The relationship between the federal government and American universities is tense and often misunderstood. The gap between the purposes and priorities of government, on one side, and the missions and functions of universities, on the other, is alarming.

Historically, the United States has relied on its colleges and universities for several things critical to national defense. First, higher education produces a more educated work force for a globally competitive marketplace. Second, advanced learning fills federal, state, and local government positions that citizens rely on for necessary services. Third, the military and civilian defense establishments require leaders who understand the science and engineering behind modern weapons. Future defense and national security leaders must also understand the American military experience and the relationship between the armed forces and society.

The current and prospective international system is one that poses a wide variety of threats to world peace and international order. U.S. armed forces will be tasked for deterrence and war fighting missions across the entire spectrum of conflict,  from nuclear weapons spread and the possibility of war in space, to the nuances of urban terrorism and counterinsurgency. Officers who rise to senior command will need the perspective of innovators and adaptors, sometimes improvising in combat when exigent conditions override old rules of engagement.

As technology advances and the geostrategic environment grows more complicated, the United States will need a stronger educational establishment to compete with China and other rising powers. Nowhere in Europe or among major Asian military powers is national education under such crossfire as it is in the United States today. How did we get here, and what is to be done?

A primary cause of the war against American education is the perception among politicians, activists, and journalists that higher education has been colonized by radicals who hate America, misrepresent its history, and aim to produce dissidents who attack traditional culture and values, including patriotism and military service. This narrative has spread through misleading political campaigns, indifferent media coverage, and, unfortunately, some missteps by educators themselves.

At the center of this narrative is conflict between the Trump administration and Ivy League universities where demonstrations included violence and charges of antisemitism. Coverage of episodes at Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, and Columbia has emphasized the behavior of a small percentage of students, sometimes supported by nonstudents and outside money, and overlooked the far larger share of students and faculty who avoid political violence and intimidation.

Admittedly, some leaders in higher education were slow to confront agitators who crossed the line between permissible speech and harassment. On July 24, 2025, Columbia University announced a settlement with the Trump administration: $220 million in fines in exchange for an end to attacks on Columbia’s federally funded research program. Some commentators and observers saw a dangerous precedent; others preferred Harvard’s decision to litigate. Acting Columbia President Claire Shipman argued the agreement was needed to prevent further disruption, and possible destruction, of the broader research enterprise. Whatever the outcome, we are far from the day President John F. Kennedy, at Yale’s 1962 commencement, joked that he enjoyed the best of both worlds: a Harvard education and a Yale degree.

Attacks on higher education also suggest that students, faculty, and administrators are elitists out of touch with Middle America. In fact, most students that attend public institutions come from middle class families, and do not learn their basic values from professors. Values are learned years before college through family and other primary groups. Professors rarely convert diehard conservatives into liberals, or vice versa. Radicals who break the law and violate campus codes are seldom motivated by instructors and more often they are encouraged and funded by activists who move from campus to campus. For example, antisemitism at some universities has been fueled by provocateurs exploiting student concern for non-terrorist Palestinians in Gaza while mischaracterizing Israel’s response to the October 7, 2023, attacks.

Administrators can also be faulted for negligence in defending First Amendment rights and for suppressing speech on spurious grounds. Unlike high school students, most college students are legal adults. They have the right to use confrontational rhetoric and provocative discourse protected by the First Amendment, however infuriating it may be. Too many universities have come to see themselves as providers of reassurance and guarantors of good feeling, backing that impulse with coercive training and sanctions against so-called offensive remarks inside and outside the classroom. The result is an atmosphere in which conversation is reduced to clichés and the celebration of the obvious instead of the clash of ideas from which great minds are molded.

It is an irony that more cut-and-thrust classroom testing of ideas can be found in some U.S. military war colleges and service academies than in many civilian institutions. Even there, however, trends toward government micro-management of curricula and textbook selection are troubling. Ukraine’s resistance to Russia since the February 2022 invasion is lesson to be learned in this debate: Ukraine turned a failed coup de main into a war of attrition through determination, drones, better intelligence, and a faster OODA loop (observe, orient, decide, act) than Russia.

Going forward, educators, politicians, warriors and voters will have to decide: do we want rigorous and results-oriented learning experiences for our future generations of leaders, or, instead, do we prefer ritualized feelgood rites of passage that will produce generations of intellectual bobbleheads majoring in conspicuous consumption?

