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Noah Tan

@noahhtan.bsky.social
3 followers 3 following 46 posts

International security, AI and tech, and economic statecraft at Carnegie. Formerly Stanford CISAC and Hoover Institution. www.noahhtan.com

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Noah Tan @noahhtan.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
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Noah Tan @noahhtan.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
8/ Full piece — with more on the Harpy drone, Operation Spiderweb, and why global efforts to regulate autonomous weapons keep stalling over these same definitional gaps: www.justsecurity.org/143209/the-p...
justsecurity.org
The Pentagon’s Autonomous Weapons Definitions Don’t Need an Overhaul, They Need an Update
The Pentagon's push to integrate AI into weapons systems exposes a critical gap: no one can agree on what "autonomous weapons" means.
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Noah Tan @noahhtan.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
7/ 2. Scale AI has introduced the emerging concept of "agentic warfare," where AI systems plan and execute multi-step actions higher up the kill chain. The updated directive should address this.
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Noah Tan @noahhtan.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
6/ I argue that DoD 3000.09 doesn't need an overhaul. It needs sharper definitions, especially on two things: 1. What exactly counts as a "specific target group" in different operational contexts?
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Noah Tan @noahhtan.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
5/ Consider a drone swarm sent after a tank formation that scatters before engagement. Can the swarm hunt individual tanks? The directive doesn't explicitly say.
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Noah Tan @noahhtan.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
4/ The directive (DoD 3000.09) also leans hard on a term—"specific target group"—without saying how tightly bound that group has to stay once a mission is underway.
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Noah Tan @noahhtan.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
3/ It gets murkier fast. STM's Kargu-2 drone allegedly hunted retreating forces in Libya without operator connectivity. The manufacturer disputes it acted autonomously. Some analysts disagree. Nobody can fully resolve it because the definitions don't force a clear answer.
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Noah Tan @noahhtan.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
2/ Here's the catch: technical capability and deployment policy are separate things. Take Anduril's Altius drone. It can technically autonomously track targets and coordinate swarms, but it's fielded with a human making the final call. It could be autonomous. That's not what the label says.
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Noah Tan @noahhtan.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
1/ DoD splits autonomy into three tiers: - Semi-autonomous: human selects the target - Operator-supervised: system can select, human can intervene - Autonomous: system selects and engages without intervention Clean on paper. More complicated once you look at real systems.
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Noah Tan @noahhtan.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
Last month, the White House gave the Pentagon 90 days to rewrite its policy on autonomous weapons. But there's still much debate on what defines an "autonomous weapon." In @justsecurity.org, I break it down and argue that ambiguity shapes everything from battlefield deployment to real disputes. 🧵
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Reposted by Noah Tan
Just Security @justsecurity.org · 24/07/2026
The Pentagon's push to integrate AI into weapons systems exposes a critical gap: no one can agree on what "autonomous weapons" means, writes @noahhtan.bsky.social (Noah Tan). www.justsecurity.org/143209/the-p...
justsecurity.org
The Pentagon’s Autonomous Weapons Definitions Don’t Need an Overhaul, They Need an Update
The Pentagon's push to integrate AI into weapons systems exposes a critical gap: no one can agree on what "autonomous weapons" means.
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Noah Tan @noahhtan.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
10/ Instead of forecasting the finish line, monitor the three moats—light source power, mirror reflectivity, photoresist purity. Those numbers are the early-warning system. thediplomat.com/2026/07/chin...
thediplomat.com
China’s EUV Lithography Progress: Parsing Signal From Noise
China faces three specific barriers as it aims to produce key chipmaking equipment. Monitoring progress in these areas would help Western countries make better chip and AI policy.
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Noah Tan @noahhtan.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
9/ This matters because chip and AI export-control policy is being written on predictions about a timeline ranging from a couple years to a couple decades—and no projection can be confirmed in advance.
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Noah Tan @noahhtan.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
8/ TSMC sources 95% of its EUV resist from Japan; China buys ~90% of its high-end supply from Japan too. Less than 1% of even the older ArF resist is domestic.
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Noah Tan @noahhtan.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
7/ Chokepoint 3️⃣: the purity of the photoresist—the light-sensitive coating that decides which parts of the wafer survive. China can make it, just not pure enough. EUV demands impurity thresholds down to parts-per-trillion.
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Noah Tan @noahhtan.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
6/ The result: China needs significantly more power or exposure time to push the same wafers ASML pushes with smoother optics.
