The CSPC Dispatch - Oct 31, 2025
In this issue, James Kitfield reports on escalating global trade tensions, examining how competition with China and Russia over critical resources and supply chains is reshaping the international economic order. Victoria Flick analyzes the imperative of transatlantic cooperation, highlighting the role of intelligence sharing in countering hybrid threats and strengthening allied security. Ben Pickert reflects on the limits of foresight in drawing lessons from history to explore the unintended consequences of transformative technologies. Finally, Amarah Din examines the resurgence of partisan gerrymandering, raising urgent questions about representation, fairness, and the resilience of U.S. democracy.
As always, we hope you find the Dispatch engaging and welcome your feedback on how we can continue to improve—and may your inbox be full of treats, not tricks, this Halloween.
Global Trade Tensions Intensify
By James Kitfield
Panel discussion at the London Defence Conference Washington Forum on October 7, 2025. From left to right: Gerard Baker, Kristi Rogers, Charles Lichfield, Abraham Denmark, and Former Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk. (Photo Credit: William Brouillette)
In recent weeks spiraling trade tensions between the United States and its allies, and the axis of autocracies led by China and Russia, have escalated to levels that threaten the global economy. First the United States and its European allies announced sweeping new sanctions on Russia’s oil industry, the first of President Donald Trump’s second term, taking aim at the wellspring of the Kremlin’s war against Ukraine. After the Trump administration also took steps to increase restrictions on the export of advanced computer chips to China, Beijing responded by using its near monopoly on “rare earth” minerals to cut off U.S. access to a critical element in modern manufacturing. Trump then threatened to increase its already high tariffs on Chinese imports by a whopping one hundred percent.
News that U.S. and Chinese officials had reached a framework trade agreement in advance of an expected meeting between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping this week calmed markets and amounted to a temporary truce. Yet the tit-for-tat of trade threats were unmistakable evidence that the post-Cold War global trade system continues to realign along competing and increasingly unfriendly blocks.
Recently the Center for the Study of the Presidency & Congress (CSPC) hosted the London Defense Conference’s inaugural Washington Forum, part of our joint commitment to encourage closer alliance cooperation in meeting these rapidly growing geopolitical challenges. The overriding theme of the conference was “Global Competition: Security from Seabed to Space,” and it brought together senior officials and experts from allied governments, think tanks, media and industry.
The panel on “Economic Statecraft and Strategic Resource Competition” directly addressed the escalating trade war. It was moderated by Gerard Baker, Editor-at-Large for the Wall Street Journal, along with panelists Abraham Denmark, Partner at the Asia Group; Former Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, Chairman of the Kyiv Security Forum; Charles Lichfield, Deputy Director of the Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Center; and Kristi Rogers, former senior U.S. government official and leader of the PRISM multinational supply chain resiliency initiative.
To facilitate free and candid discussion the Washington Forum adopted Chatham House Rules of non-attribution, but important themes emerged in the discussion of trade competition and supply chain security that offer context to the trade tensions dominating this week’s headlines.
Anticipating Western Sanctions
There was wide agreement that China recognized earlier than the United States that it was in a long-term strategic competition for global influence, and thus took steps earlier to gird itself, including by establishing a near monopoly on the mining and processing of rare earth minerals. In fact, Beijing was likely pleasantly surprised at just how effective that monopoly proved in countering President Trump’s export restrictions and threatened tariffs.
The challenge for the West is that it will likely take many years, and possibly more than a decade, to break China’s stranglehold on rare earths minerals. Though allies such as Ukraine and Australia were mentioned as promising candidates as future suppliers, it takes many years and major government investments to establish rare earth mines and processing facilities, and environmental restrictions can represent major impediments to rapid mineral exploitation. A partial interim solution could involve extracting rare earth minerals through recycling.
China’s monopoly and willingness to play hardball by restricting or cutting off its rare earth exports has awoken Western countries to the danger, however, possibly lending urgency and increased government funding for efforts to diversify supply chains of the critical minerals.
