Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA)

03/16/2026

Iranian attackers wiped devices connected to Stryker, a US medical technology company whose products the military uses to treat wounded personnel. Personal devices enrolled in the company's network were wiped too.
Wiper attacks are not about theft or extortion. They are designed to destroy, and Iran has used them since at least 2012, when a single attack rendered 30,000 Saudi Aramco computers unbootable.

Emily Otto argues the Stryker attack marks an important escalation. By spreading from corporate systems to personal devices, it signals that anyone connected to a targeted network is now fair game.

Read the full analysis in the comments below.

03/14/2026

ARM never built a single chip. It designed the architecture that now underpins more than 325 billion devices worldwide. That model, ideas over factories, is the blueprint for Britain's semiconductor strategy.

The UK is not trying to compete with Korea on memory or Taiwan on manufacturing. It is betting on compound semiconductors in South Wales, advanced power electronics packaging in Scotland, and a pipeline of PhD-level talent to produce the next generation of niche but indispensable chip designers.

Christopher Cytera argues the UK will never be a chip superpower, and it does not need to be. If British-designed compound chips become the standard for EV fast chargers and aerospace RF systems, that is leverage enough, and a chokepoint worth protecting for the democratic world.

03/13/2026

In February, Ukraine faced an average of 191 missile and drone attacks per day. Now, as Iran wages a similar campaign against US forces and Gulf states, Kyiv's expertise is suddenly in high demand.

Ukrainian counter-drone teams are being deployed to Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. The pitch is simple: Ukraine intercepts 90% of Russian drones and has four years of hard-won experience that no training exercise can replicate. In exchange, Zelenskyy is hoping for a swap that improves Ukraine's own ballistic missile interceptor stocks.

Colby Badhwar contends the deeper lesson cuts both ways. The US underestimated the drone threat before launching Operation Epic Fury, just as it had ignored Zelenskyy's warnings in August. Ukraine needs more offensive weapons to hit Russian missile capabilities at source, and the Trump administration's own logic in Iran makes the case for providing them.

03/13/2026

France is translating decades of nuclear rhetoric into action. Paris is modernizing its arsenal, developing a new supersonic cruise missile, and preparing to deploy nuclear-capable Rafale aircraft to Germany, Poland, and other European partners.

The shift is political as much as operational. For decades, Gaullist doctrine kept France's deterrent strictly autonomous. That is changing, with joint nuclear exercises and forward deployments sending a direct signal to Moscow that France may act on its allies' behalf.

But Juraj Majcin warns the gaps are real: France fields roughly 290 warheads against Russia's 1,500 deployed strategic weapons, and domestic opposition could unravel the shift after the next election. Read the full article below.

03/13/2026

France wants to raise its defense budget to €64bn within 18 months and expand its nuclear arsenal for the first time since 1992. The ambition is real. So are the obstacles.

France's debt sits at 113% of GDP. Macron has no parliamentary majority. His previous prime minister resigned after failing to pass the budget needed to fund rearmament without raising the deficit. His current PM has made progress, but the 2027 presidential elections could unravel all of it.

Nicole Monette notes the sharpest irony: while Macron positions France as Europe's nuclear guarantor, it is Germany that is outspending France on defense and leading financial support to Ukraine.

03/13/2026

On March 2, a UK air base in Cyprus came under drone attack. The Royal Navy could not send a destroyer in response. HMS Dragon finally sailed on March 10, days after an 11-ship French fleet had already headed for the Mediterranean.

Of Britain's 13 destroyers and frigates, only around four are currently at sea. Of five attack submarines, one is operational. The navy numbers just 20,000 personnel, while the Ministry of Defence employs 50,000 civil servants.

James Fennell MBE argues this is not a resourcing accident but the result of sixty years of strategic drift, successive governments treating defense as a vehicle for short-term political goals rather than a long-term national interest. The Cyprus incident may be the moment that era ends.

03/12/2026

Russia's Duma is about to pass a law authorizing the military to conduct armed operations abroad to free Russian citizens held by foreign courts. The target audience is Western legal institutions, including courts and detention centers.

