Oct 27, 2025

By Joshua Arostegui and Jake Vartanian

This essay examines Xi Jinping’s dictum of creating a world-class military by 2049 and assesses the progress of the PLA ground forces toward achieving that notional benchmark.

Oct 16, 2025

By Dr. Evan Ellis

Within the new book by the U.S. Military Academy Modern Warfare Institute, “Expecting the Unexpected: Essays on Strategic Surprise in the 21st Century” comes a chapter from Dr. R. Evan Ellis: “Preparing for PRC Military Actions in Latin America in the Context of a War in the Indo-Pacific.”

Oct 14, 2025

By Dr. Evan Ellis

"From September 13 through 21, 2025, the author traveled to Lima, Peru for an event bring them together faculty from the US Army War College and it’s alumni from Peru and across the region. There, he spoke to a wide range of Peruvian security experts about the country’s challenges and the response of its government and security forces. This work relays the insights from those conversations."

Sep 30, 2025

By Dr. Sheena Chestnut Greitens

A conversation between Dr. Sheena Chestnut Greitens and Bonnie Glaser on China's Global Security Initiative.

Sep 30, 2025

In this episode, Antulio J. Echevarria II discusses how NATO might better leverage risk to strengthen the alliance’s extended deterrence. Can NATO increase the risks and costs of war for an adversary without unduly raising the alliance’s own? Can the alliance strengthen the credibility of NATO’s extended deterrence through a proxy strategy of “waging war without going to war”?

Sep 30, 2025

In this episode of SSI Live, Major Brennan Deveraux interviews Dr. Brian Carlson, a research professor of Indo-Pacific security studies for the China Landpower Studies Center, on Central Asia. The conversation highlights two drastically different engagements Carlson recently had, one in Kazakhstan and the other at the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies in southern Germany. The discussion explores the nature of China-Russia relations and the significance of the Central Asian states in the context of great-power competition.

Sep 26, 2025

By Joshua Arostegui

The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) implemented major changes to the organization, accession, and training of its army’s special operations forces (SOF) beginning in 2017, including the creation of a 12-man SOF team and establishment of a probable national-level army-subordinate counterterrorism unit. Beginning in 2025, the PLA introduced several changes to improve officer accession and noncommissioned officer retention in its special operations community. This article assesses observed changes since 2017 designed to improve the PLA’s command and control of its army’s SOF units and to set the foundation for China’s elite forces becoming world-class by 2049.

Sep 23, 2025

In this episode of Conversations on Strategy, Major Brennan Deveraux interviews select authors of The Weaponization of Artificial Intelligence: The Next Stage of Terrorism and Warfare, a book written in partnership with NATO Centre of Excellence – Defence Against Terrorism (COE-DAT). The authors discuss their respective chapters, which include topics such as how terrorists use large language models, the use of artificial intelligence (AI) as a weapon, and the future of AI use in terrorism and counterterrorism.

Sep 22, 2025

Age of Revolutions: Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the Present explores revolutions from the seventeenth century to today. Part I offers historical case studies of revolutions, including socioeconomic, political, and technological examples. Part II discusses current economic, technological, identity, and geopolitical revolutions and their implications—like the ways technology improves life but at the price of depersonalization and digital addiction for some. The reviewer recommends this book for lovers of international relations, history, philosophy, and strategic studies and notes, “Military and intelligence officials and policymakers will benefit from reading the book as they place nation-impacting decisions into context.”