The United States is engaged in a strategic competition with China over the nature of the global system, and the Middle East has emerged as a central site of great power competition: The United States, China, and Russia are all active there. At the heart of this competition is technology. Middle Eastern countries have been developing strong technology links with China while maintaining their security and economic relations with the United States. Smart cities present a valuable case study of this competition. A smart city is a city that addresses public issues with solutions based on information and communication technology–enabled use of large-scale data available from the Internet of Things. China is involved in dozens of smart city projects in the Middle East. In that region, the need for improved urban environments is pressing. The region is well above the world average for percentage of population living in urban areas and for urban population growth. Smart city infrastructure can be used to improve services, but it can also be used for population control, to limit public dissent, to violate privacy, and to strengthen authoritarian tendencies. This therefore makes smart cities a positive factor in improved services and greater connectivity but also a potential threat to civil society and personal and political freedom. China’s involvement raises an additional issue: that of data security and the integrity of communications networks, especially those related to U.S. activities in the region. This paper addresses potential U.S. concerns related to these developments.

As the Department of the Air Force (DAF) accelerates its testing of manned-unmanned teaming (MUM-T) concepts and further integrates the Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) program into operations against highly capable adversaries, it is critical for U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) and DAF planners, strategists, and analysts to better understand Chinese perspectives and similar lines of effort to integrate autonomous systems into air operations. Additionally, understanding China's approach to MUM-T can help the DAF anticipate and counter adversarial tactics, ensuring that U.S. forces maintain a strategic advantage in the foreseeable future. The analysis presented in this report is intended to improve the DAF's understanding of the People's Liberation Army's (PLA's) perceptions regarding MUM-T and the PLA's efforts to integrate autonomous systems into air operations. These insights into China's MUM-T capabilities can inform the DAF's operational planning, enhance interoperability with allied forces, and guide investment in relevant technologies.

South Korea, Japan, and the United States' trilateral partnership has expanded to include collaboration on economic security, including on critical minerals supply chains (CMSCs). This report offers analysis, tools, and recommendations to strengthen South Korea's CMSCs and economic security through trilateral cooperation and collaboration among South Korea, the United States, and Japan. Included in the report are (1) analysis of the trio's CMSC vulnerabilities and four industry case studies on cobalt, gallium, molybdenum, and tungsten; (2) summaries of the key organizations and governance leading critical minerals efforts, national legislation, policy tactics and tasks, and available financial mechanisms in each country, along with a supply chain net assessment tool and analysis to evaluate supply chain securitization efforts; (3) case studies on trilateral engagement with India and Mongolia and political alignment metrics to evaluate potential partnerships with mineral-rich countries; and (4) opportunities for and barriers to trilateral cooperation. Although barriers exist, opportunities to secure South Korea's supply chains through trilateral cooperation include trade policy and sectoral trade agreements, steering the Minerals Security Partnership (MSP) into new directions, and joint stockpiling initiatives, such as mineral swap agreements. South Korea can improve its supply chain vulnerabilities by expanding its concepts of economic security to include securing raw material inputs for its defense industrial base. This report should be of interest to South Korean, Japanese, and U.S. policymakers; to researchers of Indo-Pacific and East Asian security, economic security, techno-economic competition, supply chain resilience, and related policy; and to the private sector.

National security leaders rarely get to choose what to care about and how much to care about it. They are more often subjects of circumstances beyond their control. The September 11 attacks reversed the George W. Bush administration's plan to reduce the United States' global commitments and responsibilities. Revolutions across the Arab world pushed President Barack Obama back into the Middle East just as he was trying to pull the United States out. And Russia's invasion of Ukraine upended the Biden administration's goal of establishing "stable and predictable" relations with Moscow so that it could focus on strategic competition with China. Policymakers could foresee many of the underlying forces and trends driving these agenda-shaping events. Yet for the most part, they failed to plan for the most challenging manifestations of where these forces would lead. They had to scramble to reconceptualize and recalibrate their strategies to respond to unfolding events. The rapid advance of artificial intelligence—and the possible emergence of artificial general intelligence—promises to present policymakers with even greater disruption. Indicators of a coming powerful change are everywhere. Beijing and Washington have made global AI leadership a strategic imperative, and leading U.S. and Chinese companies are racing to achieve AGI. News coverage features near-daily announcements of technical breakthroughs, discussions of AI-driven job loss, and fears of catastrophic global risks such as the AI-enabled engineering of a deadly pandemic. There is no way of knowing with certainty the exact trajectory along which AI will develop or precisely how it will transform national security. Policymakers should therefore assess and debate the merits of competing AI strategies with humility and caution. Whether one is bullish or bearish about AI's prospects, though, national security leaders need to be ready to adapt their strategic plans to respond to events that could impose themselves on decision-makers this decade, if not during this presidential term. Washington must prepare for potential policy tradeoffs and geopolitical shifts, and identify practical steps it can take today to mitigate risks and turbocharge U.S. competitiveness. Some ideas and initiatives that today may seem infeasible or unnecessary will seem urgent and self-evident with the benefit of hindsight.

Climate models project that the Central Arctic Ocean (CAO) may soon become ice-free in summer for a limited window of time, opening a seasonally navigable route that connects Asia to Europe by crossing over the North Pole. This Transpolar Sea Route (TSR) and its surrounding waters in the CAO have seen little activity and would be available for seasonal commercial and surface military activity, particularly from the surrounding exclusive economic zones (EEZs) of Canada, Denmark (through Greenland and the Faroe Islands), Norway, Russia, and the United States. In this report, the authors explore how global actors may leverage new maritime access in the CAO for economic, political, and military gain. Drawing on insights from climate models, literature, and expert interviews, they examine current and potential future maritime uses of the ocean and the TSR by Arctic states and other actors. They then present a scenario in four phases of how these activities could plausibly develop in the CAO over time. The authors find that the most plausible scenario for maritime use of the CAO in the next 25 years is one of limited activity, though numerous factors could lead to expanded commercial and military presence by global actors.