Russia similarly prepared against expected Western sanctions well before it invaded Ukraine in 2022. Moscow in that case was unpleasantly surprised, however, at the ability of the United States and its allies to freeze hundreds of billions of dollars in Russian assets held in Western banks. Discussions in Europe, where most of those assets are frozen, continue over possibly using the interest on the Russian funds to lend additional support to Ukraine.
Western sanctions on Russia have also revealed the difficulty of effectively shutting off a major energy exporter from the global market. While Moscow’s oil exports to the West have fallen dramatically since its invasion of Ukraine, for instance, China and to a lesser extent countries such as India and Turkey have offered a lifeline by stepping up purchases at discounted prices. Russia has also masked its oil exports with a “shadow fleet” of oil tankers with shady or third-country registrations. The United States has also been cautious in clamping down on Russian oil exports so hard that it might cause global prices to spike, threatening a global recession.
The Next Battleground
Computer chips may prove the next front in the escalating battle over trade between the West and the axis of autocracies. For instance, Beijing continues to menace its neighbor Taiwan, which it considers a breakaway province, and Xi Jinping has made no secret of his determination to bring the democratic island to heel as an essential part of his legacy. Taiwan is also the hub for manufacture of advanced computer chips, accounting for 68 percent of global market share. The Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company alone produces roughly 90 percent of the world’s cutting-edge semiconductors used for artificial intelligence (AI) and quantum computing.
The CHIPS Act passed by the Biden administration was an important first step in bringing chip manufacturing back to the United States, but it will take years to truly diversify the semiconductor supply chain away from the current overdependence on Taiwan. As is the case with rare earths, the challenge will require that the United States work closely with its democratic allies to move from dependence to supply chain diversification and security.
“There is a Chinese saying which holds that the best time to plant a tree was five years ago,” one of the Washing Forum panelists noted. “The second-best time to plant a tree is right now. The West should have collectively acted against this growing threat earlier, but we must start acting now.”
James Kitfield is a Senior Fellow at the Center for the Study of the Presidency & Congress.
Shared Threats, Shared Secrets: The Imperative of Transatlantic Intelligence Cooperation
By Victoria Flick
USS Wasp alongside coalition partner ships from Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, Norway, Denmark, Brazil, and Portugal while participating in the War of 1812 Fleet Exercise in 2012. (Photo Credit: U.S. Navy)
Renewed international tensions—from the Russian invasion of Ukraine to persisting tensions in the Middle East and unrest in other parts of the world—underscore the need for a fundamental rethink within the international intelligence community. As the global focus shifts from counterterrorism operations to great power competition, the evolving geopolitical landscape demands a more coordinated and cooperative approach. To effectively address the multitude of conflicts and transnational challenges confronting the international community, enhanced intelligence sharing and collaboration among allies have become more essential than ever. For the United States, intelligence cooperation with transatlantic allies is vital to national security, enabling shared awareness, pooled resources, unique partner insights, greater operational strength, and a unified response to emerging threats.
While constructivist scholars explain the longstanding tradition of transatlantic intelligence sharing through the lens of shared identities, values and norms, in practice it reflects a realist logic: no single intelligence agency possesses the capacity to monitor every threat or know everything on its own. Thus, international intelligence sharing is a way to fill the gap. Moreover, all intelligence agreements are highly transactional and all parties who negotiate them are unsentimental and self-interested. Therefore, even as President Trump seeks to redefine U.S. engagement on the global stage, intelligence sharing should remain exempt from this reconsideration. As Arnold Wolfers once stated, “realists well understand that comity with friends is as essential for national security as judicious firmness with adversaries”.
Intelligence sharing falls almost entirely under executive discretion, meaning that the President, the Director of National Intelligence and various agency heads (e.g. the director of the CIA) decide what information is shared with whom, and under what circumstances. Therefore, it is crucial to emphasize to President Trump the need to maintain intelligence-sharing cooperation with transatlantic allies, despite potential disagreements in areas such as trade and economics.
