Trajectory Daily Brief: 10 February 2026

Global | Cybersecurity | AI-Enhanced Espionage Outpaces Detection Systems Built for Static Threats

Situation

In 2023, 54% of cyber breaches were detected by external parties rather than victims’ own security systems. Modern defense infrastructure—signature-based detection, behavioral analytics, and log aggregation—operates on assumptions that no longer match adversary capabilities. Most enterprise systems retain detailed logs for 30-90 days while espionage campaigns average 150-200 days before discovery, meaning initial compromise evidence is routinely deleted before investigations begin.

Fifty-seven state-backed threat actors from China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia deployed AI tools in 2024 for reconnaissance, phishing, and malware development. The automated tool “Villager” was downloaded 17,000 times, enabling end-to-end attack automation. Groups like Volt Typhoon avoid custom malware entirely, using legitimate system tools that generate no distinguishable signatures.

Context

The detection architecture was designed for commodity threats that reuse known tools and generate statistical anomalies. AI inverts this model: reconnaissance that once took weeks now completes in hours, generating bespoke code that has never been seen and phishing content without linguistic tells. Each defense improvement reveals its own blind spots to sophisticated adversaries who adapt in real-time.

The economic mismatch is structural. Organizations set log retention based on compliance requirements and budgets, not intelligence service operational tempo. Living-off-the-land techniques weaponize this gap—when PowerShell or WMI becomes the attack vector, every alert is either false positive or catastrophe. Cloud environments fragment visibility further across control planes no single system monitors.

The temporal blindness compounds the capability asymmetry. Defenders reconstruct intrusions from fragments while attackers operate at machine speed across timeframes exceeding forensic memory.

Trajectory

The gap is not technical debt but architectural obsolescence. Detection systems function as mirrors reflecting understood threats while novel operations pass through the frame. As AI acceleration spreads beyond 57 identified actors to unknown scale, the reconnaissance-detection inversion deepens.

Critical infrastructure targeting—particularly cloud and edge devices—exploits visibility fragmentation that cannot be solved by incremental tooling improvements. The defense industry’s “depth” strategy assumes attacks leave recoverable traces within retention windows, an assumption that espionage tradecraft systematically violates.

The feedback loop is self-reinforcing: sophisticated detection advertises unwatched spaces, AI-enhanced reconnaissance adapts faster than procurement cycles update defenses. Organizations face threats optimized by machine learning using detection paradigms designed for human-speed static attacks.

Indo-Pacific | Conflict | Taiwan’s asymmetric arsenal forces China to escalate blockade into open warfare

Situation

Taiwan imports 97% of its energy and 70% of its food, making economic strangulation through blockade Beijing’s most attractive option. China’s coast guard—the world’s largest—alongside thousands of maritime militia vessels, could impose a “quarantine” that chokes commerce while avoiding overt acts of war.

Taiwan’s 2017 Overall Defence Concept responds not by matching China’s conventional forces but by deploying dispersed anti-ship missiles, sea mines, indigenous submarines, and drone swarms. The 2025 Quadrennial Defence Review reinforces this approach: “Defensive Posture, Layered Deterrence” through mobile, hidden systems designed to survive first strikes.

Context

The standard critique misreads the strategy’s purpose. Taiwan’s asymmetric weapons don’t exist to win a shooting war—they exist to collapse the distinction between blockade and war. Every mobile launcher, every mine, every submarine possibility forces Chinese planners to accept that “law enforcement” could trigger kinetic response at any moment.

A successful blockade requires perfect calibration: squeeze hard enough to coerce surrender but gently enough to avoid triggering military escalation from Taiwan, Washington, or Tokyo. Taiwan’s hidden, distributed systems make that calibration nearly impossible. No PLA operational plan can guarantee zero kinetic engagement when launchers are mobile and mines can appear overnight.

The blockade’s vulnerability is visibility. Chinese vessels must patrol predictably for weeks. Taiwan’s defenders shoot from concealment, exploiting what amounts to actuarial sabotage—making low-probability catastrophic outcomes impossible to discount.

Trajectory

Taiwan bets that forcing China to choose between ineffective pressure and open warfare preserves deterrence better than matching conventional capabilities. The strategy transforms geography into advantage: complex bathymetry and mountainous coastlines create environments where even modest asymmetric forces generate disproportionate uncertainty.

The gap between doctrine and procurement persists. Taiwan still buys legacy fighters and large warships that serve institutional prestige over survival. These platforms represent bureaucratic inertia—impressive in parades, irrelevant against China’s missile forces.

