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Putin’s Running Out of Scare Tactics and Options

Russian President Vladimir Putin can no longer conceal the cost of his Ukraine war from the Russian public. There are fuel shortages throughout the Russian Federation. Videos show hundreds of automobiles lining up to get a few liters of gasoline at gas stations around Moscow. Gasoline sales to civilian vehicles in occupied Crimea have been suspended as the Ukrainian blockade of the peninsula takes effect. Russia continues to make painfully slow progress in its efforts to capture territory in Ukraine and at a staggering cost in casualties.“sound out idols... by pos[ing] questions here with a hammer... scrutiny will reveal that they are actually hollow and meaningless—not the high, noble standards of conduct that their proponents claim them to be. — Friedrich NietzscheTwilight of the IdolsUkrainian Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov recently says that Ukraine has successfully regained the strategic initiative on the battlefield and Kyiv’s use of long-range weapons to hit targets deep inside of Russia is aiming to force Moscow to end the war through asymmetric attrition. Ukraine has recently intensified precision strikes 20-300 kms behind Russian lines to isolate Russian infantry, destroy high value air defense systems and disrupt the flow of supplies to the front line. The long-range drone campaign is systematically targeting Russia’s energy infrastructure with devastating economic and psychological effect.Vehicles are lining up to cross the Kerch Strait bridge following successful Ukrainian drone strikes on the Tavriiska thermal power plant, major electrical substations and the Kerch and Dzhankoi oil depots. These strikes have caused blackouts in Sevastopol and Simferopol, the two largest cities in the peninsula. The panic caused by the energy shortages and the fear of total collapse has led many to flee, causing the massive backups at the bridge—with sometimes as many as 2,500-3,000 vehicles lining up to cross. The Crimean Peninsula is the crown jewel of Putin’s campaign against Ukraine which he re-ignited with its annexation in March of 2014.But Crimea is just one of the many challenges facing Putin. Omsk is burning, having been struck on July 6 by Ukrainian forces in their deepest strategic strike of the war. The Omsk oil refinery is located approximately 2600 kms from Ukrainian territory and is Russia’s largest oil refinery and its top producer of gasoline. There are still lingering oily black clouds over Moscow from the June 18 Ukrainian strike on the Gazprom Neft refinery in southeast Moscow—just ten miles from the Kremlin. The refinery was struck by over 200 drones and sent thick greasy black clouds of burning petroleum directly over the high-rise and residential areas fthat are avored by Moscow’s elites. The clouds created “black rain” and forced disruptions at Moscow’s four airports.A few weeks before, there were oily black clouds over St. Petersburg as Russia hosted its annual St. Petersburg International Economic Forum in early June. International visitors to the Forum (whose attendance has seen a significant drop since 2022) were re-routed to avoid risk of Ukrainian drone strikes and to avoid the clouds of burning petroleum. This read like quite the humiliation for the architect of Russia’s current economic disaster.As devastating as Ukraine’s attacks have been, the situation on the front is even worse. A recent thinktank study indicates that Russian forces have suffered 1.4 million total casualties including 450,000 deaths on the battlefield. Approximately 32 of Russian casualties result in death, a fatality ratio that is much higher than modern Western military standards would allow. Reports by analysts and Russian military bloggers indicate that once a Russian soldier is deployed directly into an active combat zone, their average life expectancy drops to just 20-25 minutes. The average survival time for a raw recruit measured from the moment they arrive at a regional training ground to their death in Ukraine, ranges from ten days to three weeks. Even by the Russian standards that were established for casualties in World War II, these losses are staggering and must be causing alarm bells to go off amongst Russia’s elite leadership. There is more visible criticism of how Putin is conducting this war than has even been seen before. On the diplomatic front, challenges for the Russian president are rising. This week’s NATO summit is yielding results on Europe’s commitment to defense spending and re-armament, led by Germany which is considering incurring state debt to finance defense spending which would be unprecedented for a postwar German government. Putin’s confidence in his ability to count on President Trump to put pressure on Ukraine to end the war on terms that are favorable to Moscow may be eroding and Trump has recently acknowledged Ukraine’s success in the war.Putin’s reliable ally in Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, seems also to be reconsidering the state of play and his enthusiasm for allowing Moscow to drag Belarus deeper into the conflict with Ukraine. resident Zelensky recently demanded Belarus take offline four relay facilities in Belarus’s Brest and Gomel regions near the Ukrainian border. These relay stations acted as signal boosters for Russian drones used to attack Ukrainian cities. The relays have been taken offline.President Zelensky has just authorized a forty-day intelligence and security operation to heavily amplify pressure on the Kremlin to end the war. He is arguing that Russia’s elites live in Moscow and St. Petersburg and therefore, the war must be brought to their doorsteps. He also predicted that “When not one hundred drones but a thousand start reaching MoscowPutin will be advised to move somewhere beyond the Urals. Zelensky is right and Ukrainians know Russia better than anyone in the West.Despite the pressure he is under, it is too early to count Putin out. He has largely and cleverly managed his tenure as Russia’s leader. He is still two years short of Stalin’s 29 year record at the helm, but he is getting close and in his 27 years of running Russia, he has dug his tentacles deep into every level of the country’s power structure and has certainly accumulated kompromat on any potential rival or replacement. Many have speculated that if Putin departs the scene, his replacement could be an even worse partner for the U.S. and the West. I won’t argue that any replacement or coalition that follows Putin will be less anti West than Putin, but whatever constellation follows, they will not have the benefit of having roots and leverage as deep in Russia as Putin does. For the moment, Putin still has escalatory options he can use to respond to increasing pressure.In recent weeks, Russia has taken steps to close or severely restrict seven critical railway border crossings and road traffic crossings into Finland, Estonia, and Latvia. Apparently, negotiations are under way to restrict crossings into Kazakhstan and other central Asian states. The motivations for the abrupt closures are unclear but they suggest that Putin may be considering a mass mobilization and is trying to stem the likely departure of military age males to avoid the departures that have occurred since February 2022. Mobilization alone will not solve Russia’s problem of shortages of equipment and training for conscripts as well as Russia’s World War I-style battlefront tactics. President Zelensky spoke on the margins of the NATO summit this week and said Ukraine is causing over 30,000 Russian casualties a month.Putin can also rattle the nuclear saber again, but that is likely to be largely ignored as has his previous saber rattling. Most experts are confident that Putin has received firm guidance from his only remaining reliable ally China that he should not open the nuclear Pandora’s box in Ukraine. The intelligence and security services in the Baltic States, Sweden, and Poland have recently assessed that Putin may try a provocation against one of the bordering NATO states in order to force an Article V action—which he hopes Trump would reject. But few analysts think Putin would risk an all-out war against NATO. That would be a path that could only accelerate Ukraine’s path toward NATO membership and could lead to further disasters for the Russian military, which many experts considered to be the most powerful conventional military in Europe prior to February 2022. Putin’s most likely response to his current challenges is to continue to take advantage of weaknesses in Ukraine’s air defenses, particularly against ballistic missile attacks and hope that at some point, Ukraine’s morale weakens and pressure increases on Zelensky to end the war on terms that are more favorable to Russia. Such a change in Zelensky or Ukraine is inconceivable to any rational analysis of the current state of the war, but Putin is clearly not rational.The Cipher Brief is committed to publishing a range of perspectives on national security issues submitted by deeply experienced national security professionals. Opinions expressed are those of the author and do not represent the views or opinions of The Cipher Brief.Have a perspective to share based on your experience in the national security field? Send it to Editor@thecipherbrief.com for publication consideration.Read more expert-driven national security insights, perspective and analysis in The Cipher Brief

