International Security & Defense

Calder Walton writes that China's clandestine services are on the front line of Beijing's grand strategy: to keep the Chinese Communist Party in power and to make China the world's leading and self-sufficient military and economic power. The aim is to invert the technological landscape so other countries depend on Chinese, not western, technology.

This policy brief explains how Russia and Iran have sought to upgrade their partnership through greater diplomatic support for pushing back on Western hegemony, mutual provision of key weapons systems, and sharing of expertise on evading sanctions.

The Cold War started earlier than we think — and maybe never ended at all. Historian Calder Walton says understanding the US-Soviet conflict prepares us for this era of tensions with Russia and China.

Who can be surprised that Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin met his timely end? Many have cited variations of the quote attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson that if you try to kill the king, you better not miss.

Calder Walton recounts the succession of intelligence failures against the West over which Russian President Vladimir Putin has presided, the greatest of which being his decision to invade Ukraine.

Former International Security Program Research Fellow Rebecca Weiner is profiled by the New York Times after becoming the New York Police Department's deputy commissioner of intelligence and counterterrorism. The former deputy commissioner of the bureau, John Miller, in 2014, said she had a "remarkable" ability to recognize how security threats were changing.

Calder Walton says both seek to topple the United States from atop world stage, with China's blend of money, influence, all-hands-on-deck approach posing the greater threat.

Christopher Nolan’s film Oppenheimer is outstanding. It’s an immersive biopic, the likes of which you will be hard to find elsewhere. The acting, cinematography, and seat-thundering sound, all combine to take audiences into the mind and moral decisions of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the man who led the team of brilliant scientists at Los Alamos, who built the world’s first atomic bomb.

Calder Walton writes that Soviet espionage inside the Manhattan Project would change history. By the end of World War II, Stalin's spies had delivered the secrets of the atomic bomb to the Kremlin. This accelerated Moscow's bomb project. When the Soviets detonated their first atomic weapon in August 1949, it was a replica of the weapon built at Los Alamos and dropped by the Americans on Nagasaki.

Calder Walton recounts how Russia and China are using their intelligence agencies to reverse the outcome of the Cold War