the past three decades when it comes to the Middle East: “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.” Bill Clinton promised to focus “like a laser beam” on the economy but would spend the end of
The fastest track and field athlete is no longer the Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt. In fact, it is not a person at all: it is the Chinese humanoid robot Tiangong Ultra, which in August ran 100 meters in 9.39 seconds, nearly two-tenths of a second faster than Bolt’s world-record time and more than twice as fast as its ow
The Trump administration’s attack on Canada and Mexico is cracking the foundation of the United States’ global power. Friendly relations with neighbors enhance security, promote mutual economic gain, and make it easier to handle transnational challenges. Weak neighbors export trouble. Today, Canadians perceive U.S. Pre
When it comes to Iran, the Trump administration has a decidedly dismal record. It failed to wear down the Islamic Republic with months of intense bombings. It could not bend Iran’s will at the negotiating table. Yet despite seven months of setbacks, U.S. officials believe that they have turned the page. They have imple
A year after the Trump administration negotiated an agreement to end the war in Gaza, Palestinians are still waiting for the “day after” to arrive. The October 2025 cease-fire plan freed the last remaining Israeli hostages and ostensibly ended hostilities, but Israel continues to constantly strike targets in Gaza, ofte
For the first few years of the war in Ukraine, Russia’s hybrid warfare attacks in Europe remained just below the threshold that might trigger a collective response. As the United States’ permanent representative to NATO from 2021 to 2024, I watched the campaign develop: undersea cables cut, incendiary devices hidden in
Last year, U.S. President Donald Trump told a group of African leaders that the United States would be “shifting from aid to trade.” Washington had already begun to close USAID, the world’s biggest development agency, and many U.S. allies followed suit, cutting their own aid programs in Africa. Amid the humanitarian cu
On June 3, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told the U.S. Congress that the fighting that had raged for three years in Sudan was now a “proxy war” and blamed Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) for frustrating American efforts to bring the conflict to an end. Rubio was saying out loud what many observers
In April and May, hundreds of users of the social media platform Bluesky discovered that their accounts had been hijacked and used to spread content about Ukraine. Researchers at Clemson University later attributed the campaign to the Social Design Agency, a Russian consulting firm sanctioned by the U.S. Department of
In September 2025, U.S. President Donald Trump unveiled a peace plan to end the war in Gaza, vowing it would not only rebuild the devastated territory but also usher in “eternal peace in the Middle East.” A year later, the plan has stalled. Hamas has not disarmed. Israel still controls more than 60 percent of the strip
The Brazilian presidential election, which kicks off with a first round of voting on October 4, gives citizens a choice between radically different visions of politics. Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, known as Lula, the standard-bearer of the Latin American left, seeks a fourth presidential term against Flávio Bolsonaro, th
These, it might seem, are good days for the Islamic Republic of Iran. After years of being diplomatically isolated, economically strangled, and militarily assaulted, the Iranian regime came face-to-face with its nightmare scenario—a full-blown war with Israel and Washington—and survived. The United States began bombing