Bucket-wheel excavators mine rare earth materials on Ukrainian soil on February 25, 2025, in the Zhytomyr region of Ukraine. (Kostiantyn Liberov via Getty Images)
The guided-missile destroyer USS Fitzgerald fires the first Naval Strike Missile from a US destroyer on July 18, 2024, in the Pacific Ocean. (US Navy photo)
Fast-attack submarine USS North Carolina (SSN 777) enters Dry Dock 1 at Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard and Intermediate Maintenance Facility, Hawaii, on September 4, 2024. (US Navy photo by Justice Vannatta)
A South Korean Army K1E1 tank crosses a pontoon bridge on the Imjin River during a joint river- crossing exercise as part of the Freedom Shield military drills with US and ROK forces in the border town of Yeoncheon, South Korea, on March 20, 2025. (Getty Images)
The Taiwanese container ship Ever Greet next to a vessel of China's state owned COSCO shipping company in the Rotterdam harbor on March 2, 2022. (Photo by Thierry Monasse/Getty Images)
Former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo speaks during the prospect foundation forum in Taipei. (Photo by Walid Berrazeg/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
Leaders representing Russia, Pakistan, China, Uzbekistan, Iran, and Kyrgyzstan attend a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization Council of Heads of State in Bishek in 2019. (Vyacheslav Oseledko/AFP via Getty Images)
Chinese leader Xi Jinping is applauded by members of his government as he arrives for the closing session of the National People's Congress at the Great Hall of the People on March 11, 2022 in Beijing, China. (Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)
Senior lecturer in the Department of Security Studies and Criminology at Macquarie University, Council of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute
A U.S.-made F-16V fighter jet with its armaments is on display during an exercise at a military base in Chiayi, southern Taiwan on January 15, 2020. (Photo by Sam Yeh / AFP via Getty Images)
Members of the Portuguese chapter of Falun Gong demonstrate outside Belem Palace on July 12, 2017 in Lisbon, Portugal. (Photo by Horacio Villalobos/Corbis via Getty Images)