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Great Powers

Strategic analysis of US-China-Russia competition, multipolarity, and the dynamics of great power rivalry that shape the international order.

The Wires Beneath the Waves: Tech Giants and Pacific Sovereignty

The Wires Beneath the Waves: Tech Giants and Pacific Sovereignty

Google and its peers are laying cables to connect the Pacific's most isolated nations. The infrastructure brings genuine benefits—and dependencies that look increasingly like digital feudalism. For island governments that cannot maintain what they do not understand, the gift may cost more than...

The Sahel's Hollow Alliance: Why Russian Backing Cannot Save Africa's Juntas

The Sahel's Hollow Alliance: Why Russian Backing Cannot Save Africa's Juntas

Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger expelled Western forces and embraced Moscow's Africa Corps. Eighteen months later, jihadist violence has surged 190% since 2021. The juntas may survive. Their states may not.

The Quantum Countdown: How a Computing Revolution Will Reshape Security, Science, and Power

The Quantum Countdown: How a Computing Revolution Will Reshape Security, Science, and Power

Quantum computers capable of breaking today's encryption may arrive within a decade. The race to upgrade global cryptographic infrastructure has begun—but most organizations have not started running. The consequences of delay compound daily.

The Decibel Countdown: China's Submarine Weakness and the Taiwan Window

The Decibel Countdown: China's Submarine Weakness and the Taiwan Window

Chinese submarines remain dangerously loud—detectable by sensors designed to exploit their acoustic signatures. As allied underwater surveillance networks mature faster than Chinese quieting technology improves, Beijing faces a narrowing window where undersea weakness constrains Taiwan options....

The Deterrent That Became a Target

The Deterrent That Became a Target

China's missile arsenal can now threaten every American base in the Western Pacific. The forces meant to prevent war may instead invite the opening salvo of one. Washington faces choices it has spent decades avoiding.

What Breaks First as the Sahel's Security Collapse Spreads to Coastal West Africa?

What Breaks First as the Sahel's Security Collapse Spreads to Coastal West Africa?

The crisis spreading from Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger will not arrive at the coast as an invasion. It will come as school absences, shifting market inventories, and the quiet death of institutional legitimacy. Understanding the sequence reveals which interventions might still work—and which...

The Wires Beneath the Waves: How Submarine Cables Became the Pacific's Contested Terrain

The Wires Beneath the Waves: How Submarine Cables Became the Pacific's Contested Terrain

Taiwan experiences seven to eight cable breaks annually, most linked to China. The pattern reveals how submarine cables have transformed from neutral infrastructure into strategic terrain where great powers contest the physical substrate of the digital world.

The War Nobody Watches: Why Sudan's Genocide Remains Invisible to Western Powers

The War Nobody Watches: Why Sudan's Genocide Remains Invisible to Western Powers

Sudan controls critical Red Sea access and Africa's third-largest gold reserves. Its civil war has killed tens of thousands and displaced millions. The US has declared genocide. Yet Western powers treat it as background noise—a structural failure with strategic consequences.

The Fragile Thread: Australia's Pacific Communications in a Taiwan Crisis

The Fragile Thread: Australia's Pacific Communications in a Taiwan Crisis

Ninety-seven percent of Pacific data flows through cables China could sever in hours. Australia's island partnerships depend on infrastructure designed for peacetime efficiency, not wartime resilience. The window to build redundancy is closing faster than procurement timelines assume.

Germany's Eastern Promise: Strategic Shift or Expensive Theater?

Germany's Eastern Promise: Strategic Shift or Expensive Theater?

Berlin has pledged its first permanent foreign military deployment since 1945—a 5,000-strong brigade in Lithuania by 2027. The commitment is real. Whether Germany can fulfill it remains the central question for NATO's eastern flank.

The Sovereignty Loophole: Why NATO Cannot Stop Russia's Shadow Fleet

The Sovereignty Loophole: Why NATO Cannot Stop Russia's Shadow Fleet

Over 600 Russian-linked vessels conduct espionage operations in European waters while NATO watches helplessly. The problem is not military capability but legal architecture—a gap between eighteenth-century maritime law and twenty-first-century hybrid warfare that the world's most powerful...

The Chokepoint Doctrine

The Chokepoint Doctrine