Launch activities are still subject to NEPA review by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which regulates space launch, notes Mary Guenther, head Space Policy at the Progressive Policy Institute, in a policy brief on the issue. “Repeating that analysis at the FCC would be duplicative and wasteful. It is also worth noting that the vast majority of analyses by the FAA result in findings of no significant impact,” Guenther said.
Category: Uncategorized
Manno for Philanthropy Daily: Donors, AI, and the Americans Who (Don’t) Trust It
Americans aren’t confused about artificial intelligence. They increasingly use it more and understand it better, but they are unconvinced it’s good for them.
A new survey from Gallup and the Special Competitive Studies Project puts it plainly: “Americans’ use of and familiarity with AI have grown, but their trust has not.”
That message should matter to donors asked to fund an AI literacy program, workforce initiative, or research into AI safety and oversight.
The numbers tell a clear story.
Reported AI use jumped from 39 percent of adults in 2025 to 51 percent in 2026, driven mostly by people over 30 catching up to a younger cohort that adopted early. Self-reported knowledge rose from 60 percent to 68 percent.
Trust in AI’s ability to make fair decisions was flat at 28 percent. Nearly two-thirds of Americans say they distrust it outright. Familiarity hasn’t translated into confidence, which should give pause to funders whose theory of change assumes exposure alone will close the trust gap.
The AI economic mood has also soured.
Read more in Philanthropy Daily.
Manno for DATIA K12: The World’s Education Scorecard on Life After High School
Every fall, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) publishes the closest thing the world has to an annual report card on education. The latest edition, Education at a Glance 2026, covers a wide range of topics, from how systems are structured, financed, and perform to its special focus on teacher shortages and how countries respond. It also includes a section that follows students after they leave high school, asking how far they went, whether they found work, what they earn, and what they can actually do.
The headline news is encouraging. In the United States, the share of 18- to 24-year-olds who were neither working nor in school or training fell to 14 percent in 2025, down from 16 percent a decade earlier. Some 52 percent of American adults ages 25 to 64 hold an associate degree or higher, above the OECD average of 43 percent. More young people are connected to something after high school than they were ten years ago.
But the averages hide a sorting that begins on graduation day. Among Americans ages 18 to 24, 46 percent are enrolled in some form of education, 39 percent are working and not in school, and 14 percent are doing neither. For those whose high school diploma is their final credential, the labor market is unforgiving.
Read more on Datia K12.
Manno for Real Clear Education: Goodbye to the One-School Student As K–12 Goes Modular
“Where does your child go to school?” used to be an easy question to answer with the name of a building. That straightforward response is getting harder to give.
A growing number of families now build their children’s education from parts. A young person might spend three days a week at a microschool, take an online math course, join a homeschool co-op, and take a dual-enrollment class at the local community college. More and more often, an education savings account pays for some of it.
American K–12 education is going modular. And new studies show families moving faster than the categories we use to describe, count, fund, and judge schooling. That gap between how families behave and how our systems are built deserves more attention than it gets.
Read more in Real Clear Education.
Manno for Governing: Governments’ Role in Nurturing ‘Launchpad Jobs’
The earliest effects of artificial intelligence on work are landing not in mass layoffs but at the job entry point where young people learn how to work. That shift creates a governing problem that no one in state or local government clearly owns.
Responsibility for helping students move from school to a first job is spread across high schools, colleges, local workforce boards, apprenticeship offices and state labor agencies. When everyone owns a problem in part, no one owns it at all.
The evidence is hard to ignore. In September, the Census Bureau found that since ChatGPT arrived, graduates of the most AI-exposed college majors, led by computer science, were less likely to find a job right after graduation. Those who did earned about 13 percent less than graduates in less-exposed fields — comparable to graduating into a severe recession — and more of them started in retail and restaurants. For graduates in moderately exposed fields, first jobs came later but mostly caught up.
Ainsley on The Spectator Podcast Coffee House Shots: Can Andy Keep Up With His Promises?
Andy Burnham delivered his first conference speech as Prime Minister in Liverpool yesterday, promising a sweeping expansion of public services and a fresh look at Brexit, to warm reviews from the hall. Patrick Gibbons is joined by Isabel Hardman and Claire Ainsley, Sir Keir Starmer’s former director of policy, to weigh up what was promised and how the party is taking it.
