During the Cold War, deterrence centered on missiles, troop deployments, and nuclear escalation. Military power still matters enormously, but modern strategic competition increasingly unfolds far from conventional battlefields. Rival states now seek influence through weaker institutions, compromised elites, illicit financial systems, infrastructure dependence, and strategic corruption. In many cases, adversaries no longer need to defeat a country militarily to weaken its strategic position. 

This shift has blurred the line between governance problems and national security threats. Corruption no longer acts solely as a domestic political issue tied to ethics or economic inefficiency. Increasingly, it functions as strategic infrastructure that hostile states and aligned networks can exploit to gain influence, undermine institutions, and weaken deterrence from within. The result is a form of hybrid warfare that operates quietly below the threshold of conventional military conflict. 

Traditional military deterrence assumes that states seek to avoid direct escalation because the costs remain too high. Yet modern rivals increasingly prefer indirect approaches that create long-term political leverage without triggering military confrontation. Strategic corruption fits this model well because it weakens institutional resilience gradually and often without attracting immediate international attention. 

Infrastructure financing offers one example of this evolving landscape. Major infrastructure projects can generate economic growth, but opaque financing arrangements, weak procurement oversight, and political favoritism can also create long-term dependency and strategic leverage. Ports, telecommunications systems, energy infrastructure, and logistics hubs increasingly carry geopolitical significance alongside their economic value. Foreign influence over critical infrastructure may shape political decisions long before any military crises emerge. 

Illicit financial networks create additional vulnerabilities. Sanction evasion systems, offshore financial structures, and corruption-linked patronage networks allow authoritarian governments and criminal actors to preserve influence even under significant economic pressure. These systems often connect political elites, business interests, criminal organizations, and external state actors in ways that complicate accountability and obscure responsibility. 

The challenge becomes even more serious when state and non-state actors begin to overlap. Modern hybrid competition increasingly operates through networks rather than formal battle lines. Organized crime groups, private intermediaries, corrupt officials, and geopolitical rivals often interact inside the same gray zones. Those overlapping relationships make it harder to identify where criminal activity ends and strategic competition begins. 

The Western Hemisphere illustrates this problem clearly. Across parts of Latin America and the Caribbean, organized criminal groups now exert considerable influence over trafficking routes, local economies, migration systems, illicit mining operations, and even municipal governance. Criminal organizations often provide dispute resolution, employment, or social services that weak governments struggle to deliver. This creates fragmented sovereignty in which state authority exists unevenly across territories and institutions. 

These unstable environments create opportunities for external rivals seeking geopolitical access or influence. Weak oversight systems, corruption within procurement processes, and institutional distrust make states more vulnerable to strategic penetration. In these circumstances, foreign influence does not always arrive through military alliances or ideological movements. Instead , it emerges through infrastructure contracts, illicit finance, commercial dependency, or relationships with politically connected elites. 

Traditional deterrence frameworks struggle to address these dynamics because they still focus heavily on conventional military indicators. Defense planners understandably prioritize readiness, force posture, weapons modernization, logistics, and operational capability. These areas remain essential. However, military strength alone cannot fully protect states whose institutions face sustained internal erosion. 

States often weaken politically before they weaken militarily. Public distrust, elite fragmentation, corruption scandals, feeble judicial systems, and declining institutional legitimacy can reduce a government’s ability to respond effectively during periods of strategic pressure. Adversaries increasingly recognize this and exploit those vulnerabilities patiently over time. 

This problem extends beyond developing countries or fragile democracies. Advanced democracies also face growing concerns involving foreign influence operations, cyber-enabled corruption, disinformation campaigns, opaque lobbying networks, and strategic investments tied to geopolitical objectives. Hybrid competition increasingly targets the political and institutional foundations that support deterrence itself. As a result, national security discussions must broaden beyond military hardware and battlefield concepts alone. Deterrence depends not only on weapons systems, but also on institutional credibility, public trust, transparency, and political resilience. Governments that cannot maintain confidence in procurement systems, electoral institutions, judicial independence, or regulatory oversight may struggle to sustain strategic cohesion during periods of crisis. 