2 days ago

If You Can Run a Spy, You Can Run AI

Generative AI should be managed like a human source: useful, fast, sometimes brilliant, sometimes wrong, and never a substitute for disciplined questioning and human judgment.The three of us spent our careers in an environment where bad information costs lives. We learned early that the most dangerous source isn’t someone who lies to you. It’s someone who tells you what you want to hear—and does it convincingly. As we watch organizations race to adopt generative AI, we keep seeing the same mistake: treating these tools like oracle machines rather than sources that need to be run.We are not AI experts. We are not here to debate model architectures or training data. What we know is how to extract reliable insights from sources whose motivations can’t be fully verified, whose outputs may be biased or based on incomplete information, and whose reliability must be continuously earned. That is exactly the problem organizations face with AI today.This is what HUMINT tradecraft has taught us—and what it has to teach anyone who wants to get honest, useful work from a generative AI system.The Source Who Was Never WrongEarly in our careers, two of us ran sources who were brilliant, well-placed, articulate, and deeply motivated. They produced detailed, confident, and consistent reporting. Senior analysts loved them. Their product sailed through review. For months, everything they said checked out—until it didn’t.The problem wasn’t that they were lying, exactly. In both cases, they filled gaps with inference. They’d learned what we wanted to hear, and their natural intelligence and experience let them produce it fluently. The reporting wasn’t fabricated—it was confabulated. Coherent and plausible, but in key places, wrong.We’ve all seen this pattern in the early months of AI adoption. The tool is fast. It’s articulate. It never pauses, never says “I’m not sure,” and it formats its answers with the confident authority of a briefing document. A recent Science study found that across eleven state-of-the-art AI models, sycophantic behavior—affirming users’ views even when inaccurate—was widespread and measurable. Stanford researchers found that AI systems trained on human preference feedback are systematically rewarded for being agreeable rather than correct, because agreeable outputs receive higher ratings. The models learn to please.We’ve seen that source before. We know how the story ends.Selection: Not All Sources Are EqualBefore you run a source, you select one. That’s a discipline in itself. And a discipline to which AI tools may in fact be able to add value in identifying and sorting stressors that can be exploited (anything that causes stress and then outlines for case officers which levers to pull on a recruitment). You don’t recruit someone simply because they have access. You also generally don't recruit happy people. You have to evaluate reliability, motivation, and susceptibility to manipulation. A source with wide access and poor judgment can be more dangerous than no source at all.The same applies to AI. Not all AI systems are created equal for every task or mission. Each must be evaluated on access, expertise, responsiveness, and the quality of reporting—and the last criterion is harder to assess than it appears.A few selection questions worth building into any AI adoption process:What is this model’s known track record on this specific type of task, not in general but specifically?Where does it tend to confabulate? What are its known failure modes?Is it current? A model with a training cutoff is like a source who’s been out of the field for a year—still useful, but with blind spots.How does it behave when it doesn’t know something? Does it admit it, or does it keep talking?Choosing an AI because it’s fast or because leadership read about it in a business magazine isn’t source selection. It’s the equivalent of recruiting the first walk-in who shows up at the door.Elicitation, Not InterrogationOne of the first lessons a new case officer learns is that interrogation and elicitation are not the same. Interrogation demands. Elicitation draws out. A blunt question produces a guarded answer. A layered conversation yields insight the source didn’t realize they were sharing.Most people using AI are interrogating it. “What’s the answer?” “Summarize this.” “Give me options.” That approach works, up to a point, but it caps the quality of what you get.Effective elicitation with AI means:Never ask a direct question when an indirect one is better. Instead of “What should we do?” try “What factors would a skeptic weigh against this recommendation?”Compartmentalize your tasking. Don’t dump the entire problem into a single prompt. Break it into discrete, well-scoped questions. Discrete tasking yields more verifiable output.Build layered follow-ups. Ask: “What are you assuming?” “What would change your conclusion?” “Give me the strongest argument against this.”Probe for alternatives before you settle on an answer. A source that only confirms your hypothesis may be problematic.This turns AI from a content generator into something closer to a thinking partner. But it requires the same discipline as running a source well: preparation, precision, and the intellectual humility to recognize that your framing shapes what you get back.The Hostile Source ProblemThere is a risk the standard AI adoption literature doesn’t spend enough time on. In intelligence work, we worry not just about sources who are wrong—we worry about sources who have been co-opted or doubled, or who are feeding us what we want to hear because they’ve learned our preferences and decided that’s what keeps the relationship alive.AI systems have structural analogs to all three failure modes:Sycophancy as a design artifact. Because models are trained on human preference feedback, they are incentivized to produce outputs that feel satisfying. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon and Stanford have documented an “artificial hivemind” effect in which outputs from multiple AI models converge—reducing epistemic diversity at the very moment organizations need independent judgment.Training data is a contamination channel. A source’s worldview is shaped by their environment. An AI model’s worldview is shaped by its training corpus. That corpus reflects the biases, omissions, and assumptions of the material it was built on. You may not know where those biases are, and the model won’t volunteer them.Automation bias as a user vulnerability. A series of recent studies confirms what experienced case officers know: people grant far more credibility to confident, fluent reporting than the underlying evidence warrants. Research published in 2025 found that even users with high “AI literacy” were not significantly protected against automation bias—the tendency to accept AI output without critical evaluation.The practical implication: approach your AI system with the same structured skepticism you’d bring to a well-placed source who has given you no reason to doubt them. That’s when discipline matters most.Debrief Discipline: The Protocol That Makes It RealAfter every source meeting, a case officer writes up not only what the source said but also their assessment of reliability—what was corroborated, what was assumed, and what needs follow-up. That habit is the difference between a professional intelligence organization and a rumor factory.Most organizations using AI lack an equivalent discipline. Someone prompts the model, takes the output, and puts it in a slide. No one records what was asked, what caveats the model offered, or whether the output was independently verified. The result is institutional memory built on unexamined reporting.A working AI reporting protocol should mirror the post-meeting debrief:Requirement—What question are we actually trying to answer?Prompt—What, precisely, did we ask? (Save it.)Output—What did the AI say?Source check—What in this output is reliable? What is uncertain? What is unsupported?Human judgment—What do we actually believe, independent of the AI?Action—What will we do?Review—What happened after we acted? Did the AI’s analysis hold up?The review step is the one that organizations most consistently skip. But it’s where calibration happens. A source you never debrief after the fact is one whose reliability you can never actually assess.A useful team habit before closing out any AI-assisted analysis: “Before we accept this answer, what would disconfirm it?” That question alone will catch more errors than any amount of AI governance policy.Separating Collection from AnalysisThis is a fundamental discipline in intelligence work, and it translates directly. AI is a tool for collecting and synthesizing. It can ingest, summarize, organize, and compare. What it cannot reliably do is interpret—to ask what the information means here, in this context, for this organization, with these constraints.The error organizations make is treating AI as if it collapses the divide between collection and analysis. It doesn’t. It accelerates collection. The analytical function—applying judgment, context, institutional knowledge, and accountability—remains human.Teams that hand over analytical responsibility to AI are not just making an efficiency error. They are making an accountability error. Someone has to own the conclusion. AI cannot.Burning a Source: When to Stop Trusting the AIThis is the part of the tradecraft literature on AI that doesn’t exist yet, and it needs to.Every experienced case officer has had to decide to terminate a source relationship. Not because the source was obviously lying—if that were clear, the decision would be easy. You terminate when the source's reliability has fallen below a threshold, when you have reason to believe the source has been compromised, or when the cost of continuing to run them outweighs the value of their reporting.The equivalent decisions will come for AI systems, and organizations should prepare for them:When a model’s known failure modes consistently overlap with your mission-critical questions, it is time to stop relying on it for those questions—regardless of how it performs elsewhere.When an AI system has been demonstrably wrong in a consequential context and the organization has not developed a clear explanation for why, continuing to use it at the same level of trust is an operational error.When a model is updated or retrained by its provider, treat it as a new source and revalidate. Prior reliability does not transfer automatically.When you discover that the model has been systematically producing outputs shaped by the framing of your prompts rather than by evidence—that you have been leading the witness without realizing it—you may need to reset the relationship.Burning a source is not a failure of the source-handling relationship. It is often the proof that the relationship was being handled well.What This Means for How You LeadThe three of us came to this issue through intelligence work, but the problem is not limited to intelligence organizations. Any leadership environment where AI tools are proliferating faces the same structural challenge: the tools are fast, fluent, and confident, and organizational incentives often reward those who use them most rather than those who use them best.The research bears this out. INSEAD’s 2025 analysis of firm-level AI adoption found that generative AI shifts value toward higher-order human judgment—not away from it. Microsoft’s research confirms that organizations with a well-calibrated understanding of AI perform better across missions than those that simply maximize usage. The tool is the easy part. The discipline is the hard part.For leaders, the implications are practical:Build the habit of debriefing discipline before you scale AI adoption. The protocol above should be standard practice, not optional.Create psychological safety so people can flag AI errors. The greatest risk in any source-handling operation is the team member who saw the problem but didn’t say anything because the source had too much credibility.Distinguish between AI as a collection tool and as an analytical tool. Automate the former aggressively. Guard the latter carefully.Evaluate AI systems with the same rigor you would apply to any source—including periodic reviews of whether the relationship continues to produce reliable value.Used with discipline, generative AI can be a genuinely powerful analytical partner—the kind of well-placed, high-access source that an experienced handler learns to work with carefully and derive real value from. Used without discipline, it becomes a certainty-destroyer—introducing noise, eroding judgment, and producing false confidence at scale.The HUMINT model doesn’t make AI safer by limiting what it does. It makes AI safer by raising the standard for what we do with what it gives us.AI doesn’t give you answers. It gives you reports. And reporting always requires a handler’s skeptical, trained eye.The Cipher Brief is committed to publishing a range of perspectives on national security issues submitted by deeply experienced national security professionals. Opinions expressed are those of the author and do not represent the views or opinions of The Cipher Brief.Have a perspective to share based on your experience in the national security field? Send it to Editor@thecipherbrief.com for publication consideration.Read more expert-driven national security insights, perspective and analysis in The Cipher Brief

