Trending Now
We have updated our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use for Eurasia Group and its affiliates, including GZERO Media, to clarify the types of data we collect, how we collect it, how we use data and with whom we share data. By using our website you consent to our Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy, including the transfer of your personal data to the United States from your country of residence, and our use of cookies described in our Cookie Policy.
{{ subpage.title }}
Police officers clash with a supporter of former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan during a protest outside Federal Judicial Complex in Islamabad, Pakistan March 18, 2023.
Hard Numbers: Mass political jailing in Pakistan, Musk funding Trump even as they feuded, Russia claims win in eastern Ukraine, Peruvian utility workers find 1,000-year-old remains
108: Pakistan’s anti-terrorism court jailed 108 members of former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), for protesting Khan’s arrest in 2023. The cricketer-turned-politician was arrested on corruption charges after running afoul of Pakistan’s military, who have historically dominated the country’s politics.
$15 million: Tesla owner Elon Musk donated $15 million in late June to a trio of Republican campaign committees – including a super PAC that backs President Donald Trump – even as he was publicly feuding with the president and threatening to launch a new political party.
16: After a 16-month battle, Russia claims it has captured the strategic town of Chasiv Yar in eastern Ukraine. Kyiv denies the report, but a Russian military unit posted a video showing a paratrooper raising a Russian flag there. Moscow has been slowly but steadily gaining ground in Eastern Ukraine for months, although at a staggeringly high cost in manpower and equipment
1,000: Utility workers in Lima, Peru, were busy digging underground to expand the country’s gas networks on Thursday, when they came across a pair of pre-Incan tombs, one of which contained the remains of a 1,000-year-old person wrapped in a torn bundle sitting with their legs against their chest. The other tomb was empty.
A new era of space defense
Listen: For many of us, the idea of a space-based arm of the military calls to mind images from science fiction. But the real-life world of space defense has become increasingly integral to military operations on land, at sea, and in the air. In this episode of Next Giant Leap, hosts Mike Massimino and Mike Greenley explore the world of space military technology. Guests Major General (Ret.) Kim Crider formerly of the United States Space Force, and Brigadier-General Chris Horner of the Canadian Space Division walk us through the many innovations in this fascinating arena, and attempt to answer one crucial question: how do you secure a domain with no borders?
Next Giant Leap, hosted by MDA Space CEO Mike Greenley and former NASA astronaut Mike Massimino, is a podcast series that explores how business and innovation are transforming space—and life on Earth. From national security to military technology to medical discoveries, the two Mikes talk to leading experts about the risks, opportunities, and big questions of the new Space Age.
View of what state media KCNA reported was a test-firing of the weapons system of the new "Choe Hyon-class" warship, in this picture released on April 30, 2025, by the Korean Central News Agency.
The new global arms race: who’s buying, who’s selling, what’s at stake
Welcome to the new global arms race: faster, smarter, more dangerous and more expensive than ever. In 2024, world military spending surged to a record $2.7 trillion, the steepest annual increase since the Cold War's end, driven largely by European, Asian and Middle Eastern nations.
Who's buying?
Faced with threats from Russia, Europe has ramped up defense budgets, with Poland's spending growing by 31% to $38 billion and Sweden’s by 34% to $12 billion in its first year of NATO membership. Germany increased military expenditure by 28% to $88.5 billion, making it the fourth-largest spender globally and rearming the nation that precipitated the two major world wars of the last century.
In the Middle East, Israel's military spending soared by 65% per cent to $46.5 billion, the largest annual rise since 1967, amid its war with Hamas in Gaza and conflict with Hezbollah in South Lebanon. In Asia, China spent 7% more on its military in 2024, adding an estimated $314 billion, raising fears of an imminent operation against Taiwan, which boosted its military spending by 1.8% in 2024 to $16.5 billion. Fellow Asia-Pacific power Japan saw its military budget rise by 21% to $55.3 billion, its largest annual increase since 1952.
Who's selling?
Traditional arms exporters like the United States, France, Russia, China, and Germany continue to dominate the market. However, emerging players such as India, Turkey, and Israel are increasing their share. Notably, Israel's defense exports reached a record $14.8 billion in 2024, with Europe accounting for 54% of sales, up from 35% the previous year.
What’s on the wish list?
Today’s arms race is not just about quantity, but technology. Nations are investing heavily in next-generation weapons, including drones, hypersonic missiles, artificial intelligence, cyber capabilities, and space-based systems.
In the US, President Donald Trump’s desire for a “Golden Dome” missile defence system akin to Israel’s “Iron Dome” would add $175 billion to Washington’s arms budget over the next three years. It would also require the cooperation of neighboring Canada, at a price of $61 billion, or 51st statehood – which Prime Minister Mark Carney has made clear is not on the table.
