In partnership with
China
(Sunny Cheung – The Jamestown Foundation) Distillation has become essential to the rise of Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) models. Chinese academic and industry papers published in the period 2024–2026 detail how distillation takes place—including adversarial distillation—and provides insight into the kinds of entities involved in the work of using leading models to build capabilities that rival the world’s best models. The prize is frontier reasoning: the step-by-step “chain of thought” that is the most expensive capability to build and the one on which U.S. laboratories lead most clearly. The Chinese research literature documents a deliberate, premeditated effort to distill that capability. Some published Chinese research also focuses on engineering distillation techniques to evade detection. Much of this work is conducted by researchers affiliated with the People’s Liberation Army, the defense industry, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Distilled models are either already being used, or are proposed to be used, for public security applications such as surveillance and monitoring systems, and for military and cyber operations. – Chinese Research Details Distillation for Military Use – Jamestown
Russia
(Paul Globe – The Jamestown Foundation) Ukrainian drone attacks on Russian refineries have sparked a country-wide gas shortage and cost Moscow significant export earnings. They are far from the only threat to Russia’s oil industry. Other, less dramatic threats are likely to prove more significant. Much of Russia’s pipeline network and tanker capacity, dating from Soviet times, is aging and increasingly prone to leaks, reducing the flow of oil to refineries and export markets on which the Kremlin relies while fueling growing anger among Russians. As older fields are exhausted, Russia is being forced to develop new ones in the Far North, where global warming threatens infrastructure and collapse and requires money Moscow lacks or refuses to spend to prevent new disasters. – Ukrainian Drone Attacks on Refineries Far From Only Threat to Russia’s Oil Industry – Jamestown
Russia – Ukraine
(Tatiana Vorozhko, Inna Kubai – The Jamestown Foundation) The Kremlin has returned only a small share of the Ukrainian children it transferred to Russia since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Ukraine has documented more than 20,000 forced transfers of children, only 2,404 of which have been returned. Forcibly separating children from their parents during filtration (фильтрация, fil’tratsiia)— Russia’s compulsory security screening of Ukrainian civilians in occupied territories—is one of six major mechanisms Russia has used to deport Ukrainian children to Russia, illustrating the coercive nature of separations and deportations. Russia uses deported Ukrainian children to address Russia’s demographic decline and replenish its future military ranks. Nearly 47,000 Ukrainian children received Russian citizenship between April 2022 and June 2023. The separation of children from their parents in an already traumatic environment inflicts severe psychological harm, leaving many with long-term emotional and developmental consequences. – Russia’s Filtration System Facilitates Deportation of Ukrainian Children – Jamestown
Serbia
(Blerim Vela – The Jamestown Foundation) Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić’s reported late-June move to leave the presidency while preparing to return as prime minister. This is a continuity maneuver rather than a strategic change of direction. Serbia’s regional posture toward Kosovo, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro is likely to remain unchanged. Belgrade treats neighbors’ sovereignty as conditional, a logic that resembles the Brezhnev Doctrine’s limited sovereignty model and later Russian President Vladimir Putin-era arguments about protecting Russians abroad. Ambiguity over the sovereignty of Serbia’s neighboring states is a problem because it is treated as negotiable, while revisionist actors gain leverage and regional stability and the region’s complete Euro-Atlantic anchoring becomes harder to achieve. – Vučić Uses Brezhnevian Playbook on Politics of Conditional Sovereignty – Jamestown
US – Israel
(The Soufan Center) Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held a long-sought-after meeting with President Trump in Washington this week, but the discussions produced no new initiatives to end the five-month-long Iran war or de-escalate other regional conflicts. The two governments share the vision of an integrated and Western-aligned Middle East but differ on the extent to which hard power alone can counter the challenges posed by Iran and its “Axis of Resistance” partners. Although U.S. officials feared Netanyahu would press Trump to restart combat against Iran, Tehran precipitated that result by launching a “surprise attack” on a U.S.-manned base in Jordan hours after the Trump-Netanyahu meeting concluded. The Iranian attacks signaled Tehran’s rejection of Oman’s proposals to fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz and to restart U.S.-Iran talks under the June Memorandum of Understanding (MOU). – Iran Re-ignites War as Netanyahu Visits Washington – The Soufan Center
