Kori Schake
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kschake.bsky.social
Kori Schake
@kschake.bsky.social

Leads AEI’s foreign and defense team, author of The State and the Soldier, contributing writer at The Atlantic. 2025-2026 Kissinger Chair at the Library of Congress. Californian. https://www.aei.org/profile/kori-schake/

Kori N. Schake is an American international relations scholar currently serving as Director of Foreign and Defense Policy at the American Enterprise Institute. She has held several high-level positions in the U.S. Defense and State Departments and on the National Security Council. She was a foreign policy adviser to the McCain-Palin 2008 presidential campaign. Schake is a contributing writer at The Atlantic. She serves on the board of advisors of Foreign Policy Research Institute and the Alexander Hamilton Society. Schake is a member of the Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee. .. more

Political science 84%
Economics 10%
Pinned
I just received my first copy of the book!
The Clara Marina O'Donnell fellowship provides a great opportunity to an early-career researcher to work at @centreeuropeanref.bsky.social. Past fellows have gone on to do great things. Please spread the word to anyone who might like to apply for the 2026-2027 fellowship. www.cer.eu/clara-marina...
The Clara Marina O'Donnell fellowship
Applications are now open for the 13th Clara Marina O’Donnell fellowship. Start date: October 2026 for six months. Pay: currently £14.80 per hour plus 8 per cent pension contribution. Applications in ...
www.cer.eu

Reposted by Kori Schake

NEW | Iran conducted two probing operations against the US Navy in the Persian Gulf likely designed to test US Navy defensive reactions and demonstrate Iran’s ability to threaten US forces and assets.

Read more from CTP and @thestudyofwar.bsky.social: www.criticalthreats.org/analysis/ira... (1/7)

Reposted by Kori Schake

Reposted by Kori Schake

The most predictable outcome of the Trump's hostility to immigrants is mass outsourcing of those jobs from the United States.

This is another example of damage being done to the economy which will be hard to reverse in a few years when people finally figure out how badly Trump screwed things up.
Alphabet Plots Big Expansion in India as US Restricts Visas
Alphabet Inc. is plotting to dramatically expand its presence in India, with the possibility of taking millions of square feet in new office space in Bangalore, India’s tech hub.
www.bloomberg.com

Reposted by Kori Schake

This is insane. The military should not arbitrarily cut all support for Scouting. Beyond the support for military families, the program is clear recruiting pipeline www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...
Pentagon warns Scouts to restore ‘core values’ or lose military support
The relationship dates back decades, but Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has criticized the organization for allowing girls to join and changing its name from Boy Scouts.
www.washingtonpost.com

"The key lesson is not “sell your Treasuries to punish Washington”, but “change your marginal demand and your reserve composition quietly”.

Reposted by Kori Schake

Xinhua: "China's shipbuilding output reached 53.69 million deadweight tonnes in 2025, up 11.4% year on year and accounting for 56.1% of the global total. New orders reached 107.82 million DWT last year, representing a 69% share of the global market."
english.news.cn/20260203/900...
China's shipbuilding sector maintains global lead in 2025
english.news.cn

Reposted by Kori Schake

Russia fired around 450 drones and 70 missiles at Ukraine overnight, just days after Donald Trump said Vladimir Putin had promised him a one-week truce due to sub-zero winter temperatures.
Russia launches massive strike on Ukraine day before US-brokered talks
Russia launches one of its biggest airstrikes on Ukraine, hitting power plants and homes as Zelenskyy urges more air defence before Abu Dhabi talks.
www.euronews.com

Reposted by Kori Schake

Allow me to rush to say that economics columnist Adam Tooze knows nothing about Chinese military modernization. Being smart about one thing does not make you smart about everything.
Economics columnist Adam Tooze explores Xi Jinping’s military modernization campaign and Beijing’s yearslong purge of the top ranks of the People’s Liberation Army. foreignpolicy.com/2026/01/30/c...
China Is Building a Better, More Modern Military
Xi’s purges are part of a generational reshuffling of generals.
foreignpolicy.com

Reposted by Kori Schake

Economics columnist Adam Tooze explores Xi Jinping’s military modernization campaign and Beijing’s yearslong purge of the top ranks of the People’s Liberation Army. foreignpolicy.com/2026/01/30/c...
China Is Building a Better, More Modern Military
Xi’s purges are part of a generational reshuffling of generals.
foreignpolicy.com
Q: Do you plan on tearing the Kennedy Center down and how much will all of the renovations cost?