2 days ago

Cyber Fraud, Banks, and What America Can Do About It

Your phone buzzes with a text from your bank: “Did you authorize a 2,400 transfer? Reply NO to stop it.” You reply, and seconds later a calm “fraud agent” calls, knows your name and the last four digits of your card, and walks you through “securing” your money by moving it into an account under the criminal’s control. No password was stolen, no malware installed. You handed over the money yourself, because everything looked and sounded real.This is the new face of bank fraud and business is booming. Behind these scams sit organized adversaries: nation-state actors who treat theft as state revenue, criminal gangs running industrial-scale scam operations, and hacktivists out to embarrass institutions increasingly armed with AI that makes their lies cheap, fast, and tailored to you.The problem: scams have gone industrialBanks have spent decades hardening their vaults and networks, so attackers shifted to the softest target: the customer. Rather than breaking in, they trick people into transferring funds themselves. This is “authorized push payment” fraud where the victim approves the payment and it is far harder to claw back than a stolen card number. To hear how a typical scam call actually unfolds, watch the FTC’s short imposter-scam explainer.With the age of AI, three key forces have turbocharged these threats. Payments now move instantly and irreversibly, so money is gone before anyone notices. Decades of data breaches let criminals buy your name, address, and account details cheaply, making their scripts eerily accurate. And generative AI has industrialized deception where more than half of fraud is now estimated to involve AI. A criminal can clone a familiar or family voice from seconds of audio, write flawless phishing emails in any language, and even deepfake a bank officer on a video call.The people behind it are not lone hackers in hoodies. They range from sanctioned nation-state groups that steal to fund their governments, to criminal syndicates running scam centers staffed by trafficked workers, to hacktivists attacking banks to make a political point. For them, fraud is a scalable business and it is outrunning the banks, telcos, and Big Tech.The real-world costThe damage is measured in real households. The Federal Trade Commission reports Americans lost roughly 16 billion to fraud of all kinds in 2025 the highest on record and about 25 more than the year before. Imposter scams alone accounted for 3.5 billion, nearly tripling since 2020, and the single most lucrative version is the fake bank-security alert that convinces people to “protect” their savings by moving them.These losses fall unevenly. Americans aged 50 and older reported 4.3 billion in losses in 2025, often life-altering sums drained from retirement accounts. The official numbers are almost certainly a fraction of reality, since many victims never report out of shame. Beyond the dollars, the human cost is real emptied college funds, missed mortgage payments, and a corrosive loss of trust in the financial system people rely on every day. One Florida couple lost 42,000 of their savings this way watch how it happened. In fact, this happens so often that Hollywood created an action movie about it with the Bee Keeper.A National Security issueFraud and scams are not just a nuisance but far more dangerous. Fraud and scams in the United States have escalated into a national security issue because they are no longer isolated consumer crimes. They are large‑scale, foreign‑run operations that drain billions of dollars from the U.S. economy and undermine public trust in financial and digital systems. Federal agencies increasingly link these schemes to transnational criminal organizations, some of which also engage in human trafficking, money laundering, and other activities that threaten national stability. The financial impact is massive, with losses rivaling major illicit industries, and the proceeds often flowing to adversarial nations or criminal networks abroad.The rules already on the booksThe U.S. is not starting from zero. Along with the growth of the early Internet, in 1999 the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act went into effect and its Safeguards Rule in requiring banks to protect customer data, and guidance from the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC) pushes them toward stronger, multi-factor login security. The Bank Secrecy Act and anti-money-laundering rules, enforced by the Treasury’s FinCEN, require banks to flag suspicious transactions — a key tool for tracing stolen funds. New York’s Department of Financial Services Part 500 cybersecurity rule has become a de facto national standard.Regulators are also targeting the scams themselves. The FTC’s Impersonation Rule, in force since April 2024, lets the agency go after fraudsters who pose as businesses or government agencies; in its first stretch it produced more than 70 million in consumer refunds. Voluntary frameworks like the NIST Cybersecurity Framework give institutions a common playbook.The gap is not the absence of rules it is that attackers move faster than rules can be written, and that liability for scam losses remains murky when a customer is tricked into approving the payment. So, with all these rules and regulations, why are scams and fraud occurring faster?The innovators fighting backA fast-growing wave of companies is using the same AI that empowers criminals to stop them.· Feedzai builds real-time systems that score billions of transactions as they happen, spotting the subtle patterns of a scam in under a second.· Alloy helps banks and fintechs verify who is really opening an account, choking off the synthetic and stolen identities fraudsters depend on.· Arkose Labs specializes in blocking automated bot attacks and account takeovers, while SEON, Lexus Nexus, and Sumsub offer identity-verification and fraud-screening tools that smaller banks and startups can plug in affordably.· Netcraft is a company which doesn’t only detect scams but does something about it. It is very good at “take downs” of scam networks. · Others are racing to build deepfake and voice-clone detection to catch fakes that fool the human ear and eye. Others get creative: UK carrier Virgin Media O2 built “Daisy,” a lifelike AI “granny” that answers scam calls and keeps fraudsters rambling for up to 40 minutes to tie them up so they have no time for real victims. Watch “Daisy” turn the tables on scam groups.What unites all these is adaptive defense models that learn daily, because last month’s fraud pattern is already obsolete. All these point solutions are modeled on Intellectual Property that slows sharing. This model is not working.What America should doAs scams become more sophisticated, especially with AI‑driven impersonation, deepfakes, and automated fraud, their ability to destabilize institutions, exploit citizens, and weaken economic resilience has pushed policymakers and security experts to treat fraud not just as a consumer protection problem, but as a strategic threat to national security. Staying safe will take coordinated effort. Everyone has a role.Lawmakers and regulatorsFraud and scam laws in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia share the same objective: to protect consumers and disrupting criminal activity but each country approaches the problem with a very different regulatory philosophy.In the U.S., the system is fragmented and enforcement‑driven, with no mandatory reimbursement for most scam victims and a heavy reliance on agencies like the FTC, CFPB, and FBI to pursue wrongdoing after the fact. By contrast, the U.K. has built the world’s most proactive framework, requiring banks to reimburse victims of authorized push‑payment scams, enforcing account‑name verification through Confirmation of Payee, and placing clear accountability on financial institutions to prevent fraud before it occurs. Australia sits between the two models, adopting U.K.‑style protections while expanding responsibility beyond banks to include telcos and digital platforms through its emerging Scams Prevention Framework. While the U.K. emphasizes consumer protection and the U.S. emphasizes enforcement, Australia is moving toward a shared‑liability, cross‑industry approach that recognizes scams as a systemic risk requiring coordinated prevention across the entire digital ecosystem.A typical scam today uses several pieces of technology working together to make the criminal look real. It often starts with:1. the scammer creating a fake website that looks almost identical to a bank or delivery company. They buy a cheap web address from a service like GoDaddy and change just one letter so most people won’t notice the difference.2. Then they setup email accounts on services like Microsoft Gmail to send out massive emails. 3. They use AI tools to scrape millions of social media profiles from Facebook, Instagram, etc. to collect data about YOU. 4. They use tools that let them fake a phone number (telco), so when they call you, your phone shows the name of your bank or a government agency.5. After that, they send out text messages to iPhone and Android users that look official, things like “Your account is locked” or “You have a package waiting.” The link in the text takes you to the fake website, where the scammer collects your login details. If you call the number instead, it goes to a call center where the scammer pretends to be a bank employee.All of this: fake websites, spoofed phone numbers, and realistic text messages works together to trick people into believing they’re talking to a trusted company when they’re actually dealing with a criminal.What should the Critical Infrastructure do? In the U.S., we have failed because we have not worked together across these technologies at scale at the speed of AI. Why? Because we (collectively) do not have the incentives or requirements to do so. For the CEOs of these companies, they do not want to spend money resources which do not drive revenue. Period. There are glimpses of hope. A working model already exists:· We have the Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center (FS‑ISAC) is a global, nonprofit organization that helps protect banks and other financial institutions from cyberattacks by enabling them to quickly share information about threats. It was created in 1999 (26 years!) to strengthen the safety and resilience of the financial system by collecting, analyzing, and distributing timely intelligence about cyber and physical risks so that member institutions can defend themselves and their customers more effectively. I am hopeful that they new CEO, Valerie Abend will drive more effective solutions.· In 2026, eight major carriers: ATT, Verizon, T-Mobile and others just launched the Communications Cybersecurity Information Sharing and Analysis Center (C2 ISAC), chaired by longtime cyber expert, ATT security chief Rich Baich, to share real-time threat intelligence across competitors. Because most scams ride phone and text networks before they ever reach a bank, telecom and banking defenses should connect through the same kind of collective-defense sharing. But the C2 ISAC cannot do this alone. · In 2025, the Global Anti‑Scam Alliance (GASA) was formed to bring together governments, financial institutions, technology companies, law‑enforcement agencies, and consumer groups to fight scams on a global scale. GASA acts like a global “anti‑scam task force,” uniting experts and institutions so people everywhere are better protected from online fraud.These have proven to not operate effectively to get ahead of scams and fraud. We need a better way – mandates of sharing, legal risks support, cross ISAC/intel which is tailored/aware, good native ML AI models (not rules), and others working at speed and context with more transparent sharing.In the meantime,What should consumers do? Treat any unexpected “urgent” message about your money as a warning sign, not a command. Banks will never ask you to move funds to “protect” them. Hang up and call the number on the back of your card. Turn on multi-factor authentication and agree on a private “safe word” with family so a cloned voice can’t fake an emergency. Report scams to ReportFraud.ftc.gov, even unsuccessful attempts, because the data helps train good AI/ML models to protect everyone.What should all companies do? Adopt adaptive, AI-native detection rather than yesterday’s rules, and design apps that help customers pause before they act. Investors should back the firms building deepfake detection and identity verification, and banks should partner with them quickly instead of waiting years to build in-house.Conclusion:With fast innovation, fraud scams will not disappear, but it can be better contained. The criminals have industrialized deception; the answer is to industrialize defense with smarter rules, sharper technology, and a public that knows the warning signs.The Cipher Brief is committed to publishing a range of perspectives on national security issues submitted by deeply experienced national security professionals. Opinions expressed are those of the author and do not represent the views or opinions of The Cipher Brief.Have a perspective to share based on your experience in the national security field? Send it to Editor@thecipherbrief.com for publication consideration.Read more expert-driven national security insights, perspective and analysis in The Cipher Brief

2 days ago

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Endless Warfare – Part II: Countering Endless Warfare and its Networks

