Trajectory Daily Brief: 13 January 2026

Indo-Pacific | Defence | India’s ASEAN partnerships provide hedging options rather than China constraint

Situation

India’s defence cooperation with Southeast Asia has expanded significantly since 2014’s Act East Policy, including joint exercises across nine nations and BrahMos missile exports to the Philippines. The Information Fusion Centre in Singapore now provides real-time maritime tracking with 25 partner nations.

However, these partnerships operate within strict limits imposed by ASEAN’s hedging strategy. China remains the region’s dominant trade partner with over $1 trillion in annual bilateral trade—double US volumes. ASEAN’s consensus requirement means cooperation is constrained by the least willing members, including Cambodia which hosts Chinese naval facilities.

Context

ASEAN nations fundamentally seek diversification rather than replacement of Chinese influence. They want strategic options, not salvation from Beijing’s regional presence. This hedging approach functions like a financial instrument—deriving value from averaging positions over time rather than committing to any single partner.

China’s structural advantages remain overwhelming. Beijing’s $44 billion annual defence R&D budget—15% of military spending versus India’s 3.35%—enables weapons exports at marginal production costs. China’s 99-year infrastructure leases create multi-generational lock-in that outlasts political changes, while India’s concessions run 15-30 years. India also lacks permanent basing rights for sustained regional presence.

Trajectory

India’s true value lies in creating “strategic remanence”—residual alignment through interoperability and shared systems that persist beyond formal agreements. Weapons standardization creates decades-long maintenance dependencies that quietly accumulate shared interests.

This partnership model succeeds precisely because it doesn’t threaten China directly. It provides ASEAN with insurance against volatility while giving India incremental influence through military-to-military relationships and operational knowledge transfer, particularly in counterinsurgency operations.

Middle East | Policy | Iranian protests show regime faces simultaneous nationwide uprising without defined grievances

Situation

The 2025-2026 Iranian protests began December 28 when Tehran’s Grand Bazaar closed over budget shortfalls, spreading to all 31 provinces within 72 hours. Unlike previous uprisings with specific grievances, these protests escalated from economic complaints to calls for Supreme Leader Khamenei’s death within days.

Over 400 have been killed and 15,000 detained as security forces deployed military units against civilians. The regime has issued over 1,000 indictments rapidly, with at least 60 facing death sentences under “enmity against God” charges.

Protests reached over 100 cities by January 5, with no single epicenter allowing security forces to concentrate their response effectively.

Context

This uprising differs structurally from Iran’s 2009 Green Movement, 2019 fuel protests, and 2022 Woman Life Freedom demonstrations because it lacks containable, specific demands. The simultaneity across all provinces prevents the regime’s traditional strategy of concentrating repressive force.

The Islamic Republic’s foundational bargain—revolutionary legitimacy plus economic protection through subsidies—has collapsed under 52.6% inflation and systematic corruption. The revolutionary generation that remembers the Shah is dying, leaving grandchildren who know only Islamic Republic brutality.

The regime’s response reveals it understands this threatens its existence: military deployment against civilians, hospital surveillance of wounded protesters, and arrest of defense attorneys signal desperation rather than confidence.

Trajectory

The regime faces a thermodynamic problem where small perturbations trigger cascading failures across its control systems. Its security architecture cannot simultaneously monitor and suppress nationwide resistance when the population has mentally defected while remaining physically present.

Rapid mass prosecutions function as sorting mechanisms to identify leaders for execution while offering plea bargains to followers, but create processing bottlenecks that may backfire.

The uprising represents a phase transition from reform demands to regime removal, suggesting Iran approaches a critical threshold where the costs of conformity exceed resistance costs nationwide.

Africa | Conflict | Sudan’s 150,000-death crisis receives 6% funding while major powers pursue resource extraction over resolution

Situation

Sudan’s civil war between the Sudanese Armed Forces and Rapid Support Forces has killed over 150,000 people and displaced 12 million since April 2023. The International Rescue Committee ranks it the world’s largest humanitarian crisis, accounting for 10% of global humanitarian need despite Sudan representing just 1% of world population.

