The Leap into Quantum Technology: A Primer for National Security Professionals

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This article was originally published by War on the Rocks on 17 November 2017.

China recently announced the launch of its Jinan Project, a quantum information effort billed as “the world’s first unhackable computer network.” Building on its launch last year of the world’s first quantum-enabled satellite, China has made significant strides in quantum technology, a field with rapidly increasing relevance to national security. Its satellite has been hailed as a major step toward “unbreakable” encrypted communications.

Nuclear Norms and the UN Ban Treaty

Image courtesy of US Department of Energy

This article was originally published on the Australian Strategic Policy Institute‘s The Strategist on 20 November 2017.

On 7 July, 122 states voted to adopt a new Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. It articulates the world’s collective revulsion at the humanitarian consequences of the use of nuclear weapons, under any circumstances. The foreseeable effects of use in the indeterminate future make the possession of bombs today morally unacceptable to the international community. The treaty’s primary intent is to stigmatise nuclear weapons through a legally binding prohibition instrument in order to induce movement towards nuclear disarmament by the bomb-possessing countries.

Categories
Terrorism

Terrorism Spreading but Less Deadly

This article was written following the release of the Institute for Economics and Peace’s Global Terrorism Index 2017.

The fifth edition of the Global Terrorism Index highlights that for the second consecutive year, deaths from terrorism have decreased. There were 22 per cent fewer deaths when compared to the peak of terror activity in 2014, with significant declines in terrorism in the epicentres of Syria, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria. Collectively these four countries, which are among the five most impacted by terrorism, recorded 33 per cent fewer deaths.

In China, a New Political Era Begins

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This article was originally published by Geopolitical Futures on 19 October 2017.

Blending the policies of his predecessors, the Chinese president is trying to liberalize with an iron fist.

The world has changed since modern China was founded, and it seems that China, not for the first time, is changing with it. When Mao Zedong established the republic in 1949, having fought a civil war to claim it, China was poor and unstable. To reinstate stability he ruled absolutely, his government asserting itself into most other state institutions. Private property was outlawed, and industrialization was mandated, from the top down, in an otherwise agrarian society. The goal was to disrupt China’s feudal economic system that enriched landlords but left most of the rest of the country in poverty. Mao’s techniques ensured compliance with government policies, but they did little to improve the country’s underdeveloped economy. This is what we consider the first era of communist rule.

In Praise of NATO’s Dysfunctional, Bureaucratic Tedium

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This article was originally published by War on the Rocks on 7 November 2017.

A year after Donald Trump’s election to the presidency, the furor around his approach to transatlantic security has predictably calmed. Part of the reason is saturation. Like antibiotics, provocation of one’s allies loses its potency when used excessively. Part of the reason is that the president has found a more willing and compelling foil, in the form of Kim Jong Un, than those buttoned-up European leaders he accuses of freeloading. Certainly, part of the reason includes the administration’s Russia-related scandals and Robert Mueller’s investigation. The president’s hostility toward NATO has always felt more like a sop to Moscow than a matter of principle and thus not a good look with indictments swirling.