16 Oct 2025

Algorithms of Genocide: From Silicon Valley to the Gaza Strip

The tools of twenty-first-century warfare are no longer confined to conventional weapons such as missiles, tanks, and aircraft. They have expanded to encompass cloud-computing platforms, artificial-in...
14 Oct 2025

Not All Quiet on the Western Front: Europe’s Next War

“Poland is at its closest to open conflict since World War Two,” warned Prime Minister Donald Tusk, after a sudden Russian airspace violation rattled the country. On September 9, a swarm of Russian dr...
14 Oct 2025

What Would Iran’s Withdrawal from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Mean?

Iran’s nuclear file is witnessing a rapidly escalating trajectory, underscored by its potential decision to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). This move could redefine the very ...
9 Oct 2025

U.S. Intelligence Support Signals a New Phase in the Russia-Ukraine War

On October 1, U.S. reports stated that President Donald Trump gave the green light to provide Ukraine with intelligence information to strike deep into Russia’s energy infrastructure sites, while stud...
5 Oct 2025

Balancing Talent and Identity: The GCC’s Labor Market Test

The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) labour market is at a pivotal crossroads. The high ratio of expatriate workers, which accounts for almost 78% of the total workforce in this region as of Q2 2024, ac...

Programmes

Not All Quiet on the Western Front: Europe’s Next War

14 Oct 2025
“Poland is at its closest to open conflict since World War Two,” warned Prime Minister Donald Tusk, after a sudden Russian airspace violation rattled the country. On September 9, a swarm of Russian drones entered Polish skies, prompting NATO aircraft to scramble and intercept several of them. It marked the first direct encounter between NATO and Moscow since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. While the incident might have been a test by Putin to gauge NATO’s and Europe’s response, it also raises the specter of a potential war between Poland and Russia. Given Poland’s critical role within NATO and the EU, far greater than Ukraine’s, the implications of such a conflict would place the entire continent in Jeopardy. The pressing question now is: how likely is this war to erupt, and would Europeans bear the brunt?

An Unequal Cost: How Space Debris Deepens the Exclusion of Developing Nations from the Economies of the Future

30 Sep 2025
Since the launch of the first satellite in 1957, the Low Earth Orbit (LEO) has undergone a profound transformation from a near-empty frontier into a congested and polluted environment shaped by decades of human activity. Non-functional satellites, spent rocket stages, and fragmentation debris from collisions and explosions have accumulated to a mass exceeding 14,700 tons. Critical events have amplified the scale of the problem, most notably China’s Anti-Satellite Test (ASAT) in 2007 and the 2009 collision between the U.S. Iridium-33 and Russia’s Kosmos-2251, which together generated nearly one-third of all catalogued debris in LEO.   This material is unevenly distributed but highly concentrated between 750 and 1,000 kilometres, an orbital belt central to Earth Observation and communications. Objects in this altitude range can persist for centuries, while in the Geostationary Orbit (GEO) debris may remain indefinitely, underscoring the long-term persistence of the hazard. Consequently, orbital space has shifted from an open frontier to a finite and polluted resource requiring collective governance.   This study examines the economic and political dimensions of space debris. It assesses the direct costs borne by operators, the cascading risks to terrestrial infrastructure such as Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) and weather forecasting, and the disproportionate challenges facing developing nations. It concludes by analysing potential responses, ranging from mitigation strategies to Active Debris Removal (ADR), within the broader framework of international governance and global equity.

