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Articles by Madeline Field
When the world's at stake, go beyond the headlines.
NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Transformation, Adm. Pierre Vandier, returns to the studio to discuss how the alliance is continuously adapting to a new era of warfare driven by software, data, and uncrewed systems, and where it still lags. He explains why NATO is favoring field experimentation, how allies can build sovereign defense tech ecosystems without sacrificing interoperability, and what the right balance between unmanned and legacy platforms might look like. Image: 1st Sgt.
When the world's at stake, go beyond the headlines.
The relationship between Congress and the Pentagon over the past year has been marked by public disagreements and frustrations over lawmakers’ concerns about the Iran War, and by what some lawmakers view as politically motivated firings of top military leaders. In many ways, the House and Senate versions of the Fiscal Year 2027 National Defense Authorization Act reflect lawmakers’ efforts to check the Pentagon’s policy power.
When the world's at stake, go beyond the headlines.
America’s defense industrial base cannot build the Navy out of the threat it faces. Decades of industry consolidation, persistent resource shortages, and inconsistent demand signals have delayed the production of critical vessels and munitions. With production bottlenecks stacking up, the Navy may have no choice but to let its allies do some of the building.
When the world's at stake, go beyond the headlines.
In 2024, when Jiangsu Delong, the world’s second-largest stainless-steel producer, filed for bankruptcy, several Chinese firms and state-owned enterprises quietly absorbed its Indonesian assets. Among them was China First Heavy Industries, a state-owned enterprise founded in 1954 as one of China’s early Soviet-backed industrial projects. Today, China First Heavy Industries supplies military-grade metals to China’s military, including reactor vessels for nuclear submarines.
When the world's at stake, go beyond the headlines.
Editor’s note: This is the ninth article in an 11-part series examining how the United States should organize, lead, and integrate economic statecraft into strategy, defense practice, and the broader national security ecosystem. The special series is brought to you by the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies and War on the Rocks. Prior installments can be found at the War by Other Ledgers page.
When the world's at stake, go beyond the headlines.
China’s diplomats are on an “AI governance” offensive. At a May 5 United Nations meeting, China’s vice minister of science and technology championed China’s role in shaping U.N.-led frameworks that determine how the technology should be built and used. Just a week earlier, two top Chinese AI experts actively involved in Beijing’s governance efforts appeared by video on a Capitol Hill panel discussion hosted by Senator Bernie Sanders, touting China’s contributions to AI safety and cooperation.
When the world's at stake, go beyond the headlines.
One number buried in the Pentagon’s Fiscal Year 2027 budget request reveals a decade of acquisition decisions in a data point: The U.S. Navy is requesting 785 Tomahawk cruise missiles. In 2025, Congress funded 55. That 1,200 percent jump is the cost of choices never stress-tested against the scenario unfolding today — a sustained air campaign against Iran while China watches the magazine drain.
When the world's at stake, go beyond the headlines.
After four years of watching the war in Ukraine, NATO defense decision-makers are finally beginning to pour money into drones. The Iran conflict has drawn further attention to these investments. The assumption is that unmanned aerial systems will ensure a long-term advantage in conflicts requiring ground operations and infrastructure defense. But the battlefield in Ukraine is already pointing toward a different future.
When the world's at stake, go beyond the headlines.
Editor’s note: This article is the eighth in an 11-part series examining how the United States should organize, lead, and integrate economic statecraft into strategy, defense practice, and the broader national security ecosystem. This special series is brought to you by the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies and War on the Rocks. Prior installments can be found at the War by Other Ledgers page. In Sept.
When the world's at stake, go beyond the headlines.
The United States and Canada are both racing to rebuild their defense industrial bases, recognizing that future conflicts will be determined not only by military capability, but by the ability to produce at scale. But they cannot succeed alone — and importantly, they do not need to start from scratch.
When the world's at stake, go beyond the headlines.
The term “affordable mass” entered public defense discourse in 2021 as a munitions concept, which the to describe its effort to field large numbers of lower-cost, semi-autonomous aircraft to complement crewed fighters. The term has since spread in defense reporting, , service initiatives, and even on War on the Rocks.
When the world's at stake, go beyond the headlines.
In May 1953, in the desert west of Idaho Falls, a crew powered up the world’s first naval nuclear propulsion system. What made it possible was daringly aggressive innovation: Adm. Hyman Rickover insisted that the Submarine Thermal Reactor Mark I be built to exactly the specifications that would later be required inside a submarine.
When the world's at stake, go beyond the headlines.
Editor’s note: This article is the seventh in an 11-part series examining how the United States should organize, lead, and integrate economic statecraft into strategy, defense practice, and the broader national security ecosystem. This special series is brought to you by the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies and War on the Rocks. Prior installments can be found at the War by Other Ledgers page.
