You could call it "Extreme Makeover: Central Asian Edition." Today, among the five post-Soviet republics that make up the region, there are heartening signs of political dynamism and a newfound drive for integration.
At the center of these changes is the Republic of Uzbekistan, which has launched a far-reaching program to reform and modernize the state.
Though Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs, or drones) are now an essential part of the U.S. national security toolkit, military views of UAVs were less than enthusiastic when the technology first emerged. In the early days of drones, the most prominent roadblocks to widespread adoption by the armed forces were inconsistency in performance, spiking costs, and, perhaps more importantly, a significant lack of interest on the part of military leaders, who could not quite envision a tactical use for the technology and thus had little incentive to push for the investment that such systems required. Today, by contrast, UAVs are an accepted, even vital, part of military and intelligence operations.
Iran is on the march in the Middle East.
Over the past year, a steady drumbeat of news reports from the Persian Gulf, intelligence assessments regarding Syria's civil war, and firsthand accounts out of Iraq, Lebanon and beyond has pointed to an inescapable conclusion: Iran is erecting a new empire in the region.
Moscow has long sought to ensconce itself in key Venezuelan energy sectors and provide loans and weapons to the regimes of Hugo Chavez and then Nicolás Maduro so they could use this assistance to destabilize the entire continent.
The past several years have seen a remarkable transition of Artificial Intelligence (AI) from academia to practical use. This shift is beginning to transform every industry, is fundamentally changing many consumer services, and will have a profound impact on national security.