This reality does not mean every corruption scandal represents foreign subversion or hybrid warfare. Domestic political dysfunction often emerges from local conditions and internal failures. However, strategic rivals increasingly exploit those weaknesses opportunistically once they appear. Corruption creates openings that adversaries can leverage quietly and incrementally. 

The United States and its allies therefore need a broader understanding of deterrence in the twenty-first century. Military modernization remains necessary, particularly as rival powers continue expanding nuclear, cyber, and space capabilities. Yet strategic competition increasingly unfolds inside institutions as much as along borders or within contested seas. 

Institutional resilience should now be a centerpiece of national security planning. Strong oversight systems, transparent procurement practices, anti-corruption enforcement, independent courts, investigative journalism, and trusted public institutions all contribute to long-term strategic stability. These systems strengthen national resilience against both domestic corruption and external exploitation. 

In the emerging era of hybrid competition, states may not lose strategic position through invasion alone. They may lose it gradually through institutional erosion that weakens deterrence long before conventional conflict formally begins. 

Jeffery A. Tobin is a senior advisor and partner with Pan-American Strategic Advisors, conducting research on democracy, corruption, and institutional health. His work has appeared in outlets including Lawfare, Just Security, Foreign Policy in Focus, the Modern War Institute, and Small Wars Journal. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own. 

Strategic Corruption and the Future of Hybrid Warfare was originally published on Global Security Review.

Nigeria’s worsening security crisis is, at its core, a story of military breakdown. The Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) overran at least 15 military bases in 2025, captured and executed a brigadier general, and deployed armed drones that outmatched the defending units. The pattern of base overruns, mass desertions, and failure to reinforce troops under attack points to deep organizational failure.

Events like the February 2026 Kwara massacre, in which jihadists killed over 200 people as well as the December 2025 U.S. Tomahawk cruise missile strikes on Nigerian soil and the deployment of American troops amount to the clearest sign yet that Africa’s most populous nation can no longer secure itself.

The Mosul Parallel

Iraq, before the fall of Mosul in 2014, offers the closest comparison. When 1,500 ISIS fighters routed 60,000 Iraqi soldiers, the collapse came not from lack of firepower but from corruption. The Iraqi military had roughly 50,000 ghost soldiers on its payroll, troops who existed only on paper so commanders could pocket their salaries. Nigeria faces the same problem. Leaked UK diplomatic cables found that of the 20,000 troops Nigeria claims to deploy in the northeast, the real number is significantly lower, with thousands of ghost soldiers generating salaries collected by officers. The corruption is not incidental; it is systemic. Transparency International gave Nigeria’s defense sector an ‘E’ rating for “very high” corruption risk.

The human cost falls on ordinary soldiers. A Nigerian private earns $31 to $38 per month. Soldiers spend three to five years deployed without rotation, creating conditions for mass desertion. Iraq’s military eventually reformed after Mosul through fingerprint-based troop verification and coalition mentoring, but that reform only happened because Mosul was a shock too large to ignore. Nigeria faces a harder problem, a slow bleed rather than a single catastrophe, which gives political leaders room to delay action indefinitely.

ISWAP’s Tactical Evolution and the Sahel Corridor

ISWAP’s 2025 “Camp Holocaust” campaign has been the most successful in the group’s history. ISWAP systematically destroyed forward operating bases across the Lake Chad Basin using drones, night-vision gear, and coordinated swarm attacks. The capture and execution of Brigadier General Musa Uba in November 2025 was not simply a battlefield loss. It revealed that ISWAP now operates with better intelligence than the forces it fights. ISWAP intercepted his communications and tracked his position after his convoy was ambushed 88 kilometers from regional military headquarters in Maiduguri. A force with 230,000 troops and a multibillion-dollar budget could not locate its own brigade commander.

The broader Sahel security framework has collapsed around Nigeria, and the timing could not be worse. Niger’s withdrawal from the Multinational Joint Task Force in March 2025 ended joint border patrols along a vast open frontier. Into this gap has moved Lakurawa, an Islamic State Sahel Province subgroup operating across Sokoto and Kebbi states with surveillance drones. Al-Qaeda affiliate JNIM launched its first recorded attack on Nigerian soil in 2025.

