U.S. core national interests are defined by the new administration as safeguarding American strength, promoting power sharing to U.S. advantage and upholding a stable and open international system.

A complete reassessment of Washington’s stance on territorial disputes in the East and South China Sea is long overdue. Implied obligations and strategic ambiguity only increases risks for all parties.

A recent court case in Hangzhou saw a landmark victory for data privacy and security in China. As facial recognition technology becomes more readily accessible, how will lawmakers across the world react?

For now and the foreseeable future, gaming will be intensified, making compromise difficult. It will likely remain peaceful and manageable on the whole, but uncertainties are growing.

Already hotly contested, the South China Sea is seeing an uptick in movement since certain European powers have gotten involved. It remains to be seen how far Europe is willing to go in shaping the maritime disputes along its preferences and provisions of international law.

Once again the annual assessment is filled with unfounded suspicion and smears. Nevertheless, with relations at low ebb between China and the United States, relations between the two militaries will be the key to peace.

Since the 1970s, the US has tread a fine line of pursuing neutrality on claims to the South China Sea. The Trump administration, however, looks set to upend that policy.

Since 2017, America’s National Security Strategy has focused on great power competition, and today much of Washington is busy portraying our relationship with China as a new cold war. Obviously, great power competition remains a crucial aspect of foreign policy, but we must not let it obscure the growing transnational security threats that technology is putting on the agenda.

In a word, no. China has never recognized the arbitration under the UNCLOS treaty as valid. Meanwhile, the United States continues to poison relations by opposing everything China does.

By disrupting the world’s interconnected economic, social, and geopolitical spheres, the COVID-19 crisis has exposed just how fragile and inequitable the institutions that govern them really are. It has also highlighted how difficult it is to address systemic fragility and inequity amid escalating national-security threats.