TRUMP: Probably around $200 million. I'm not ripping it down. I'll be using the steel. So we're using the structure. We're using some of the marble.

Reposted by Kori Schake

'For their part, authoritative leaders of India and Pakistan made no credible nuclear threats of nuclear use in the Kargil War of 1999 and the five subsequent violent crises of 2002, 2008, 2016, 2019, and 2025' carnegieendowment.org/research/202...
How to Assess Nuclear ‘Threats’ in the Twenty-First Century
The less precise our nuclear discourse, the more fear nuclear manipulators can elicit.
carnegieendowment.org

Reposted by Kori Schake

Russia has shifted its attacks from energy infrastructure to Ukraine’s transportation arteries, striking highways and railways critical to both civilian travel and military logistics, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Monday.
www.ft.com/content/83ef...
Russia shifts focus to Ukraine’s transport routes
Deadly ‘double-tap’ strike on bus carrying Ukrainian miners highlights Moscow’s new tactic
www.ft.com

Reposted by Kori Schake

More than 100,000 civilians have been killed in wars over the past 18 months. Brutal, genocidal war is returning to the world. Turns out the liberal world order wasn't so terrible.
International law meant to limit effects of war at breaking point, study finds
Report covering 23 conflicts over last 18 months concludes more than 100,000 civilians have been killed as war crimes rage out of control
www.theguardian.com

Reposted by Kori Schake

Richard Moore: "I’m no longer sitting reading the intelligence, but my sense talking to people is that there is still absolutely zero sign that Putin is serious about negotiating. He obviously will play us along. He will try and spin things out." samf.substack.com/p/putin-is-n...
"Putin is not getting an accurate picture"
This is the second part of our interview with Richard Moore, who from 2020 until last September was Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) also known as “C”.
samf.substack.com

Reposted by Kori Schake

Trump suing the U.S. government for $10 billion and then bragging about how he plans to settle with himself makes me realizes Nigerian kleptocrats were babies when it comes to corruption.

This is generational genius in grifting.
Trump Lawsuit Against IRS Puts Him on Both Sides of the Same Case
President Trump’s lawsuit against the government that he runs presents a mind-bending minefield of conflicts that could end with his appointees approving a federal payout to him.
www.wsj.com

Reposted by Kori Schake

That moment when you’re reading Thucydides and hit this passage just before the start of the war: “Abstinence from all injustice to other first-rate powers is a greater tower of strength than anything that can be gained by the sacrifice of permanent tranquility for an apparent temporary advantage.”

"Both elected branches seem to have grown uninterested in making political...arguments to the American people, & rely on both active-duty & retired officers to do it for them. Ms. Schake rightly warns that this practice undermines their long-term interest in political supremacy over the military."
‘The State and the Soldier’ Review: Washington’s Worthy Example
The Founders worried that the U.S. could be undermined by a powerful standing army. Civilians needed to be in control.
www.wsj.com
Such is the outrage in Denmark over both Trump’s desire for Greenland and disparaging remarks about NATO that one of the country’s leading newspapers devoted their Saturday front and plenty of room inside to the bios of all 44 Danes slain during NATO missions in support of the US

Reposted by Kori Schake

wapo.st/4q5tv2n

A great Virginian and American. RIP, Dr. West, with the thanks of a grateful nation. 
Mathematician Gladys West dies at 95. She was a hidden figure behind GPS.
Without the mathematical model that she helped refine, “the extraordinary positioning, navigation, and timing accuracy of GPS would be impossible to achieve.”
wapo.st

Reposted by Kori Schake

11/ The other Thucydides Trap in action. US hubris pushes our allies into the arms of the rising power. In other words, Athens beat itself and the US risks doing the same.
www.nytimes.com/2026/01/31/w...
U.S. Allies Are Drawing Closer to China, but on Beijing’s Terms
www.nytimes.com

Reposted by Kori Schake

The State Department announced a new, $6.7B weapons sale for Israel at 530 PM.

