Foreign Affairs

How AI is reshaping influence operations in America.

Donald Trump has Pyongyang on his mind. In recent months, the U.S. president has made comments to the media suggesting he is in communication with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. In an August 17 Truth Social post, for instance, Trump announced that the United States would scale back joint military drills with South Korea. The decision, he wrote, was “based on my very good relationship with Kim Jong Un,” describing the dictator as “unthreatening and respectful.”

America should be taking notes.

Why the baby bust is making the world more unequal.

How Africa’s weak states and rare earths drive transnational extremism.

Why the risk of a crisis is growing.

The imperative of ambition in a new Congress.

What the godfather of realism can teach Trump.

Weak institutions—not private fortunes—deform democracy.

How to blunt Hegseth’s assault on the brass.

Beijing’s theory of success in the face of failure.

To catch up to China, America and its allies must dig.

How far will he go to make peace—and war?

Which debates matter most for 2028.

A useful tool has been unjustly maligned.

The United States and China are locked in a global competition to determine who will dominate artificial intelligence and whether it will be democracies or autocracies that set the standards and values of the new digital age. The United States leads the world in the sophistication and power of its artificial intelligence models, and its innovation base and investment in research and development remain unparalleled.But AI competition is much broader than modeling alone. It encompasses a technology ecosystem that includes power generation, servers, and deployment in real-world applications. Jensen Huang, co-founder and CEO of Nvidia, has described the AI industry as a five-layer cake with energy at its base and chips, infrastructure, models, and applications above it. To win the AI race with China, the United States needs to maintain or establish an advantage in each of these layers. And to do that, the United States needs Taiwan.

China’s Food Insecurity Could Prevent a War Over Taiwan

The case for an economic security alliance.

A new way to deter Russia.

How long will elites stay loyal to Kim Jong Un?