006 — PROTECT THE SYSTEMS THAT GENERATE NATIONAL POWER
From Ukraine’s Battlefield to Iran’s Financial Networks
The Strategic Meaning of Ukraine and Iran
The lessons emerging from Ukraine and Iran should not be studied as separate strategic problems. Ukraine is demonstrating how modern war attacks and exploits technological, industrial, informational, communications, and physical systems. Iran is demonstrating how an adversary can exploit international financial and commercial systems to obtain the resources necessary to sustain military activity even while facing sanctions and political isolation.
Taken together, these conflicts reveal a broader reality. Modern national security is increasingly the protection of systems. The battlefield no longer begins only where military formations meet. It can begin inside a semiconductor plant, a data center, a telecommunications network, an electrical grid, an international bank, a shipping company, an insurance market, an investment vehicle, or a financial structure capable of moving capital into the hands of an adversary.
The United States and its allies must therefore broaden the meaning of defense. Protecting the nation now requires protecting the entire structure through which national power is created, financed, communicated, manufactured, transported, and sustained.
Ukraine and the Protection of the Technology System
Ukraine has demonstrated that artificial intelligence, drones, electronic warfare, satellites, software, communications networks, advanced manufacturing, precision weapons, and battlefield intelligence can no longer be treated as independent capabilities. They increasingly function as parts of a continuously adapting combat system.
The most important lesson is not simply that the United States needs more drones or more advanced weapons. The deeper lesson is that the United States must protect and strengthen the technological ecosystem that allows those systems to be invented, manufactured, improved, deployed, and replaced.
American leadership in artificial intelligence must therefore be regarded as a national-security capability and not merely as a commercial advantage. The infrastructure supporting American AI—including data centers, electrical generation, semiconductor production, advanced computing, cloud infrastructure, fiber networks, research universities, robotics, venture capital, and advanced manufacturing—has become part of the strategic foundation of American power.
In earlier wars, governments protected shipyards, arsenals, steel mills, aircraft factories, ports, railroads, and oil supplies because these systems produced military power. In the age of artificial intelligence and autonomous warfare, data centers, semiconductor fabs, software companies, communications networks, cloud infrastructure, and advanced manufacturing must increasingly be understood in the same strategic way.
The Infrastructure of Artificial Intelligence Is Strategic Infrastructure
Artificial intelligence does not exist independently of physical infrastructure. It requires enormous computing capacity, reliable electricity, resilient telecommunications, secure data, advanced chips, cooling systems, skilled personnel, and sophisticated supply chains.
An adversary that cannot defeat American AI development directly may instead attempt to weaken the infrastructure supporting it. Cyberattacks against data centers, power systems, fiber networks, satellite communications, semiconductor production, or industrial supply chains could potentially have strategic consequences far beyond the immediate physical damage.
Protecting American AI leadership therefore requires a national infrastructure strategy. Cybersecurity, physical security, electrical resilience, telecommunications redundancy, supply-chain protection, industrial capacity, and continuity planning must be integrated.
The United States should recognize that the infrastructure enabling artificial intelligence is increasingly comparable to strategic military infrastructure. Its protection must therefore become part of national defense planning.
Iran and the Protection of the Financial System
Iran reveals another dimension of modern warfare. Military capability requires financing. Missiles, drones, weapons components, transportation systems, proxy organizations, shipping operations, communications networks, and military industries all require money.
Sanctions are intended to restrict access to that money, but Iran has demonstrated how sanctioned states can attempt to penetrate the international financial system through intermediaries, exchange houses, front companies, shadow banking systems, shipping networks, commodity transactions, opaque ownership structures, and offshore entities.
This means that financial architecture itself has become strategic terrain.
An adversary does not necessarily need to defeat the international financial system. It may only need to find sufficient openings within that system to convert exports, commodities, or hidden assets into usable currency.
The lesson of Iran is therefore simple but profound: the international financial system can become part of the logistical system supporting warfare.
