Shashank Joshi Profile picture
Jul 3, 2023 19 tweets 14 min read Read on X
🧵 I want to highlight some papers, studies and other sources that sparked useful thoughts and helped with this special report. https://t.co/HZikd3H7sr
The first is podcasts, above all @WarOnTheRocks' output, including the regular @KofmanMichael chats () and Peter Roberts' @TMWpodcasts (https://t.co/VLDCwSiHuv).warontherocks.com/premium/therus…
podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/thi…
Second is the outstanding series of RUSI papers on Ukraine, which set a new bar for rigorous analysis of an ongoing war:
-
- https://t.co/kCMoWx3Sf7
- https://t.co/6s3LaWuJM2
- https://t.co/KwHvx66aoz
- https://t.co/YfL4Lrre6s
- https://t.co/Om0yvmC4nSrusi.org/explore-our-re…
rusi.org/explore-our-re…
rusi.org/explore-our-re…
rusi.org/explore-our-re…
rusi.org/explore-our-re…
rusi.org/explore-our-re…
This RUSI report, looking at preliminary lessons from Feb-July last year, is one I come back to again and again. Its core message is one I hear again and again. "There is no sanctuary in modern warfare. The enemy can strike throughout operational depth."
https://t.co/Y3uK3ibMDbstatic.rusi.org/359-SR-Ukraine…
.@WarOnTheRocks has published too many good Ukraine-lessons pieces to document here. I'd pick out:
-
- https://t.co/RrIGncPk8W
- https://t.co/nIXRBRvRiJ
- https://t.co/X9rvWHbPoY
- https://t.co/yHj3Q6RE03
-https://t.co/x5eHBdTRuP
- https://t.co/Cf5tvHbv30warontherocks.com/2023/01/americ…
warontherocks.com/2022/05/would-…
warontherocks.com/2022/08/ending…
warontherocks.com/2022/08/ending…
warontherocks.com/2023/04/bind-u…
warontherocks.com/2022/11/ukrain…
warontherocks.com/2023/06/what-t…
.@nicolange_'s paper for @GLOBSEC, published in February, is another outstanding survey of what Ukraine has been doing right. He emphasises areas in which NATO countries would find it hard to emulate Ukrainian practices for various reasons.
https://t.co/8DQuBYFNe9globsec.org/sites/default/…
Sweden's @FOIresearch team (including @MansRAD, @niklas_granholm) have produced very good output on Russia-Ukraine, including a study last summer () and more recently a forward-looking anthology (https://t.co/3sGivzdPKM).foi.se/rapportsammanf…
foi.se/en/foi/reports…
.@HoansSolo, among other good writing, has reflected on the ways in which Ukraine might offer false or misleading lessons for a war over Taiwan. He disagrees with one of the points I emphasise in the special report—that defence is likely to dominate. https://t.co/genq3KWlZ1foreignpolicy.com/2022/11/02/les…
Ben Barry for @IISS_org looks at some of the lessons for land war. He points to the basics: "The war reminds us that the prime requirement for armed forces is competence."
https://t.co/BjVi9Yq7WAiiss.org/globalassets/m…
Israeli analysis has been good at putting the war into perspective, particularly in picking out the ways it echoes typical land wars of the past:
Here's one piece by Eado Hecht:
And another below by @Eyal_Berelovich https://t.co/bDHp5iKEyq https://t.co/WrRsNHbZhobesacenter.org/the-russo-ukra…
idf.il/%D7%90%D7%AA%D…


Estonia's defence ministry has been a consistently pragmatic voice on the war, warning of Russian military strength even when others have played it down. Some of their assessments seem a bit pessimistic to me, but always worth reading: https://t.co/IahY1cfLbbkaitseministeerium.ee/sites/default/…
.@peterwsinger looks at the technologies in use in Ukraine. "So too in Ukraine, we have seen similar examples of new technology in use—not drastically shaping the fighting, but providing signs of what’s to come." newamerica.org/international-…
I don't touch on cyber lessons in this report, but see:
-
- https://t.co/iyldQOCD94
- https://t.co/r7eJzskjtV
- https://t.co/oR9U2W05vd
- https://t.co/iPara6W94J
- https://t.co/XUssJAGgNl
- And of course our piece from November: https://t.co/P7wWqh1ULOswp-berlin.org/publications/p…
carnegieendowment.org/programs/techn…
iiss.org/research-paper…
eccri.eu/wp-content/upl…
tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10…
blog.google/threat-analysi…
economist.com/science-and-te…
We've also spoken to officials on what lessons they are drawing:
- @PedderSophie & I interviewed France's top general:
- @BWallaceMP on how defence review will reflect lessons: https://t.co/hfnmQeZgso
- JIC chair on intel lessons: https://t.co/zrSy9dSPc6 https://t.co/1Ix88EzdZAeconomist.com/europe/2023/06…
economist.com/britain/2023/0…
economist.com/britain/2023/0…
.@defpriorities has a good symposium from Feb on lessons, many from experts of a more realist bent. @AngelaStent: "The most important lesson U.S. strategists and policymakers should take away from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is that deterrence failed."
defensepriorities.org/symposium/less…
On resilience, society and total defence: Hannah Shelest on Ukraine's "third way", between the "whole-of-society" approach (Sweden, Finland, etc) and the big-power highly centralised approach (US, Russia, China). "Europeans should learn from this." https://t.co/Xqiyypu4suecfr.eu/publication/de…
On logistics lessons from Ukraine:
-
- https://t.co/Itjz7ejEUY
- https://t.co/jtshcbVyGt
- https://t.co/PQYj9T64M5
- https://t.co/Itjz7ejEUY
- https://t.co/LOFiLcYBljicds.ee/wp-content/upl…
mwi.usma.edu/logistics-dete…
csis.org/analysis/europ…
sldinfo.com/2023/04/the-re…
mwi.usma.edu/logistics-dete…
cnas.org/press/press-re…
Finally, though I will have a proper sources & acknowledgments section up shortly, I want to thank the many people who anonymously shared their insights with me for this special report—in particular the Ukrainian experts & officials generous with their time & wisdom in Kyiv.
I'll add some as they occur to me. @AmosFox6 in RUSI Journal: "today’s technological investments accelerate the death of manoeuvre while increasing the possibility of replicating [WW1] battlefields [eg] Somme, Ypres & Verdun—static, defensive, destructive" https://t.co/i58yqldWp4tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10…

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with Shashank Joshi

Shashank Joshi Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

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

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Don't want to be a Premium member but still want to support us?

Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us!

:(