The Air Power Deficit

The Nigerian Air Force shows what happens when procurement runs ahead of maintenance capacity. Three JF-17 fighters from Pakistan were delivered in 2021. By May 2023, only one could still fly. The result is an air force that cannot protect civilians or support ground troops. SBM Intelligence estimates over 400 Nigerian civilians killed in erroneous military airstrikes between 2017 and 2025. The February 2026 Woro massacre showed what this means in practice. A military aircraft appeared overhead during a ten-hour attack that killed at least 162 civilians but did not engage.

External Partners and the Limits of Assistance

The United States launched 16 Tomahawk cruise missiles against Lakurawa camps in Sokoto State on Christmas Day 2025 and deployed troops to Bauchi Airfield. CSIS assessed that one-off strikes are unlikely to reduce the terrorist threat significantly. The pattern is familiar: outside firepower treats the symptoms while the underlying disease, institutional corruption, goes unaddressed. Nigeria’s own Defense Minister Christopher Musa has acknowledged that military action addresses only 30 percent of the conflict. The International Crisis Group’s 2016 reform blueprint called for fingerprint-based troop verification and open defense spending records. It remains unimplemented a decade later.

The Coup Question and the Criminal-Terror Nexus

Recent history across the Sahel makes this risk real. In Burkina Faso and Mali, troops who felt abandoned by civilian leaders seized power. Nigeria shows each of these warning signs. Soldiers earn $31 a month while generals oversee billions in unchecked spending. The Nigerian Armed Forces mostly ruled the country between 1966 and 1999, and the memory of military government has not faded.

A second risk deepens the picture. ISWAP brings in an estimated $191 million per year by taxing trade across the Lake Chad Basin, ten times what the Borno State government collects. Furthermore northwest bandit networks took in an estimated $1.42 billion in ransom in a single year.

Every overrun  base sends vehicles, weapons, and ammunition to ISWAP and other groups, fortifying their governance with economic and military assets. This is the critical danger: the longer reform is delayed, the more these groups entrench themselves as alternative governments with independent revenue. Once that happens, as Sudan’s civil war has shown, the window for reversing the trend narrows sharply.

Outlook

The 2026 Nigerian defense budget includes 5.41 trillion naira ($3.9 billion). However, 62 percent goes to personnel costs and the naira’s collapse has cut real spending power by two-thirds since 2023. Nigerian President Tinubu’s security emergency declaration has not changed the picture. At least 316 civilians were killed across 15 states in the 71 days that followed.

Three patterns deserve attention: the self-arming cycle, where weapons from overrun bases fuel the next attack; the intelligence gap, where ISWAP knows more about the military than the military knows about ISWAP; and the governing contest, where ISWAP’s services undercut public trust in the state. Until the corruption at the heart of Nigeria’s military is confronted, no amount of outside help will change the course. The question facing Abuja is whether reform comes through deliberate action or through the kind of devastating loss that forced Iraq’s hand after Mosul.

Arman Sidhu is an American geopolitical analyst and writer. He regularly covers the commodities market, international trade, and foreign investment. He is a regular contributor to Geopolitical Monitor and his work has previously appeared in The Diplomat, Eurasia Review, Economic & Political Weekly, and RealClearWorld, among several other outlets. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own.

Hollow Ranks & Ghost Soldiers: Nigeria’s Corruption-Fueled Security Collapse was originally published on Global Security Review.