When the world's at stake, go beyond the headlines.
In the 1964 black comedy Dr. Strangelove, an emergency war plan called “Plan R” allows an unhinged U.S. Air Force commander, Jack Ripper, to launch a nuclear strike without presidential authorization. Once the president, the joint chiefs, and the Soviet ambassador convene in the war room, the bombers are already airborne. Only Ripper knows the three-letter prefix needed to recall them, until his aide, Lionel Mandrake, reconstructs it from Ripper’s notes.
When the world's at stake, go beyond the headlines.
In the 1986 World Cup, Diego Maradona scored his infamous “Hand of God” goal — an obvious handball that went uncalled, because the referee did not have the tools to see it. Today, soccer has addressed that vulnerability with sensors and video review, ensuring the game is adjudicated fairly. U.S. defense industrial policy faces a similar challenge.
When the world's at stake, go beyond the headlines.
Over the past decade, the Department of Defense has tested internal software development through efforts like the Air Force’s Kessel Run, the Army Software Factory, and the Marine Corps Software Factory. Those efforts showed that military personnel can build useful software when given the right tools and infrastructure.
When the world's at stake, go beyond the headlines.
China controls 99 percent of the world’s primary gallium, a critical mineral and semiconductor crucial for building the microchips of the future. In 2023, it placed export controls on gallium to retaliate against American restrictions on the export of advanced chips to China. In December 2024, China escalated to an outright ban on gallium exports to the United States. The U.S. National Defense Stockpile had zero gallium reserves when that ban landed. The United States has been here before.
When the world's at stake, go beyond the headlines.
The tech soldiers carry will shape their performance in combat, missions, safety, and health. If you care about any of those things, you will love this episode. The next generation of American soldiers will operate with systems that blur the line between human and machine, but that future is still being worked out in real time. In this episode, three former servicemembers turned industry leaders look ahead to how frontline capabilities may evolve over the next decade and what will constrain them.
When the world's at stake, go beyond the headlines.
This episode is about far more than countering drones. It is about how America prepares for and fights its wars. With three leaders from three companies at the forefront of counter-drone solutions (AeroVironment, Epirus, and Hidden Level), the conversation explores how America and its enemies are adapting, how the U.S. military is and isn’t keeping pace, the problems with how America buys things, and more.
When the world's at stake, go beyond the headlines.
A few hours before Anthropic announced the launch of its newest model, Claude Mythos Preview, on April 7, I had just completed a six-month analysis of AI-enabled cyberattacks. My research traced Chinese state-sponsored cyber campaigns against U.S. critical infrastructure and found that the barrier between nation-state-level hacking and everyone else was eroding far too fast. By the time I closed my laptop that afternoon, Mythos had shattered that barrier.
When the world's at stake, go beyond the headlines.
Commercial technologies are enabling the U.S. military and militaries around the world to operate with greater efficiency, speed, precision, and lethality. The benefits of commercial capabilities can be particularly impactful given the defense industrial base’s struggles to produce at the speed and scale needed to outmatch China, Russia, and other aligned adversaries. It is largely for these reasons that President Donald Trump mandated the Department of Defense to preference commercial solutions.
When the world's at stake, go beyond the headlines.
Think of a violin made by a master craftsman: beautiful, precise, capable of extraordinary performance, but impossible to produce quickly or cheaply. It takes time, rare expertise, and materials that cannot be sourced at scale. You would not equip an entire orchestra with instruments like that. Yet that is essentially what the United States has attempted with its tactical air fleet.
When the world's at stake, go beyond the headlines.
Editor’s note: This article is the fourth in an 11-part series examining how the United States should organize, lead, and integrate economic statecraft into strategy, defense practice, and the broader national security ecosystem. This special series is brought to you by the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies and War on the Rocks. Prior installments can be found at the War by Other Ledgers page. What if the real battlefield of great-power competition is the global flow of money?
When the world's at stake, go beyond the headlines.
This exclusive Cogs of War interview is with Eric Chewning, the executive vice president of maritime systems and corporate strategy at HII. As HII is America’s largest and one of its oldest military shipbuilders, we asked him to share his thoughts on maritime startups, reindustrialization policy, and more. Shipbuilding has been slow to adopt AI and other automated tools in comparison to other manufacturing industries.
When the world's at stake, go beyond the headlines.
Editor’s note: This article is the fifth in an 11-part series examining how the United States should organize, lead, and integrate economic statecraft into strategy, defense practice, and the broader national security ecosystem. This special series is brought to you by the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies and War on the Rocks. Prior installments can be found at the War by Other Ledgers page. Debates over defense budgets and economic statecraft are not a distraction from warfighting.
When the world's at stake, go beyond the headlines.