Intelligence sharing is vital to counter a multitude of threats, be it traditional ones such as Russia’s increasingly expansionist agenda, or hybrid ones, such as cyber-threats and disinformation campaigns. U.S. interests closely align with those of Europe in countering Russia’s expanding international influence. As today’s battlefields have expanded beyond the traditional spaces—air, sea, and land—to grey zones such as cyberspace, there is a need to modernize the intelligence community, shifting from industrial-age processes to those suited for the digital era.
Russia’s sabotage operations across Europe—particularly those targeting critical infrastructure—not only threaten the national security of affected European states but also undermine the stability of NATO as a whole, thereby posing direct risks to U.S. security interests. Moreover, Russia utilizes cyber disruptions as a strategic tool to influence foreign policy and shape other nations’ decisions. Europe’s slow response to recent Russian grey-zone attacks on Poland, the Baltics, Germany, Romania, Norway, and Belgium leaves little doubt that Moscow will continue expanding its espionage, influence, and attack capabilities. Rhetoric alone is not enough to deter Russian hybrid aggression. The EU must strengthen its defense capabilities, as robust intelligence networks have limited value if there are no means to respond effectively to threats once they are identified. There are several ways to do so including low-key responses of utilizing counter-intelligence measures to alert countries in immediate danger of Russian hybrid attacks or more advanced strategies. One more advanced approach includes intelligence collaboration with secret anti-Russian armies (such as the Russian Volunteer Corps, RVC) within Russia to conduct sabotage operations against Russia. This approach serves as a calibrated response, signaling to Russia the consequences of its actions without escalating into a full-scale campaign. Its purpose is to compel Moscow to reconsider future hybrid operations against the West.
Moreover, to address threats in cyber space, the United States and its transatlantic allies need to invest in their cybersecurity frameworks. This approach not only strengthens the defense of U.S. and European infrastructure but also empowers the transatlantic alliance to conduct targeted cyber countermeasures against Russia. Transatlantic cooperation in cyber space is vital in enhancing the ability of the United States and the EU to counter Russian attacks. European allies, in coordination with the United States, have employed NATO frameworks to enhance intelligence coordination and conduct joint training activities. Notably, the 2024 “Coalition Warrior” Exercise (CWIX) represented NATO’s largest and most comprehensive digital interoperability exercise to date. Continuing these joint training exercises with transatlantic allies remains even more essential, as the public sector faces a critical shortage of cyber talent due to competition with private industry—further complicating efforts to counter hybrid threats within the intelligence community. Maintaining joint cyber operations is vital, as consistent intelligence sharing is a core element of effective collaboration.
The issue of Russian infiltration and malign activities across Europe has grown increasingly severe, affecting even major European powers such as Germany. According to recent briefings from German intelligence agencies, Russia has become highly active in efforts to infiltrate the German armed forces and destabilize NATO. As German defense analyst Nico Lange cautioned last week, these developments underscore the escalating threat posed by Russian hybrid operations within Europe.
Considering the heightened threat environment around the world, the collaboration between the United States and its transatlantic intelligence partners is more vital now than ever before. To effectively address conventional and hybrid threats, particularly stemming from Russia, the United States should continue engaging in joint training exercises, such as the CWIX, to strengthen interoperability, enhance cyber defense coordination, and improve readiness among allied forces.
Victoria Flick is a Research Fellow at the Center for the Study of the Presidency & Congress
Hubris, Artificial Intelligence, and the Passenger Pigeon
By Ben Pickert
A photo of Martha, the last Passenger Pigeon from 1912. (Photo Credit: Enno Meyer)
In 1995, the Washington Post published an article titled “Another AOL Milestone,” announcing “Three million and counting. Vienna-based America Online Inc. announced last week that it's passed that mark in its subscriber rolls.” The developments of the thirty years since, which began small with services that now feel like relics of a bygone era, have been transformative and utterly unpredictable.
