Shashank Joshi Profile picture
Defence editor @TheEconomist, Visiting fellow at @warstudies KCL. Signal: shashank.96. These are my personal views.
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Apr 2 22 tweets 12 min read
I've been reviewing many of the past year's US & European military & intelligence assessments of how long it would take Russia to rebuild its military capability and the timeline on which any threat to NATO could unfold. A brief thread below which summarises these assessments. Norway intel service: "At the earliest, Moscow may be able to fully realise these plans [for military expansion e.g. Karelia] five to ten years after the war in Ukraine is over." In some areas Russia has "next to no reserves" for the next two years. etterretningstjenesten.no/publikasjoner/…Image
Mar 26 7 tweets 3 min read
I wrote a piece on China’s evolution into a bigger, more sophisticated and more threatening cyber power over the past decade, and particularly in the last few years. I also look at the pivotal role played by China’s private sector ecosystem in that shift. economist.com/china/2025/03/… A few sources. Ciaran Martin’s very good survey from a few days ago gazumped mine. rusi.org/explore-our-re…
Mar 24 6 tweets 3 min read
Absolutely incredible. The Trump admin accidentally adds the editor of the Atlantic to a Signal group. Then Pete Hegseth sends him details of the US strikes on Yemen hours ahead of time incl. "precise information about weapons packages, targets & timing" theatlantic.com/politics/archi… Walz: "it will have to be the United States that reopens these shipping lanes [Red Sea]. Per the president’s request we are working with DOD and State to determine how to compile the cost associated and levy them on the Europeans" theatlantic.com/politics/archi…
Mar 23 7 tweets 3 min read
Witkoff on UK troop proposals. “it’s a combination of a posture and a pose and…simplistic. I think there’s this … sort of notion of we’ve all got to be like Winston Churchill, the Russians are gonna march across Europe. I think that’s preposterous” singjupost.com/transcript-of-… Witkoff transcript is just eye popping: “Why would they want to absorb Ukraine? For what purpose, exactly? They don’t need to absorb Ukraine. That would be like occupying Gaza…They want stability there… But the Russians also have what they want” singjupost.com/transcript-of-…
Mar 22 4 tweets 2 min read
America’s main negotiator with Russia appears to be completely captured by Russian propaganda. Witkoff: “there have been referendums where the overwhelming majority of the people have indicated that they want to be under Russian rule.” pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2025/…Image The Russians must be dumbstruck they their opponents have managed to find perhaps the most gullible man on the planet. Putin “told me a story, Tucker, about how when the president was shot, he went to his local church and met with his priest and prayed.” pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2025/…Image
Mar 3 4 tweets 2 min read
“The multinational task force envisioned does not need to be everywhere in Ukraine. It needs to have a presence on three directions, and with sufficient mobility to redeploy as necessary along the front.” But is UK/Fr intention really a force that wd deploy to front in a crisis? Kofman/Watling: “the initial force deployed could be as few as three combat brigades, … force may need to grow over time as Russia reconstitutes. This would amount to perhaps 15,000 to 20,000 personnel in country, with another 30,000 to 40,000 required for sustained rotation”
Feb 23 8 tweets 2 min read
🧵 This UN resolution vote on Ukraine is worth paying attention to. A brief thread on the Trump administration's bullying under way in the background.
reuters.com/world/europe/u… Every year the US has backed a UN General Assembly vote noting the principles of the UN Charter & Russia's violation of those in Ukraine. Now the US is threatening to vote against that & is pushing a new resolution in the Security Council.
Dec 29, 2024 8 tweets 3 min read
‘The IDF requires an officer to sign off on any recommendations from its “big data processing" systems, according to an intelligence official … The Gospel and other AI tools do not make decisions autonomously, the person added.’ washingtonpost.com/technology/202… “Another machine learning tool, called Lavender, uses a percentage score to predict how likely a Palestinian is to be a member of a militant group, allowing the IDF to quickly generate a large volume of potential human targets”
washingtonpost.com/technology/202…
Dec 18, 2024 21 tweets 9 min read
The Pentagon's annual report on Chinese military power is out. It has a number of interesting things in it. media.defense.gov/2024/Dec/18/20…Image It deals extensively with the corruption purges in the Chinese armed forces—at least 15 high ranking officers or industry execs removed July-Dec 2023—concluding that this "may have disrupted its [PLA] progress toward stated 2027 modernization goals" media.defense.gov/2024/Dec/18/20…Image
Dec 8, 2024 4 tweets 1 min read
Senior US admin official says Assad wouldn't have been toppled absent US support for Ukr & Israel. No "serious" outreach from Assad to USG. US urged Iraq to "stay out of it". And: "future here will be written by Syrians. We are not coming up with a blueprint from Washington" Asked if USG is in contact with HTS, the US official says: " it's safe to say there's contact with with all Syrian groups". Says HTS is a "broad kaleidoscope" and US has to be "smart" in dealing with it, "mindful and pragmatic about about the realities on the ground."