Algorithms of Genocide: From Silicon Valley to the Gaza Strip

16 Oct 2025
The tools of twenty-first-century warfare are no longer confined to conventional weapons such as missiles, tanks, and aircraft. They have expanded to encompass cloud-computing platforms, artificial-intelligence systems, and data-processing capabilities developed and managed by major U.S.-based technology corporations, including Microsoft, Google, and Amazon. These companies have become central pillars in the conduct of modern digital warfare, with their decisions and policies exerting profound geopolitical influence and forming an integral component of contemporary global power dynamics.   In this context, the relationship between commercial technology corporations and the Israeli military has undergone a profound transformation, moving beyond the traditional model of supplying hardware and software to establish digital infrastructure as a central instrument in the management of modern conflict, most notably during the war on Gaza. A new paradigm of integration between the military and the private sector has emerged, in which commercial digital systems have become an inseparable component of military capability, blurring the boundaries between market-driven services and state security architectures.   The management of the global narrative surrounding humanitarian catastrophes, including the confirmed famine and persistent reports of atrocities, has become inseparable from the content-governance policies imposed by major digital platforms controlled by technology conglomerates. These platforms frequently amplify official narratives while minimising or obscuring the magnitude of famine and conflict. At the same time, they enable advanced surveillance mechanisms that restrict or silence independent media operating within conflict zones.   The war in Gaza has underscored the dual and increasingly intricate role of major technology corporations, particularly Google (Alphabet Inc.) and Microsoft Corporation, in both modern warfare and global information control. These entities operate within a mutually reinforcing dynamic, providing specialised cloud-computing and artificial-intelligence infrastructure that enables unprecedented levels of lethal military operations and mass surveillance across Gaza and the occupied territories. Concurrently, they deploy advanced mechanisms of information control, encompassing internal content moderation, algorithmic bias, and data suppression, to recalibrate public narratives and shield corporate power from accountability.   This analysis, therefore, examines the role of technology corporations in shaping the dynamics and repercussions of the conflict in Gaza, exploring how they contribute to the engineering of the informational, political, and humanitarian landscape within the framework of contemporary warfare. In this process, these corporations are transformed from ostensibly neutral service providers into active participants within the conflict’s infrastructural ecosystem.

Most Read

Arab Airspace Blockade After Doha Attack
Programmes
17 Sep 2025

Arab Airspace Blockade After Doha Attack

This paper provides a comprehensive assessment of the potential economic, political, and security outcomes should the Arab and Islamic worlds enact a coordinated airspace blockade against Israel. The specified catalyst for this action is the Israeli airstrike on Hamas leadership in Doha, Qatar, on September 9, 2025, an event that has already precipitated a significant realignment of regional diplomatic postures.   The central thesis of this analysis is that a coordinated airspace blockade would represent a strategic shock to Israel, not merely a logistical inconvenience. It would function as a form of asymmetric economic warfare, inflicting severe, multi-sector damage on Israel's globally integrated economy by targeting its core vulnerabilities in aviation, high-value trade, and tourism. The direct economic impact is estimated to be a contraction of 4.8% to 5.7% of Israel's Gross Domestic Product (GDP), a shock sufficient to trigger a deep recession.   Politically, the blockade would fundamentally re-order the regional geopolitical landscape, shattering the post-2020 status quo established by the Abraham Accords and rendering further normalization efforts untenable. It would accelerate a strategic pivot by Gulf Arab states away from a singular reliance on the United States as a security guarantor, fostering a new, region-driven security architecture. For the United States, such a development would present an acute diplomatic crisis, forcing a choice between its ironclad alliance with Israel and its vital strategic partnerships with Arab nations, thereby undermining a cornerstone of its Middle East policy.   From a security perspective, the blockade would act as a "gray zone" challenge, a highly coercive act that exists in the ambiguous space between peace and declared war. It would degrade the operational reach of the Israeli Air Force (IAF) and place the onus of military escalation squarely on Israel. A decision by Israel to forcibly challenge the blockade would create a high-probability pathway to a wider regional military conflict, potentially drawing in the Gulf states, Iran and its proxies, and the United States. The airspace blockade, therefore, represents a plausible and potent instrument of collective action that could irrevocably alter the strategic balance in the Middle East.
What If: The US Economy Collapses?
Programmes
28 May 2025

What If: The US Economy Collapses?