The personal motivation is clear: Putin holds an ICC arrest warrant from 2023, and Shoigu and Gerasimov hold their own. But Irina Borogan and Andrei Soldatov argue this is a policy decision with a clear precedent.

In 2006, Putin used the murder of Russian diplomats in Baghdad as political cover to legalize offensive special forces operations abroad. The Litvinenko poisoning followed three months later. Moscow is building a system.

Read the full analysis below.

Russia's war against international law reaches beyond words and now includes the use of military special forces on foreign soil.

03/12/2026

After 35 years of independence and four years of full-scale war, Ukrainians trust their army. They do not trust their government.

94% express confidence in the armed forces. 76% distrust parliament, 75% distrust the state bureaucracy, and only 12% trust prosecutors.

Kateryna Odarchenko argues that closing this gap will be the central challenge of Ukraine's post-war transformation. Without meaningful improvements in civilian governance, restoring the credibility of democratic institutions will remain a Sisyphean task.

03/11/2026

A Hungarian publisher is suing Google over an AI-generated summary of an article about bringing Amazon dolphins to Lake Balaton. The case has reached the EU Court of Justice, and its implications extend far beyond sweetwater dolphins.

The March 10 hearing will produce the first major European ruling on how copyright law applies to AI: specifically, whether training a generative AI model falls under Europe's text and data mining exemption, or whether publishers are owed compensation. Clara Riedenstein notes the case has since shifted toward a narrower but equally consequential question: Does a chatbot summarizing a publicly available article constitute unauthorized communication to the public?

With US courts already exonerating Meta and Anthropic under fair use provisions, Europe's highest court faces pressure to offer its own answers. A wrong ruling, one analyst warns, could leave Europe with complex regimes for AI developers and no clear protections for rights holders. Read the full article in the comment below.

03/11/2026

Roughly $350 billion in illicit funds have moved through crypto-linked laundering schemes over the past two decades. In 79% of identified cases, no convictions followed.

Drawing on the first open-source database of major known cryptocurrency money-laundering cases, Alexander Browder contends the actors behind it are not fringe criminals. North Korea funds an estimated one-third of its government revenue through cryptocurrency schemes. Russia has created its own sanctions-evasion stablecoin, A7A5, estimated to have processed close to $100 billion in its first year alone.

Browder sets out three recommendations: sanctioning Kyrgyzstan officials enabling A7A5 to operate despite Western designations, creating a cryptocurrency whistleblower reward scheme modeled on successful US programs, and building stronger international coordination between financial intelligence units. Crypto crime is cross-border by design. No single country can dismantle it alone.

03/11/2026

The war in Iran is forcing Europe to confront difficult choices about its relationship with Washington.

The Trump administration has expanded the aims of Western engagement with Iran, adding demands that Iranian security forces disarm and that its navy be “annihilated,” while urging the Iranian people to overthrow their government. This widening agenda, combined with concerns about international law and limited consultation with allies, has left European governments divided over how far they should support US operations.

Alexander Crowther notes that Europe now faces a stark set of options: condemn the campaign, quietly assist by granting access to infrastructure, or actively support military action. Much will depend on the war’s outcome, whether it produces democratic change in Iran or triggers wider regional instability, but Europe’s central focus will remain on supporting Ukraine against Russia’s invasion.

03/10/2026

Silicon Valley was built on Cold War defense spending. Ukraine may be producing the next wave.

Since Russia's full-scale invasion, Ukraine's defense industry has grown from battlefield improvisation into a formal industrial ecosystem, with joint production lines now operational across Germany, the UK, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Norway. Defense-tech startups raised more than $105 million in private capital in 2025 alone.

Anatoly Motkin argues the parallels with Silicon Valley are not superficial. Combat validation against Iranian-designed drones has given Ukrainian engineers expertise no Western defense contractor can replicate, and the spillover into dual-use technology is already underway. For investors, the window to engage early is narrowing.