Endless Warfare – Part II: Countering Endless Warfare and its Networks

Author’s Note: This article is not about ‘endless wars’ as a critique of U.S. military interventions — that debate belongs elsewhere. It examines a distinct and increasingly visible pattern: how U.S. adversaries wage continuous, long-term conflict against the United States across peace and war, both below and above the threshold of open conflict. The aim is to clarify the nature of the competition we are already in.Countering Endless Warfare and its NetworksThe United States is not at peace. As I argued in Part I, the United States is already in a continuous, long-term conflict with determined adversaries who are waging warfare without crossing the threshold into open conflict. Endless Warfare is a framework for understanding how those adversaries pursue an enduring approach to erode and supplant U.S. power, influence, and global leadership over time.Endless Warfare is not simply another label for the gray zone or cognitive warfare. Both are important elements and merit their own approaches, but Endless Warfare describes the adversary’s persistent, long-term strategy, not just the elements that enable it.Given this operating environment, this is about far more than terminology. It is about how we understand conflict, how we achieve deterrence, how we protect decision autonomy, how we retain leverage, and, most importantly, how we disrupt the networks that fuel Endless Warfare.What are the essential next steps?Endless Warfare Requires a Different Strategic MindsetMilitaries are often criticized for planning to fight the last war. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was undermined by Russia’s underestimation of how much warfare had evolved since Georgia in 2008 and Crimea in 2014. The United States potentially faces that same risk today. It is important that we are prepared to fight and win the next conventional war, but there are risks in a focus on only that strategy. We must also prepare to fight and win—with the appropriate instruments of national power—the Endless Warfare being waged on the United States by its adversaries; warfare that incorporates gray zone activity, cognitive warfare, weaponized negotiations, proxies and surrogates, and other subversive networks.This change in strategic mindset is not because of a lack of capability. The United States has considerable experience, resources, and capabilities in this space. Endless Warfare is conceptually different from conventional war—particularly given the ambiguous nature of gray-zone activity and cognitive warfare—and therefore demands a different approach.Yet because it is a continuous state of conflict, it also requires the same level of national leadership and vision, organization, critical thinking, sense of urgency, and collaboration with allies that we apply to conventional conflict. This is achievable but will take some effort. It may require a senior White House official, such as a Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Competition, to integrate interagency action and coordinate a sustained national response to this threat.That Deputy National Security Advisor would not replace existing responsibilities of Departments and Agencies. The role would be to ensure that strategic deterrence in the gray zone, cognitive advantage, conflict negotiations when adversaries seek to extend rather than resolve conflict, and network disruptions are integrated into a coherent and sustained national response to the threat of Endless Warfare against the United States.Strategic Deterrence in the Gray ZoneStrategic deterrence is one component of a broader approach to countering Endless Warfare. Gray zone activity is a powerful enabler of Endless Warfare because it gives our adversaries a space to undermine the United States while avoiding armed conflict.Our adversaries have calculated that there are more gains than risks in the gray zone and that any risks they do face are acceptable. Actions that seek to counter or defend against gray zone activity but that do not impose meaningful costs or create credible deterrence may simply reward gray zone activity.An effective strategy for achieving strategic deterrence in the gray zone rests on deliberate preparation, clear communication, a national approach, and the resolve to change the risk calculus of our adversaries.Deliberate preparation means collecting and analyzing information on adversary gray zone trends, capabilities, and intent before they act; routinely coordinating at the national level so roles, responsibilities, and decision paths are clear; and reorienting institutions and the interagency to maintain effective balanced capability in both conventional and gray domains.We also must communicate clearly domestically, to our allies, and particularly to our adversaries. A simple but clear message for our adversaries: “We will see what you’re doing, we will publicly attribute it to you, and we will impose costs that exceed your gains.”This message is credible only if it is backed by action over time. The United States must convincingly demonstrate its resolve to proactively and persistently employ national capabilities to change the risk calculus and behavior of our adversaries.This range of national capabilities includes coordinated diplomatic and allied action, economic sanctions and restrictions, cyber operations, legal and financial disruption, public attribution, denying access to critical technologies, cognitive measures, military posture and partner capability-building and—when necessary—kinetic responses. Recent examples illustrate that imposing costs is possible.In 2021, the United States publicly attributed the SolarWinds supply-chain compromise to Russia, expelled Russian Intelligence Officers, and imposed broad financial penalties under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.In early 2025, the U.S. Treasury sanctioned Sichuan Juxinhe Network Technology Company and associated individuals for their role in Salt Typhoon for attacks on network infrastructure of multiple major U.S. telecommunication and internet service providers.These were hard-earned wins for U.S. Departments and Agencies involved, but Russia and China appear to have absorbed the costs and continued their operations. Achieving strategic deterrence means that actions like these must become the norm, not the exception.The goal of strategic deterrence in the gray zone is to shape adversary decision-making before action is taken. It means proactively shaping the environment so adversaries hesitate before they act—a critical step in disrupting the cycle of Endless Warfare.Gaining a Cognitive AdvantageCountering the impacts of cognitive warfare is essential to countering Endless Warfare. My colleague, Austin Branch, and I argued in The Cipher Brief that it was possible—and necessary—for the U.S. to seize a 21st-century cognitive advantage.That argument is even more urgent today given the central role of cognitive warfare in our adversaries’ strategies of Endless Warfare. Cognitive Security, at its core, is the protection of human cognition and decision autonomy—our individual and collective ability to accurately perceive global events, to trust the knowledge we have and the information we receive, and to make confident, independent decisions free from external manipulation, influence, or coercion.Cognitive Security is also about offense—outthinking, outpacing, and outmaneuvering our adversaries in the cognitive domain.Our adversaries should understand that their leaders, institutions, networks, proxies—and decision-making—are vulnerable to cognitive pressure and influence. The goal is to force them—not the United States—to confront the uncertainties and risks of cognitive warfare and to weaken their ability to wage Endless Warfare.There are some positive steps at the national level.We now have a first-ever NSC Cognitive Advantage Director, and the FY26 NDAA directs the Secretary of Defense to formally define cognitive warfare for the Department. The Department’s Strategic Capabilities Office recently launched a Cognitive Warfare Project to advance the military’s cognitive warfare capabilities. There is clearly opportunity here.Yet, these early steps remain fragmented. In contrast, China’s United Front Work Department, Russia’s Active Measures networks, and Iran’s diverse network of surrogates reflect centralized national direction and a long-term horizon as elements of a national strategy.In this vital process, America’s approach has to be equally well-coordinated and strategic. It is essential that these new efforts avoid bureaucratic hurdles, over-prescription that may stifle innovation, and creating silos. Our adversaries will not wait for us to catch up.Our national narrative—America’s Story—also plays an important role. As Branch and I argued in the Cipher Brief, our national narrative is both sword and shield. It projects power, influence, and advances our interests. It tells the story of our values, history, aspirations, and view of the world. It supports confidence in our actions, our institutions, and our global commitments.Importantly, America’s Story counters adversary narratives and actions that seek to undermine America at home and abroad. It can serve as a powerful antidote to adversary campaigns that use cognitive warfare to sustain prolonged conflict. America’s Story was built at a time when much of the world saw America as liberator, peacemaker, builder, global diplomat, and above all, a powerful symbol of sacrifice, freedom, and self-determination. The long arc of America’s Story is its strength.The United States cannot let this national narrative get lost in episodic political turbulence—its role in countering our adversaries is too vital.Countering Weaponized NegotiationsIn the era of Endless Warfare, adversaries often use negotiations as a continuation of conflict by other means—not as instruments of resolution. Negotiations can play an outsized role in Endless Warfare even though they only occur periodically. The central challenge is distinguishing when talks aim to legitimately resolve a conflict versus when they are designed to shape its next phase.Today, drawing lessons directly from Russia’s behavior—from Georgia to Ukraine—and from Iran, several principles emerge that can strengthen our negotiating posture when facing adversaries that practice weaponized negotiations.Those key principles include:No upfront concessions. Make no upfront concessions to get an adversary to the negotiating table. Such actions erode diplomatic, economic, and military leverage and can shape the entire negotiations on unfavorable terms.Establish clear overarching objectives and non-negotiable redlines early. This preserves decision autonomy, provides a framework for decision-making, and prevents adversaries from reshaping objectives to their advantage.Proactively counter narratives. During negotiations over Ukraine, Russia repeatedly pushed narratives, such as “Ukraine can never win” and “territory concessions are inevitable,” to shape Western perceptions of what constituted a realistic outcome. Anticipating and countering false narratives ensures negotiations are not manipulated.Concessions must be conditions-based. Any concessions given during negotiations must be based on measurable, verifiable actions with automatic snap-back mechanisms if commitments are violated.Be willing to walk away. The desire for any agreement should never outweigh core national security interests. Suspending or ending talks is better than enabling or accepting a settlement that resets the conflict in an adversary’s favor.Chester Karrass put it plainly, in life you don’t get what you deserve, you get what you negotiate. This is a powerful counter to American assumptions that raw power or battlefield success will carry the day at the negotiating table.Countering Endless Warfare NetworksThese measures—deterrence, cognitive advantage, and managing weaponized negotiations—greatly improve America’s posture, but they do not by themselves disrupt Endless Warfare networks.The ultimate goal is systematically confronting the adversary networks that pose an enduring threat to the U.S. These networks fall into two broad categories: state institutional structures and more ambiguous structures that blur the line between state and non-state activity.Institutional networks include military organizations, intelligence services, party organizations, proxy structures, and state-directed organizations such as IRGC-QF, MSS, GRU, and FSB, as well as the specialized units responsible for assassinations and sabotage, influence operations, and cyber-attacks as a few examples.Ambiguous networks include ghost fleets, shell and front companies, criminal organizations, illicit financial systems, logistics systems influence networks, cyber hacktivists, proxy militias, smuggling organizations, and other similar entities.These networks are not abstract. Iran, Russia, and China employ different approaches to Endless Warfare, but each illustrates how adversaries develop and employ both institutional and ambiguous networks to achieve persistent strategic objectives over a long timeframe. Just as a few examples:Iran’s network of proxies and surrogates, built over decades, allows Iran to project power, coerce and intimidate its neighbors, and get inside the decision space of its adversaries at relatively low cost. The IRGC is an enabler of Iran’s distributed networks with global reach.Russia’s networks conduct cognitive warfare against the U.S. and the West and conduct sabotage, assassinations, and political coercion across Europe. Russia’s “ghost fleets” have allowed it to generate billions in revenue despite Western sanctions.China’s Cyber networks probe and penetrate U.S. critical infrastructure to sustain access, collect information, and provide a disruption capability during a crisis. Its networks enable sophisticated influence operations inside the U.S. and the transfer of critical technologies that directly enhance its military capabilities.Shared and overlapping networks in gray and ambiguous spaces play a critical role. Ghost fleets, front companies, terror networks, illicit financial organizations, and criminal enterprises allow adversaries to bypass sanctions, sustain operations, and reduce international pressure.Some of these networks are visible and attributable, others are intentionally obscured and decentralized to complicate attribution and defy sovereignty, international law, and national laws, including those of the U.S. We should expect our adversaries to fiercely protect these resilient, adaptive, and self-recovering networks they have carefully developed over time, often over decades, to gain and sustain a strategic advantage.The critical question is how the U.S. can systematically reduce the effectiveness of these networks.To paraphrase H.L. Mencken, for every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. That is the dilemma facing the U.S. now. Overly simplistic approaches or single solutions that do not take into account the complexities of Endless Warfare and the commitment of our adversaries to that approach will consume time and resources but ultimately fail.Countering Endless Warfare requires a sustained, network-centric strategy employing the instruments of national power—diplomatic, military, economic, technological, informational, cognitive, and kinetic—rather than a series of independent actions. This strategy consists of three mutually reinforcing lines of effort built on one foundational principle.First, identify and prioritize the networks that pose the greatest long-term threat to the United States. There are no official estimates of this ecosystem of networks—and what constitutes a network has not been clearly defined—but Iran, Russia, and China, collectively direct or enable a very large number institutional, commercial, criminal, cyber, intelligence, influence, and proxy networks worldwide.Second, sustain campaigns to daylight, degrade, disrupt, and impose costs on institutional networks that conduct and oversee attacks on the United States and our allies. It is unlikely that the U.S. can dismantle foreign institutional networks, but those networks can be degraded, constrained, and made costly and less effective.Third, dismantle, disrupt, and prevent the regeneration of ambiguous networks by severing the financial, logistical, technological, and organizational systems that support them. This is not a one-time activity. Ambiguous networks are more vulnerable, but they are often adaptive and can regenerate or be replaced.Cognitive Security and Cyber Defenses have a combined vital role to play. None of these efforts will succeed unless American citizens, business leaders, military commanders, and policy makers are less vulnerable to influence, manipulation, and coercion—preserving America’s decision autonomy—and unless governments, institutions, organizations, and critical infrastructure are less vulnerable to technological exploitation and disruption.SummaryThe concepts in this paper are difficult to neatly categorize because they describe a form of warfare that is not fully defined. As conventional warfare evolves, so do the more nuanced aspects of warfare that take place below and above the threshold of conflict and in the ambiguous space between peace and war. I offer four takeaways.First, Endless Warfare is a distinct adversary strategy already underway by China, Russia, and Iran and should be treated as a current strategic threat—not just a future one.Second, endless Warfare is sustained by sophisticated and interconnected networks that must become a primary target for U.S. and allied efforts.Third, countering Endless Warfare requires a proactive, persistent, and network-centric approach backed by national-level leadership, a new framework for strategic planning, a sense of urgency, and coordinated interagency action. Is ittime to consider a senior White House official, such as a Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Competition, to integrate interagency action and coordinate a sustained national response to this threat?Fourth, strategic deterrence in the gray zone, cognitive advantage, disciplined negotiations, and network-focused disruption are core tools of that sustained national response to make Endless Warfare increasingly ineffective, costly, and ultimately unsustainable for China, Russia, and Iran.Endless Warfare will not end because our adversaries choose peace. It will end when it is no longer effective.All statements of fact, opinion, or analysis expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official positions or views of the U.S. Government. Nothing in the contents should be construed as asserting or implying U.S. Government authentication of information or endorsement of the author’s views.The Cipher Brief is committed to publishing a range of perspectives on national security issues submitted by deeply experienced national security professionals. Opinions expressed are those of the author and do not represent the views or opinions of The Cipher Brief.Have a perspective to share based on your experience in the national security field? Send it to Editor@thecipherbrief.com for publication consideration.Read more expert-driven national security insights, perspective and analysis in The Cipher Brief