A few hours before Anthropic announced the launch of its newest model, Claude Mythos Preview, on April 7, I had just completed a six-month analysis of AI-enabled cyberattacks. My research traced Chinese state-sponsored cyber campaigns against U.S. critical infrastructure and found that the barrier between nation-state-level hacking and everyone else was eroding far too fast. By the time I closed my laptop that afternoon, Mythos had shattered that barrier.
When the world's at stake, go beyond the headlines.
Commercial technologies are enabling the U.S. military and militaries around the world to operate with greater efficiency, speed, precision, and lethality. The benefits of commercial capabilities can be particularly impactful given the defense industrial base’s struggles to produce at the speed and scale needed to outmatch China, Russia, and other aligned adversaries. It is largely for these reasons that President Donald Trump mandated the Department of Defense to preference commercial solutions.
When the world's at stake, go beyond the headlines.
Editor’s note: This article is the sixth in an 11-part series examining how the United States should organize, lead, and integrate economic statecraft into strategy, defense practice, and the broader national security ecosystem. This special series is brought to you by the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies and War on the Rocks. Prior installments can be found at the War by Other Ledgers page.
When the world's at stake, go beyond the headlines.
What happens when one of the defense industry’s leading technology integrators partners with one of Silicon Valley’s most influential venture firms? Bryce Pippert of Booz Allen and Matt Cronin of Andreessen Horowitz join Ryan to unpack their new partnership and discuss how the United States is trying to tap into the tech ecosystem.
When the world's at stake, go beyond the headlines.
The U.S.-Israeli war with Iran, now in an unstable ceasefire, has exposed a structural failure in the global semiconductor memory supply chain, and it is not the one analysts seem to be tracking. The story receiving attention is helium: Qatar’s Ras Laffan facility went offline, a 45-day inventory clock started running, and spot prices doubled within days. The story receiving almost no attention is bromine, and it is potentially the more dangerous one.
When the world's at stake, go beyond the headlines.
In May 1953, in the desert west of Idaho Falls, a crew powered up the world’s first naval nuclear propulsion system. What made it possible was daringly aggressive innovation: Adm. Hyman Rickover insisted that the Submarine Thermal Reactor Mark I be built to exactly the specifications that would later be required inside a submarine.
When the world's at stake, go beyond the headlines.
The tech soldiers carry will shape their performance in combat, missions, safety, and health. If you care about any of those things, you will love this episode. The next generation of American soldiers will operate with systems that blur the line between human and machine, but that future is still being worked out in real time. In this episode, three former servicemembers turned industry leaders look ahead to how frontline capabilities may evolve over the next decade and what will constrain them.
When the world's at stake, go beyond the headlines.
In October 2022, Unitree Robotics joined Boston Dynamics, Agility Robotics, and three other firms in signing an open letter pledging not to weaponize their machines and to review customers’ intended applications. This Chinese startup based in Hangzhou had earned its place in that group. Founded in 2016 by a 26-year-old engineer named Wang Xingxing, who quit his job at the drone maker DJI during his probationary period, Unitree set out to build affordable quadruped robots. It worked.
When the world's at stake, go beyond the headlines.
This exclusive Cogs of War interview is with Jeffrey E. Stern, an award-winning journalist and author of the newly released The Warhead: The Quest to Build the Perfect Weapon in the Age of Modern Warfare, which details the development of Paveway, the precision-guided bomb. We asked him to share his thoughts on the bomb’s history and its role in air campaigns, and the relationship between government, science, and industry.
When the world's at stake, go beyond the headlines.
In October 2022, Unitree Robotics joined Boston Dynamics, Agility Robotics, and three other firms in signing an open letter pledging not to weaponize their machines and to review customers’ intended applications. This Chinese startup based in Hangzhou had earned its place in that group. Founded in 2016 by a 26-year-old engineer named Wang Xingxing, who quit his job at the drone maker DJI during his probationary period, Unitree set out to build affordable quadruped robots. It worked.
When the world's at stake, go beyond the headlines.
Editor’s note: This article is the fifth in an 11-part series examining how the United States should organize, lead, and integrate economic statecraft into strategy, defense practice, and the broader national security ecosystem. This special series is brought to you by the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies and War on the Rocks. Prior installments can be found at the War by Other Ledgers page. Debates over defense budgets and economic statecraft are not a distraction from warfighting.
When the world's at stake, go beyond the headlines.
On July 4, 2026, the United States turns 250. At Cogs of War, we plan to mark the occasion the way we know best: by examining how Americans have built, adapted, and fought with technology in war. From David Bushnell’s Turtle submarine to the Gatling gun, nuclear warhead, GPS, and AI, American defense innovation has always been more about people working at the edge of constraint to deliver advantage in war — improvising, scaling, and sometimes breaking institutions — than any singular invention.