The UN’s 2024 humanitarian appeal received less than 6% of requested funding before late pledges. Major Western outlets publish ten times more articles on Gaza than Sudan, reflecting systematic media indifference to the crisis.

Context

The attention gap stems from Sudan’s inability to fit Western narrative structures requiring clear victim-perpetrator binaries and plausible intervention roles. Both military factions participated in the 2021 coup, offering no heroic democratic resistance story like Ukraine or domestic political stakes like Gaza.

Major powers maintain strategic disengagement while pursuing resource opportunities. The UAE allegedly arms the RSF while maintaining SAF ties, ensuring gold trade access regardless of victor. Russia’s Wagner networks exploit territorial fragmentation for mining extraction. The US designated RSF actions as genocide but won’t pressure UAE arms suppliers due to Gulf alliance priorities.

The humanitarian system’s own incentives reward politically salient crises over severe but strategically irrelevant ones, creating structural invisibility for conflicts like Sudan.

Trajectory

Sudan demonstrates how global attention operates as a resource allocation mechanism rather than a suffering measurement system. Crises without clear Western strategic stakes or narrative coherence face systematic marginalization regardless of humanitarian severity.

This pattern will likely intensify as great power competition prioritizes alliance management over humanitarian intervention. Future African conflicts may face similar invisibility unless they directly threaten major power interests or fit established media templates.

China | Technology | Philippines’ $30 billion digital economy relies on undefendable undersea cables

Situation

The Philippines hosts 16,000 kilometers of submarine cables carrying the digital traffic for its $30 billion business process outsourcing industry, which employs 1.5 million people. These cables must pass through contested South China Sea waters and come ashore at a handful of vulnerable landing stations.

In February 2023, a Chinese-registered vessel severed two cables connecting Taiwan’s Matsu Islands, cutting internet access for 14,000 residents for weeks. Beijing dismissed it as a “common maritime incident,” establishing a template for deniable infrastructure attacks.

Chinese research vessels conduct 20-22 surveys annually in the Luzon Strait, where cables traverse shallow waters accessible to anchors and grappling hooks.

Context

The Philippines has built its modern economy as an “externalized nervous system” for Western corporations—when Americans call customer service and reach Filipino agents, the cognitive processing happens in Manila via these cables. A coordinated attack on three or four landing stations could sever this connection entirely.

UNCLOS maritime law creates a structural vulnerability: while granting all states freedom to lay cables, it limits coastal states’ ability to protect them. The same legal framework enabling cable infrastructure constrains cable defense.

Gray zone operations exploit this gap. Individual cable cuts remain deniable as accidents, while forensic analysis requires months. Natural turbidity currents in the Luzon Strait create additional “noise” making attribution structurally difficult.

Trajectory

Alliance frameworks offer limited protection. The US-Philippines Mutual Defense Treaty was designed for conventional attacks, not deniable cable sabotage that falls below armed attack thresholds. Each incident forces allies to reveal whether they treat infrastructure attacks as acts of war or regrettable accidents.

The US Navy’s cable repair capacity has atrophied to two aging vessels, while private companies like Meta and Google own the infrastructure. This creates a dependency where states rely on commercial actors for what becomes military-critical capability during conflicts.

The Philippines faces a quantum alliance problem—protection exists in theory until tested by attribution requirements.

Yesterday’s Assessments

• The Pentagon’s Absorption Problem: Why $1.5 Trillion Cannot Buy Its Way to Capability
• America’s First Strikes in Nigeria Signal a New Sahel Doctrine
• The Invisible Tripwire: How China’s Cable Control Erodes South China Sea Deterrence
• The Purge Paradox: Xi’s Anti-Corruption Campaign Is Crippling the Military It Was Meant to Strengthen

Until tomorrow.