2 days ago

Gen. Dunford: Military Leaders Must Advise, Not Advocate

“We [the Joint Chiefs of Staff] often times in the national security decision-making process or White House meetings -- outside of the Pentagon process -- will go back and forth between military issues and political issues. And I think it's incumbent upon us to kind of stay in, you know, what the current [Joint Chiefs] Chairman [Air Force Gen. Dan] Caine describes as ‘the midfield’ in that regard. So we have to be aware of the political environment within which we're operating, but we have to be nonpartisan. And as long as we stick to addressing the military dimension of the problem, and not fall to the temptation to start participating and waxing eloquently about issues that are not in our purview, I think we can maintain that character.”That was ret.-Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford, former-Joint Chiefs Chairman during the second Obama and first Trump administrations, speaking last Tuesday on a panel entitled Inside the Pentagon: The Chairman, Congress Combatant Commands, as part of the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ (CSIS) 2026 Global Security Forum.Also on the panel were ret.-Navy Adm. John Aqualino, former-Commander of Indo-Pacific Command and former-Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Texas), a one-time Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.The panel’s hour-long discussion covered a variety of current issues and also at times provided a behind-the-scenes look at past Pentagon leaders’ thinking.For example, Dunford said at one point, “I can't think of a time when I was participating in the National Security Council where I was dealing with a military problem. We were dealing with strategic problems that had a military dimension. And that's really important because in that capacity, you are providing advice about the military dimension and how the military dimension can best support the political objective that's been articulated by the President.”Dunford further explained, “It's not the [Joint Chief] Chairman's role to go to the National Security Council and advocate for a particular policy that involves much more than just the military dimension. It's the Chairman's role to represent the other Joint Chiefs and provide military advice, again in a way that's integrated with all the other elements of national power to accomplish a particular objective.” And he repeated, “I think it's really important both in public and private that we be seen as advisors and not advocates.”In Dunford’s view, discussions at the National Security Council “ought to remain private and most often they're very highly classified.” He added, “Even today, I don't feel at liberty to discuss what went on inside the National Security Council or what I specifically recommended.”I quote these Dunford views because these days, for example. many Trump critics who disagree with the President’s decision last February to attack Iran, have wondered why no top military commander has yet to publicly voice opposition to that decision.As Dunford explained his view, “Number one, it's the elected official who gets to decide. And number two, the best military option, in other words, the option that I might have offered that would provide the best military outcome may in fact not be the best option for the President when he looks at it from a broader strategic perspective.He went on that his military option “may or may not be in a broader strategic context when you take into account our diplomatic, our economic interests and the other competing demands that the President may have at a given time strategically, whether they be in the security realm or elsewhere”Dunford continued: “As I used to say, the President looks through this with a much bigger soda straw than those of us in uniform. And we need to be attentive to that in the public space and not put pressure on the Executive Branch to make a decision one way or another because of what military advice may be out there in the public domain.”However, when Dunford went to see a Chairman of the House or Senate Armed Services Committee, he said, “Obviously you know the Legislative Branch of our government has a need to be informed about these issues and so the way I would approach it is less would I address specifically the advice I gave to the President, or again advocate a specific military option to be adopted. More often than not, what I would try to do is highlight the interdependent variables that went into the recommendation; talk about the risks; perhaps walk through each of the options that might be available from military perspective and the pros and cons of each, but then not be in a position publicly to say it should be this option or that option.”As a former Committee Chairman, Thornberry said, “One branch [the Legislative] is responsible for raising and supporting; providing and maintaining; approving all the money, declaring war; and the other branch [the Executive] for the operations of the military. So we divide the authority. We have civilian control of the military, which is an important principle, but we make sure that it's a professional [military], nonpartisan, not taking sides.”Thornberry also said, “It's important for Congress to hear from that professional military and to hear directly. Now, sometimes that'll need to be behind closed doors in classified sessions and some you can get franker that way, but it's not just Congress hearing. It's the American people hearing from the chairman or the combatant commanders or whoever.”When it comes to congressional hearings, Adm. Aqualino spoke of a suggestion he had made that’s worth repeating.He said, “I made a request of the chairman [of the Armed Services Committee] on the House side and the Senate side that said, ‘Hey, let's have a classified session first. Let me answer everything that I can in the classified space that will give you the understanding and oh, by the way, I think it'll help shape your questions for the public side.’ That ended up being very, very, I think effective both for Congress and certainly for me because it really made sure they understood where we were, why we were doing what we were doing and how it was going to deliver. And again, I thank all of the members of Congress for accepting that position because I found it very helpful.”Actually, however, most closed-session hearings of those Armed Services Committees are still held after the public ones, although Aqualino’s approach is much more rational.Dunford talked about how warfare has been changing.“If you think about conflict,” he said, “this go back to the 1990s, you could assume that a conflict would be isolated to particular geographic area. It didn't involve largely sea, air, and space, and the homeland was protected. We didn't have the homeland issuesSo, when you think about managing risk, you could manage risk within a specific geographic area. As the character of war began to change, threats to the homeland increased. We're now operating in sea, air, land, space, and cyberspace. We know now that there's no conflict that can be isolated to a specific geographic area.”These days, Dunford said, “We can see the conflict in Iran and Ukraine and the global implications of those two conflicts. There needed to be somebody that could help the Secretary of Defense think about risk across all geographic combatant commands and in all of those domains and in the context of broader strategic issues like service readiness and being prepared for the conflict or crisis that that was going to come even as we were dealing with one that may be ongoing.”Planning has also changed.“When it came to planning,” Dunford said, “we used to have single numbered plans. You'd be familiar with those, where plans were focused on the Korea plan or the Iran plan. Well, there's again if you agree with me that there's no conflict [now] that doesn't have broad global implications. Planning needs to be done, not in a geographic combatant commander’s region, it needs to be done globally. Certainly informed by the supported combatant commander if it's a Indo-Pacom (India-Pacific) or not Pacom (Pacific) commander perspective. But while he's fighting the fight against China, there are certainly things happening globally that are going to require the prioritization and allocation of resources again back to foundationally defense of the homeland.”Adm. Aqualino’s views of the Joint Chiefs system are worth repeating.“When you talk about the [military] service chiefs as members of the Joint Chiefs,” he said, “that is an incredible thoughtful bunch to help the Chairman shape best military advice to remove blind spots that may be missing, and to get an incredibly broad perspective. So he [also] gets it from the Combatant Commander operational required to provide options through the lens of a single theater.”Aqualino added, “Then the Joint Chiefs are able to put a layer on top of that and say, ‘Hey, more broadly, here's what I think it looks like globally. Here's what it looks like through the [separate military] service lens.’ And all that information informed the chairman to ultimately take the best option to the President. And then whenever I brief the [Service] Secretary, the [Joint Chiefs] Chairman was sitting in the room and sometimes we agreed, sometimes we disagreedMy advice was taken sometimes, and other times I got thanked for my interest in national defense. That's just the way it works.”Looking back, Aqualino said, “I do think it has worked pretty well to have the [Joint Chiefs] Chairman speak for the whole military and yet not be directly in the chain-of-command. So far it has given him an objectivity where he didn't have to necessarily defend a decision, because they are political decisions, but he [the Chairman] can look at that broader picture about the state of our military, about the threats that we face, and I think those discussions for Congress to understand have been really important.”One other point came up from former-Congressman Thornberry that also needs to be recorded, because neither Dunford nor Aqualino mentioned it.“I got to say I think today there's a strain on between civil military relations,” Thornberry said, adding, “Part of the professionalism of the military is that it's a meritocracy. It's based on who does their job well, who can excel. And there have been some universally respected officers who've been fired recently with no explanation. And I think that leads to questions about what's really going on here. Is it still a meritocracy?”At another point Thornberry said, “We were concernedabout using the military for law enforcement responsibilities, especially on the border during my time and now it's more broadly. I think that creates tensions, too. And so maybe this 250th anniversary is a good time for us to kind of remember, okay, what are the protections in our Constitution and in our system? And do we need to remember and maybe refresh some of them to make sure that the military continues the sort of respect that it has.”With that background, I want to close with something Dunford pointed out early in his remarks that I think is worth consideration.“Through most my career,” Dunford said, “polling said that about 80 of the American people had confidence in the U.S. military -- and that's 62 plus or minus today. Just in 2016 and 2017, Republicans had an over 90 favorability rating of the U.S. military. It's now somewhere in the 60s, overall about 62 percent. So we can put aside what our own personal judgments are. The data would tell us that there is a decline in the confidence U.S. military which reflects challenging times overall. We live in an incredibly hyper-partisan environment[and] there is in many corners a declining trust in institutions broadly and one of those institutions has been the U.S. military. I think we can't be complacent about that.”Dunford went on, “Why is it important: Number one, for recruiting and retention. The American people need to see the U.S. military as their military. It can't be partisan. Number two, when we're sending men and women in this harm's way, they have to have the support of the American people. And it can't be seen as a Republican or a Democrat decision to send people to war. These are Americans that got to be supported by the American people at home.”We all should agree with that.The Cipher Brief is committed to publishing a range of perspectives on national security issues submitted by deeply experienced national security professionals. Opinions expressed are those of the author and do not represent the views or opinions of The Cipher Brief.Have a perspective to share based on your experience in the national security field? Send it to Editor@thecipherbrief.com for publication consideration.Read more expert-driven national security insights, perspective and analysis in The Cipher Brief