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Noah Tan @noahhtan.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
5/ China's best, from the Changchun Institute of Optics, reflect 65%. Sounds trivial—but a single EUV machine chains 10 to 12 mirrors, and that 5-point gap compounds over every one of them.
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Noah Tan @noahhtan.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
4/ Chokepoint 2️⃣: the smoothness of the mirrors. Germany's @zeiss-microscopy.bsky.social polishes optics so flat that you could focus a laser to hit a golf ball on the moon. Their mirrors reflect 70% of EUV light.
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Noah Tan @noahhtan.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
3/ Worse, China's lasers bleed energy to heat and off-target wavelengths, so wafers sit longer under the light. Slow exposure is uncompetitive exposure.
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Noah Tan @noahhtan.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
2/ Chokepoint 1️⃣: the light source's power output. China's EUV light output sits at 100–150 watts. ASML hit 250 watts back in 2017, runs 600 today, and announced 1,000-watt research in early 2026.
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Noah Tan @noahhtan.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
1/ Last December, Reuters reported that China built a secret EUV lithography prototype—one of the most important pieces of equipment in Beijing's quest for advanced semiconductor self-reliance, and something barred by export controls since 2019.
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Noah Tan @noahhtan.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
EUV lithography machines are made up of over 100,000 components. But in my latest piece for @thediplomat.com, I argue there are three big (inexhaustive) technical moats policymakers should keep an eye on to track China's progress.
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Noah Tan @noahhtan.bsky.social · 01/06/2026
👉 Read the full story here: www.roemedia.org/p/i-gave-hig...
roemedia.org
I gave high schoolers a nuclear crisis and 28 minutes to survive it. What the outcome says about my generation.
Every simulation ended with a nuclear exchange. What would you have done?
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Noah Tan @noahhtan.bsky.social · 01/06/2026
4/ If you’ve ever wondered how you, your team, or the next generation would handle a literal existential crisis, you’ll want to read this. I broke down the entire experiment, the students' decisions, and my biggest takeaways in my latest article for Rules of Engagement.
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Noah Tan @noahhtan.bsky.social · 01/06/2026
3/ After two out the three simulations ended in mutually assured destruction and every class used nuclear weapons, I reflected with them about their decison-making process. I ended up learning A LOT about how my generation might handle a future nuclear crisis and what we should do about it.
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Noah Tan @noahhtan.bsky.social · 01/06/2026
2/ My mission was to ground the leadership and teamwork lessons they learned in the classroom into a real-life, national security scenario, one that would force the students to confront the raw, terrifying reality of nuclear crisis management under extreme pressure.
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Noah Tan @noahhtan.bsky.social · 01/06/2026
1/ This is the exact scenario I dropped a room full of high schoolers into. A few weeks ago, I was grateful to return to Culver Academies to work with the next generation of leaders.
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Noah Tan @noahhtan.bsky.social · 01/06/2026
⚠️ There's a ballistic missile headed for your mainland. It could be nuclear, but you don't know for sure. Your AI early warning system is telling you one thing, your intelligence is saying something else. You have just under 28 minutes to decide how to respond. What would you do? 🧵
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Noah Tan @noahhtan.bsky.social · 07/05/2026
carnegieendowment.org/research/202... Have any thoughts or know of anyone that should see this? Engage on this thread and share it around!
carnegieendowment.org
The Geopolitical Debates Over Controlling Cloud Compute
If U.S. policymakers continue down the path of restricting China’s access to frontier AI, they will eventually have to implement some sort of restriction on cloud access.
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Noah Tan @noahhtan.bsky.social · 07/05/2026
4/ Open issues: Would cloud controls impose restrictions on all foreign entities or just Chinese renters? And what cloud services would be restricted? Each answer has to reconcile security concerns with the practical and strategic costs of regulating a transnational service.
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Noah Tan @noahhtan.bsky.social · 07/05/2026
3/ Cloud controls' cons: The compliance burden of cloud controls may push foreign-owned data centers to seek convenient Chinese alternatives, not to mention the diplomatic objections to U.S. extraterritorial authority. Remote access may also provide the US with a window into China's AI development.
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Noah Tan @noahhtan.bsky.social · 07/05/2026
2/ The logic behind cloud controls: Cutting off physical chips to China for national security purposes is undermined by remote access. It also weakens the leverage that the U.S has in physical chip license negotiations and undercuts American R&D expenses into model development.
