Dark Wars
The (Un)Intended Consequences of Oil Sanctions Through the Dark Shipping of Sanctioned Oil
Jesús Fernández-Villaverde et al.
NBER Working Paper, February 2025
Abstract:
We examine the rise of dark shipping -- oil tankers disabling AIS transceivers to evade detection -- amid Western sanctions on Iran, Syria, North Korea, Venezuela, and Russia. Using a machine learning-based ship clustering model, we track dark-shipped crude oil trade flows worldwide and detect unauthorized ship-to-ship transfers. From 2017 to 2023, dark ships transported an estimated 7.8 million metric tons of crude oil monthly -- 43% of global seaborne crude exports -- with China absorbing 15%. These sanctioned flows offset recorded declines in global oil exports but create distinct economic shifts. The U.S., a net oil exporter, faces lower oil prices but benefits from cheaper Chinese imports, driving deflationary growth. The EU, a net importer, contends with rising energy costs yet gains from Chinese demand, fueling inflationary expansion. China, leveraging discounted oil, boosts industrial output, propagating global economic shocks. Our findings expose dark shipping's central role in reshaping oil markets and macroeconomic dynamics.
AI and Warfare: A Rational Choice Approach
Atin Basuchoudhary
Eastern Economic Journal, January 2025, Pages 74–86
Abstract:
Artificial intelligence has been a hot topic in recent years, particularly as it relates to warfare and military operations. While rational choice approaches have been widely used to understand the causes of war, there is little literature on using the rational choice methodology to investigate the role of AI in warfare systematically. This paper aims to fill this gap by exploring how rational choice models can inform our understanding of the power and limitations of AI in warfare. This theoretical approach suggests (a) an increase in the demand for moral judgment due to a reduction in the price of AI and (b) that without a human in the AI decision-making loop, peace is impossible; the very nature of AI rules out peace through mutually assured destruction.
‘All the Heroes are Dead:’ U.S. Covert Operations in Ukraine, 1949-1953
Thomas Boghardt
Intelligence and National Security, February 2025, Pages 151-171
Abstract:
Between 1949 and 1953, the CIA’s Munich operations base airdropped 12 agents into Western Ukraine with instructions to gather intelligence and assist the local partisan movement (Project AERODYNAMIC). Yet Soviet security forces captured or killed all but one of the intruders. Based on official records and the personal papers of the CIA officer in charge of the project, this article discusses AERODYNAMIC’s historical background and reviews the agents’ recruitment, training, and deployment. The project failed, the article argues, due to a lack of strategic planning, ill-defined American policy toward the USSR, and the reckless operational culture of the CIA in Germany. In the absence of a meaningful after-action review, few lessons were learned, and the agency continued to conduct flawed covert operations for several years, culminating in the ill-fated Bay of Pigs landing in 1961.
Commissars with keyboards: The lingering relevance of the military-political origins of Chinese and Russian psychological warfare
Joe Cheravitch
Intelligence and National Security, February 2025, Pages 58-86
Abstract:
From disinformation to cyberattacks, Chinese and Russian military units’ digital operations have gained increasing international attention over roughly the past decade. Less studied are some of these units’ historical antecedents, the military-political directorates of the Soviet military and Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) of the 20th century. The political officers, or commissars, who staffed these directorates played a large role in shaping the development of psychological warfare beyond the Cold War and into the information age. This article summarizes this history and demonstrates its relevance to modern PLA and Russian military psychological warfare.
Undersea nuclear forces: Survivability of Chinese, Russian, and US SSBNs
Tom Stefanick
Journal of Strategic Studies, forthcoming
Abstract:
China, Russia, and the United States base a substantial number of strategic nuclear warheads on submarines. Technologies for sensing, vehicle autonomy, and communication under the oceans are steadily improving. These technologies can be used to protect SSBNs from crewed and uncrewed (autonomous) systems that attempt to detect, localize, track, and threaten SSBNs at sea. These same technologies can be applied to directly threaten SSBNs. Given the geographic and oceanographic constraints on tracking SSBNs at sea, it is more likely that new technologies can be effective in protecting SSBNs than threatening them over an extended time.