3 days ago

Colombia’s Election Exposes a Country Still Split

Colombia stands at a crossroads because of the narrow victory of right‑wing outsider Abelardo de la Espriella over leftist Senator Iván Cepeda. On August 7, 2026, Colombia will close the country’s first experiment with a left‑wing presidency while leaving its worsening social, economic, and security dilemmas unresolved. The choice between these competing projects forced Colombians to decide whether they would prioritize a hardline stance towards security and a more economic market orthodoxy or continue a contested path of socialist structural reforms and unsuccessful efforts for a negotiated peace with insurgent groups and criminal Cartels.From Petro’s Experiment to Right-Wing ResurgenceGustavo Petro’s government marked a historic break: he was Colombia’s first left‑wing president, elected on promises of social reform, environmental transition, and a reorientation of the peace process with armed groups. His administration became a referendum on whether Colombia could simultaneously confront inequality, rural marginalization, and entrenched violence through progressive policies rather than traditional security and economic policies. De la Espriella’s win, backed openly by U.S. President Donald Trump, signals a swing back toward the right after this four‑year experiment with very mixed results at best. Yet the victory margin—about 49.7 percent to 48.7 percent—shows a country almost evenly split, ensuring that any agenda he pursues will confront a mobilized opposition and a society that has not reached consensus on its model of development and governance.Security vs. Peace ProcessThe election exposed starkly different visions for dealing with Colombia’s enduring conflict a decade after the FARC peace accord. Cepeda campaigned on deepening Petro’s approach of his “Plan Paz Total” (Total Peace Plan) which depended on negotiations with leftist insurgent groups and narcotics cartels to roll back the increasing violence in the country. Also included were social and economic reforms aimed at what Petro described as the root cause of the violence. However, during Petro’s four year administration, violence returned to highs not seen in decades, coca cultivation increased to record levels and the economy muddled along without showing any dramatic gains. By contrast, De la Espriella positioned himself as a tough‑on‑crime outsider promising order, harsher measures against criminal groups, and a rollback of what the right portrays as excessive concessions to insurgents and criminal organizations. This clash between “peace through reform and dialogue” and “peace through strength and crackdowns” left the country at an inflection point: continue a fragile peace architecture which saw the insurgent groups and cartels regain strength and control over vast swaths of the country, or re‑embracing strict security measures which in the past proved successful but led to uncertain consequences and human rights abuses.Economic and Social Policy ChoicesPetro’s camp argued that Colombia needed redistributive policies, stronger social protection, and state‑led reforms to break cycles of poverty that feed violence and migration. Critics accused his government of scaring investors, mishandling fiscal policy, and failing to deliver visible improvements, especially amid inflation and uneven growth. De la Espriella’s coalition now promises a more orthodox pro‑market line—greater emphasis on private investment, energy sector continuity, and deregulation—combined with promises to defend “the people” from crime and chaos. The crossroads lies in whether Colombia can craft an economic model that restores business confidence and restores security while still addressing the structural inequalities and social demands that gave Petro and Cepeda their base in the first place.Why This Moment MattersDe la Espriella’s government inherits a society that has tasted left‑wing rule, remains deeply divided, and is wrestling with increased violence and insecurity, inequality, and institutional mistrust. De La Espriella, who takes office on August 7,2026, will be challenged to fulfill his campaign promises. The March 8, 2026 elections left the Colombian congress splintered among various parties with no party or coalition taking control. Just as the congress proved to be Petro’s main obstacle to many of his social and economic reforms, De La Espriella will be faced with this same problem as his party gained very few seats during the elections and he will be forced to work with several political parties in order to pass his legislative agenda.The Cipher Brief is committed to publishing a range of perspectives on national security issues submitted by deeply experienced national security professionals. Opinions expressed are those of the author and do not represent the views or opinions of The Cipher Brief.Have a perspective to share based on your experience in the national security field? Send it to Editor@thecipherbrief.com for publication consideration.Read more expert-driven national security insights, perspective and analysis in The Cipher Brief

