China has pulled ahead of the U.S. in the artificial intelligence arms race in some areas, tech industry experts warned this week at the Pentagon’s Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office (CDAO) symposium that brought Silicon Valley and American defense officials together for a major brainstorming summit in Washington.

AI experts, including former Google executive Andrew Moore, who is advising U.S. Central Command on AI, cautioned those attending the summit not to overestimate America’s advantage in its high-tech competition with China, a race that stretches across domains, including drone warfare and deep space capabilities.

National Security Tech Reporter Ryan Lovelace reports that “large language models,” or powerful algorithms, were a hot topic at the symposium, which came a week after Washington became consumed by the prospect that a major adversary — in this case, Russia — could deploy nuclear-armed anti-satellite weapons.

The intersection between AI and the future of satellites is occurring now. DefenseScoop reports on the greenlighting by Lockheed Martin Space’s innovation unit of a new mission to experiment with AI capabilities. Lockheed says it will launch two small satellites into low-Earth orbit for the Pony Express 2 mission to test “a tactical communications system.”

A majority of Iranians will boycott the Islamic republic’s March 1 parliamentary elections, according to a prominent dissident group that held a press conference in Washington this week claiming that Iran’s citizenry views their country’s political system as rigged in favor of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The National Council of Resistance of Iran says more than 15,000 candidates are competing for a four-year term in the Iranian Parliament’s 290-seat chamber, which has been controlled by hardliners for decades. 

It will be the first election since nationwide protests erupted in 2022 following the death of 22-year-old activist Mahsa Amini, who died while in custody of the Khamenei regime’s morality police after being arrested for allegedly wearing her hijab too loosely. It’s notable that protesters at one point hacked into Iranian state TV and briefly broadcast an image of the supreme leader surrounded by flames.

Alexei Navalny and other opposition figures who posed threats to Vladimir Putin are dead as the Russian president’s war in Ukraine grinds into its third year.

Ukrainian troops are running perilously low on ammunition, Russian forces are gaining ground in the Donbas and the future of U.S. aid to Ukraine has never been more in doubt, with the White House pressing House Republicans to vote on the Senate’s $95 billion package that includes more than $60 billion for Kyiv. Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer is in Ukraine trying to reassure President Volodymyr Zelenskyy that Congress will come through.

Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for European and NATO Policy Jim Townsend tells National Security Correspondent Ben Wolfgang that “Putin is on an offensive … taking advantage of the Ukrainians being low on ammunition of all types, particularly artillery.”

That coincides with a dispatch from the front line in Donetsk oblast by Washington Times Special Correspondent Guillame Ptak, who interviews Ukrainian soldiers still reeling in the face of Russia’s capture of the strategically located city of Avdiivka. “Russian drones were constantly flying above our heads, directing artillery fire on us as we were retreating,” one soldier — a 22-year-old who says he’s “very lucky to be alive” — tells Mr. Ptak.

Iran has never altered its strategy of “avoiding a direct war with the U.S. (which it would lose), while creating strategic depth by funding and arming its proxy terrorist allies in the Gaza Strip, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen,” according to former CIA Clandestine Services Officer and regular columnist Daniel Hoffman.

Writing on the heels of last week’s 45th anniversary of the end of Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution — a moment marked with a massive military parade, while crowds burned U.S. and Israeli flags and shouted retread slogans such as “Death to America” and “Death to Israel” — Mr. Hoffman argues that “there is no appeasing a state sponsor of terrorism.” He goes on to outline a strategy through which “the U.S. should aggressively target Iran’s economy, internal instability and regional allies.”

Per usual, Mr. Hoffman’s peppers his arguments with provocative analysis, such as the assertion that, “amid the war in Gaza, Iran has used its proxies to raise the cost of international trade and to pressure its Sunni adversaries in the Persian Gulf, whose populations are pro-Palestinian but whose governments covet good relations with Washington.”