Hypersonic Cruise Missiles
David Wright & Cameron Tracy
Science & Global Security, January 2025, Pages 219-268
Abstract:
This paper analyzes hypersonic cruise missiles (HCMs) powered by hydrocarbon-fueled scramjets and compares their capabilities to other systems that might perform the same missions, including hypersonic boost-glide vehicles (BGVs) and maneuverable reentry vehicles (MaRVs). Most analysis of hypersonic weapon capabilities has focused on BGVs, while HCMs are a distinct technology with distinct characteristics. We analytically model the X-51A HCM vehicle that the United States flight tested in 2010–13 and use that model as a basis for assessing the potential performance of near-term HCMs for military use. We find that these HCMs can have lower masses than BGVs of the same maximum range, but significantly higher masses than MaRVs of the same range. Because these HCMs use hydrocarbon fuels, they are limited to flying at low hypersonic speeds relative to BGVs and MaRVs, giving them longer flight times than those systems over the same range and making them vulnerable to interception by terminal missile defenses. We find that HCMs can be more maneuverable than BGVs during the atmospheric portion of their flight, though less maneuverable than supersonic cruise missiles.
Tracking mobile missiles
Thomas MacDonald
Journal of Strategic Studies, forthcoming
Abstract:
Nuclear-armed states have sought to secure their nuclear arsenals from preemptive attack by deploying mobile ground-launched missiles. However, recent developments in remote-sensing technologies have spurred a debate about the survivability of ground-mobile missiles. Current scholarship implicitly assumes that mobile missiles will be operated sub-optimally, underestimating the difficulty of tracking mobile missiles and hence their survivability. In this paper, I analyze how a set of remote sensing technologies, including space-based radar, could track mobile missiles. I find that, today, ground-mobile missiles could defeat tracking through evasive operation and that technological countermeasures could allow them to remain survivable into the near future.
Analyzing the Utility of Arrow 3 for European Missile Defense Using Footprint Calculations
Timur Kadyshev & Moritz Kütt
Science & Global Security, January 2025, Pages 174-218
Abstract:
After the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, missile defense systems became more prominent and sought after on a global scale. In 2023, Germany decided to purchase the Israeli Arrow missile defense system. This article derives technical capabilities of the Arrow missile defense system from publicly available information, with a focus on the Arrow 3 interceptor. This information is the basis for an analysis of Arrow’s utility to defend Germany within a larger European context against existing and potential future missile threats from Russia. The interceptor’s capabilities are assessed using a newly developed missile defense footprint calculation and comparison program. The program calculates trajectories of missiles and interceptors, and sectoral footprints. The results suggest that Arrow 3 is theoretically capable of intercepting Russia’s current long-range and potential future intermediate-range ballistic missiles. It will be of no use against existing Russian short-range ballistic missiles and of limited use against existing medium-range ballistic missiles.
Long-Run Consequences of Sanctions on Russia
David Baqaee & Hannes Malmberg
NBER Working Paper, February 2025
Abstract:
This paper examines the long-run economic consequences of Western sanctions on Russia. Using a new framework for balanced growth path analysis, we find that the long-run declines in consumption are significantly larger when capital stocks are allowed to adjust -- 1.4 times larger for Russia and 2.2 times larger for Eastern Europe. This is contrary to the common intuition that long-run effects should be milder due to greater adjustment opportunities. In our model, Russian long-run consumption falls by 8.5%, Eastern European consumption by 2%, and Western countries' consumption by 0.3% in response to sanctions. The model also reveals important distributional effects: as capital adjusts, Russian real wages fall more than rental prices in the long run. These findings show that accounting for capital adjustment is quantitatively important when analyzing trade sanctions.