The City of London and the Responsibility of Global Finance
The City of London remains one of the most important centers of global finance. Its banks, insurance markets, investment institutions, legal services, commodity networks, and international connections are sources of enormous British and Western economic power.
That same global reach creates strategic responsibility.
When hostile states or sanctioned organizations seek access to international capital, insurance, shipping finance, commodity markets, offshore corporate structures, or investment networks, major financial centers may become targets for exploitation.
The appropriate response is not to weaken London as a financial center. It is to make the City of London one of the most secure, transparent, and strategically resilient financial centers in the world.
The United Kingdom therefore has an opportunity similar to the one presented by Ukraine. Just as Britain can help lead the transformation of NATO military institutions around the lessons of modern warfare, it can help lead reform of the international financial system around the lessons being revealed by Iran.
London should become a global model for preventing hostile states, sanctioned regimes, terrorist organizations, criminal networks, and covert procurement organizations from exploiting legitimate financial systems.
Wall Street and the City of London as Strategic Assets
Wall Street and the City of London are not merely centers of commerce. They are two of the most influential financial systems in the democratic world.
Their strategic importance means that financial security must increasingly become a shared American-British responsibility.
The objective should not be government control over legitimate capital. Nor should financial security be used as an excuse for unnecessary interference in lawful commerce. The objective should instead be to create financial transparency capable of identifying hostile-state exploitation without destroying the openness and trust upon which Western markets depend.
This requires greater cooperation among the United States Treasury, HM Treasury, financial regulators, banks, insurance companies, investment funds, pension funds, intelligence organizations, technology companies, shipping organizations, commodity markets, law firms, accounting firms, and allied governments.
The financial system must become capable of identifying an adversarial network before the capital passing through that network is transformed into weapons, military production, strategic infrastructure, or proxy warfare.
Persistent Observation Must Include Financial Observation
The concept of persistent observation should extend beyond the physical battlefield.
Ukraine demonstrates persistent aerial observation. Satellites, drones, sensors, signals intelligence, electronic surveillance, and artificial intelligence are making it increasingly difficult for military forces to move without detection.
A similar concept should be developed for the financial domain.
Persistent financial observation would not mean monitoring every citizen or every legitimate transaction. It would mean developing the capability to identify patterns among sanctioned entities, shell companies, shipping movements, commodity transactions, ownership structures, procurement networks, and suspicious financial flows.
Modern financial networks are too large and complex for human analysts alone to understand in real time. Artificial intelligence can help identify relationships hidden across millions of transactions and thousands of corporate entities.
The strategic objective should be straightforward:
Follow the money before the money becomes military capability.
Artificial Intelligence and Financial Early Warning
Artificial intelligence should become an important part of a new allied financial early-warning architecture.
AI systems can help analysts identify unusual relationships among corporate registrations, financial transfers, vessel movements, sanctions lists, beneficial ownership records, procurement transactions, insurance contracts, digital assets, commodity sales, and trade finance.
The purpose should not be to replace human judgment. Financial intelligence involves law, diplomacy, national security, property rights, and due process. These decisions require accountable human authority.
Artificial intelligence should instead expand the ability of human investigators to see relationships that would otherwise remain hidden.
The same principle emerging from the battlefield applies to finance: the organization capable of seeing, understanding, and acting faster gains strategic advantage.
Financial Intelligence as a Major Intelligence Discipline
Modern national security traditionally recognizes several major intelligence disciplines, including human intelligence, signals intelligence, geospatial intelligence, cyber intelligence, and open-source intelligence.
Financial intelligence should increasingly be treated with comparable strategic importance.
Money reveals relationships.
Financial networks can reveal who is purchasing equipment, which companies are acting as intermediaries, which shipping organizations are supporting trade, where commodities are being sold, which currencies are being used, and which foreign businesses are connected to military procurement.
Following financial networks can therefore expose the structure behind military networks.
Financial intelligence should become more deeply integrated with military intelligence, cyber intelligence, maritime intelligence, economic intelligence, and sanctions enforcement.
