Australia and Brazil: Gold and Primitive Rebels

09/23/2026 Our newly published book, The Australian, Brazilian, and Chinese Dynamic: An Inquiry into the Evolving Global Order, argues that Australia and Brazil are authentic Global South actors, commodity-exporting democracies shaped over centuries by colonial extraction and structural dependence, a category entirely different from authoritarian powers such as China Russia which merely invoke "Global South" solidarity as a strategic instrument. Brazil,… Read more »

The Club Goes Inside the Wire: What Moving Valdai from Sochi Says About Putin’s Russia

09/23/2026 By Robbin Laird When the Valdai Discussion Club opens its twenty-third annual meeting on September 28, it will not be on the Black Sea coast. Invitations initially named Sochi, but organizers told participants in late August that the meeting was moving to the Moscow region, and two sources told the Financial Times that Russia's Federal Protective Service insisted on the… Read more »

The Transformation of Maritime Domain Awareness: Why the Old Model No Longer Works

09/22/2026 Maritime domain awareness, the ability to know what is happening at sea and to understand what it means, has been redefined over the past three decades. The concept itself has not changed much on paper: the International Maritime Organization still defines it as the effective understanding of anything associated with the maritime domain that could affect the security, safety, economy,… Read more »

Fixing the Machine: Rear Admiral McCoy on Rebuilding Naval Aviation’s Training Pipeline

09/20/2026 By Robbin Laird I published an overview piece, "Street to Fleet: How CNATRA Is Working Naval Aviation Training," ahead of this interview deliberately. That article was built entirely from public sources: CNATRA's own releases, Proceedings essays going back to 2002, the "Warrior Ethos" letter to incoming students, DVIDS features on the FITU/HITU instructor pipeline. The point of publishing it first… Read more »

AI Agents Need Rules of Engagement Before They Get Credentials

09/19/2026 By Gleb Tsipursky Defense organizations already understand that authority should track mission, role, and risk. An intelligence analyst, a weapons officer, a contractor, and a system administrator do not receive the same access simply because each can perform useful work. Artificial intelligence agents need the same discipline before they become routine participants in national-security operations. That need is visible in… Read more »

Mastering Chaos: A Leadership Framework for Homeland Defense

09/16/2026 Remarks to the Nevada National Guard Pre-Command Course, September 15, 2026 By Robbin F. Laird On the morning of September 11, 2001, I was sitting in the waiting area outside the Secretary of Defense's office at the Pentagon, watching a small television, when the first plane hit the World Trade Center. As a New Yorker, my reaction was immediate —… Read more »