Big news overnight from Japan, where Prime Minister Fumio Kishida announced he will not run in the upcoming party vote in September, paving the way for a new leader and delivering an unexpected twist atop the government of a key U.S. ally.

Washington Times Asia Correspondent Andrew Salmon analyzes the far-reaching implications of the decision, noting that Mr. Kishida has been dogged by a number of political corruption scandals, and his approval rating has dipped below 20%. But his Liberal Democratic Party still controls both houses of parliament in Tokyo and is essentially guaranteed to retain the prime minister’s chair, Mr. Salmon reports.

It might sound like a far-fetched question, but the rapid advances in artificial intelligence technology mean it’s one that the U.S. — and its adversaries — are now grappling with. National Security Correspondent Bill Gertz takes us inside the Pentagon’s view on AI and its role in determining when and how the world’s most dangerous weapons might be employed. Mr. Gertz reports on new comments from Air Force Gen. Anthony Cotton, the head of U.S. Strategic Command, who told reporters that his command prohibits the use of AI to authorize the launch of nuclear weapons.

But Russia and China may not follow suit, and there are fears that more lax rules around AI in Moscow and Beijing could raise the risk of a nuclear exchange.

How to deal with AI is a key question for both the military and intelligence communities. Times reporter Ryan Lovelace offered an exclusive look recently at how American spies are in the midst of a major push to develop new rules for AI use.

The huge, potentially humanity-altering question hanging over all AI discussions is whether the technology, if unchecked, could essentially develop a form of human-like consciousness. To some, the idea of sentient AI going rogue may still sound like science fiction, but some of the brightest minds in the world have been warning of its dangers for years.

Mr. Lovelace recently joined the “Threat Status Podcast” to dive into the topic and explained why it’s possible humans might miss the warning signs of sentient, potentially deadly AI until it’s too late.

“The real problem is going to be that strategic surprise, that scientific surprise, that at some point it might emerge and the benchmarks, or hallmarks, in anticipation of that might go missed,” he said.

Elsewhere in the cyber world, Threat Status has new information on Iran’s apparent targeting of Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign. Mr. Lovelace reports that Iran was secretly behind efforts to paint the July assassination attempt against the former president as a hoax, according to the cyber intelligence firm Recorded Future.

The revelations come just days after the Trump campaign claimed that Iranian hackers stole internal campaign documents and leaked them to U.S. media outlets. Iranian actors, the firm says, launched an online campaign designed to fuel the narrative that the assassination attempt wasn’t real.

Here’s the big picture: Mr. Trump and his allies are now under what appears to be a near-constant technological assault. Mr. Trump’s highly anticipated interview with X owner Elon Musk earlier this week was delayed after the company says it was hit by a massive denial-of-service attack.

And on Iran specifically, let’s not forget that earlier this summer we learned that Tehran is helping to finance anti-Israel protests on American college campuses.

The unexpected Ukrainian advance into Russia has left Moscow reeling. Russia’s Belgorod border region declared an emergency Wednesday under heavy shelling by Ukrainian forces. Belgorod joins Kursk as Russian regions that have been forced to evacuate citizens in the face of the Ukrainian offensive, which has flipped the script of a war now well into its third year.

Officials in Kyiv said Wednesday their troops had made fresh advances into Russia, while Moscow complained to the United Nations Security Council about the dangers now facing Russian civilians in the areas occupied by Ukrainian troops.

For the Russians, this might be a “what goes around comes around” situation. Military Correspondent Mike Glenn, for example, reports that Russian troops in occupied Ukrainian territories have been forced to drink stagnant puddle water because their own attacks against Ukrainian infrastructure have destroyed water systems there.

A potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan would have repercussions that stretch far beyond Asia. In fact, a Chinese takeover of the island democracy could be a turning point in the global battle between the U.S. and communism.

That’s the key point from Clifford D. May, president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, who writes in a new piece for The Times that Chinese President Xi Jinping is hellbent on seeing his country replace the U.S. as a preeminent global power.

“If World War II were fought to prevent global domination by totalitarian dictators, the ascendance of China would mean we’d merely won a battle in a war we would eventually lose,” Mr. May writes. “And if the Cold War was fought to prevent the spread of communism, that twilight struggle will turn out to have ended a few generations later in a victory for a communist regime 3,600 miles east of Moscow.”

• Aug. 14-16 — Space Warfighting Forum, National Defense Industrial Association 

• Aug. 15 — One Year after Camp David: How Durable Are U.S.-Japan-South Korea Trilateral Ties? Hudson Institute 

• Aug. 21 — AI and the Evolution of Biological National Security Risks, Center for a New American Security

• Aug. 27 — U.S.-Mexico Relations: Addressing Challenges at the Border, Brookings Institution

• Sept. 3-6 — Billington CyberSecurity Summit