Record Sea-Turtle Nesting Counts in Florida, Texas, and Georgia This Summer
Record sea-turtle nesting counts in Florida, Texas, and Georgia this summer
THE NUMBERS: Green turtle nest counts at Florida’s “core index beaches” (using a two-year average*) –
| 2025-2026 | ~50,000 nests |
| 2020-2021 | ~23,000 nests |
| 2010-2011 | ~10,000 nests |
| 2000-2001 | ~4,000 nests |
| 1980s – | ~500 nests |
*Florida Wildlife Commission, using two-year averages, as green turtle nesting totals appear to vary in a two-year cycle. These are not total statewide (or U.S.) nesting estimates, but counts of nesting at 27 long-studied beaches, making up a representative sample of known Florida nesting beaches.
WHAT THEY MEAN:
From the Chinese classics A-list: Sometime around 330 BC, proto-conservationist Mencius offers King Hui of Liang (a Warring States principality near today’s Kaifeng) a simple solution to a complex problem:
“If you ban nets with fine mesh from ponds, there will be more fish and turtles than the people can eat. If you ban axes from the forests on the hillsides except in the proper season, there will be more timber than the people can use.”
And from the research arm of Florida’s Fish and Wildlife Commission a week ago Monday, an excited Facebook post:
“We may have a new loggerhead nesting record in Florida. Loggerheads have reached a preliminary 136,972 nests statewide as of August 31, already exceeding the previous annual record of 134,930 nests set in 2023. These numbers are still preliminary and will need to be verified before we can officially call 2026 a new record year, but it’s an exciting milestone! Leatherbacks have also had a remarkable season, with 2,209 nests documented so far. If these preliminary numbers are confirmed during final data review, 2026 would also set a new statewide leatherback nesting record.”
Background: Turtles — large, armored reptiles with few natural predators — are very tough animals. The 2026 nesting season was about the 150 millionth in the series, meaning turtles weathered not only the last seven ice ages but the apocalyptic end-of-Cretaceous asteroid that did in the belemnite and the mosasaur. Nonetheless, as of 2025, all seven sea turtle species — greens, loggerheads, leatherbacks, Kemp’s Ridleys, olive Ridleys, flatbacks, hawksbills— were on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s “Red List” as “vulnerable,” “threatened,” “endangered,” or “critically endangered,” and U.S. law considers all seven endangered. NOAA’s summary for the green turtle explains the causes of their 20th-century “catastrophic global decline”:
(1) “By-catch,” as turtles drown in nets towed by shrimp boats and fishing fleets;
(2) Direct hunting “in extraordinarily high numbers for their fat, meat, and eggs”;
(3) Loss of nesting grounds through beach erosion, seawall construction, and
bright hotel lighting that deters night-time nesting;
(4) Collisions with boats close to shore;
(5) Ocean pollution, in particular plastics and balloons;
(6) Climate change and warming ocean temperature; and
(7) Communicable diseases possibly linked to deteriorating habitat.
Some of these threats — floating plastics, warming water — are daunting, global-scale issues. But others turn out to require only the sort of simple ideas Mencius pitched to King Hui. In 1991, the Florida government under Gov. Lawton Chiles imposed beach protection rules and night-time nesting-month blackouts on hotels. (Florida has 90% of the U.S. sea turtle nesting sites, and joins Oman as one of two main loggerhead nesting sites worldwide.) Puerto Rico, the main western-hemisphere leatherback nesting site, has done the same. Most countries, including the U.S., have banned turtle-hunting for food and jewelry, and banned trade in turtle products through the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. And Congress in 1987 adopted a law imposing Mencius’ actual idea, requiring shrimp boats serving the U.S. — whether local or foreign — to equip their nets with “Turtle Excluder Devices,” which are cheap metal grilles with holes allowing unintentionally trapped turtles to swim out of the nets. NOAA thinks the TEDs are 97% successful.