3 days ago
What's at Stake as NATO Meets in Ankara

What's at Stake as NATO Meets in Ankara

As NATO leaders gather in Ankara this week, the alliance faces a myriad of security challenges unlike anything it has confronted in decades.With Russia's war against Ukraine raging on and instability in the Middle East following the conflict with Iran, President Donald Trump continues to press European allies to take on more of the burden for their defense. This all comes to a head in Ankara, where Turkey finds itself at the center of the alliance's most pressing strategic concerns. Taken together, the issues confronting leaders at this week's summit extend well beyond the traditional debates over defense spending.This is a great opportunity for Türkiye, retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, former Commanding General of U.S. Army Europe, told The Cipher Brief. Finally many Allies will have the opportunity to better appreciate the strategically vital role that Turkey plays for NATO due to its geography as well as its defense industry and military capabilities. The changing perception of Turkey's role in the alliance represents quite a shift.Only a few years ago, Turkey's relationships with many NATO countries were strained over its purchase of Russia's S-400 air defense system and disagreements over admitting new countries into the alliance shortly after Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February, 2022. Today, NATO looks to expand defense production and strengthen its southern flank.Russia's war continues to shape NATO's prioritiesThe urgency surrounding Russia is likely to dominate the conversation in Ankara.Another deadly wave of Russian missiles and drones struck Kyiv just hours before the summit, killing 21 people and injuring at least 77 more. President Volodymyr Zelensky is expected to seek additional Western air defense systems, particularly U.S.-made Patriot interceptors, during meetings with allied leaders. Beyond Ukraine itself, many in the alliance predict that Moscow will continue testing NATO's resolve across Europe.There is a recognition, regardless of what President Trump says when he speaks tomorrow, that this meeting has to set major new directions for cooperation between NATO allies, former senior British diplomat Nick Fishwick, who is attending meetings in Ankara surrounding the summit, told The Cipher Brief.Most people recognise that the days when European allies could freeload on massive U.S. security support have come to an end, Fishwick said. European allies are now committed to spending two or three times the amount of GDP devoted to defence in 2015.European governments are increasingly acknowledging that spending more money is only half of the equation, while rebuilding defense industries and coordinating military planning across the alliance have become equally urgent priorities.We Europeans have to find ways of cooperating, sharing and communicating in an age of hybrid warfare and AI-enabled cyber attacks, Fishwick said.Beyond defense spendingPresident Trump is expected to arrive in Ankara seeking commitments from allies to meet NATO's new defense investment targets.Retired Adm. James Stavridis, former Supreme Allied Commander Europe, believes the summit's greatest achievement may be just preserving the alliance's unity.The most important thing is simply that there are no huge blowups, Stavridis told The Cipher Brief. Worrisome issues include fundamental disagreements about operations in Iran; the pace of European defense spending; support to Ukraine, both diplomatic and military; and the lingering negative effects of the U.S. moves on Greenland.One area where Stavridis sees potential progress is maritime security, particularly after recent instability in the Middle East. He said President Trump would likely welcome a European commitment to participate in operations protecting commercial shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.Stavridis also said allies should move past broad spending pledges and begin outlining specific plans for expanding Europe's defense industrial base. Just as important, he said, should be addressing threats that increasingly blur the line between peace and war, or as we like to call it, the Gray Zone.A robust discussion about how to counter increasing levels of hybrid and grey zone activity specifically including anti-drone cooperation would be meaningful, Stavridis said. I would also hope to see some discussion of the role of the alliance in cyber security because the likelihood of Russian hybrid operations in that zone is significant and rising.For Hodges, success in Ankara should be measured by whether the alliance shows that its members remain aligned on the issues that matter most to their collective security.A strong endorsement of Ukraine and the strategic importance for all NATO Members that Ukraine is successful in its war with Russia, with commitments of resources and capabilities from everyone, including the USA, to Ukraine, remains essential, Hodges said.Whether leaders can deliver that message, and Trump's often unpredictable approach to NATO, will cement how this summit is remembered.The gathering in Ankara is unlikely to produce any severe dramatic breakthrough. But at a time when Europe faces its most serious security environment in a generation, maybe it's enough for the alliance to demonstrate that it is capable of remaining united.The Cipher Brief is committed to publishing a range of perspectives on national security issues submitted by deeply experienced national security professionals. Opinions expressed are those of the author and do not represent the views or opinions of The Cipher Brief.Have a perspective to share based on your experience in the national security field? Send it to Editor@thecipherbrief.com for publication consideration.Read more expert-driven national security insights, perspective and analysis in The Cipher Brief

4 days ago

A Tale of Two Africas in Maps, And How It Affects the United States

As an Africa watcher, I have long told the story of two continents, juxtaposing the region’s plight with its opportunities, often arguing that the West should prepare for the continent's strategic risks and opportunities. This is a decades-old mantra from across the Africa-watcher community. Alas, repeating these arguments over decades suggests we must work to deliver our message in a more compelling way. So, this is my attempt to tell the story of African issues more visually, with the hope that experts in geopolitics will gain a greater appreciation for the stories from the continent that carry compelling US implications.The Effectiveness of MapsFor nearly three decades, I have grappled with the most compelling way to hook a reader, whether at the CIA, the Department of Defense, the State Department, in the university classroom, or working with industry partners. One consistent reality is that a good graphic is optimal for making a story stick. And in my experience, the map is the king of graphics. Indeed, in the countless briefings I delivered as an intelligence officer, I brought one or more maps along every time. Similarly, I have used at least one map in every class meeting with my students. Maps orient the reader geographically, grant easy visual context, and ground a story in scale.Orientation: A reader can best relate to a story when they can see where it is taking placeContext: A map can provide a reader with helpful, visual facts, whether through data or comparisonScale: The size and value of a specific trait are easily observable on a mapThe Risk Side: Development Gaps and Conflict Reinforce Each Other CRITICAL CONTEXTHealthPoor healthcare infrastructure exacerbates communicable disease outbreaks, like Ebola in Congo in 2026 and West Africa in 2014, challenging global aid capacity.SecurityLax development creates an environment ripe for extremism, creating a cycle where insecurity exacerbates underdevelopment that in turn fosters insecurity.GeopoliticsConflicts attract outside actors, creating a hotbed of geopolitical competition devoid of local interests and reducing African agency.Why It Matters to WashingtonAfrica is the last entry in Washington’s National Security Strategy, reflecting a plan to allocate fewer resources to the continent, but Africa's crises often force unforeseen commitments. The Ebola outbreak in Congo underscores that weak health systems can turn outbreaks into global threats, compelling a US response. Insecurity due to extremist violence has prompted new and expanded US military action in Nigeria and Somalia, respectively. The continent leads the world in terrorist-related casualties, with more than half of global fatalities occurring in the Sahel, posing an enduring threat to greater African stability and attracting renewed US focus. This deepening malaise and Sudan’s civil war have become a magnet for regional and global competition, including increased intervention from Russia and China and adversarial action between US allies Saudi Arabia and the UAE.The Opportunity Side: Economic Growth and Demographics Are StandoutStrengths CRITICAL CONTEXTGrowth PotentialLess developed countries have more room for economic growth. Africa has outperformed global growth by approximately 0.5 to 1.5 percentage points since 2000.ImportsAs economies and populations grow, so do imports. Africa is on track to outpace the rest of the world in merchandise import growth during 2026.WorkforceAfricans are the world’s future workforce. The OECD estimates that the continent’s working-age population (15-64 years old) will rise from about 850 million today to more than 1.5 billion in 2050, accounting for 85 of the global workforce increase. Why It Matters to WashingtonAfrica’s GDP growth represents the high upside potential of the continent’s many comparatively less developed countries. Because African economies are not saturated, they have greater room to grow, making them attractive for investment gains. This coincides with the world's youngest population, which presents a range of reasons for outside nations to work with Africa, including circular migration deals for labor to sustain growth and to find markets for exports—60 countries are set to shrink in population this year alone, including economic juggernauts China, Germany, Japan, Italy, Russia, Spain, and South Korea.- More pointedly for US implications, the country has been below the replacement fertility rate of 2.1 children per woman for nearly two decades (1.6 in 2024). Mexico, the top provider of immigrant workers to the US, has been below replacement fertility for about a decade (1.9 in 2024), suggesting Africa is positioned to serve as a sought-after source of workers.- For example, Washington could leverage Kenya’s plan to broker agreements for 1 million of its citizens to work abroad annually. Nigeria is on track to surpass the US as the world’s third-largest country by population within the next three decades and will almost certainly have to find foreign destinations for its workforce.- Canada stands out as having conspicuously higher population growth in North America, the result of purposeful legal migration, which is 3 times that of the US as a percentage of the overall population. All statements of fact, opinion, or analysis expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official positions or views of the U.S. Government. Nothing in the contents should be construed as asserting or implying U.S. Government authentication of information or endorsement of the author's views.The Cipher Brief is committed to publishing a range of perspectives on national security issues submitted by deeply experienced national security professionals. Opinions expressed are those of the author and do not represent the views or opinions of The Cipher Brief.Have a perspective to share based on your experience in the national security field? Send it to Editor@thecipherbrief.com for publication consideration.Read more expert-driven national security insights, perspective and analysis in The Cipher Brief