Dec 4, 2024 11 tweets 3 min read
Punchy intro to CDS Xmas lecture at RUSI from @MTSavill: “last month's announcement of cuts… is emblematic of a dept. that is struggling to reconcile people and money with existing commitments at a very time when the threats that we face are growing in scale and complexity” Image Radakin warns North Korean deployments could become a larger flow: “This year's most extraordinary moment was the deployment of thousands of North Korean soldiers on the border of Ukraine and the possibility of tens of of thousands more to follow” as part of DPRK-Russia pact Image
Dec 2, 2024 4 tweets 2 min read
Reading the just released “War and Peace” by General Sir Richard Barrons, who is currently co-writing the UK’s strategic defence review. Image Barrons on serving in Bosnia. “The experience of working in a broken, rundown, deeply factionalised and occasionally bizarre environment was pretty faithfully replicated by my stints in the Ministry of Defence in London” Image
Nov 13, 2024 29 tweets 5 min read
An instructive podcast, published six days ago, with Pete Hegseth, Trump's nominee for the secretary of defence position. A few takeaways:
podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/143… Hegseth: "I would probably talk a lot about the military industrial complex... the companies that influence the way we procure weapons and way we fight. Well, there's the veterans industrial complex too...allow the private market to provide for vets ... the VA hates that."
Nov 2, 2024 4 tweets 2 min read
“JPMorgan Chase, a bank, has estimated that a tariff hike half the size of the one Mr Trump is advocating would knock a third to half a percentage point off gdp growth in its first year and increase inflation by 1.5-2 percentage points.” economist.com/briefing/2024/… “Mass deportations of the magnitude that Mr Trump has proposed are also unlikely to happen. The federal government simply would not have the capacity to hunt down and deport millions of people unless Mr Trump were to enlist the armed forces or deputise…law enforcement”
Oct 23, 2024 21 tweets 4 min read
This is a very good discussion with @liscovich, providing a clear picture of what the drone war in Ukraine currently looks like (rather than how it looked a year ago). A few points that stood out to me: 1. We're on to the third generation of First Person View (FPV) drones. "The overall trend has been toward using larger [air]frames that can carry more payload [with] frequency shifting." Bigger antennae—30W v 2W—to strengthen signal and counter impact of Russian jamming.
Oct 14, 2024 9 tweets 3 min read
Big statement by Canadian police. “An extraordinary situation is compelling us to speak about what we have discovered in our multiple ongoing investigations into the involvement of agents of the Government of India in serious criminal activity in Canada” rcmp-grc.gc.ca/en/news/2024/r… “there has been well over a dozen credible and imminent threats to life which have led to the conduct of Duty to Warn by law enforcement with members of the South Asian community, and specifically members of the pro-Khalistan movement” rcmp-grc.gc.ca/en/news/2024/r…
Sep 27, 2024 5 tweets 2 min read
"despite these achievements, Ukraine’s troops and their commanders are growing concerned over manpower problems, particularly the quality of new recruits and the speed at which they are injured or killed in combat." "ft.com/content/b93961… Grim & will have a knock-on effect on mobilisation and will to fight. "The [Ukrainian] commanders estimated that 50 to 70 per cent of new infantry troops were killed or wounded within days of starting their first rotation." ft.com/content/b93961…
Sep 7, 2024 17 tweets 4 min read
Listening to Richard Moore & Bill Burns at Kenwood House.
Image Burns: “we have no better foreign partner in the world than SIS” Image
Sep 5, 2024 12 tweets 5 min read
I wrote this week on the latest skirmishing in the crypto wars. End-to-end encryption has conquered the world. Governments continue to push back in defence of lawful intercept. But the debate around technical solutions has changed little in years.
economist.com/international/… A few sources for this piece. In 2018 & 2021 a pair of GCHQ officials proposed various solutions for reconciling gov't interception with end-to-end encryption. The first piece proposed that govts could be added secretly to particular communications:
lawfaremedia.org/article/princi…
Aug 13, 2024 13 tweets 5 min read
A CNAS tabletop exercise. "This study finds that a hypothetical, protracted U.S.-PRC conflict creates conditions under which nonstrategic nuclear weapons use is both appealing to the PRC and difficult to manage for the United States" cnas.org/publications/r… "once nuclear escalation in the Indo-Pacific occurs, reciprocal tactical nuclear exchanges may continue, but not necessarily lead to general nuclear war." cnas.org/publications/r…
Aug 13, 2024 4 tweets 2 min read
“Russia has trained its navy to target sites deep inside Europe with nuclear-capable missiles in a potential conflict with Nato, according to secret files…Maps of targets as far-flung as the west coast of France and Barrow-in-Furness” on.ft.com/4fzYtM2 ‘The document notes the navy’s “high manoeuvrability” allows it to conduct “sudden & pre-emptive blows” and “massive missile strikes . . . from various directions”. It adds that nuclear weapons are “as a rule” designated for use “in combination with other means of destruction”..’