Protecting Freedom While Protecting the Financial System
Western financial systems derive their strength from trust, property rights, rule of law, privacy protections, predictable regulation, and the freedom to conduct legitimate commerce.
Those principles must be preserved.
A financial-security system that destroys trust in Western markets would ultimately weaken Western power.
The strategic challenge is therefore to achieve transparency against hostile networks while protecting lawful activity.
That requires due process, judicial oversight, clear sanctions authorities, reliable evidence standards, privacy protections, and narrowly defined investigative powers.
The purpose is not financial centralization. The purpose is financial resilience.
The democratic financial system should remain open to legitimate commerce while becoming increasingly difficult for hostile states to exploit.
Reform of the International Financial Architecture
The lessons of Iran should also influence the larger international financial architecture.
The United States possesses substantial influence within institutions such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and other international development and financial organizations.
These institutions increasingly operate in areas that have direct strategic significance.
Development financing supports ports, telecommunications, energy systems, transportation networks, digital infrastructure, critical minerals, water systems, manufacturing, and emerging technologies.
These are no longer merely economic projects. Many are components of strategic national infrastructure.
The United States should therefore lead efforts to incorporate financial transparency, cybersecurity, sanctions compliance, supply-chain resilience, beneficial-ownership standards, infrastructure security, and anti-corruption requirements into international development finance.
The purpose should not be to turn development institutions into military organizations. It should be to recognize that infrastructure financed today can become strategic leverage tomorrow.
The Financial System and the Infrastructure System Are Connected
A modern nation does not possess separate technological, financial, industrial, and military systems. They increasingly function as one interconnected structure.
Capital finances infrastructure.
Infrastructure supports energy.
Energy supports computing.
Computing supports artificial intelligence.
Artificial intelligence supports manufacturing, intelligence, communications, logistics, and military capability.
Advanced manufacturing produces the physical systems through which military and economic power are exercised.
The financial system therefore stands near the beginning of the entire chain.
If hostile states can access Western capital while simultaneously competing against Western security interests, the democratic world risks financing portions of the strategic system being constructed against it.
That problem must be confronted without undermining legitimate globalization.
Industrial Power and Financial Power Must Be Reunited
Ukraine has demonstrated the importance of industrial capacity. Iran has demonstrated the importance of financial access.
Together they reveal that military strength ultimately rests upon both.
A nation cannot sustain modern warfare without an industrial base capable of producing weapons, drones, sensors, communications equipment, munitions, electronics, and replacement systems.
But industry itself cannot operate without capital.
Financial power and industrial power therefore must once again be understood as components of national power.
The United States should develop policies that encourage investment in strategic industries, advanced manufacturing, AI infrastructure, semiconductor production, energy systems, defense technology, critical minerals, and resilient supply chains.
Capital should be encouraged toward the systems that strengthen national resilience.
At the same time, greater transparency is required to identify situations in which Western capital may directly or indirectly support strategic competitors or sanctioned military networks.
China and Russia Expand the Strategic Problem
The Iranian case is important, but Iran is not the largest strategic challenge.
China and Russia possess much greater economic, technological, industrial, intelligence, and military capacity.
Any weakness in international finance that Iran can exploit on a limited scale may become far more consequential when exploited by a major power.
China in particular operates deeply within the global economy. It participates in international finance, shipping, manufacturing, technology, trade, energy markets, critical minerals, infrastructure construction, and supply chains.
That integration makes the problem far more complicated than traditional sanctions enforcement.
The objective cannot simply be economic separation.
The strategic requirement is to identify where legitimate economic integration becomes strategic dependency.
That distinction will become increasingly important during the coming decades.
Taiwan and the Convergence of Military and Financial Warfare
The Taiwan scenario demonstrates why these lessons must be integrated now.
A conflict involving Taiwan would not be fought solely with aircraft, ships, submarines, missiles, drones, satellites, and cyber systems.