Why Trust and Continuity Matter

Recent trust surveys show that public confidence in both government and business has declined, with many people believing institutional leaders are not honest with them. The 2025 Edelman Trust Barometer, for example, highlights a “crisis of grievance,” in which large segments of the population feel left behind and are more inclined to distrust complex policy and technology initiatives.[2]​

This erosion of trust is particularly dangerous at a time when artificial intelligence, quantum technologies, and advanced biotechnologies are central to economic and military competition. A report submitted to Congress by U.S.–China policy experts emphasizes that both countries now treat these technologies as strategic industries, tying them directly to national power and long-term security.[4]​

Building Durable Relationships with Legislators

For technology companies, increasing national trust starts with treating Congress as a long‑term strategic partner, not simply as an annual budget gatekeeper.[4]​

• Institutionalize bipartisan technology engagement: Firms can create recurring, nonpartisan briefings and workshops with relevant committees to explain how artificial intelligence (AI), quantum, cyber, and bio tools affect national resilience, economic competitiveness, and workforce opportunity. By engaging members and staff from both parties, companies reduce the perception that emerging technologies are aligned with a single political faction.[5]​
• Lead with ethics, safety, and security: Research on public attitudes toward AI suggests people are more supportive when they see clear safeguards, transparency, and accountability mechanisms within the tech industry. Companies can build trust by proactively presenting their AI safety frameworks, data-protection policies, and supply‑chain security measures, aligning them with federal guidance and international norms on responsible technology use.[6]​

Securing Sustained Funding for Critical Technology

Trust is reinforced when technology programs are clearly tied to enduring strategic missions and supported through stable, multi‑year funding rather than fragile pilots.[5]​

• Connect capabilities to mission portfolios: Instead of scattered line items, technology programs can be organized into mission‑driven portfolios—such as quantum‑resilient communications, AI‑enabled national preparedness, or biosecurity infrastructure—that span research, prototyping, and deployment over several years. Multi‑year authorizations and appropriations make it harder for any single administration to abruptly cancel essential capabilities.[4]​
• Use innovation tools that protect both government and industry: Policy analyses highlight the value of mechanisms like Other Transaction Authority and structured public‑private partnerships to bring nontraditional vendors into national security and infrastructure work more quickly. By pairing these tools with clearer intellectual property protections and streamlined oversight, legislators can encourage top-tier tech firms to stay engaged in sensitive missions over the long term.[8]​

Embedding Technology in Law, Not Just Budgets

To prevent critical technologies from being swapped out with each political shift, their roles must be written into statute and tied to democratic oversight.[9]​

• Statutory roles for key technologies: Laws governing defense planning, critical infrastructure, and economic security should explicitly call for the use of AI, secure digital infrastructure, and advanced analytics in defined mission areas, such as threat detection, disaster response, and supply‑chain monitoring. Once these roles are codified, dismantling them requires visible legislative action rather than quiet executive changes.[9]​
• Multi-stakeholder governance in legislation: Legislated advisory councils and oversight boards that include government, industry, academia, and civil society should supervise high-impact technologies and publish regular reports. This structure signals that powerful tools are subject to ongoing, pluralistic scrutiny rather than being controlled solely by political appointees or corporate executives.[10]​

Quantum Networking Testbed Infrastructure

The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) put forth by Congress each year does not typically use a single, generic phrase like “quantum networking testbeds” in isolation; instead, it authorizes and directs specific programs and experiments that collectively constitute quantum networking testbed infrastructure. Several provisions and related authoritative documents are especially relevant to the future of quantum technology growth.

A Senate Armed Services Committee fact sheet on the fiscal year 2024 NDAA highlights language that “authorizes increased funding for a distributed quantum networking testbed” and the development of a next-generation ion‑trap quantum computer at the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL). While the fact sheet summarizes rather than reproduces the statutory text, it makes clear that Congress explicitly authorized a distributed quantum networking testbed as part of the defense Research, Development, Test, and Evaluation (RDT&E) portfolio.[12]​

Within the fiscal year 2025 NDAA, Congress, “authorizes funding to create a ‘quantum communications corridor’ as part of Navy research, development, test, and evaluation.” This is an explicit description of support for a testbed or network to advance quantum communication research so the Navy and the Department of Defense (DoD) can securely transmit information resistant to quantum computer decryption.[15]​

Other recent NDAA cycles also include broader direction that reinforces these testbed authorizations, such as requirements for DoD to establish pilot programs for promising quantum computing capabilities and to identify near‑term use cases that can be fielded within two years. These provisions do not always use the word “testbed” in the operative clause, but they direct the department to stand up experimental infrastructure and pilots that, in practice, operate as quantum networking and computing testbeds for defense applications.[16]​

