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.

Iranian official says US ‘maximalist’ demands stall face-to-face talks

 SUZAN FRASER|AP News

ANTALYA, Turkey (AP) — Iran is not yet ready to hold a new round of face-to-face talks with U.S. officials, a senior Iranian official said Saturday, citing Washington’s refusal to abandon “maximalist” demands on key issues.

In an interview with The Associated Press on the margins of a diplomacy forum in Turkey, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Saeed Khatibzadeh also said his country will not hand over its enriched uranium to the United States, rejecting claims made by U.S. President Donald Trump.

“I can tell you that no enriched material is going to be shipped to United States,” Khatibzadeh said. “This is non-starter and I can assure you that while we are ready to address any concerns that we do have, we’re not going to accept things that are nonstarters.”

Iranian official says US ‘maximalist’ demands stall face-to-face talks was originally published on Global Security Review.

Science and education are part of strategic ties in recent years. The “Program of educational cooperation between the Government of the Republic of Azerbaijan and the Government of the State of Israel for the years 2023-2026” forms the basis for developing this vital field in mutual cooperation. As Azerbaijan strives to reform its education system in order to make schools future-ready and sci-tech focused, it benefits greatly from the exchange of teachers and education experts to train and learn from the Israeli experience.

Cooperation on climate change, high tech agriculture, green energy, and water are also part of the educational and scientific ties. Israel’s high-tech economy and agriculture and its experience in green energy and water desalination provide Azerbaijan a unique opportunity to diversify and develop the non-oil sector of its economy.

Cybersecurity is also part of the educational ties between the countries with staff at the Technion, a public research university based in Haifa, contributing to the training of Azerbaijani students on a cybersecurity program.

Food security with a focus on grain is another new angle in Azerbaijan-Israel ties. Israel’s food security, and specifically its requirement for grain, will be met by Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan, following the disruption to supplies as a result of the Russia-Ukraine war. This will be a huge boost to both Israel’s and Azerbaijan’s food security, as Azerbaijan will receive advanced technology from Israel as part of the deal.

The high level of religious tolerance and historical lack of anti-Semitism in Azerbaijan form a strong basis for people-to-people relations between Azerbaijan and Israel. The village of Qırmızı Qəsəbə (Red Village) in the Quba region of Azerbaijan, home to an old community of Mountain Jews, is believed to be the world’s only all-Jewish village outside Israel and the United States. The opening of the Mountain Jews Museum in the village is also a testament to the positive role of Azerbaijan in Jewish-Muslim coexistence and the promotion of harmony and tolerance. Azerbaijani Jews form a strong bond between the people of the two countries and their significant presence in Israel also promotes bilateral ties.

An important development in the energy sector, a key part of the strategic partnership between Azerbaijan and Israel, took place in October 2023, when Azerbaijan’s state oil company SOCAR was granted a gas exploration license alongside British Petroleum and Israel’s NewMed to explore an area north of Israel’s Leviathan gas field in the Mediterranean. This is a significant boost to SOCAR, increasing its role in the world energy market and introducing a new aspect to Azerbaijan-Israel energy cooperation. Around 40 percent of Israel’s oil imports come from Azerbaijan.

Diversification of supply and non-reliance on Arab oil has been a key component of Israeli energy security over the years. Azerbaijani oil pumped to Turkey’s Mediterranean port of Ceyhan and transported onwards to world markets forms a major source of revenue for the Azerbaijani budget and, as such, has been crucial in the modernisation of the country’s infrastructure, armed forces, and the large-scale reconstruction in Azerbaijan’s liberated lands.

Azerbaijan’s energy policy forms the backbone of the country’s independent foreign policy. The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline bypasses both Russia and Iran and has proved a key asset following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, when Kazakh oil shipments, for example, most of which pass through Russia, have been disrupted.

Since the Hamas terrorist attacks against Israel on October 7, 2023, and the subsequent war in Gaza, Iran has singled out the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline as well as Azerbaijan, putting them under pressure to cut off the key crude oil supply to Israel and thereby to damage the basis for Azerbaijan’s independent foreign policy.     Iran launched media propaganda against Azerbaijan. Leftist so-called nongovernmental organizations, financed by Western-donor political figures such as Greta Thunberg and Qatar-financed outlets such as the Middle East Eye, also criticized Azerbaijan.