Due to family stuff, I hit publish on our story at 7:25.... having missed that at 7:14, the State Department announced a $9B deal to Saudi for Patriot missiles.

Please clap.

breakingdefense.com/2026/01/isra...
US clears $6.7B in new weapon sales to Israel, $9B in Patriot missiles for Saudi Arabia - Breaking Defense
The Trump administration has approved a potential sale of 30 AH-64E Apache helicopters and over 3,000 JLTV ground vehicles to Israel.
breakingdefense.com

"The day marked the first moment “they had ever had a country, the first flag they had ever seen which promised anything to their people."
I’ve long admired Thomas Wentworth Higginson (abolitionist, associate of John Brown, commanded first all Black regiment in the Civil War, literary scholar and editor of Emily Dickinson, feminist, socialist). Someone just published it though! blog.oup.com/2025/02/thom...
Thomas Wentworth Higginson and the freedom jubilee
“Colonel Higginson was a man on fire,” read one obituary. “He had convictions and lived up to them in the fullest degree.” The obituary added that he had “led the first negro regiment, contributed to ...
blog.oup.com

Reposted by Diane Marie Amann

Never mind the jobs you had, tell me five classes you took in college

Values, Technology and Society
Art and the Transatlantic Exchange
Petroleum Engineering
Poetry Writing
Marxist Philosophy (I barely scraped out a C!)
Never mind the jobs you had, tell me five classes you took in college

Sage, the Way, and Zen
Shakespeare
Religion and Modern Secularism
Creative Fiction Writing
International Political Economy

Pleasantly surprised how many of these classes proved useful later in life.
Never mind the jobs you had, tell me five classes you took in college

Urban politics
Urban sociology
Mid 20th century U.S. History
Gender and Politics
World History (I'm sorry for sleeping through this at 8am, but the prof was so nice in office hours, I will always pay that forward)

Reposted by Kori Schake

I’ve long admired Thomas Wentworth Higginson (abolitionist, associate of John Brown, commanded first all Black regiment in the Civil War, literary scholar and editor of Emily Dickinson, feminist, socialist). Someone just published it though! blog.oup.com/2025/02/thom...
Thomas Wentworth Higginson and the freedom jubilee
“Colonel Higginson was a man on fire,” read one obituary. “He had convictions and lived up to them in the fullest degree.” The obituary added that he had “led the first negro regiment, contributed to ...
blog.oup.com

Reposted by Kori Schake

Never mind the jobs you had, tell me five classes you took in college

Sage, the Way, and Zen
Shakespeare
Religion and Modern Secularism
Creative Fiction Writing
International Political Economy

Pleasantly surprised how many of these classes proved useful later in life.
Never mind the jobs you had, tell me five classes you took in college

Urban politics
Urban sociology
Mid 20th century U.S. History
Gender and Politics
World History (I'm sorry for sleeping through this at 8am, but the prof was so nice in office hours, I will always pay that forward)
Never mind the jobs you had, tell me five classes you took in college

Calc II
Irish drama
Bertolt Brecht auf deutsch
Poetry writing
Race in America

Keep trying.
👀 Every Senate Democrat + Collins and Murkowski just voted for the Bernie Sanders amendment to repeal the $75 billion in additional ICE funding under Trump’s “big beautiful bill.” The measure failed 49-51.
👀 Every Senate Democrat + Collins and Murkowski just voted for the Bernie Sanders amendment to repeal the $75 billion in additional ICE funding under Trump’s “big beautiful bill.” The measure failed 49-51.

Reposted by Kori Schake

Traders are abuzz with talk of the “debasement trade”, a broad term for bets on the deterioration of American financial exceptionalism. If they are right, then the sell-off in the greenback has barely begun econ.st/4kcbL48

Illustration: Satoshi Kambayashi