Stephen J. Cimbala is Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Penn State Brandywine and the author of numerous works on nuclear deterrence, arms control, and military strategy. He is a senior fellow at NIDS and a recent contributor to the Routledge Handbook of Soviet and Russian Military Studies edited by Dr. Alexander Hill (Routledge: 2025). The views of the author are his own.

The Halls of Ivy and National Defense was originally published on Global Security Review.

Arms control and disarmament advocates differ with this view, seeing the deterrent as a risk that must be reduced in size and function via various forms of diplomacy that range from one-party declarations and codes of conduct to formal arms control agreements. These sorts of undertakings are currently moribund within officialdom, though enjoying an eternal spring of hope among the single-issue think tanks, academics, and commentators who strive to sway government.

Paradoxically the current surge in hostilities between the United States and the axis of autocracy (China, North Korea, and Russia) could furnish the spark that revives official efforts at both improving deterrence and renewed arms control. For instance, an updated Budapest Memorandum might form one component of a settlement or freezing of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. An Iranian “regime change” may also offer a path for a true and verifiable non-nuclear-weapon Iran.

The modality of any future arms control arrangement could vary greatly. Not all arms control arrangements are treaties. Given the current international situation among nuclear-armed states, treaties might indeed be the least likely of modalities. Some modalities that future arms control arrangements could take include unilateral American declarations, American-backed codes of conduct, American-backed norms, agreement within NATO (such as the Committee on Proliferation or the Nuclear Planning Group), unilateral American renewal of earlier Negative Security Assurances (such as those deposited with the United Nations), bilateral or multilateral statements, bilateral or multilateral memorandum or other agreed instrument short of a treaty, and/or bilateral or multilateral treaties.

The Process of Arms Control

All these arms control approaches present challenges to American and NATO forces. They also present opportunities to refine force posture and employment options. Three concrete steps are useful in ensuring American and alliance leadership receives constant feedback with operational decision-makers.

First, it is important to sustain collaboration. As government and American allies contemplate arms control arrangements, nuclear-force commanders should offer information on the challenges and opportunities that various permutations of an arrangement present to force posture and operations. Not all ideas are operationally possible.

Second, highlight the challenges that an arrangement poses to fielded forces. As part of any discussions, commanders should relate how they would adjust operations as nascent arrangements move toward implementation. This would likely be a stepwise evolution of operations in reaction to implementation of disclosures and intrusion that could accompany various forms of arms control measures. Policymakers rarely understand what their aspirational objectives mean for operational forces.

Third, highlight opportunities an arrangement creates for forces. Similarly, commanders should monitor the evolution of arms control arrangements and be on the lookout for arrangements that permit gleaning information about adversary forces—information that is useful in crafting the best force posture, plans, and operational tactics.

These feedback loops would evolve in phases over the time that an arms control arrangement is contemplated, refined, and implemented (or rejected).

The Phases of Arms Control

Any future arms control agreement should have six phases:

Phase 1 takes place during internal American contemplation of potential arms control arrangements. Classified analysis of changes to operations that an arrangement might necessitate are discussed. When inspections are proposed, any detrimental effects to operations from various forms of inspection are discussed. Discussing the benefits of inspecting adversary installations is also an important consideration. 

Phase 2 occurs during outreach with adversaries and third-country parties. Internal “food-for-thought” papers from the operational community are prepared for negotiators and strategic-communications personnel. Deliberate public statements such as editorials and conference presentations serve a useful purpose in explaining American interests.  

Phase 3 takes place during formalization of an arms control arrangement. When requested by the Department of Defense, Department of State, National Security Council, the president, or other officials, public statements are made for adversary consumption. 

Phase 4 is the implementation phase. This is the period in which an arms control arrangement comes into effect by treaty agreement or as a unilateral/bilateral/multilateral action. Classified reports on implementation progress of the new arrangement are prepared. When inspections are part of the arrangement, coordination between government agencies occurs.

Phase 5 is focused on sustainment. During this period an arms control arrangement is in effect. Classified reports address difficulties from the arrangement. 

