War on the Rocks

In the lead-up to General Secretary Xi Jinping’s September 2026 visit to the White House to discuss, among other topics, AI, U. S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent met with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng at JPMorgan Chase’s New York City offices. At the meeting, U. S. officials proposed establishing a dialogue between the United States and China, which would serve as a mechan...

Editor’s Note: This is the second article in a two-part series exploring the Golden Dome for America proposal. Please also read the first, “Golden Dome Is Technologically and Financially Infeasible.”Golden Dome is an ambitious proposal for a comprehensive, layered defense, with ground, sea, and space-based elements. It is supposed to protect the United States, its allies, and...

In spring 2026, Britain, Norway, and the United States tracked and disrupted a covert Arctic exercise off the coast of Norway involving Russian deep-sea submersibles simulating the deployment of a weapon designed to disable the two 1,400-kilometer submarine cables linking the islands of Svalbard to mainland Norway. Svalbard hosts a satellite ground station serving Europe, the...

The number of armed conflicts has increased in recent years, and researchers have warned that many wars are lasting longer and have become more difficult to end. We asked five experts if the 21st-century trend of more intractable wars is continuing, and if so, why. Read more below. Dafna H. Rand Senior Fellow at Brookings Former U. S. Assistant Secretary of State Wars are not...

How the Army makes decisions, communicates orders, coordinates forces, and keeps operations moving toward a common goal is undergoing a revolution. It’s called Next Generation Command and Control. Two of its architects — Lt. Gen. Matthew W. McFarlane, commanding general of I Corps, and Maj. Gen. Patrick J. Ellis, commanding general of the 4th Infantry Division — joined us to ...