The attacks reveal the range of political sides that are keen to damage and destroy the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline and Azerbaijan’s independent foreign policy. Attacks against SOCAR’s HQ in Istanbul, organized by pro-Hamas Islamists and leftists, with the tacit approval of circles within the Turkish government, were also part of the campaign.

Azerbaijan-Israel strategic cooperation, particularly in the energy sector, stood firm in the face of attacks from various circles, geopolitical turbulence, and pressure. The incoming Trump administration should value Baku’s role in the energy security of Israel, the European Union, and Turkey, which are key US allies.

Azerbaijan and Israel developed the defense component of their strategic partnership over the years. Israel is one of the main sources of Azerbaijan’s defense imports and modernization of the armed forces. Azerbaijan made skilful use of Israeli defence products in liberating its lands; most notably, Israeli’s Barak 8 anti-ballistic missile defense system intercepted an Iskander missile fired from Armenia over the capital Baku.

Israel, too, stood firm in the face of pressure during the war in 2020 and did not allow third parties to influence their defense cooperation with Baku. The defense cooperation also came under extensive media attack by pro-Armenia and pro-Iran elements who consider the Azerbaijani-Israeli defense partnership a threat to their interests. Iran feared Azerbaijan’s growing role since Baku’s victory in the Karabakh war and the high-level conduct of its armed forces.

A strong Azerbaijan on its northern border is a nightmare for Iran. Tehran invested heavily for decades to keep Azerbaijan weak, but this failed badly with the restoration of Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity and sovereignty. Azerbaijan-Israel defense cooperation is vital for regional security and the containment of rogue actors such as Iran, which pose an existential security threat to both countries.

With the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria, Israel and Turkey appear to have inflicted a strategic defeat on Iran. Considering the strained nature of Turkish-Israel relations, due to Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan backing Palestinian extremist groups, it is in the interests of both Israel and Turkey not to collide in Syria and to manage the risks.

In this regard, Azerbaijan can play a key role in coordinating and reconciling both Israeli and Turkish interests to avoid confrontation in Syria. Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev’s foreign policy aide Hikmet Hajiyev visited Israel in December, where he had meetings with high-level Israeli officials including Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar and President Isaac Herzog. The trip was a positive development in reducing confrontational elements in Turkish-Israeli ties and keeping backchannel communications open.

It is in Azerbaijan’s interests to reconcile or at least reduce the negative atmosphere between its two key strategic partners Israel and Turkey, with Azerbaijan playing a significant role in the recent normalization process between the two countries. Baku also proposed setting up a trilateral regional format for strategic cooperation between Azerbaijan, Israel, and Turkey before the Hamas terrorist attack derailed the fragile Israeli-Turkish ties with Erdoğan siding with Hamas.

Overall, it is worth noting that both Azerbaijan and Israel benefit strategically from their partnership in various fields. The contribution of their relationship to the security environment of the South Caucasus and the Middle East is important as it also opens new opportunities.

The role of Azerbaijan in easing the tension in Turkish-Israel ties becomes more significant with the fall of the Assad regime in Syria. Azerbaijan and Israel have both stood firm during geopolitical crises, protecting their strategic ties and blocking third-party attempts to influence them, thereby proving that their partnership is reliable and mutually beneficial.

Rufat Ahmadzada is a graduate of City University London. His research area covers the South Caucasus and Iran. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own.

Azerbaijan-Israel Strategic Relationship Proves Its Importance was originally published on Global Security Review.

Nano aquabots are a dual-use technology that can both serve humanity and cause harm. Research on 3-lamellar morphology of miktoarm terpolymers is also dual-use technology. Manipulating the crystalline morphology in a non-fullerene acceptor (NFA) mixture to improve carrier transport and suppress energetic disorder is itself a dual-use technology. Ignoring all of the scientific language, it is important to understand that these are dual-use technologies.

All these technologies are funded in large part by the US government, in collaboration with the Chinese government and institutions. The dual-use nature of these examples is instructive. First, nano aquabots perform a variety of tasks in aquatic environments, ranging from environmental monitoring to targeted drug delivery within the human body. Weaponizing nano aquabots would lead to new and bizarre sci-fi warfare.

