National Security Correspondent Bill Gertz breaks down this deeply troubling revelation: China is working with Moscow to develop an automated command-and-control system for landing operations, such as a future invasion of Taiwan.

The news comes from documents obtained by the European hacker group BlackMoon and is related to a joint Russian-Chinese project known as “Sword 208.” The documents reveal work on the automated communications system for controlling airborne units for China’s People’s Liberation Army. And the main goal of the project is to prepare PLA paratroopers for an attack on Taiwan.

Threat Status is always looking for real, tangible examples of diplomatic, intelligence, military and economic cooperation between members of the “Axis of Authoritarians”: China, Russia, Iran and North Korea. This development would seem to be one of the clearest examples yet of direct cooperation between the Russian and Chinese militaries for a kinetic military operation.

There’s a growing movement inside the defense industry to build self-contained, compartmentalized systems that can function without being connected to outside networks and even without internet access at all. It’s important, experts say, because the American military’s reliance on the internet creates new targets — such as satellites in orbit — for adversaries to hit.

On the latest episode of the Threat Status weekly podcast, Tyler Saltsman, the founder and CEO of the company EdgeRunner AI, explores the issue in an in-depth conversation. He explains how his company’s product, an AI assistant for U.S. troops that lives entirely on a phone or laptop and can fully function with no internet access, is an example of the kind of capability the Pentagon should pursue.

Asia Editor Andrew Salmon poses this high-stakes question in his latest piece from the region: Is the world’s most powerful democracy about to lose the world’s most populous democracy?

The answer is that it could be. Mr. Salmon walks through how, over the span of just the past few days, India has reset deeply its troubled relationship with China even as its relations with the United States are fraying.

The reason for those fraying U.S.-India ties, at least according to some Indian media, is President Trump. India objected to the visit of the Pakistani army chief of staff to the White House after an aerial border conflict in May between the two nations. And India has fumed about U.S. tariffs and Mr. Trump’s threat of sanctions on Indian purchases of Russian oil.

Those tensions seem to have opened the door for a new dawn of India-China relations at a crucial geopolitical moment. 

It’s the harsh reality of any peace deal that cedes all or part of Ukraine’s Donbas region to Russia: The Russian military would come out stronger and more capable of future strikes on Ukraine or other eastern European nations.

Military insiders and former Pentagon officials say that’s why the Ukrainian military is privately urging Mr. Zelenskyy to oppose any such deal. They understand that Russian control over the Donetsk and Luhansk provinces, which make up the Donbas, would lead to permanent Russian military bases in the region, greater Russian naval control over the Black Sea, and the permanent loss of Ukraine’s most heavily fortified defensive positions. 

And the Russians aren’t even waiting for a peace deal. There were new signs this week that Russian forces are already turning Donetsk’s airport into a military hub and converting abandoned Azov Sea resorts into military barracks. 

Threat Status correspondent Guillaume Ptak also has a fresh dispatch from Kyiv about how the Trump administration’s peace push is playing inside Ukraine.

The prospect of Ukraine giving up a significant chunk of its land to end the current conflict might provide a political win for the Trump administration. But it would be a historic blunder that would open the door to more Russian aggression in the future.

Carl O. Schuster, a retired Navy captain, makes that case in a new op-ed for The Washington Times and argues that a land-for-peace deal will all but guarantee that the conflict will reignite.

“Unlike America’s professional political and media elites, Mr. Zelenskyy sees history as more than the events that have transpired since the last American election or press conference. He knows that Mr. Putin has the same view of history,” Mr. Schuster writes. “Mr. Zelenskyy has a nation to protect and preserve, not just during his time in office but also far beyond. He knows that Mr. Putin wants to gain Ukraine’s last line of defensible terrain in hopes of conquering his country once Western attention has shifted elsewhere.”

• Aug. 26 — Reexamining the U.S.-South Africa Relationship, Foundation for Defense of Democracies

• Aug. 26 — The Future of Naval Aviation: A Conversation with Vice Adm. Daniel L. Cheever and Lt. Gen. Bradford J. Gering, Center for Strategic & International Studies

• Aug. 27 — Advancing America’s Quantum Leadership with Next-Generation Sensors, Center for a New American Security

• Aug. 28 — AI Safety Governance in Southeast Asia, Brookings Institution

• Sept. 4 — The Digital Front Line: Building a Cyber-Resilient Taiwan, Hudson Institute