It could simultaneously involve semiconductor markets, global shipping, maritime insurance, energy supplies, banking networks, financial sanctions, digital currencies, international capital, commodity markets, undersea cables, communications infrastructure, and supply chains.
The financial system itself could become part of the strategic confrontation.
The lessons learned from Iran about sanctions enforcement, financial evasion, shipping networks, and economic pressure should therefore be incorporated into Taiwan planning.
At the same time, the lessons learned from Ukraine about drones, AI, electronic warfare, distributed command, persistent observation, industrial mobilization, and rapid innovation must also be incorporated.
Taiwan may therefore represent the point at which the lessons of Ukraine and Iran converge.
American Leadership of an Allied System of Strategic Resilience
The United States possesses a unique combination of capabilities.
It remains a global leader in artificial intelligence, advanced computing, finance, aerospace, defense technology, higher education, scientific research, venture capital, manufacturing innovation, international alliances, and military power.
The United States should use those capabilities to lead an allied system of strategic resilience.
Such a system would integrate military transformation, artificial-intelligence leadership, critical-infrastructure protection, financial intelligence, industrial mobilization, sanctions enforcement, supply-chain security, energy resilience, and international financial cooperation.
These areas should no longer be treated as separate policy communities.
They are increasingly components of one strategic system.
Britain’s Opportunity for Leadership
Britain also possesses a unique opportunity.
The United Kingdom combines military experience, intelligence capabilities, advanced technology, NATO leadership, global diplomacy, and one of the world’s most important financial centers.
It can therefore contribute to two transformations simultaneously.
Ukraine creates an opportunity for Britain to help lead NATO military reform.
Iran creates an opportunity for Britain to help lead reform of the democratic financial system.
The City of London can become part of Britain’s strategic contribution to allied security just as surely as the British Armed Forces.
The objective should be to demonstrate that a free financial system can remain globally competitive while becoming far more resistant to exploitation by hostile states.
The Larger Strategic Principle
Ukraine teaches that the military organization capable of learning and adapting fastest may possess a decisive advantage.
Iran teaches that the adversary capable of continuing to obtain money can continue to generate military power.
Artificial intelligence teaches that the ability to understand complex systems at speed is becoming a strategic capability.
Critical infrastructure teaches that military power cannot exist independently of resilient civilian infrastructure.
Global finance teaches that capital itself can become an instrument of national power.
These lessons converge into one principle:
Protect the system that generates the power.
The United States cannot defend itself solely at the military perimeter.
It must protect the technological system that develops its capabilities, the infrastructure that supports them, the industrial base that manufactures them, and the financial system that funds them.
The New Meaning of National Defense
The battlefield has expanded beyond traditional geography.
The new battlespace includes physical terrain, cyberspace, the electromagnetic spectrum, artificial intelligence, industrial production, supply chains, energy systems, information networks, and global finance.
National defense must therefore expand accordingly.
Military reform alone is insufficient.
Artificial-intelligence leadership alone is insufficient.
Critical-infrastructure protection alone is insufficient.
Financial enforcement alone is insufficient.
Industrial policy alone is insufficient.
These capabilities must operate as parts of one integrated system.
FIELD MANUAL PRINCIPLE — PROTECT THE SYSTEM THAT GENERATES THE POWER
The strategic requirement can be stated simply.
Observe the battlefield.
Observe the technology network.
Observe the industrial system.
Observe the supply chain.
Observe the financial flow.
Protect artificial intelligence.
Protect advanced infrastructure.
Protect the electrical and communications systems upon which that infrastructure depends.
Protect legitimate capital.
Expose adversarial financial networks.
Protect the industrial base capable of transforming capital and technology into national power.
Then integrate these systems faster than the adversary can understand, penetrate, exploit, or disrupt them.
Ukraine shows how quickly warfare can change.
Iran shows how warfare can be sustained through financial networks.
China and Russia demonstrate how much larger the challenge could become.
Taiwan may become the test in which all of these systems converge.
The United States and its allies should use the lessons available today to build the strategic architecture required for tomorrow.
THL SCI •