A generation later, FWC’s researchers not only can talk up a good 2026 nesting season but point to a much improved basic landscape. When Florida wildlife biologists began their regular nest counts in 1989, they found 37,000 loggerhead nests, 500 green turtle nests, and 98 leatherback nests. This year’s season isn’t quite over, but the nearly 140,000 loggerhead nests the FWC cites mean a roughly four-fold increase, while leatherback nesting totals are up about 20-fold and green turtle counts 100-fold. Counts in Georgia and Texas are up as well, including a return of the particularly rare Kemp’s Ridley. Green turtle world populations specifically appear to have jumped by 28%, leading the International Union for Conservation of Nature to shift them from “endangered” to “least concern”. Not more than people could theoretically eat, at least so far, and the other six remain in the “vulnerable” to “critically endangered” tiers. But still pretty good, and a reminder that relatively modest policies sustained over time can often achieve a lot.
FURTHER READING
Then:
An online Mencius translation; see Chapter 1A.3 for turtle and fish policy.
Now:
NOAA’s green turtle assessment: https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/species/green-turtle
The Florida Wildlife Commission reports on nesting totals for five turtle species at 27 annually studied “index beaches” from 1989 through 2025: https://myfwc.com/research/wildlife/sea-turtles/nesting/beach-survey-totals/
… Their upbeat (if still incomplete) 2026 returns.
… And their guide to beachfront lighting rules.
The IUCN’s 2026 “Red List” assessments, with green turtles still on the list but at “least concern” level.
Also:
Texas’ Sea Turtle Patrol counts 697 Kemp’s Ridley nests so far in 2026, up from 449 in 2025, 340 in 2024, 256 in 2023, 284 in 2022, and 195 in 2021. The Kemp’s Ridley is the smallest and most endangered sea turtle, with worldwide nesting totals (per NOAA) down to 702 in 1985. Since then, totals have rebounded to about 9,000 per year in Mexico, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has created a second nesting site on Padre Island in Texas, whose nest counts are up from an initial 7 to 353 last year.
Georgia’s Sea Turtle Nest Monitoring System reports 4,292 nests this year (all species), up from 1,910 in 2025 and 2,521 in 2024.
The New England Aquarium reports on leatherback tracking in Puerto Rico.
And a report from Masirah Island in Oman.
Policy:
The CITES (Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species) homepage.
NOAA explains how Turtle Excluder Devices work.
The State Department explains shrimping import and turtle conservation rules, and which countries’ fleets qualify.
ABOUT ED
Ed Gresser is Vice President and Director for Trade and Global Markets at PPI.
Ed returns to PPI after working for the think tank from 2001-2011. He most recently served as the Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Trade Policy and Economics at the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR). In this position, he led USTR’s economic research unit from 2015-2021, and chaired the 21-agency Trade Policy Staff Committee.
Ed began his career on Capitol Hill before serving USTR as Policy Advisor to USTR Charlene Barshefsky from 1998 to 2001. He then led PPI’s Trade and Global Markets Project from 2001 to 2011. After PPI, he co-founded and directed the independent think tank ProgressiveEconomy until rejoining USTR in 2015. In 2013, the Washington International Trade Association presented him with its Lighthouse Award, awarded annually to an individual or group for significant contributions to trade policy.
Ed is the author of Freedom from Want: American Liberalism and the Global Economy (2007). He has published in a variety of journals and newspapers, and his research has been cited by leading academics and international organizations including the WTO, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund. He is a graduate of Stanford University and holds a Master’s Degree in International Affairs from Columbia Universities and a certificate from the Averell Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union.
Read the full email and sign up for the Trade Fact of the Week.
Kahlenberg for The Atlantic: How the Culture War Put Public Schools at Risk
For more than half a century after Milton Friedman proposed using taxpayer money to support students in private schools, the libertarian economist’s idea went almost nowhere. Republican presidents, including Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, pushed vouchers—which help parents enroll their children in schools of their choice, including private and religious schools, at taxpayer expense—as a way to liberate poor children from failing big-city school districts. Those efforts led to voucher initiatives in a smattering of districts, such as Cleveland, Milwaukee, and Washington, D.C. But in state after state, support for public schools—which take all comers and have historically played a crucial role in cultivating students’ common identity as Americans—was just too broad-based and too strong to get voucher-like programs approved on a larger scale.