When the world's at stake, go beyond the headlines.
In late 2024, Chinese models accounted for one percent of global AI workloads. By the end of 2025, that figure had surged to 30 percent. Alibaba’s Qwen family now boasts over 700 million downloads, making it the world’s largest provider of “open-source” AI systems that are publicly released and capable of being downloaded and run locally.
When the world's at stake, go beyond the headlines.
In the 1964 black comedy Dr. Strangelove, an emergency war plan called “Plan R” allows an unhinged U.S. Air Force commander, Jack Ripper, to launch a nuclear strike without presidential authorization. Once the president, the joint chiefs, and the Soviet ambassador convene in the war room, the bombers are already airborne. Only Ripper knows the three-letter prefix needed to recall them, until his aide, Lionel Mandrake, reconstructs it from Ripper’s notes.
When the world's at stake, go beyond the headlines.
Over the past decade, the Department of Defense has tested internal software development through efforts like the Air Force’s Kessel Run, the Army Software Factory, and the Marine Corps Software Factory. Those efforts showed that military personnel can build useful software when given the right tools and infrastructure.
When the world's at stake, go beyond the headlines.
In 1918, the U.S. Supreme Court held that government contractors could be sued for patent infringement even if their products were manufactured specifically for the U.S. government. Franklin D. Roosevelt, then acting secretary of the Navy, wrote an urgent letter to Congress warning that contractors were hesitant to build equipment for the Navy that could expose them to expensive litigation.
When the world's at stake, go beyond the headlines.
Somewhere in a defense ministry, someone is drafting a policy on whether to permit AI-assisted software development in defense procurement. The sentiment is understandable, but the policy is unfortunately unenforceable because the code is already there. In April 2025, Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella told an audience that 20 to 30 percent of code in some Microsoft repositories is now AI-generated.
When the world's at stake, go beyond the headlines.
What if the real battlefield of great-power competition is the global flow of money? The ability to mobilize and direct large pools of public and private capital across critical industries — defense, infrastructure, manufacturing, and technology — is becoming the defining instrument of contemporary economic statecraft. These industries operate largely in private balance sheets and global supply chains, meaning governments should increasingly align national priorities with private investment.
When the world's at stake, go beyond the headlines.
This exclusive Cogs of War interview is with Eric Chewning, the executive vice president of maritime systems and corporate strategy at HII. As HII is America’s largest and one of its oldest military shipbuilders, we asked him to share his thoughts on maritime startups, reindustrialization policy, and more. Shipbuilding has been slow to adopt AI and other automated tools in comparison to other manufacturing industries.
When the world's at stake, go beyond the headlines.
This episode is about far more than countering drones. It is about how America prepares for and fights its wars. With three leaders from three companies at the forefront of counter-drone solutions (AeroVironment, Epirus, and Hidden Level), the conversation explores how America and its enemies are adapting, how the U.S. military is and isn’t keeping pace, the problems with how America buys things, and more.
When the world's at stake, go beyond the headlines.
In recent years, as AI has begun to enter military planning and operational design, a persistent unease has surfaced among practitioners. Even with improved tools, increased tempo, and unprecedented access to data, plans continue to falter on integration, coherence, and a shared sense of direction. Marco Lyons’ recent War on the Rocks article on the perceived decline of operational art gives voice to this unease in a way that is both timely and important.
When the world's at stake, go beyond the headlines.
At conferences, in pitch decks, and increasingly in public writing, “service” is increasingly being used to describe the work of startup founders, employees, and venture capital investors in defense technology. The claim, sometimes explicit, more often implied, is that building defense technology is itself a form of service comparable to uniformed military service.
When the world's at stake, go beyond the headlines.
Is America running out of missiles? The attacks on Iranian forces and leadership have had a devastating impact on the regime, but the repeated salvos of precision-guided munitions and interceptors have put a strain on U.S. and Israeli stores of some of these munitions. While the United States retains significant capacity, as Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has stated, the expenditures do create risk, particularly in other potential theaters of action such as East Asia.
When the world's at stake, go beyond the headlines.
In early March 2026, U.S. Central Command confirmed the first U.S. fatalities of the Iran conflict. A drone strike at Port Shuaiba in Kuwait killed six American servicemembers. A counter-drone system can intercept “most” threats and still fail at the mission that matters: protecting people and critical nodes. Small drones can fly as low to the ground, present detection challenges, and punish any gap in hardening or point defense.
When the world's at stake, go beyond the headlines.
There is little doubt in Washington that AI is a powerful technology that will help determine which country rules the 21st century. Policymakers from the Hill to the White House have made U.S. AI leadership a priority and invested significant resources towards staying ahead of competitors. Yet the United States is at perhaps greater risk than ever before of losing the broader global technology competition.
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