Phase 6 is the sunset period. This is when the arms control arrangement ends or appears to be faltering. Analysis of the operational steps, timeline, costs, equipment, and personnel necessary to terminate the arms control arrangement is conducted. Classified reports on progress toward ceasing any earlier changes to operations and capabilities, necessitated by the arrangement, are conducted.

Conclusion

Arms control for the sake of arms control was always a bad idea. The United States is no longer in a position where it can enter into arms control agreements because it furthers an idealist ambition to promote peace. Today, arms control is only useful if it furthers American interests.

Taking a hard-nosed look at arms control in its various forms is necessary, but it must be acceptable for the answer to be no. The United States is no longer in a position to act altruistically. Russia is a superior nuclear power, and China may reach a similar status within a decade. The world has changed and American leaders must accept that its adversaries are no longer willing to follow America’s lead.

Professor Stephen Cimbala, PhD, is a professor at Penn State-Brandywine. Views expressed are his own.

An Uncertain Future for Arms Control was originally published on Global Security Review.

Contacts with foreign sources were not very informative. The Chinese Ministry of Defense denied any use of drones over American or other territory, and their spokesperson added, “We get all the information we need from hacking into US government and industry sources.” They referred Americans to the Russians.

The Russian Security Council denied any involvement in flying drones over the East Coast. “Iran provides most of our drones, go talk to them,” was the only response we could get from officials. They added that President Putin has his own personal drone for use when he is hunting while riding bare chested in the Far East.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry was no more helpful on the issue saying, “Any drones we have will be used for surveillance of Israel or sent to the Russians for the Ukrainians to shoot down.”

Having exhausted foreign sources, Americans turned to domestic agencies. The Department of Homeland Security had no information about drones. “We are fully challenged to cope with unprecedented illegal border crossings, a meltdown of the Secret Service, and a FEMA fiasco in North Carolina to worry about drones,” said one agency official, on background.

The Department of Defense was not any more helpful. They denied having any information about drones, other than to say that there was no evidence of aliens being connected to drone activity in the United States. On the other hand, there was no evidence that the drones were not connected to aliens. They referred Americans to past episodes of The X Files.

The State Department reported that they had no contact with drones other than some foreign ambassadors who were posted to the United States and predictably uninformed about their activities.

The intelligence community said they did not necessarily know anything about drones, but even if they did, it would be classified and could not be shared with the media. This was an understandable reply.

A Republican member of Congress from New Jersey claimed that Iran had launched drones from a “mother ship” somewhere off the coast of the United States and that this information came from highly classified sources. This was corroborated by some boardwalk vendors of pizza in Ocean City and Wildwood, New Jersey. Their credibility was not challenged.

Some residents of New Jersey thought that tourists from Pennsylvania who visit New Jersey beaches during the summer are retaliating for exorbitant rental charges paid in previous years. Given prices, this is certainly an option worth exploring.

Others claimed that the drones were the work of environmentalists angered by shore communities’ wars against sea gulls, including the importation of hawks to chase gulls away from their natural habitats. Recent destruction of irreplicable works of art by environmentalists makes the illicit flying of drones over New Jersey easily conceivable.

Residents of New York suggested that New Jersey was seeking publicity to compensate for its comparative insignificance in national and regional affairs. “New Jersey is simply a suburb of New York and otherwise has no reason to attract news coverage,” was the explanation provided by one New Yorker.

But a New Jersey native came to her state’s defense. New Jersey residents, she said, were mentally exhausted from driving around in their infamous traffic circles until their brains boiled over; aliens or foreign enemies would be a welcome distraction.

An expert in artificial intelligence (AI) suggested that the drone swarms might be the result of an AI experiment gone awry, given the widespread use of “deepfakes” pervasive in social media and other sources. “The Jersey drone swarm could be the opening scene in the next Hollywood spectacular mixing fictitious events (alien invasions) with real events (military drone attacks) in order to smash box office records,” he noted.

Whatever the case may be is still undetermined. Needless to say, the longer it takes to find an answer, the more numerous the conspiracy theories will become. They will also grow increasingly more interesting for sure.

Professor Steve Cimbala, PhD, is a Senior Fellow at the National Institute for Deterrence Studies and Professor of Political Science at Penn State-Brandywine.

Drones on the Loose was originally published on Global Security Review.