In the past several years, though, voucher advocates have switched strategies to take advantage of the country’s ever-deepening political polarization. In 2022, the Heritage Foundation urged the voucher movement “to embrace the culture war” as a way of promoting school choice. As evidence of progressive overreach, the conservative think tank has pointed to “racial essentialism for third graders” and decried the presence in some school libraries of Gender Queer, a graphic novel that “features a picture of oral sex being performed on a sex toy.”
Conservative leaders in many state capitals have emulated Heritage’s tactics, and the tactical shift has helped persuade lawmakers to expand the supply of school vouchers. Amy Sinclair, the president of the Iowa state Senate, told an interviewer in 2023 that during the coronavirus pandemic, “many parents became aware of anti-American and explicit materials in their child’s classrooms and began to demand choice.” “There’s no reason why any students should have a woke agenda pushed on them,” Texas Governor Greg Abbott declared a month later at a rally for private-school-choice legislation. The following year, his Arkansas counterpart, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, promoted her school-choice efforts by declaring on X, “We need kids learning math, reading, and science—not woke nonsense.” Since the pandemic, voucher-like programs have proliferated, and they are now open to even the richest students. In 2021, no states had universal programs supporting private education with public dollars; by 2025, 18 did. The number of students using publicly funded private-school-choice programs has tripled since the 2018–19 school year.
Read more in The Atlantic.
An Explainer to the FCC’S Push to Clarify NEPA’s Application to Satellites
It’s rare for an arcane Federal Communications Commission (FCC) agenda item to attract attention outside of the trade press, but the September 30 vote on whether to exempt satellites from National Environmental Policy Act review as a rule has some environmental organizations and astronomers up in arms.
BACKGROUND
Since the 1980s, all satellite licensing efforts at the FCC have enjoyed a categorical exemption under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), generally excluding them from its potentially lengthy standard review process. On September 30, the FCC plans to go a step further. Specifically, the FCC is clarifying that space-based activities do not rise to the level of a “major federal action,” as it was recently defined in the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023, and therefore are not subject to NEPA.
Activities receive a categorical exclusion under NEPA if a federal agency determines that they do not typically have a significant impact on the human environment. Categorical exclusions allow for a far more streamlined and efficient process for both the federal government and the applicant: A 2014 review estimated about 95% of NEPA analyses are for categorically excluded activities. Note that interested parties can still ask an agency to make an exception to categorical exclusions if the action before them has unusual or extraordinary circumstances.
Now, the FCC is going a step further in arguing that space-based operations under its regulatory authority are not subject to NEPA at all anymore because they no longer meet the scope of activities that legislation is focused on. The new definition of “major federal action” — the threshold for NEPA applying — is “an action that the agency carrying out such action determines is subject to substantial Federal control and responsibility.” The definition further clarifies that non-federal actions carried out without federal funding and without the ability for a federal agency to control the outcome of the project are not considered major federal actions. Given that the FCC is not funding the satellite activities it is licensing or controlling its operations — it simply authorizes satellite utilization of spectrum — this finding appears consistent with the updated statute.
In claiming that NEPA should not apply to satellite licensing, the FCC also cites a longstanding exemption for activities conducted outside of the United States with effects located “entirely outside the jurisdiction of the United States.” However, whether that exemption is applicable is somewhat murky, given an emerging body of research that points to atmospheric impacts of satellite reentry, among other environmental issues that impact life here on Earth. These concerns will be reviewed in the next section.
Read the full analysis.
Marshall in Mainichi: Democratic Party’s Left-Wing Candidates May Struggle to Expand Support in Battleground States Ahead of Midterm Elections
As momentum grows for the left wing of the Democratic Party ahead of the U.S. midterm elections, Will Marshall, president of the Progressive Policy Institute, a think tank associated with moderate Democrats, discussed the party’s prospects in an interview with The Mainichi.
Given the current political environment, Democrats have a good chance of winning back the House of Representatives in this year’s midterm elections. However, I do not expect a landslide victory like the one seen in 2018 during President Trump’s first term.