Russia’s recent announcement that it is equipping Belarus with antiballistic Oreshnik missiles capable of striking all of Europe has upped the need for missile defence systems on the continent. The United States, China, France, and Germany have also invested in electromagnetic railguns that shoot projectiles without gunpowder; last year, Japan became the first country to test one at sea.
Strategic implications
All this warmongering could deal a death blow to arms control agreements. The New START treaty between the US and Russia is set to expire in February 2026, with little hope for renewal. It could also see new theatres of war emerge: in the Asia Pacific around Taiwan, in Europe in countries bordering Ukraine, and in cyberspace, through the use of disinformation and propaganda campaigns. And all that military spending will put a dent in national budgets, possibly requiring cuts to social benefits, increased debt, or fewer government services - which won’t make voters happy, and could contribute to political instability.
Indian paramilitary soldiers patrol along a road in Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir, on April 29, 2025.
India and Pakistan inch toward a major clash
Nerves are fraught throughout Pakistan after authorities said Wednesday they have “credible intelligence” that India plans to launch military strikes on its soil by Friday, fueling fears of an outright clash between the two nuclear-armed archrivals. Troops from both sides have been exchanging fire in the disputed territory of Kashmir since a terrorist attack in the Indian-controlled section killed 26 civilians last Tuesday. Both China and the US are calling for restraint.
Tensions are spiraling rapidly. India closed its airspace to Pakistan on Wednesday and ordered nearly all Pakistani citizens to leave the country last week. Pakistan – while denying any involvement in the attacks – also canceled visas last week for most Indian citizens in retaliation. The scenes of rapid flight evoked painful memories of the 1947 Partition when Hindus in Pakistan and Muslims in India fled bloody ethnic massacres in the newly formed nations.
How bad could it get? The two countries have had two major wars, in 1965 and 1971, both of which India won, in the latter case quite decisively. In the ensuing decades, however, India has utterly outstripped Pakistan economically, militarily, and diplomatically, which means that Islamabad’s chances of prevailing in a conventional confrontation are very slim.
The balance of power shifted nonetheless when Pakistan began developing nuclear weapons in 1972 to match the India program begun in 1967. This has prevented a full-scale attack ever since. When the two sides went to war in 1999, hostilities lasted just over two months and were geographically limited to the Himalayas. If New Delhi should be foolish enough to existentially threaten its neighbor, it raises the grim – albeit unlikely – prospect of a nuclear exchange.
We’re watching for a limited engagement, but we’re far from sanguine about the risks.
The Israeli Air Force launched an airstrike on Thursday, targeting a building in the Mashrou Dummar area of Damascus. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant confirmed Israel's responsibility for the attack, which resulted in one fatality.
Israel strikes Syria to warn Turkey
As we wrote in February, Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has big plans for Syria. Erdogan’s government was a crucial backer of the HTS militia, an Islamist rebel group that ousted longtime Syrian strongman Bashar Assad in December, and it now wants Turkey’s military to take over some air bases on Syrian territory in exchange for Turkish training of Syria’s new army.
This, Erdogan hopes, will allow Turkey to greatly expand its regional influence, return many of the millions of Syrian refugees still living inside Turkey back home, and clamp down on Kurdish militants who have used Syria as a base of operations against Turkey’s military.
That’s the backdrop for a wave of Israeli airstrikes on military targets inside Syria early Thursday. The Syrian government called the attacks a “deliberate attempt to destabilize Syria” and “a blatant violation of international law and Syrian sovereignty.”
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz quickly fired back at Syria’s president: “If you allow forces hostile to Israel to enter Syria and endanger Israeli security interests, you will pay a very heavy price.” Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar warned that Erdogan is doing his “utmost to have Syria as a Turkish protectorate.”
Syria’s fledgling military is no match for its neighbors, and its new government remains at the mercy of outside players. This dangerous competition to fill the vacuum in Syria created by the ouster of Assad is just beginning.
Former (and incoming) President Donald Trump and Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy meet at Trump Tower in New York City, on Sept. 27, 2024.
Trump wants more Ukrainians drafted
President-elect Donald Trump promised on the campaign trail to end the war in Ukraine “on Day One” of his administration. His supporters have long argued Trump should be taken seriously but not literally, and his team has since rolled back that expectation and insists on a 100-day ceasefire timeline instead.
That goal is still plenty ambitious, and the incoming president is already laying the groundwork for a halt to fighting. Trump will likely speak directly with Russian President Vladimir Putin in the coming days, and he’s already beginning to detail what he’ll ask of Ukraine.
In April 2024, Ukraine, under Biden administration pressure, lowered its conscription age from 27 to 25 to bring more soldiers to the frontlines. Incoming National Security Advisor Mike Waltz told ABC News on Sunday, that Trump wants the age lowered to 18. “If Ukrainians have asked the whole world to be all in for democracy, we need them to be all in for democracy,” said Waltz.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has resisted pressure from Washington by insisting that if his country is to remain economically viable, it can’t sacrifice so many of its young men. He also warns there aren’t enough weapons for the Ukrainian troops already in the field.