The real test isn’t military effectiveness but political sustainability. Can Taiwan maintain the discipline to fund unglamorous weapons that work rather than prestigious platforms that don’t? Beijing’s blockade advantage grows with every dollar Taipei wastes on ritual objects.

Pacific | Indo-Pacific | HMAS Stirling cannot substitute for Guam in Taiwan conflict scenarios

Situation

HMAS Stirling in Western Australia sits 3,400 nautical miles from Taiwan—a geographic reality that would remove deployed submarines from active operations for weeks at a time during a Taiwan crisis. The base currently lacks the logistical infrastructure required to sustain US naval operations at the scale Guam provides.

Australian political commitments remain conditional rather than guaranteed, and the facility’s readiness timeline does not align with US contingency planning assumptions for rapid Indo-Pacific response.

Context

US war planning increasingly treats allied bases as fallback positions if China’s precision strike capabilities neutralize Guam’s air and naval facilities in a conflict’s opening phase. But distance matters in submarine warfare—the transit time from Western Australia effectively removes assets from the theater for extended periods, reducing available force during critical windows.

The strategic assumption that Australia can serve as a rear operating base overlooks infrastructure gaps: dry dock capacity, munitions storage, fuel reserves, and maintenance facilities sized for routine visits rather than sustained combat operations. Building this infrastructure requires years and billions in coordinated investment.

Trajectory

The Guam-or-Stirling framing reveals a gap between strategic concepts and operational reality. If planners assume Australia can absorb displaced US operations, they are building strategies on foundations that don’t yet exist—and may not exist when needed.

This points to a broader vulnerability: the US Pacific posture depends on nodes that cannot be quickly replicated. Dispersal strategies only work if alternative bases are genuinely ready, not theoretically available.

Read the full analysis →

Indian Ocean | Geopolitics | Trump’s Chagos opposition tests whether UK-US alliance can withstand sovereign treaty interference

Situation

The UK signed sovereignty over the Chagos Archipelago to Mauritius in May 2025, securing 99-year operational control of Diego Garcia base. Secretary of State Marco Rubio welcomed the deal after interagency review. Trump then called it “great stupidity.”

The contradiction reveals presidential intent to block a bilateral treaty between allies without direct veto power. Available tools include Section 232 tariffs (already 25% on British steel), Treasury sanctions targeting Mauritius’s offshore financial sector, and threatened reduction of Diego Garcia operations hosting 2,500 personnel and strategic bombers.

Institutional resistance represents the primary constraint. First-term precedent shows Pentagon and State Department officials defied or slow-walked strategically incoherent orders. Every blocking mechanism requires willing bureaucratic executors.

Context

Diego Garcia matters because it provides unrestricted military access in the Indian Ocean, supporting operations from Afghanistan to the South China Sea. The 2019 ICJ advisory opinion (13-1) ruled Britain’s 1965 detachment of Chagos violated self-determination rights. UN General Assembly Resolution 73/295 passed 116-6, creating rare legal clarity on decolonization.

The handover attempts to reconcile strategic interests with international law—Mauritius gains sovereignty, Britain retains operational control, the base continues functioning. This arrangement depends on legal stability, not perpetual contestation.

UK-US relations have survived Suez, Iraq, and Trump’s first term through structural dependencies: Five Eyes intelligence sharing, NATO interoperability, nuclear cooperation on Trident servicing. But structural interests require both parties to value institutional frameworks. Starmer treats international law as non-negotiable foundation; Trump treats it as bargaining chip.

Trajectory

Rupture likely follows the Okinawa pattern—quiet infrastructural decay rather than dramatic break. Punitive tariffs trigger regulatory retaliation against US tech firms. Intelligence sharing continues but becomes guarded. Military exercises proceed with less enthusiasm. No announcement, but permanent damage.

For international law, Trump blocking implementation confirms what the Global South already suspects: Western powers invoke legal frameworks when convenient, discard them when costly. This matters because decolonization represents international law’s strongest success area over 70 years.

The real fracture is precedent. Each compliance case strengthens norms; each defiance weakens them. A successful American obstruction demonstrates that ICJ rulings on self-determination create expectations without enforcement—legal gravity without gravitational pull.

Yesterday’s Assessments

• Why current cyber espionage detection systems cannot catch AI-powered reconnaissance
• Why cyber espionage detection keeps failing—and how AI is making it worse

Until tomorrow.