Democratic and Republican voters have become increasingly entrenched, and there are fewer seats that can realistically change hands.
The biggest reason for the growth of left-wing groups such as the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) is frustration within the Democratic Party itself.
The party’s defeat in the 2024 presidential election was a profound shock. Faced with President Trump pushing laws and democratic norms to their limits, Democrats have felt powerless to stop him. As a result, left-wing populism has gained strength, and demands for maximum resistance and confrontation have grown louder.
Read the Mainichi interview here.
Read the English translation here.
Lewis for MinnPost: Data Centers: Can Democrats Regulate and Still Build?
The emerging debate over data centers in Minnesota poses a question Democrats nationally will increasingly have to answer: Can we be the party that demands strong environmental protections, community input and corporate accountability — and still be the party that builds things?
Pine Island, Minn., is becoming a test case.
In early September, one of the community’s larger employers announced that it would close its metal-finishing plant, eliminating 55 jobs. At nearly the same time, Pine Island was preparing for a very different economic future: a major technology development that could bring new investment, tax revenue and jobs to the community.
But that project is now caught in litigation.
This is precisely the tension Democrats need to resolve. The choice should not be between writing a blank check to developers and making major investment practically impossible. Minnesota has already begun constructing a third way: set tough rules, protect ratepayers and natural resources, require transparency, give communities a meaningful voice — and then allow projects that meet those standards to move forward.
Keep reading in MinnPost.
Manno for The 74: So Many Credentials, So Little Value — What States Can Learn From Ohio’s Reboot
The gap between workforce policy ambition and the infrastructure that’s needed to make it a reality is a defining story in American workforce policy. Ohio is an example of this problem and the pathway to solving it.
Last year, about 9,000 Ohio high school students earned a retail sales and customer service credential. State records show employers were looking to fill exactly three jobs statewide that required it. Another 4,000 students earned a stack of emergency management credentials for a field with fewer than 300 openings.
These students didn’t do anything wrong. The problem belonged to a state that built an enormous credentialing system far before it had the tools and data infrastructure to know which credentials were worth earning.
Since 2019, Ohio has allowed high school students to earn a diploma by completing career and technical education coursework and receiving an industry-recognized credential rather than passing a state test. Students responded rationally, with credential attainment rising from 53,000 in 2019 to 170,000 in 2024.
Keep reading in The 74.
Manno for Community College Daily: The Readiness Paradox Community Colleges Can’t Ignore
Community colleges can help close the readiness paradox, or the widening gap between finishing high school and being ready for what’s next. Three new national surveys show how wide it’s grown.
High school graduation rates are up. But graduates report they’re not sure what comes next. And community colleges, which enroll a large share of this population, are the first place that uncertainty shows up.
The share of public high school students graduating on time rose from 80% in 2011–12 to 87.4% in 2022–23, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, confirmed by K-12 Dive’s review of the same federal data. The Everyone Graduates Center at Johns Hopkins University puts the longer arc at roughly two decades, from about 70% to today’s all-time highs.
That is a genuine institutional achievement. It means a larger share of students than ever before is arriving at community colleges with a diploma. But these same students are, by their own account, less sure why they’re there.
Seventy-seven percent of recent high school graduates say they feel only moderately, slightly or not at all prepared for life after high school, according to YouScience’s 2026 Post-Graduation Readiness Report. That’s up from 72% just a year earlier.
Read more in Community College Daily.
Manno for Washington Monthly: Thriving After High School: A Foundation to Build On
The country finds itself debating what happens to young people after 12th grade. Is college worth it? Should high schoolers skip it for an apprenticeship? Is college still the ticket to the middle class or a debt trap dressed up as opportunity?
A new report from the American Academy of Arts & Sciences characterizes our times as “a moment of great national debate about the journeys people make after they receive their high school diploma.” What makes this contribution to that debate worth taking seriously isn’t that it settles the argument, but who is making it, and how.
Thriving After High School: Community, School, Service, and Work is the product of the Academy’s Commission on Opportunities After High School. Thirty leaders from K-12 and higher education, business, service, and philanthropy worked together for two years.
It’s worth pausing to consider where this cross-partisan report comes from, because that context changes how it should be read.