Today, we are at the beginning of a similarly unpredictable revolution in the adoption of artificial intelligence, and are now attempting to read the tea leaves of what it will mean. While research in AI has been progressing for decades, new tools and applications have inundated the market the last couple years.
To the early builders and adopters of the web (standing on the shoulders of engineers who made the technology possible decades prior), the internet would be capable of great and terrible things, and there was no shortage of experts and laymen alike envisioning what it could mean for the world. (Elon University has compiled a database of such predictions from the 1990s which is well worth a visit.)
We’ve never been particularly good at predicting the ripples of our own innovation. Consider: the adoption of the telegraph directly drove the passenger pigeon to extinction. It allowed trackers and hunters to quickly share the location of massive, unpredictable flocks, fueling an overzealous commercial canning industry. Likely nobody involved in establishing the telegraph was thinking about its impact on the passenger pigeon, much less anticipating it would enable extinction. The same is true today. We are all (myself included) looking to the past to predict the future, yet our perspectives remain confined to the context of 2025. It is almost certain, however, many of the players and issues of 2035 aren’t even on our minds yet. The only thing we can say with confidence is that, like the web and the telegraph before it, AI will be a very big deal, and the impacts will be much stranger than we realize.
Some effects of AI are already becoming visible. Young people entering the workforce today are finding it harder to get a foothold as many of the traditional “entry-level” tasks are increasingly handled by AI systems. The technology’s reach may also soon outpace its real value, and there are some who caution we may be in a speculative bubble. AI algorithms are also reshaping our trust in each other. We tasked them simply with maximizing user engagement online, and the vitriol, polarization, and erosion of trust we now see as a consequence were never intended; the algorithms never “aimed” for that outcome, of course. It has been a weird, unintended consequence.
There is no way to predict what effects AI will have on our world. What will it mean when we can no longer trust what we see and hear about a political candidate or public servant? What will it mean for copyright law when works are prompted by users, but not strictly made by them? What will it mean for our communities when the algorithms which drive the internet continue to perfect their mission of pulling us in for longer and longer, especially when outrage has proven itself such an effective tool in that task?
Will AI bring us to finally reach longevity escape velocity and end human mortality from disease and aging? Maybe. Will AI turn the world into paperclips? Maybe.
There is no way to predict what effects AI will have on our world. But between utopian dreams and apocalyptic fears lies something more important than certainty: humility. The lesson of every technological leap is not that we can govern the unknown, but that we must recognize how limited our foresight truly is. Each innovation expands what’s possible and also narrows the time we have to think carefully about how it will reshape us.
The world that AI will build is still taking shape, but so are we. If there is a task before us, it isn’t to master that uncertainty, but to meet it with care, thoughtfulness, curiosity, and the humility to admit that even our best intentions will ripple in ways we never expected.
Ben Pickert is the Executive Assistant to the President & CEO at the Center for the Study of the Presidency & Congress
The Race to Redraw America
By Amarah Din
The North Carolina Legislative Building in Raleigh, North Carolina in 2008. (Photo Credit: Mark Turner)
Midterm elections will take place in just one year, and multiple states have been racing to redraw their congressional maps in order to tilt the results and gain a partisan edge. Among those states voluntarily redrawing their maps are Texas, California, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Maryland, Missouri, North Carolina, and Virginia.
The gerrymandering free-for-all began last July, when President Donald Trump urged Texas Republicans to redraw their districts to give an additional five House seats to Republicans in an attempt to secure a Republican-majority in the House in the midterms. Republicans currently have a slight majority (219 Republicans to 213 Democrats, with three vacancies), and House Democrats are projected to gain power in 2026 given historical trends in midterm elections. As a result, a new map was approved by the Texas Senate and signed into law by Republican Governor Greg Abbott on August 29.
Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom of California responded to the news of Texas’s redistricting, posting “Two can play this game” on social platform X. Soon after, California lawmakers approved a new congressional map giving California Democrats five additional House seats, potentially cancelling out the five from Texas. That map must be approved by the state’s voters in a special election this November.
In historical swing state North Carolina, legislators passed a new map of their own this month. Republicans currently hold seats in 10 of the 14 districts, and the new map would likely give them control of one more. State Senator Ralph Hise, creator and proponent of the new map, said the quiet part out loud in defending the effort, saying “The motivation behind this redraw is simple and singular: drawing a new map that will bring an additional Republican seat to the North Carolina congressional delegation.”
However, the political makeup of the state is not so favorable to Republicans as the maps suggest: roughly a third of the state’s 7.6 million voters are registered Republicans, another third are registered Democrats, and the last remaining third are unaffiliated. The state’s Democrat governor is unable to veto the maps due to constitutional restraints. Critics also claim that the new map dilutes the voting and political power of Black voters, but racial gerrymandering is difficult to prove when partisan gerrymandering is legal and often offered as the justification.
One might wonder how states are allowed to simply gerrymander their congressional districts for brazen partisan gain. The answer can be found in the Supreme Court’s Rucho v. Common Cause (2019) case, which dealt with a 2016 North Carolina congressional map and the issue of partisan gerrymandering. In a close 5-4 decision, the Court ruled that the political nature of the practice put it beyond the scope of federal courts, meaning it is not in a court’s jurisdiction to decide if partisan gerrymandering is unjust. As we see in today’s race to redraw maps before a crucial midterm election, the precedent set by the decision has allowed partisan gerrymandering to flourish.
In her dissenting opinion in the Rucho case, Justice Elena Kagan stated that the Court’s decision “encourage[s] a politics of polarization and dysfunction” and that it “may irreparably damage our system of government.” The current race to redraw America may well be what Justice Kagan had in mind. Voters find themselves caught in an endless political tug-of-war, pushed, pulled and weaponized by politicians and political machines more interested in clever cartography than political persuasion. The end result will almost certainly be growing political polarization in an already dangerously divided nation.
What is the antidote to this rash of partisan gerrymandering and the cynicism and political dysfunction it engenders? One solution that has gained traction in recent years is independent redistricting commissions. While most states let their legislatures draw and vote on congressional maps, such initiatives entail “a body separate from the legislature that is responsible for drawing the districts used in congressional and state legislative elections.” Independent commissions are empowered to make the redistricting process more transparent, impartial, and fairly balanced to reflect a state’s voting population. Currently, seven states (Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Michigan, Montana, and Washington State) have created independent citizen-redistricting commissions to draw electoral districts in a way that does not give any one political party an unfair advantage.
Common sense dictates that when legislators are allowed to manipulate district lines to entrench power, voters lose the ability to choose their representatives. Instead, politicians are allowed to choose their voters. The Supreme Court has left it up to the people alone to defend their democracy against this partisan stranglehold, and the best weapon is to choose only representatives committed to nationalizing independent redistricting commissions. The outcome of that battle may well determine the future of American democracy itself.
Amarah Din is an intern at CSPC and recent Political Science graduate from Appalachian State University.
CSPC IN THE NEWS
Joshua Huminski on NewsNation to Discuss Trump-Zelensky Meeting
Originally published on NewsNation on October 17, 2025:
SVP of National Security and Intelligence Programs Joshua Huminski joined NewsNation to analyze what the Trump-Zelensky meeting means for U.S. strategy in Ukraine and Russia.
Watch the full clip here.
Joshua Huminski joins Council on Geostrategy as International Fellow
Originally published in the Council on Geostrategy on October 15, 2025:
The Council on Geostrategy announced that CSPC’s Joshua Huminski is joining as an International Fellow, where his main areas of expertise include American national security and policy, UK-US relations, Euro-Atlantic defence and security.
Read the full announcement here.