The Cipher Brief

OPINION — Five weeks into the US-Israeli war against Iran, the immediate military picture — decapitation strikes, missile exchanges, and the grinding attrition of Iranian launch capacity — dominates headlines. But the more consequential story is playing out in the war’s cascading second- and third-order effects: the economic shock reverberating through global energy and food systems, the hardening of the Iranian regime, the fracturing of alliance structures Washington has depended on for eight d

Four weeks into Operation Epic Fury, with airstrikes having killed a sitting supreme leader, wiped out scores of top military and intelligence commanders, and significantly degraded Iran’s missile arsenal and naval capacity, Washington is confronting a conclusion that was reached by its own intelligence community before the first bomb fell: the Islamic Republic is not going anywhere.A National Intelligence Council assessment completed in February concluded that neither limited airstrikes nor a l

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OPINION — “The use cases that help to drive the research agenda can come from a variety of different settings…We need to acknowledge that it's okay for those use cases to come from the Department of War (DoW) and Intelligence Community (IC). It's our responsibility to be able to help put the best minds here in the U.S., the best talent here in the U.S., to help unlock some of that research and innovation. And then it's up to our colleagues at DoW and the IC, whom we collaborate with, to harness

OPINION — Strategic intelligence, usually perceived as intelligence supporting the formulation of strategy, has always had limited influence over national security decisions. Leaders in democratic countries, let alone in authoritarian ones, have their own ideological views of the world, and their own vision of ways to shape the world. They do not rely only on their intelligence agencies for sense-making of the strategic environment. But in the cases of the US and Israel, the demand for strategic

OPINION — While the war has yet to conclude, we have enough information to create a preliminary net assessment of its effects on U.S. security and prosperity. Spoiler alert: the war is on track to be a net negative for Americans.Instead of focusing on variously articulated war aims, this assessment strives to assess a selected but broader range, admittedly unscientifically derived, of U.S. interests. This scorecard is designed to simply show whether these interests have improved (↑), declined (↓

OPINION — Russia and China are certainly concerned about the desperate state of Iran’s regime, an invaluable transactional partner to both countries. Yet they are also working to secure more strategic gains at America’s expense. Both likely prefer—and are enabling—a drawn out, grinding, and unpopular U.S.-led war that strains U.S. military reserves, alliances, global influence, and deterrence. Their shared goal is to turn successful U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran into a strategic and costly se

OPINION – The Cipher Brief broke new ground when it published my piece addressing scams as a national security issue in December 2023. Two years later, there is broad consensus that transnational criminals are attacking our citizens and businesses at unprecedented scale, and the White House has responded with a new Executive Order to combat the surge in cybercrime. It is time to raise our defenses, and the Intelligence Community has an important role to play. The lessons gained from the battle

OPINION – Economic insulation is no longer guaranteed by geography. Australia is nevertheless very vulnerable to geopolitical unrest in the Middle East despite its distance from the region, especially through international energy markets. The recent escalation between Iran and important regional players has once again shown how swiftly economic effects from the Gulf War can spread across continents. Australian consumers, businesses, and governments are facing a well-known but growing reality: di

OPINION — The countries that get held up as models for this kind of US led attack are worth looking at closely, because they’re instructive in the wrong direction.Iraq fell in twenty-one days in 2003, but Saddam Hussein was running a hollow state. His military had been gutted by a decade of sanctions, the 1991 Gulf War, and the no-fly zones. There was no grassroots ideological loyalty to the man — people obeyed out of fear, not faith. The moment the fear lifted, the structure dissolved. What fol

What U.S. national security interest binds Greenland, Argentina, the Congo, and the Cook Islands? What was the impetus for the recent “strategic resilience” bill in Congress? And as Washington retreats from many global alliances, what’s the issue driving a U.S. push for closer ties with more than 50 nations?The answer to all three questions involves critical minerals – integral elements in everything from smartphones to cars to major weapons systems, and an issue that has surged in strategic imp

THE BLUF: The January 3rd Operation Absolute Resolve ousted Venezuelan Dictator Nicholas Maduro but the full consequences of the US operation continue to play out. With that move, the subsequent Shield of America’s coalition, and apparent blockade of Cuba, the Trump administration has made one message clear to the world and that is that the US is pushing back on adversaries’ influence in the western hemisphere. This is a vast change from the last twenty or so years where we watched US influence

OPINION — Iran is the right place to start. Not because it is the most sophisticated adversary in disinformation—but because it is the most instructive. It has built a working infrastructure. It is using it in a live conflict. And it is showing us exactly what AI will make possible over the next five years.This is not a future problem. The architecture is already under construction.Within hours of the February 28, 2026 U.S.-Israeli strikes, AI-generated images of a burning USS Abraham Lincoln we

OPINION — For thirty years, American wars have contained a quiet assumption: that the skies were uncontested. From Grenada and Panama, through Desert Storm, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya - the US could reliably achieve air superiority very quickly, almost a preordained fighting condition. Operation Epic Fury, however, has challenged that assumption, marking the first time in a generation the US has been forced to establish air superiority. And though air superiority was achieved over Iran in less

OPINION — “Nuclear facilities on both [the Iranian and Israeli] sides have been targeted. That’s where we are in this war, and that’s how far it’s escalated. If a nuclear reactor like [Iran’s] Bushehr [nuclear power plant] were hit there’s a significant risk of a meltdown and leaks of extremely dangerous radioactive materials that would affect all countries in the [Middle East] region, and, of course millions of people including Americans and American service members.”That was Rep. Joaquin Castr

Executive SummarySince President Xi Jinping's 2013 directive to "tell the story of China well" (讲好中国古事), the People's Republic of China has developed a systematic thirteen-year strategy treating "discourse power" (话语权) as a core component of Comprehensive National Power (CNP). This approach has enabled measurable influence gains, demonstrating that narrative power is not supplementary propaganda but a strategic weapon comparable to hard power.Introduction‘Chinamaxxing’ is a 2026 viral trend wher

KREMLIN FILES: A brush of a hand against a park bench with chalk; or, a piece of electrical tape left on a mailbox. Sometimes it’s a coded phrase buried in a routine email with an encrypted picture. This is what Russian intelligence tradecraft looks like: subtle, disciplined, and built on signals most people would never notice. With the campaign of Russian hybrid war taking place across the European continent, it is more important than ever for NATO’s intelligence services and the general public

For roughly two weeks, the Karachi, a Pakistani-flagged Aframax tanker loaded with crude at Das Island in Abu Dhabi, sat waiting for a signal that never came through official channels. When it finally moved, it did not take the standard shipping lane.It hugged the Iranian coast, threading through the narrow gap between the islands of Larak and Qeshm, a route mariners are normally advised against, before tracking out into the Gulf of Oman. The tanker’s AIS transponder was broadcasting throughout,

OPINION — The White House is making a significant effort toward putting the nation’s cyber house in order. A newly released National Cyber Strategy represents a big step in the right direction for U.S. national security policy — advocating for the aggressive defense of our national infrastructure.While the strategy includes important goals for the administration — streamlining regulation, developing the cyber workforce, defending federal networks, and partnering with the private sector — how the

The countries that get held up as models for this kind of US led attack are worth looking at closely, because they’re instructive in the wrong direction.Iraq fell in twenty-one days in 2003, but Saddam Hussein was running a hollow state. His military had been gutted by a decade of sanctions, the 1991 Gulf War, and the no-fly zones. There was no grassroots ideological loyalty to the man — people obeyed out of fear, not faith. The moment the fear lifted, the structure dissolved. What followed was