3-lamellar morphology of Miktoarm terpolymers have unique mechanical strength, thermal stability, and chemical resistance, which are pivotal in applications ranging from aerospace because of their lightweight yet strong components to biomedicine potentially revolutionizing certain medical treatments and interventions. The 3-lamellar morphology of these terpolymers paves the way for advancements in nanotechnology.

The primary benefit of manipulating crystalline morphology in NFA mixtures lies in the enhancement of carrier mobility. Energetic disorder refers to the variation in energy levels within a material. For example, this disorder can impede the performance of organic solar cells by trapping charge carriers and reducing their mobility. Suppression of energetic disorder advances stealth technology. It can also be used to harden electronics to withstand extreme temperatures, humidity, and other environmental stressors.

We are at the beginning of a multifaceted quantum revolution in science (MQRS). This multifaceted scientific revolution is fueled by its own discoveries in artificial intelligence, machine learning, quantum mechanics, and quantum computing. Imagine a hypothetical quantum battery that has the capacity to recycle its own energy as it continues to accelerate and deliver sustained power for exponential acceleration. The MQRS will, hypothetically, accelerate scientific discovery exponentially.

What are some of these facets that make this scientific revolution multifaceted? MQRS facets include revolutions in genetics, such as with techniques like CRISPR and gene therapy, biotechnology, nanotechnology, quantum mechanics, quantum computing, robotics, autonomous systems, space exploration, astrophysics, neuroscience, and brain-computer interfaces.

Unclassified research is available in peer reviewed academic journals such as the American Chemical Society’s (ACS) Nano, Synthetic Biology, Macromolecules, Small Science, Emerging Microbes and Infections, Immunological Reviews, Journal of Computational Physics, Advanced Science, Advanced Materials, Advanced Electronic Materials, and many more. Funding research trickles down from the Department of Energy to labs such as the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which, since 2000, is operated by the University of Tennessee and the Battelle Memorial Institute.

Other partners and funding include the Army Research Office, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research and Basic Energy Sciences. Partners on the Chinese side include Hong Kong’s Research Grants Council, University Grants Committee, Croucher Foundation, Beijing’s National Natural Science Foundation of China directly under the administration of the PRC’s Ministry of Science and Technology, and the Foreign Technology Cooperation Plan of Guangzhou, China.

This sensitive and advanced research has the blessing of the US Congress under the US-China Science and Technology Cooperation Agreement (STCA). Under this legislation, Congress requires the Departments of State, Defense, and Commerce and the Central Intelligence Agency to report to Congress biennially on how the US-China STCA benefits the PRC economy, military, and industrial base, including the role of technology transfer and compliance with American export controls.  According to the Congressional Research Service’s (CRS), Karen M. Sutter and John F. Sargent Jr., “These reports have not been public; some that have been made public through Freedom of Information Act requests mostly do not provide the required assessments.”

The United States sees this as a tool to foster ties, address climate change, and advance science for overall well-being. According to Sutter and Sargent’s report, the benefits to American researchers is that they have access to large pools of research subjects and longitudinal health studies from China. This also means that Chinese researchers have access to American medical data, from databases such as those acquired through the 2013 BGI-Shenzhen acquisition of US-based Complete Genomics. Also noted in the CRS report, as China develops domestic scientific competencies, it increasingly seeks to restrict US access. In 2019, China cut off US access to coronavirus research, including US-funded work at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. China withheld avian influenza strains required for American vaccines.

The MQRS will potentially accelerate until it hits an unforeseen black swan of a brick wall. China’s intentions toward the United States are not of the black swan variety; instead, they are of the plain-as-day white swan variety that Americans choose to ignore. And this is at a time when risks and rewards of the MQRS are growing more pronounced.

In short, Congress should remove China from its Science and Technology Cooperation Agreement. Americans should not take part in driving Chinese technical expertise forward. American tax dollars are also assisting China’s AI-driven research in advanced fields such as energy-dissipative evolutionary deep operator neural networks. Such work has application to military purposes. It would be foolish to believe the Chinese will not use all of the technologies discussed here to further their advantage over the United States.

China wants to overturn the liberal international order. American naivete is one way to make sure they succeed.

Alex Littlefield, PhD, is the Chief of Staff at the National Institute for Deterrence Studies and a Fellow of the Institute. He spent more than two decades in Taiwan and China.

Nano Aquabots and the US-China Science and Technology Cooperation Agreement was originally published on Global Security Review.