In parallel, the National Quantum Initiative framework and associated Department of Energy (DOE) efforts describe quantum networking testbeds as shared infrastructure for entanglement distribution and quantum communications, and Congressional action has repeatedly referenced these federal testbeds and network efforts as part of the broader quantum information science ecosystem that the DoD can leverage.[13]​

Ensuring key technologies not only protect the nation but are also provided with substantial investment and economic promise is a necessity for companies to further their developmental efforts. Demonstrating that quantum technologies are viable for multiple applications—within internal defense and external partnerships—is one possible solution as tech companies become increasingly concerned with the long-term payoff of their test bed programs. For now, defense authorization bills appear to be the most forward leaning avenue supported by government, but the long-term stability of this method has yet to be validated.

How This Approach Builds Public Trust

When the tech industry engages both parties and chambers in Congress, supports multi-year statutory programs, and accepts meaningful oversight, it demonstrates that emerging technologies are being developed within a framework of law, ethics, and long-term national interest. In such a system, citizens can see that AI, quantum computing, and other advanced capabilities are not partisan experiments or purely profit-driven ventures, but part of a durable national strategy subject to democratic control.[2]​

The tech sector can both strengthen U.S. strategic competitiveness and contribute tangibly to rebuilding public trust in government by positioning itself as a co-steward of national resilience, helping design governance mechanisms, committing to transparency, and working with legislators to hard‑wire critical technologies into law and funding.[5]​

Sources:

1. https://www.edelman.com/trust/2025/trust-barometer
2. https://cooleypubco.com/2025/02/11/2025-edelman-trust-barometer-grievance/
3. https://www.edelman.com/news-awards/2025-edelman-trust-barometer-reveals-high-level-grievance
4. https://www.uscc.gov/sites/default/files/2024-11/Chapter_3–U.S.-China_Competition_in_Emerging_Technologies.pdf
5. https://www.uscc.gov/sites/default/files/2024-11/2024_Annual_Report_to_Congress.pdf
6. https://www.edelman.com/sites/g/files/aatuss191/files/2025-01/Global%20Top%2010%202025%20Trust%20Barometer.pdf
7. https://www.nationalsecurity.ai/chapter/executive-summary
8. https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/public-informations/petitions/1558121/download-documents?artifactId=z4DLuAiI8FBq5qxTCRlq-VPk-yx0lU4p_Mou2oSkOWL2OdIfZr8DAG4
9. https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/white-house-releases-2025-national-7517228/
10. https://www.biotech.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/NSCEB-Full-Report-%E2%80%93-Digital-%E2%80%934.28.pdf
11. https://www.imd.org/ibyimd/audio-articles/restoring-faith-in-leadership-in-the-age-of-grievance/
12. https://defensescoop.com/2024/01/08/ndaa-2024-quantum-provisions/
13. https://www.quantum.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/NQIA2018-NDAA2022-CHIPS2022.pdf
14. https://www.quantum.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/NQI-Annual-Report-FY2025.pdf
15. https://www.emergingtechnologiesinstitute.org/publications/insights/fy2025ndaa
16. https://www.nextgov.com/emerging-tech/2024/12/fy2025-ndaa-angles-enhance-dods-ai-and-quantum-sciences-capabilities/401545/

Beyond the Next Administration: Building Enduring Tech–Government Alliances for National Power was originally published on Global Security Review.

In 2020, President Donald Trump led a campaign to ban TikTok, citing national security risks stemming from its Chinese ownership and compromise of private data by the Chinese government. Four years later, Trump delayed the removal of TikTok from the American market as he looks to find an American buyer for the popular app. This apparent reversal raises the question, is this change motivated by legitimate considerations or political advantage?

The 2020 Ban: National Security or Politics?

During his first term, President Trump pushed to ban TikTok. This effort was framed as a national security measure. Concerns were raised that the app’s parent company, ByteDance, was sharing user data with the Chinese government, posing a threat to American citizens and government operations.

