Asymmetric warfare

Unlikely.

The last three decades have illustrated some pretty clear truths about asymmetric warfare between powerful and powerless nations.

Ukraine and Iran both demonstrate that the aggressor nation has to win, but the attacked nation has to do nothing more than not lose.

And they do so by being more resilient and more adaptable.

Well, drones now.

See, this, the asymmetric warfare that we now have enable countries that- Were not major powers before

Like Argentina

Like Argentina.

exactly how much have we missed here? Or did we always know they had this capability? We just never wanted to bother with them and we didn't have to.

Well, Herein lies the problem with asymmetric warfare.

When the other side doesn't care about dying, as the Houthis in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard and ISIS do not, most radical Islamists don't because they view dying as proof of the righteousness of their cause, especially for the followers, not the leaders.

We underestimate what is required to prosecute a war against them.

He's also the author of Drones and Terrorism.

The Asymmetric Warfare and the Threat to Global Security.

You can follow him on The Blue Skies at Nicholas Grossman, and you can sign up for his newsletter, ArcDigital at Grossman.ArcDigital.Media. Nicholas Grossman, thanks for joining us.

Look forward to the next time, sir.

Uh, second, it proves the asymmetry of military technology, which I think we've forgotten for a long time.

You mentioned asymmetric warfare.

What's the clearest example of asymmetric warfare today in twenty twenty-six?

The thing about asymmetric warfare is that it's always changing around power law of technologies.

Asymmetric warfare by nature is sort of just the Pareto edge of technology as relates to a given fight, and so it's changed, right? Asymmetry early in the war was them adopting traditional Western Stingers and Javelins incredibly well.

Asymmetry in Ukraine, the thing the Ukrainians done, do incredibly well is they out-innovate.

They don't necessarily have better engineering.

He's actually one of our build engineers on Pike.

You know, they were forced to move because potentially of a van that might have, you know, gotten into Normandy somehow, and the people that pulled out of the van were Iranians.

So it's asymmetric warfare as it's designed.

Cheap threats force an expensive response.

And it's really-- I mean, the future of warfare is just gonna be, we have these expensive platforms.

You, you, you want a fighting force that is so courageous and scary and willing to die, and there's nothing more willing to die than an unmanned drone.

Uh, and by the way, you can just launch thousands of them.

So this is basically Iran is bringing the war to its allies using asymmetric warfare.

And, [sighing] you know, the war used to-- The war has followed us home to our allies, and the UK let us use its bases, and now it's the one with suspects on its soil.

Innovation happens in fast back and forth cycles as each side copies the successful moves of its rival.

But then there's asymmetric warfare.

These are things that cannot be copied.

Russia may rely on its larger population to overwhelm Ukraine.

To be clear, it is well established in public discourse that China, Russia, and Iran engages espionage and theft of intellectual property and information, especially technology which can provide commercial and military benefit for these hostile states.

Asymmetric warfare.

It is clear that China, Russia, and Iran, and there are others, are conducting asymmetric warfare against Australia, with China recently going further by demonstrating military threats through having a naval task force circumnavigate Australia, during which it undertook missile live firing and China's launching of an ICBM into the South Pacific.

Yet we allow academic cooperation of dual-use and military-aligned projects.

This has to stop.