Read more in Washington Monthly.
Introducing Domain Awareness
Introducing Domain Awareness: A new weekly feature from PPI’s national security team
By Danielle Steitz
Lately, it seems like every day begins with a torrent of headlines from an increasingly complex and rapidly changing global landscape. Wars in Europe and the Middle East prompt fears of escalation and geopolitical confrontation, while proliferating technologies like artificial intelligence threaten to reshape the security landscape. Political, security, economic, and technological concerns are increasingly intertwined, making the global landscape fraught with tensions and trade-offs. And in the United States, the erratic and unprincipled leadership of the Trump administration is confounding America’s allies while emboldening her adversaries, creating a more unpredictable and dangerous world.
PPI seeks to offer a path for navigating this increasingly chaotic global environment through understanding the domains in which we operate, which is why we are proud to announce the launch of Domain Awareness. While there are countless stories each day that demand attention, PPI’s new weekly digest offers a curated list of the top stories that policymakers and practitioners need to read, paired with commentary from PPI’s policy experts. We hope you will join us each week as we seek to understand current events and trends, and as we offer pragmatic policy solutions towards a more stable and secure future.
THIS WEEK’S
TOP STORIES
Europe’s warning lights are blinking red
By Danielle Steitz and Tamar Jacoby
Leaders throughout Europe have spent the past several days publicly stating that Russia has stepped up its hybrid activity targeted at their nations, and may continue to escalate in order to probe Europe’s response. French President Emmanuel Macron and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk both addressed the increase in Russian malign activity, describing it as designed to degrade support for Ukraine and to drive a wedge between NATO allies. These warnings come amidst events like last month’s drone attack at Leipzig Airport, suspicious fires and sabotage operations targeting European defense facilities, and a drone attack on a train that narrowly missed former U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson and former U.S. CIA director David Petraeus.
PPI Expert Assessment:
Danielle Steitz, Director of National Security Policy: European leaders are reading recent Russian actions as forecasting the desire to continue probing Europe’s resolve, and are reacting to warn their publics and the world accordingly. Russia appears to perceive a divide between the U.S. and European NATO allies, and will take every opportunity it can to create distance and doubt in the alliance.
Tamar Jacoby, Kyiv-based director of the New Ukraine Project: Most of the world is still using the phrase “hybrid war” to describe Russia’s escalating aggression in Europe: sabotage, arson, assassination attempts, cable-cuttings, airspace violations, cyberattacks, and campaigns to undermine electoral integrity. But after four years and hundreds of incidents, some Europeans say it’s time to drop the word hybrid. “The reality is that Russia considers itself at war with Europe,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha explained this month, “even if Europe does not consider itself at war with Russia.”
One of Moscow’s goals is clearly to suppress Western support for Ukraine, persuading European voters that it’s in their interest to pursue peace at any price on Russia’s terms. But it’s hard to believe the motive ends there. The Kremlin has long framed its aggression in Europe as part of a conflict with “the collective West,” and Vladimir Putin makes no secret of his desire to reclaim the Cold War Soviet sphere of influence – a huge swath of what’s now free, democratic Europe, including one-third of Berlin. Europeans are increasingly alarmed but only beginning to grapple with the implications – what would it mean to be at war with Russia, for national governments and for NATO?
For additional PPI insight on this topic, please see “Europe Struggles to Respond to Russian Attacks” by Tamar Jacoby.
A new escalation between Russia and Ukraine
By Tamar Jacoby and Danielle Steitz
As Ukraine prepares for its fifth winter under Russian attack, the evolving conflict appears to have undergone yet another shift. This past weekend, Ukraine launched its largest strike yet into the Moscow region, reportedly using over 1,100 drones as well as Ukrainian-manufactured Flamingo and Pelican missiles to target infrastructure in the region that includes one of Russia’s largest oil refineries. At the same time, Russia has stepped up its use of jet-powered Geran drones to attack targets across Ukraine, increasing the reach of the conflict and eliminating any sense of distance between civilians and the frontlines.
