by Joey Middleton | Oct 13, 2026 | SOF and Strategic Competition
By Toby Fenton Introduction Cognitive warfare is receiving increasing attention in national security and defense communities, including much discussion within the pages of the Small Wars Journal. In contribution to these discussions, this essay identifies an overlap...
by Joey Middleton | Oct 13, 2026 | SOF and Strategic Competition
By Lee Ferran After underestimating Ukraine’s forces, the Defense Intelligence Agency adopted a new analytical framework to try and quantify the unquantifiable. WASHINGTON — The Defense Intelligence Agency revealed today the analytical framework it’s using to...
by Joey Middleton | Oct 13, 2026 | SOF and Strategic Competition
By Rania Kisar On September 29, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps did something unusual. It published a lengthy open letter addressed not to Washington but to “the honorable people of the United States,” and particularly to American scholars, students and...
by Joey Middleton | Oct 6, 2026 | SOF and Strategic Competition
In August 2021, Afghan National Security Forces collapsed in a mere eleven days following the withdrawal of the United States military. Two decades of training and advising ended without resistance before a materially inferior Taliban force reclaimed power amid an...
by Joey Middleton | Oct 4, 2026 | SOF and Strategic Competition
The Little Green Men In 2014, Russia conducted an operation to annex the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine. It was over before the rest of the world even knew it had begun, because it was shrouded in disinformation. The Kremlin began by quietly sending thousands of...
by Joey Middleton | Aug 23, 2026 | SOF and Strategic Competition
By Kerry Chávez Since 9/11, Special Operations Forces (SOF) have often been cast as the United States’ sharpest instrument: they hunt high-value targets, train partners, and operate at the seams where conventional forces cannot reach or persist. Thriving in permissive...