Which comes first: the soldiers or the weapons? This debate will continue once Trump is inaugurated next Monday, but Zelensky knows that the new US president will have the leverage to get most of what he wants.
The AI military-industrial complex is here
That should come as no surprise; after all, the military has been a major funder, driver, and early adopter of cutting-edge technology throughout the last century. Military spending on AI-related federal contracts has been booming since 2022, according to a Brookings Institution analysis, which found yearly spending on AI increased from $355 million in the year leading up to August 2022 to a whopping $4.6 billion a year later.
In response to this demand, AI companies of all sizes are getting in on the action. Last Wednesday, on Dec. 4, OpenAI announced a new partnership with the military technology company Anduril Industries, known for its drones and autonomous systems. OpenAI had previously banned the use of its large language models, but with this partnership, it has somewhat reversed course, deciding there are, in fact, some applications that it feels comfortable with — in this case, defensive systems that protect US soldiers from drone attacks. In response, OpenAI employees have raised ethical concerns internally, the Washington Post reported, but CEO Sam Altman has stood by the decision. “We are proud to help keep safe the people who risk their lives to keep our families and our country safe,” he wrote in a statement.
OpenAI’s decision came mere weeks after two other big announcements: On Nov. 4, Meta decided to reverse course on its own military prohibition, permitting its language models to be used by US military and national security agencies. The company said it would provide its models directly to agencies, to established defense contractors Lockheed Martin and Booz Allen, and to defense tech companies like Anduril and Palantir. Then, on Nov. 7, OpenAI’s rival Anthropic, which makes the chatbot Claude, partnered with Peter Thiel’s firm Palantir and Amazon Web Services to provide AI capabilities to US intelligence services.
Military applications of AI go far beyond developing lethal autonomous weapons systems, or killer robots, as we’ve written before in this newsletter. AI can help with command and control, intelligence analysis, and precision targeting. That said, the uses of generative AI models such as OpenAI’s GPT-4 and Anthropic’s Claude are more sprawling in nature.
“There’s a lot of both interest and pressure on the national security community to pilot and prototype generative AI capabilities,” says Emelia Probasco, a senior fellow at Georgetown University's Center for Security and Emerging Technology and a former Pentagon official. “They’re not quite sure what they’re going to do with it, but they’re pretty sure it’s going to be powerful.”
And some of the best uses of this technology might simply be the boring stuff, Probasco added, such as writing press releases and filling out personnel paperwork. “Even though [the military] does some warfighting, it also does a lot of bureaucracy.”
For contractors of all types, AI presents a business opportunity too. “Defense contracting is a potentially lucrative business for AI startups despite some very valid concerns about AI safety and ethics,” says Gadjo Sevilla, senior technology analyst at eMarketer. He added that gaining the trust of the military could also help AI companies prove their safety. “They are more likely to gain other contracts once they are perceived as defense-grade AI solutions.”
Probasco says that the US military needs the expertise of Silicon Valley to stay on the cutting edge, but she does worry about the two worlds becoming too cozy with one another.
“The worst thing would be if we end up in another techno-utopia like we had when in the early days of social media, thinking that Silicon Valley is going to 100% come in and save the day,” she said. “What we need are reasonable, smart, hardworking people who respect different perspectives.”
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin poses with Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr during a courtesy call at the Malacanang Palace in Manila, Philippines, November 18, 2024.
Philippines locks in enhanced defense deal with US to deter China
Manila’s top defense official Gilberto Teodoro signed a treaty with the US on Monday that will allow the Philippines to access more closely-held military intelligence and purchase more advanced technology to defend itself from China. US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said the agreement was meant to display Washington’s commitment, saying, “We are more than allies. We are family.”
Unlike some other US allies, Manila feels quite confident that its relationship with Washington will stay strong under incoming President Donald Trump. Trump and Filipino President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. spoke over the phone on Tuesday about strengthening the alliance, which Marcos said was “very productive.”
Trump is pledging a hawkish approach to China, and the Philippines is eager to upgrade its own defenses given ongoing conflicts over the South China Sea. The strong alignment on shared interests and Marcos’ praise for Trump’s “robust leadership” seem promising, as long as he can make the case to Trump that the US is coming out ahead in the transaction.
How is China preparing for Trump? President Xi Jinping attempted to set boundaries in the relationship at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Peru over the weekend. He drew “four red lines” for Trump to avoid: undermining the Communist Party, pushing China toward democracy, stifling China’s economic rise, and encouraging Taiwanese independence.
“These are the most important guardrails and safety nets for China-US relations,” he said. But with Trump promising punitive tariffs up to 60% on Chinese goods, and appointing China hardliners like Marco Rubio and Mike Waltz, confrontation looks likely.