Shashank Joshi Profile picture
Sep 30, 2020 8 tweets 4 min read Read on X
Some excerpts from the House Armed Services Committee's "Future of Defense Task Force", published this week armedservices.house.gov/_cache/files/2… @HASCDemocrats @HASCRepublicans
"China represents the most significant economic and national security threat to the United States over the next 20 to 30 years ... Russia’s long-term economic forecast makes its global power likely to recede over the next 20 to 30 years." armedservices.house.gov/_cache/files/2…
"Advancements in AI, biotechnology [etc] are making traditional battlefields and boundaries increasingly irrelevant. To remain competitive, the United States must prioritize the development of emerging technologies over ... legacy systems" armedservices.house.gov/_cache/files/2…
"Using the Manhattan Project as a model, the United States must undertake and win the artificial intelligence race by leading in the invention and deployment of AI while establishing the standards for its public and private use" armedservices.house.gov/_cache/files/2…
"Congress and the Department of Defense must ... require every Major Defense Acquisition Program to evaluate at least one AI or autonomous alternative prior to funding [and] require all new Major Defense Acquisition Programs to be AI-ready " armedservices.house.gov/_cache/files/2…
"To compete against 21st century adversaries, Congress & [DoD] must identify, replace, and retire costly and ineffective legacy platforms. The Task Force recommends that Congress commission RAND Corporation (or similar entity) ...to study legacy platforms" armedservices.house.gov/_cache/files/2…
"Because an engaged and informed electorate is essential for a republic to endure, the United States should expand voluntary National Service programs. Promoting volunteerism and active engagement in democracy bolsters our national security" armedservices.house.gov/_cache/files/2…
"binary notions of war and peace are becoming antiquated. Future conflicts will be...waged in the gray zone, the nebulous battlespace below open combat, [w/] tactics such as economic coercion, cyber espionage, disinformation & unattributed military forces" armedservices.house.gov/_cache/files/2…

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More from @shashj

Aug 30
Some defence stories in this week’s @TheEconomist. First, we looked at Ukraine’s new cruise missile. ‘Production…at least partially carried out abroad, but “over 90%”, the company says, of final assembly is in secret sites dispersed throughout Ukraine’
economist.com/europe/2025/08…
We reported on the Wagner group’s meltdown in Mali. “Murdering ordinary Malians, it turns out, is a bad way to win over ordinary Malians. Informants have dried up.” economist.com/middle-east-an…
We examined the US naval buildup in the Caribbean & whether it’s really for counter-narcotic purposes. ‘This “looks just right to scare the daylights out of Maduro’s supporters”, says Evan Ellis of the US Army War College.’ economist.com/the-americas/2…
Read 8 tweets
Jul 22
🧵 I've been writing something on the intelligence & national-security applications of frontier AI models. This is an experiment in seeing what one of them, OpenAI's o3-pro model, might be able to do in an area relevant to national security.
I fed the model this chart, explaining that it was the manoeuvre history of a satellite (though not sure I even needed to do that). Could it identify the satellite? Yes, after reasoning for 22 minutes and 23 seconds, it could indeed. Image
o3-pro identified the two large east-west & minimal north-south movements as distinctive signatures of Russia's Luch-5X satellite. It reasoned by elimination: "No other GEO spacecraft executed delta‑V’s of that magnitude (tens of m s‑¹) in exactly those two windows." Image
Read 12 tweets
Jul 7
Good account of a KGB "dangle" to the CIA in the cold war. "GTPROLOGUE exemplifies CIA’s troubled experience with hostile double agents during the 1980s, when a few select services—particularly the Soviets, East Germans & Cubans—badly burned the agency." cia.gov/resources/csi/…
"The ‘85–86 losses [due to Ames], as they became colloquially known within CIA, also signaled the need for a major KGB undertaking to deceive CIA as to the real reason for these losses. A multichannel KGB disinformation campaign, which operated from at least 1986, was launched" cia.gov/resources/csi/…Image
"Within the KGB, the Soviet preoccupation with secrecy fostered an institutional bias against release of the sort of valid feed typically required to establish the credibility of a deception channel." cia.gov/resources/csi/…Image
Image
Read 5 tweets
Jun 24
Important. "The US military strikes on three of Iran’s nuclear facilities last weekend did not destroy the core components of the country’s nuclear program and likely only set it back by months, according to an early US [DIA] intelligence assessment" edition.cnn.com/2025/06/24/pol…
Wow. 'Two of the people familiar w/ the assessment said Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium was not destroyed. One of the people said the centrifuges are largely “intact.” “...the (DIA) assessment is that the US set them back maybe a few months, tops”...' edition.cnn.com/2025/06/24/pol…
And a caveat. "It is still early for the US to have a comprehensive picture of the impact of the strikes, and none of the sources described how the DIA assessment compares to the view of other agencies in the intelligence community." edition.cnn.com/2025/06/24/pol…
Read 4 tweets
Jun 22
Pentagon briefing: “I know that battle damage is of great interest. Final battle damage will take some time, but initial battle damage assessments indicate that all three sites sustained extremely severe damage and destruction.”
Pentagon briefing: “In total, US forces employed approximately 75 precision guided weapons during this operation. This included, as the President stated last night, 14 30,000 pound GBU-57 Massive Ordnance penetrators, marking the first ever operational use of this weapon.”
Pentagon briefing: “our initial assessment… is that all of our precision munitions struck where we wanted them to strike and had the desired effect, which means especially in Fordo, which was the primary target here, we believe we achieved destruction of capabilities there”
Read 10 tweets
Jun 20
1. Useful details here. “While some American officials find the Israeli estimate credible, others emphasized that the U.S. intelligence assessment remained unchanged” nytimes.com/2025/06/19/us/…
2. “American spy agencies believe that it could take several months, and up to a year, for Iran to make a weapon.” nytimes.com/2025/06/19/us/…
3. “new [White House] assessments echoed material provided by Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency, which believes that Iran can achieve a nuclear weapon in 15 days.”

But: “None of the new assessments on the timeline to get a bomb are based on newly collected intelligence”
Read 5 tweets

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