While these concerns were legitimate, critics argued the move was also a political maneuver. It allowed Trump to position himself as tough on China, appealing to his base and broader nationalistic sentiments during an election year. Few analysts considered that both can be true. Politics, particularly those surrounding a beloved video app, were too divisive.

2024: The Return of TikTok?

Fast forward to 2024, and the reported pivot to support TikTok’s return appears incongruous. The core issues cited in 2020—national security and data privacy—have not fundamentally changed. In fact, Americans better understand what it means to have sensitive personal data captured and potentially used for nefarious purposes by an adversary state. Highly contentious congressional testimony by the leaders of social media companies in 2024 only shined a further spotlight on how such firms do not work for the good of users.

Why then would President Trump seek to save the platform? One possible explanation is the platform’s immense popularity, particularly among younger demographics—a voting bloc Trump struggled to capture. Saving TikTok from the US Supreme Court’s ruling and ensuring its sale to an American firm could signal an attempt to appeal to these voters, making the move less about the app’s merits and more about electoral politics.

Is It about the Public Good?

President Trump’s changing perspective on TikTok may reveal a broader trend in modern politics—the prioritization of optics over substance. Leaders often take contradictory stances to align with prevailing public opinion or to cater to specific constituencies. In the case of TikTok, the narrative seems less about resolving genuine concerns and more about capitalizing on its cultural ubiquity. If national security was a pressing concern in 2020, the question remains why it would be any less urgent today.

Ironically, users fleeing from TikTok prior to its designated cutoff date did not flock to American social media platforms as some might expect, but other Chinese platforms similar to TikTok. It seems Americans are angrier and more concerned that Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat are manipulating them than anything the Chinese Communist Party may do. Whether this is the wisest choice is yet to be determined.

Political Rhetoric or Pragmatism?

Ultimately, the fluctuating stance on TikTok underscores the blurred line between political rhetoric and pragmatic governance. Decisions on complex issues like technology and national security require consistency and transparency, yet they are often reduced to tools for political gain. This is a bipartisan issue that was not invented by President Trump. It has a long tradition dating back to the early days of the Republic. In fact, it is endemic to democratic systems.

Whether Trump’s recent position reflects a genuine change of heart or strategic posturing, it highlights the broader issue of political inconsistency. Leaders across the political spectrum often adjust their positions based on electoral strategy rather than principle, yet accountability for these shifts is rare. For example, former Vice President Kamala Harris initially endorsed “Medicare for All” during the 2020 Democrat primary, only to later soften her stance to appeal to moderate voters. These shifts demonstrate how political beliefs are easily adjusted to maximize votes. Whether on healthcare, national security, or technology policy, such reversals can erode public trust if not clearly explained to the electorate.

The ultimate resolution of TikTok’s future will depend on whether the app is sold to an American firm, as President Trump has stipulated, or whether it continues operating without a sale. Given the heightened concerns over data security and foreign influence, a lack of clarity on this issue could further weaken public confidence. While political reversals are common, abrupt shifts without clear explanations can make leadership appear inconsistent or opportunistic. Greater transparency from President Trump regarding his rationale would not only provide insight into the decision-making process but could also help mitigate skepticism about his motivations. At a time when trust in government is already fragile, reinforcing accountability and open communication is critical to maintaining public confidence.

The TikTok saga serves as a reminder that political decisions, especially those framed as national security concerns, are often entangled with strategic interests. In an era where public trust in government is fragile, transparency and consistency are essential. Without them, shifting narratives risk further eroding confidence in leadership—not just on TikTok, but on the larger issues that shape democracy itself.

Offering further explanation into President Trump’s plan and thinking would give the American people a better understanding of the variables under consideration and could potentially assuage some of the speculation into his motivation. Democracies require open communication between the citizenry and their representatives. TikTok is an example of just that.

Justin Miller is Associate Professor of Practice in the School of Cyber Studies at the University of Tulsa.

TikTok: Security Threat or Political Pawn was originally published on Global Security Review.