4 days ago

The West Needs to Prepare for a Russian Defeat in Ukraine

We are good at winning wars and generally bad at what comes after. Far from a partisan observation; this is a pattern with receipts. We removed Saddam Hussein in three weeks and then spent eight years discovering that we had no plan for Iraq. We helped topple Qaddafi in 2011 and left Libya to sort itself out, which it did into a decade of competing militias and open-air slave markets. We spent twenty years in Afghanistan and still managed to be surprised when the government we built collapsed in eleven days. The American way of war ends at the moment of victory. The credits roll, everyone goes home, and the sequel is a disaster nobody bothered to consider.There is exactly one modern exception, and it is instructive. When the Soviet Union came apart in 1991, a Democratic senator from Georgia and a Republican senator from Indiana looked at roughly 30,000 nuclear warheads scattered across four newly independent, newly broke republics and decided, radically, to think ahead. The Nunn-Lugar program spent American money to secure, consolidate, and dismantle those weapons before they could walk out the door to Tehran or to a bidder we would like even less. It was unglamorous, it was expensive, and it worked. Three decades after the largest state collapse in modern history, there has been no loose-nuke catastrophe. We planned once. It went well. We have not repeated the experiment since.I raise this because we may be about to need it again, and the warning lights are coming on faster than the planning is.Start with the battlefield. Russia has absorbed somewhere near 1.4 million casualties since February 2022 in order to advance, in its showcase offensives, at a pace measured in tens of meters a day. That is more than any major power has taken in any conflict since the Second World War. In early 2026 that grinding pace stalled outright, and for the first time since 2023 Ukraine recaptured more ground than it lost. Russian military recruitment fell twenty percent in the first quarter of this year, into the teeth of the worst labor shortage the Russian economy has ever recorded. An army that cannot recruit and an economy that cannot spare the men are not a combination that trends toward Berlin.Then follow the money, because wars end when the money does. Russia's federal budget deficit hit 5.9 trillion rubles in just the first four months of 2026. That is larger than the entire deficit it ran in all of 2025, and against a full-year plan of 3.9 trillion. The liquid portion of the sovereign wealth fund, the rainy-day cushion, has shrunk from 6.5 percent of GDP at the start of the war to 1.8 percent this April. Oil and gas revenue in 2025 fell to its lowest level since 2020, and in the first two months of 2026 it dropped nearly by half year-on-year. The Kremlin is raising its value-added tax from 20 to 22 percent and cannot borrow abroad, because we long ago cut it off from the markets. Putin is a man selling his furniture to make rent.And here is the part that should be keeping planners awake at night: Ukraine has learned to hit the one thing Russia cannot armor. Kyiv's drones have taken more than a third of Russia's oil-refining capacity offline, roughly 38 percent by some counts. Gasoline output is down seventeen percent from a year ago. Refineries at Kirishi, Ryazan, Nizhny Novgorod, Yaroslavl, and outside Moscow itself have been forced to halt or throttle production. Russia, one of the largest oil producers on earth, has banned gasoline exports and is now rationing fuel to its own citizens, who are queuing at pumps in a country that floats on crude. A petrostate that cannot keep its own drivers in gasoline is a petrostate whose social contract is running on fumes.Now the honest caveat, because I have watched too many confident men predict Moscow's collapse and end up eating the prediction. Russia has a genius for absorbing punishment that would break others, and the regime is about to fall has been the graveyard of Western analysis for a century. Vladimir Putin may well hang on for years. I am not promising you a collapse. I am telling you that a Russian defeat, a real one, military exhaustion bleeding into political rupture, inside the next two years, has moved from a fringe scenario to one that a serious government insures against. You do not buy fire insurance because you expect to burn. You buy it because you cannot afford the one time you do.So what does the insurance look like in this case? A few things, none of which require us to want Russia to come apart.First, dust off Nunn-Lugar and write the sequel now, before the crisis. Russia has roughly 1,800 strategic warheads today. If central authority in Moscow wobbles, the question of who controls them becomes the only question that matters. What’s worse, New START quietly expired this past February and is no longer around to give us the courtesy of counting them. We need pre-negotiated channels for securing those weapons, ideally including China and India, whose interest in not having loose Russian nukes on the market is every bit as sharp as ours.Second, decide in advance what we will and will not recognize. A fragmenting Russian Federation could throw off breakaway republics the way the USSR did in 1991. The moment to agree on which borders and which authorities we will treat as legitimate is before a dozen regional governors declare themselves president, not while it is happening. Improvised recognition is how you turn a collapse into a set of proxy wars that makes Putin’s destabilizing behaviors look like child’s play.Third, keep the technocrats employed. The most dangerous export of a collapsing weapons state is not a warhead; it is the underpaid engineer who knows how to build one. In 1992 we worried about Russian scientists boarding flights to Iran, Iraq, and Libya. This time we should build the landing pads, research funding, visas, civilian projects, before they start looking for the exits.Fourth, tell Ukraine and our European allies what victory actually means, so that we are not improvising the peace the way we improvised Baghdad. A defeated Russia is not a solved Russia. It will still have grievances, a reconstituting army, and a long memory. The objective is a Russia that loses this war and cannot start the next one, a vacuum we will spend the 2030s regretting.None of this is a prediction that Moscow falls next spring. It is the recognition that we have been surprised by nearly every ending we should have seen coming, and that the cost of preparing for a Russian defeat that never arrives is a few think-tank salaries and some awkward classified memos. The cost of not preparing for one that does is measured in warheads we cannot account for.We have the receipts on what happens when we refuse to think ahead. We also have a single example of what happens when we do. Let’s choose the sequel we actually storyboarded.The Cipher Brief is committed to publishing a range of perspectives on national security issues submitted by deeply experienced national security professionals. Opinions expressed are those of the author and do not represent the views or opinions of The Cipher Brief.Have a perspective to share based on your experience in the national security field? Send it to Editor@thecipherbrief.com for publication consideration.Read more expert-driven national security insights, perspective and analysis in The Cipher Brief

4 days ago

How to Get the Venezuela Response Right

When the two earthquakes struck Venezuela last week, killing more than 1,400 people and leaving tens of thousands missing, there was a silent pause in Washington with everyone wondering: with no USAID, how will the U.S. respond to this disaster? Following the 2010 Haiti earthquake, USAID surged resources, with urban search-and-rescue teams wheels-up within hours. Naval vessels steamed to Haiti’s capital. President Obama placed USAID as the lead agency. The machinery of American humanitarian response was moving. The Trump Administration has now responded: multiple USAR teams from Fairfax County, Los Angeles, and Miami-Dade are on the ground, the State Department has pledged 300 million in assistance, with more promised, and the Department “of War” is providing C-17 airlift and Marine Osprey support. This is deja vu all over again. Now the question is whether we have learned anything since Haiti.I've seen this machinery up close. I coordinated the U.S. response to the 2010 Haiti earthquake from Washington — the then largest American humanitarian mobilization in a single country. We had genuine resources, genuine commitment, and genuine failures. Fifteen years later, as Venezuela's crisis unfolds, the lessons we learned are likely to be repeated again.The most effective humanitarian tool is also the least glamorous: cash. It lets organizations buy exactly what is needed immediately, spurs local markets rather than undercutting them, and reaches beneficiaries faster. The new Trump Administration partnership with Walmart and Global Empowerment Mission to collect in-kind donations — clothing, toys, household goods - will be a time-consuming logistical mess. We saw NGOs with more experience than GEM make the same mistake in Haiti. Those items filled valuable warehouse space while people went without shelter; sorting and distribution consumed staff time and resources. In Venezuela, that same supply chain runs directly into CLAP — the Bolivarian food distribution network that conditions assistance on political loyalty. Cash allows organizations and individuals to purchase locally what they need, building up the local markets. The U.S. military performed heroic and essential functions in the early days of the Haiti response. But it performed them at defense-budget rates, and they continued humanitarian tasks long past the point where cheaper civilian alternatives were available. The USS Comfort hospital ship sat in Port-au-Prince harbor for months at approximately 1 million per day — with no patients on board. The full cost of the military response was obscured across multiple budget authorities, making honest accounting impossible. In addition, with 23,000 personnel on the ground, it made coordination impossible across all the other actors on the ground.USAID formally recommended transitioning military operations out after 8 weeks. Political leadership pushed back, and the military footprint persisted until summer, costing more money and crowding out the civilian and longer-term programming that should have taken its place.Within days, USAID surged experienced officers to Haiti with decades of technical expertise in civilian response to humanitarian crisis, honed after the Asian tsunami, the Pakistan earthquakes, and other relief efforts. Without USAID’s experienced coordination and personnel, the default to military logistics in Venezuela will be even stronger. And with Venezuela's acute sovereignty sensitivities — a country where 25 years of Bolivarian politics have institutionalized resistance to U.S. military presence as a founding national narrative — a visible American military footprint isn't just expensive, it is politically combustible. The Delcy Rodriquez government is already unpopular, and such a presence could further delegitimize the very transitional government it is meant to bolster.The Trump Administration has starved the UN of resources, and ironically is now relying almost entirely on the UN for relief efforts in Venezuela. Of the U.S.’s 300 million commitment, 200 million flows directly through OCHA’s Venezuela pooled fund — an institution the Administration has simultaneously been defunding.In Haiti, within weeks of the earthquake, political pressure prioritized permanent housing construction over temporary shelter. The reasoning was politically driven — the donor community wanted houses built. There was a concern that anything less than permanent wasn’t good enough. The consequence was catastrophic - hundreds of thousands of displaced Haitians remained in tent cities for years, because the permanent programs moved slowly through land disputes and contractor delays while the temporary shelter that could have housed them in months went underfunded.The simple missing answer we neglected was to surge supplies – plywood, lumber, cinderblock corrugated metals, plastic sheeting – to affected areas and provide support to local entities who could rebuild structures to last two to three years. Supplies should be purchased on the local market to further spur the local markets.The failure to prioritize the removal of rubble was a strategic miscalculation. The Haiti earthquake generated an estimated 10 million cubic meters of debris. Rather than treating its removal as a strategic prerequisite — clear the roads, open the sites, enable everything else — it was treated as a logistics afterthought. No single agency owned it. Only one disposal site was identified, requiring trucking rubble through the broken downtown on narrow urban roads. Dump trucks spent 8-10 hours on each load of rubble. The bottleneck cascaded across the entire response for years.Venezuela's cities, particularly Caracas and the coastal communities near the epicenter, face similar dynamics. The pressure to show reconstruction will arrive before the rubble is cleared. The pressure to build permanent housing will arrive before anyone has mapped who owns the land — a question made vastly more complicated by 25 years of Chavista-era property redistributions. Permanent housing takes years to complete even when the land is easily available; people will need shelter good enough to live in while a permanent solution is created.Corruption is a cancer that will bring down governments and create long-term instability (just look at Haiti), and establishing mechanisms at the outset is a core design requirement for any response. Corruption in Venezuela is categorically harder. The Bolivarian state has spent 25 years building sophisticated infrastructure for capturing and redirecting resource flows. The CLAP food distribution system — the government's commodity network — is a documented political control tool, conditioning food on political loyalty.The same sanctions-evasion architecture that moves Venezuelan oil revenue through front companies and cryptocurrency channels is fully available to divert humanitarian cash.A response that doesn't build independent financial oversight, beneficiary verification, and distribution channels explicitly designed to bypass state capture mechanisms before the first dollar is obligated will hemorrhage resources.The window to get the architecture right is now. That is the lesson Haiti burned into everyone who was there: the cameras arrive before the coordination does, and decisions made in the first two weeks shape outcomes for the next ten years.Venezuela is not Haiti. It is more complex and more fraught diplomatically — and this time, the agency built to apply these lessons no longer exists to apply them. Haiti was not a failure; lives were saved, a devastated capital came back to life, and a generation of practitioners learned hard truths about sequencing, cost, and corruption. The risk now is that we forget it and make the same mistakes again, because the institution that absorbed those lessons is gone, and no one has rebuilt the muscle memory to apply them.The people of Venezuela deserve the benefit of what we learned in Haiti, not a response built from scratch. So does American credibility.The Cipher Brief is committed to publishing a range of perspectives on national security issues submitted by deeply experienced national security professionals. Opinions expressed are those of the author and do not represent the views or opinions of The Cipher Brief.Have a perspective to share based on your experience in the national security field? Send it to Editor@thecipherbrief.com for publication consideration.Read more expert-driven national security insights, perspective and analysis in The Cipher Brief

4 days ago