Author: thaobh.leo@gmail.com

The United States military announced Tuesday that its forces had struck and destroyed 16 of Iran’s minelayers near the Strait of Hormuz. The claim was made amid mounting concern that the Islamic Republic was preparing to deploy mines in the crucial waterway. The figure of 16 vessels comes from U.S. Central Command, which posted an accompanying 34-second video clip showing some of the strikes. President Donald Trump had given a lower figure in a social media post a short time earlier. “I am pleased to report that within the last few hours, we have hit, and completely destroyed, 10 inactive…

As artificial intelligence (AI) advances and its global impacts deepen, strategic cooperation among states and other actors becomes increasingly important. This report examines what functions such cooperation could serve and how those functions are currently implemented in other domains. The report identifies three objectives that strategic cooperation on AI could advance — improving understanding of AI capabilities and risks, promoting reliable AI development while managing proliferation, and preparing to mitigate and respond to harms — and four core functions likely to be relevant across a range of possible futures: research, standard-setting, monitoring, and verification. To ground this analysis, the report…

By Alex Raufoglu March 08, 2026 WASHINGTON — The US-Israeli military campaign against Iran has focused world attention on the Middle East. It has also fueled debate in Washington over whether the conflict could divert resources and political attention away from Ukraine more than four years into Russia’s full-scale invasion. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy voiced those concerns earlier this week, telling the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera he that he hopes “the Iranian crisis remains a limited operation,” though there’s a “risk” it won’t. But US officials and lawmakers told RFE/RL they believe the Iran campaign will remain limited in…

The U.S. Space Force has cleared a major design hurdle in its Resilient Missile Warning and Tracking program, completing the preliminary design review for the 10-satellite Epoch 2 medium Earth orbit constellation.Space Systems Command announced Sunday that System Delta 84, working with prime contractor BAE Systems Space and Mission Systems, achieved the milestone nine months after the contract award. The critical design review is scheduled for this summer.Space Systems Command awarded BAE Systems Space and Mission Systems a $1.2 billion firm-fixed-price other transaction authority contract for Epoch 2 in May 2025, the command said. First delivery is planned for fiscal…

HONOLULU—“What happens when you concentrate on one [AI] model and all of a sudden that model isn’t available to you?” That’s the reality that U.S. Indo-Pacific Command is living right now, its resources and requirements director said here Monday.The audience, after a beat, laughed cautiously at the realization that Bob Stephenson was likely referring to Anthropic’s Claude model.“It happens,” Stephenson said Monday at the Pacific Operational Science & Technology conference. “You know, I actually started thinking about this last September. We were working on a plan to be more model-neutral in our workforce. Now we’re just going faster.”More than a…

NORWAY — The ability to rapidly mobilize forces has shaped the outcomes of conflicts since the very beginning. During the opening stages of World War I, Germany’s war plans assumed that Russia would require months to mobilize its military. Instead, Russia mobilized faster than expected, forcing Germany to divert troops, weakening its advance against France and ultimately resulting in them fighting a war on multiple fronts. More than a century later, that lesson remains relevant. In today’s security environment, the difference between days and weeks can determine whether forces deter conflict or respond to crisis. Hidden within Norway’s mountains lie…

Daniel Cormier, Jon Jones’ biggest rival, expressed sympathy for the former UFC heavyweight champ after he called for his release. Jon Jones wants out of the UFC following CEO Dana White’s recent remarks at the UFC 326 post-fight press conference. After announcing the full lineup for UFC Freedom 250 at the White House in June, White dismissed the narrative that Jones was close to fighting on the card, falling Jones’ claims that he was in talks with the promotion ‘b——‘. This prompted a fiery reaction from Jones on social media, including a lengthy statement that included the former two-division champion…

In a world of intensifying great-power competition and geopolitical uncertainty, it is tempting to interpret the Trump administration’s recent foreign policy moves through the familiar lens of realpolitik. The administration itself invites this reading. U.S. President Donald Trump’s revival of the nineteenth-century Monroe Doctrine suggests a foreign policy rooted in the balance of power. So, too, do his recent strikes on Iran. The 2026 National Defense Strategy claims to support “hardnosed realism” while castigating previous administrations for clinging to “cloud-castle abstractions like the rules-based international order.” The rejection of international norms in favor of power politics appears, at first glance,…

Australian Air Force’s E-7A Wedgetail. Credit: Fasttailwind/Shutterstock.com. Australia will send both an E-7A Wedgetail aircraft and Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missiles (AMRAAMs) to the Gulf, as part of efforts to support regional partners and protect civilians. The E-7A Wedgetail will deploy for an initial four-week period to provide airborne early warning and control capabilities, according to a 10 March 2026 statement from the Department of Defence. Discover B2B Marketing That Performs Combine business intelligence and editorial excellence to reach engaged professionals across 36 leading media platforms. Find out more This decision was made in response to “requests,” the Department said,…

When regular contributor Emma Grace Brown sent me her article about avoiding burnout, I thought, “What perfect timing!” I’m currently on a hiatus from taekwondo because I am, in fact, burned out. There were many other life-related factors that led to my decision at the end of last year to take a few months off, which I may explore in a future blog post. For now, it’s the right thing for me, and I will return to what I love eventually. I’m going to take Emma’s words to heart and think about how I can approach my training differently when…