Articles
Our articles cut through the noise on irregular warfare to connect strategic theory to operational reality and translate complexity into insight for practitioners and policymakers. No time to read? Check out our podcast, "Insider: Short of War," which transforms our articles into concise, engaging audio pieces you can listen to anywhere. Available directly in most of our articles and on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major platforms.
Protocol Insurgency: Winning the War of Conditions in the Digital Age
Modern irregular warfare is shifting from physical terrain to digital protocols. This analysis explores how adversaries leverage infrastructure to build systemic dependence, introducing Technical Foreign Internal Defense (Tech-FID) and protocol insurgency to maintain strategic advantage.
How America's Adversaries Learned to Weaponize Reality
Russia, China, and Iran use sophisticated narrative warfare to shape politics, while the US relies on an outdated Cold War model. Modern conflict is a battle of narrative endurance; strategic success depends on whose political story is believed, not who wins on the battlefield.
The Iran War: A War with or against the AI Sector?
The 2026 Iran War marks the dawn of hyperwar, accelerating military AI integration while disrupting critical upstream supply chains like Qatari liquid helium. This dual physical and financial pressure creates a shared strategic crisis for both the U.S. and Chinese AI sectors.
Hidden Costs of Precision: What Drone Strikes Actually Do to Civilians
New research using cellphone data from Yemen reveals that U.S. drone strikes cause widespread civilian displacement and communication spikes, even when avoiding casualties. These non-lethal disruptions create significant strategic and humanitarian costs overlooked by military planners.
A Bed-ROC-k for Total Defense: Building a Practical Manual to Disrupt Hybrid Threats and Deter War
While the Resistance Operating Concept guides post-occupation survival, states require a practical peacetime framework to deter hybrid aggression. This article proposes an international Total Defense manual, drawing on Finnish history, to operationalize whole-of-society resilience.
Is Cognitive Warfare Dead on Arrival?
Cognitive warfare is everywhere, but it may already be doomed. It is hard to read national security literature and social media posts without coming across the term cognitive warfare. The conflict with Iran. China’s current operations. Russia’s way of war. North Korea’s nuclear strategy. Reports from NATO’
Winning the Systems War: Why the Army Should Reorganize Itself for Modern Combat
America’s decisive victory in Desert Storm may have also planted the seeds of future military defeat. Watching American forces dismantle the Iraqi military convinced Chinese military analysts that they could not compete with the United States tank for tank or plane for plane. The lesson learned was that America
Good Change Brings New Leadership, Ideas, and Opportunities to IWI’s Air and Space Power Team
Editor’s Note: As the Air and Space Power Team enters its next chapter, Dr. Kerry Chávez and Dr. Rick Newton will be stepping aside from their leadership roles and passing responsibilities to Dr. Michael Kreuzer. While this marks a leadership transition, the team’s commitment to advancing air and
Operationally Detached: Why Decentralization, Not Consolidation, Is the Future of U.S. Army Special Forces
“The country must turn to, and not away from, the American way of irregular war.” —Lieutenant General Charles T. Cleveland, The American Way of Irregular War (2020) Editor’s Note: This article is a response to “The Last A-Team: Special Forces Aren’t Special Anymore,” and “A New Vision
We’ll Go No More Enriching
The United States and Israel have struck Iran’s nuclear infrastructure twice in less than a year and have killed dozens of nuclear weapons scientists in what is the most comprehensive and deadly counterproliferation campaign in history. The International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) Director General says the program has
Bridging the gap between irregular warfare scholars, practitioners, and policymakers.