Global trade tensions, supply chain disruptions, and skyrocketing costs are some of the unprecedented effects caused by U.S. president Donald Trump’s second term aggressive tariff policies. Tariff policies' impact goes beyond being just hypothetical, with real-time predictions and forecasts that more severe effects could follow; the global GDP is expected to slowly grow by only 2.2% in 2025, while the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) has warned of a possible global recession, given that growth slips below 2.5%. Not only the UNCTAD but also the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has downgraded its outlook for the global economy to 2.8% in 2025 and made a significant revision for the U.S. economy lowering its 2025 growth projection to 1.8% in April from 2.7% in January. Adding to these concerns, the World Trade Organization has already highlighted a sharp deterioration in global trade prospects, with world merchandise trade now expected to decline by 0.2% in 2025, nearly three percentage points lower than previous forecasts.   The current instabilities go beyond the economic aspect; they also affect the U.S.’s international alliances and add additional burdens to households, many of whom are delaying major life decisions. A pressing question amid recession fears arises: What are the impacts on a global scale in the event of a U.S. economic collapse? Given the leading position the U.S. plays as the world’s largest economy and the leading issuer of primary reserve currency, such a downturn would trigger a financial disaster of unparalleled magnitude. Essentially, if the U.S.’s economy falls, the world’s economy falls with it. Imagine waking up a few years from now, pulling out your phone, and seeing the headline: "U.S. Economy in Freefall: Markets Collapsed Overnight." It begins as a distant rumble, as if a story is taking place somewhere else. But then you go to get your morning coffee, and the price has tripled. Your investment app reveals that your life savings have been devastated. Overseas, factories that rely on American consumers come to a standstill, leaving entire villages jobless. The USD, once the cornerstone of global banking, has collapsed, provoking wild currency wars as governments try to preserve their own. Suddenly, that far-off catastrophe isn't so far away; it's emptying your wallet, increasing your grocery cost, and endangering your basic existence. This isn't just a headline; it's a chilling, global economic winter, its icy grip felt in every home, on every continent, for generations. Are we truly prepared for such a cataclysm?
AI’s Crossroads: Decoding the Middle East’s AI Transformation
Programmes
30 Jul 2025

AI’s Crossroads: Decoding the Middle East’s AI Transformation

In a fast-paced world driven by technological advances, the global landscape is being reshaped by the rapid rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI), a technology that is playing a vital role in bringing in major economic shifts, unleashing a new era of GDP growth. One of the most active regions concerning AI integration is the Middle East, a region not only observing or keeping up, rather revolutionizing this integration as governments across the region harness the power of AI to reshape their policies, implement national strategies, attract smarter investments while powerfully reconstructing their futures. Such adaptation has already borne fruit, as different economies in the region became more agile and dynamic, systems evolved to operate more efficiently and smarter, resulting in providing better services to their respective populations.   Despite the rapid progress and fast growth of AI in the Middle East, the region still faces a set of challenges, including the lack of properly trained individuals and the constant need of innovative solutions and new ways to narrow this gap. On the other hand, the region lacks legislative framework to regulate the use of AI in a fair and ethical manner. While a growing need for sustainable infrastructure development underlines the fact that more work is still required, overcoming these obstacles and challenges will lead to unlock the region’s full potential, overcome competition and become a major player in the AI world globally.
Trump Peace Play: Three Futures for Russia-Ukraine War
Programmes
15 Sep 2025

Trump Peace Play: Three Futures for Russia-Ukraine War

Amid Trump’s meetings with Russian & Ukrainian counterparts to reach a prolonged ceasefire, questions arise about the possibility of a successful peace plan occurring between Moscow & Kyiv with a U.S. mediation. Yet, with Putin’s demands from one side and Trump’s ambiguous promises to Zelensky from the other side, will the Ukraine war come to an end?

Publications

The Blog

Balancing Talent and Identity: The GCC’s Labor Market Test

5 Oct 2025

Aid vs. Investment: Shifting Financial Flows to Palestine

1 Oct 2025

The UAE Strategic Steps Toward AI Leadership

30 Sep 2025

The Kurdish-Syrian Agreement: Reasons Behind the Stalemate

17 Aug 2025

Open to All Nationalities

29 Jul 2025

Trump’s Control Over His Party Falters

2 Jul 2025

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