Luke Vargas

Somewhere between war and peace.

That's how Germany's Chancellor Friedrich Merz described Europe's new reality in November when he said we are no longer at peace with Russia.

Recently, China has also grown bolder in its approach to neighbors like Japan.

And as if to highlight this new and more aggressive reality, the U.S.

now has a rebranded Department of War.

All the while, fighting raged on in Ukraine and for much of the year in Gaza, battlefields that served as laboratories for military experimentation.

And developments there are likely to continue in the year to come.

Joining me now with more is Wall Street Journal defense industry reporter Alistair McDonald, as well as Matt Ince, strategic intelligence manager at geopolitical and security intelligence firm Dragonfly, which, like the Wall Street Journal, is part of Dow Jones.

Matt, looking back at this past year, what is standing out in terms of either the emergent threats or just changes we've seen among the world's largest militaries that are likely to shape global stability next year and beyond?

And Alistair, the Ukraine war has been really a laboratory of military innovation, no?

Matt, the hybrid threats we're talking about, AI threats, cyber attacks, these tools are being used as we saw here in the UK in the last year and elsewhere to target everything from railways to retailers.

So this is more than armies that are at risk.

Alistair, what do you see as far as weapons developments go, defense tech spending, at least I'm sure we can say is going to be high looking at Europe as an example, for instance?

Quite the shopping list for the world's largest militaries going into 2026.

I've been speaking today with Wall Street Journal defense industry reporter Alistair McDonald and Dragonfly's strategic intelligence manager, Matt Ince.

Alistair, Matt, thank you both so much.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

And that's it for What's News.

Today's show was produced by Pierre Bien-Aimé and Julie Chang, with supervising producer Tali Arbel, and I'm Luke Vargas for The Wall Street Journal.