PPI Expert Assessment:
Tamar Jacoby, Kyiv-based director of the New Ukraine Project: Everyone knew this would be a difficult fall in Ukraine. Ukrainian long-range drones and missiles have been pummeling Russia for months, striking at the heart of its economy by incapacitating 45 percent of its oil refining capacity – and everyone knew a wounded Putin would be an even more dangerous Putin.
Now, Moscow is striking back, and it has some nasty new weapons to do it with, including North Korean ballistic missiles and drones equipped with Chinese jet engines. Ukraine will soon have an answer for the jet drones. Several prototypes have been tested and will now go into mass production.
But only the West can help Kyiv down ballistic missiles. Congress should press Trump to allow Ukraine to produce its own Patriot interceptors. Trump should press America’s allies — including Spain and Greece — to give Kyiv the interceptors lying unused in their storerooms. Elon Musk should give Ukraine permission to use Starlink to strike ballistic-missile launch sites deep inside Russia. Then, the US should follow through on the sanctions and tariffs authorized by the Lindsey Graham bill. Ukraine is heading into a tough winter – probably the toughest of the war. All its friends and allies need to step up and help.
Danielle Steitz, Director of National Security Policy: The Russia-Ukraine war has seen rapid technological iteration and tactical adaptation, and this current moment is no exception. Ukraine’s Operation Vivaldi, where heavy drones were used to deploy kamikaze ground drones behind Russian lines, demonstrates Ukrainian ingenuity and has reportedly disrupted Russian ground advances in Donetsk. However, with very few options to shoot down Geran drones currently available, Ukraine faces increasing difficulties in replicating that operational success in the air domain — particularly when it comes to air defense.
For additional PPI insight on this topic, please see “The New Normal in Kyiv, Ukraine” by Tamar Jacoby.
Iran War costs increasing, with no end in sight
By Danielle Steitz
The Pentagon’s cost estimates for the ongoing conflict against Iran continue to increase, with the latest total at $45.1 billion as of September 3rd, per reporting from CNN. This number includes operations costs and the increased cost of fuel, but does not include potential reconstruction costs for damaged U.S. military bases in the region. A recent CBO report assessed that costs for the war could increase at the rate of $2-3 billion per month, depending on the intensity of the conflict and operational demand.
PPI Expert Assessment: Despite the Trump administration’s assertions to the contrary, the war with Iran persists. The war, which looks far more like a regional conflict given the recent success of the Iranian-aligned Houthis in capturing control of the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, continues to cost the U.S. billions of dollars in operational and maintenance costs alone. Although Trump seeks to project confidence in promising that the war will end “immediately after” the midterm elections in November, Iran’s leaders seem to believe they can increase direct and indirect war costs enough to undermine America’s will and drive Trump to the bargaining table.
Military intelligence vs. artificial intelligence
By Danielle Steitz
As the national debate around AI safety and responsible pacing of frontier models grows louder, a recent CNN report demonstrates that no matter how advanced the model, human review and verification of outputs remain incredibly necessary. A U.S. military intelligence analyst utilized a Department of Defense-approved AI chatbot to draft an intelligence assessment on a Chinese ship, only for the U.S. military to reportedly realize at the last minute that the AI had misidentified the ship’s cargo as nuclear components – a “hallucination” that nearly sparked a war.
PPI Expert Assessment: As Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth has pushed for the rapid and full-throated embrace of AI systems throughout all DoD processes and use cases, advocating for speed over everything else. As stated in his January 2026 Artificial Intelligence Acceleration Strategy, “We must accept that the risks of not moving fast enough outweigh the risks of imperfect alignment.” If Secretary Hegseth truly views the potential of the American military hallucinating itself into a conflict with China as an acceptable risk of “imperfect alignment,” that irresponsible and cavalier attitude is exactly the wrong one to be leading the Department of Defense at this high-stakes global moment.
Gresser on CNBC Asia: No Change in Status Quo Despite Extended US-China Trade Truce
Ed Gresser from the Progressive Policy Institute says that while the trade truce has been extended, there is still little common ground between the U.S. and China for a more substantive trade agreement. He adds that while the U.S.-China trade deficit has narrowed, imports from Southeast Asia, especially Vietnam, have surged, meaning the overall U.S. trade balance has changed little.