The Cipher Brief

EXPERT INTERVIEW – With an interim agreement expected as early as today between the U.S. and Iran aimed at reopening the Strait of Hormuz to shipping traffic, experts are assessing the short and long-term costs of any deal.As negotiators work on an agreement to re-implement a ceasefire and restart negotiations aimed at curbing Iran’s nuclear ambitions, there are questions about whether Iran will end up with more control over the strait than it enjoyed prior to the war and about the hidden costs

As Washington works on the historically large defense budget, there is one theme which should loom large in the budget but comparatively, will cost little. Key to our national security is countering the gray zone activity that our adversaries are waging against the US and developing our own offensive gray zone strategies. Just as we would not ignore a kinetic strike against the US, we cannot ignore the targeted gray zone attacks by adversaries but we must be careful that our approach is thoughtf

“I do think there's a lot of evidence to believe that we're accomplishing the military objectives [of the Iran War], which is destroying the Iranian Navy, the Iranian Air Force, their air defenses, the missile production capabilities, drone production capabilities. That's going well. But how that translates into strategic success has been, I think, the weakness in this entire operation and continues to be today. And I think that if we were to take a step back to February [when the Iran War start

On March 25, 2025, Israeli aircraft struck a set of Syrian airfields. The targets were not Syrian assets, instead they were the sites Turkey had surveyed for planned forward military bases. Ankara quietly shelved the deployment.That is what the Israel-Turkey rivalry looks like when it is working as designed: a NATO member and a US major non-NATO ally maneuvering against each other in a third country, close enough to require a deconfliction hotline, disciplined enough that neither has yet acknowl

The Iranian leadership appears to be intent on demonstrating its defiance and courage in the face of American force while also humiliating the “most powerful man in the world.”“Counting Coup, or striking an enemy, was the highest honor earned by warriors participating in the intertribal wars of the Great Plains. Key to a man’s success in Plains combat was demonstrating his own courage by proving superiority over his opponent and, in a competitive sense, over his own comrades.Killing was a part o

More and more people are using AI like a search engine – 42 percent of U.S. adults now use AI chatbots to search for information – and that shift is exposing a structural vulnerability that adversaries are exploiting to seed propaganda. In practical terms, this is a problem of Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) – the deliberate effort to shape digital content so that AI chatbots absorb and repeat it.The research so far points to data voids — the thinly covered topics where there isn't much cre

America’s critical technology, maritime, infrastructure, and advanced manufacturing base is one of the clearest places where tax incentives, private capital, and national security should meet. We already know this model can work. Opportunity Zones helped drive billions of dollars into real estate, community development, and designated investment areas by giving investors a reason to move capital into places that policy makers wanted to support.Now we should apply that same logic to the sectors t

In our previous article, we argued that overwhelming military superiority no longer guarantees strategic success.Today, military and political outcomes have become increasingly disconnected.As Carl von Clausewitz observed, war is fought to achieve political objectives, with military force only one instrument among many in statecraft.Modern professional militaries are exceptionally proficient at identifying and destroying adversary military capabilities. Yet, they remain far less able to reshape

North Korea is strategically closer to Russia and China than any time since the Korean War, while the U.S. does nothing to challenge the growing power of the Axis of Authoritarians (China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea). The irony is that North Korea has, since 1994, wanted a normal relationship with the U.S., yet the U.S. appears incapable of addressing the North Korean nuclear threat.On July 19, 2026, North Korean Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Mosco

For US allies, the combination of geopolitics, ever-expanding risk surface and an unsustainable dependence on hyperscale cloud providers has created significant excitement about the potential value of AI data centers and sovereign digital infrastructure. Many of those nations and critical infrastructure owners are now starting to realize that the token, not the data centre, is the atomic unit of AI value. Whoever prices the token actually controls the economics and value creation of every AI-dep

“You sir [Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth] are the failure. Not the men and women [in military service] who are on that front line [in the Middle East]. Not the men and women who hold up their honor with distinction. But if there's a lack of a winning strategy [for the Iran War by the Trump administration], they're in harm's way. Their leaders have failed them! And that's what's happening. We have political leadership. You don't have a strategy. You don't have a long-term plan to actually win thi

The future of disinformation is no longer about creating better content. It is about teaching machines what to retrieve, summarize and recommend. In the AI era, the editor matters more than the article.A story no longer has to trend. It has to be retrieved when a large language model (LLM) constructs the answer. The most important audience in the information environment is no longer human. If an AI assistant becomes the primary gateway to information, influencing what it retrieves becomes more v

Recent statements from President Trump indicate he is prepared to continue, or escalate, U.S. military strikes while simultaneously signaling he is open to continued negotiations. Some would see this as a reasonable offer of carrot or stick. But, having lost scores of ships, missiles, and military production facilities, U.S. actions still depend on what Iran does. This is allowing the regime leadership to control the pace of the conflict. How is this possible?By his own words, President Trump is

Editor’s note- Russia's war in Ukraine has fundamentally changed the character of warfare, proving that autonomous and attritable drones are no longer supporting tools but have become a decisive instrument of combat. In this provocative essay, co-authors Xen & Matthew Creedican argue that the United States must abandon legacy assumptions and adopt an entirely new military doctrine, force structure, and industrial strategy built for the age of autonomous warfare. (Xen is a former US Special Opera

“This is not at all a strategy-driven [FY 2027 defense] budget. This is a budget-driven budget. If you look at the Truth Social posts by the President [Trump] and the statements of the people around him, he [President Trump] makes very clear that this budget was driven by a budget number, a budget target, an arbitrary level that was set based on five percent of last year's GDP…They set this arbitrary level and then at relatively the last minute in the budget development process the [Defense] Dep

The choreography in Ankara last week was impressive, even by Recep Tayyip Erdogan's standards. Cannons fired, mounted honor guards paraded, and jets flew overhead trailing red, white, and blue smoke as Donald Trump arrived for the NATO summit. By the time the two leaders sat down together, the American President was already telling reporters that Turkey has been "much more loyal" than other allies, and that reinstating Ankara into the F-35 program is "certainly something we will consider." He we

The next 9/11 is unlikely to be another terrorist attack of equivalent scale nor a cyber-attack nor even another pandemic. The next global shock may be the use of nuclear weapons assisted by the more casual attitudes of less responsible world leaders and the lack of popular understanding and fear.Journalists around the world are already working on their articles for the 25th anniversary of 9/11 this autumn. Most assume that the focus should be on Afghanistan and the renewed threat there from ISI

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

The next Arsenal of Democracy will be built as much by investors, entrepreneurs, and operators as by government.Cold War 2.0 is not coming, it’s already here. This version will not be fought only with tanks, missiles, ships, and proxy armies. Those still matter, but much of the real competition is taking place through capital markets, technology, critical minerals, supply chains, ports, telecommunications, manufacturing, energy, intellectual property, and information.Put simply, much of the mode

The Department of War has just executed the most ambitious acquisition reform in six decades. It scrapped JCIDS — the requirements process that ossified innovation for a generation; replaced program offices with portfolio executives, and built a Warfighting Acquisition System designed for speed. The changes deliver on years of reform proposals. They also risk repeating a costly mistake of the post-9/11 wars: chasing evolving threats with rapid fixes while no one is responsible for understanding