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Noah Tan @noahhtan.bsky.social · 07/05/2026
1/ The loopholes: Chinese companies can legally lease compute either from third-country or U.S.-based clouds. Because the physical chips are housed in licensed data centers, it doesn't count as an "export" subject to U.S. restrictions.
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Noah Tan @noahhtan.bsky.social · 07/05/2026
Congress is trying to close a longstanding loophole that allows Chinese customers to remotely access restricted U.S. chips. In a new article for @carnegieendowment.org, I discuss the logic behind these "cloud controls" and why they're more complicated than they seem. 🧵My takeaways below:
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Noah Tan @noahhtan.bsky.social · 18/04/2026
Current export rules focus on keeping chips a generation behind. They should focus on keeping America's total compute ahead. New piece out from me and Alasdair Phillips-Robins. ai-frontiers.org/articles/the...
ai-frontiers.org
The Right Way to Sell Chips to China | AI Frontiers
Alasdair Phillips-Robins, Apr 13, 2026 — Current export rules focus on keeping chips a generation behind. They should focus on keeping America's total compute ahead.
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Reposted by Noah Tan
Carnegie Endowment @carnegieendowment.org · 10/04/2026
The Artemis II crew splashes down to Earth tonight. But NASA missions aren't the only things getting attention in space. @nktpnd.bsky.social joins Noah Tan to unpack the concept of nuclear weapons in space (and why it's a bad idea).
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Noah Tan @noahhtan.bsky.social · 09/04/2026
📍There seems to be a tension between the two rulings. The NDCA sees this as a retaliation case (protecting a company's right to say "no" to the military), whereas the D.C. Circuit sees it as an executive deference case (protecting the military’s right to dictate the terms of its supply chain).
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Noah Tan @noahhtan.bsky.social · 09/04/2026
📍 This ruling is different from the one by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, which concluded that Anthropic could not be restricted from continuing its federal contracts with certain defense-related agencies.
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Noah Tan @noahhtan.bsky.social · 09/04/2026
📍This is NOT a final ruling; rather, the Court has simply refused to pause the supply chain risk designation while the case proceeds.
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Noah Tan @noahhtan.bsky.social · 09/04/2026
was not enough to meet the incredibly high bar that a case must reach to justify judicial imposition on military operations. Generally speaking, the Court gives broad deference to the government on issues of national security.
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Noah Tan @noahhtan.bsky.social · 09/04/2026
📍 In justifying this ruling, the Court argued that, while Anthropic would likely suffer irreparable harm without a stay, the relatively "contained risk of financial harm to a single private company"
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Noah Tan @noahhtan.bsky.social · 09/04/2026
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit has DENIED the motion from Anthropic to suspend the "supply chain risk" designation issued by the Department of War. Here's what you need to know: www.courtlistener.com/docket/72380...
courtlistener.com
Per Curiam Order Filed (Special Panel) – #01208838678 in Anthropic PBC v. United States Department of War (D.C. Cir., 26-1049) – CourtListener.com
PER CURIAM ORDER (with Per Curiam Statement attached) [2167684] filed granting motions to participate as amicus curiae [2164155-2], [2164113-2], [2163923-2], [2163913-2], [2163907-2], granting motion to participate as amicus curiae [2163901-2], [2163273-2], [2163178-2]; The Clerk is directed to file the lodged Amicus briefs [2164233-2], [2164156-2], [2164145-2], [2164098-2], [2163924-2], [2163914-2], [2163300-2], [2163215-2]; denying emergency motion for stay pending appeal [2163176-2], setting briefing schedule: PETITIONER Brief due 04/22/2026. APPENDIX due 04/22/2026. Brief(s) of Amicus Curiae, if any, Supporting Petitioner due 04/22/2026. RESPONDENT Brief due on 05/06/2026. Briefs(s) of Amicus Curiae, if any, Supporting Respondents due 05/06/2026. PETITIONER Reply Brief due 05/13/2026 (SEE ORDER FOR DETAILS), scheduling oral argument on Tuesday, 05/19/2026. Before Judges: Henderson, Katsas and Rao. [26-1049] [Entered: 04/08/2026 05:31 PM]
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Noah Tan @noahhtan.bsky.social · 06/04/2026
On Sunday, I sat down with Katharine Sorensen, a reporter for @thebeiruter.bsky.social, who says that the Iran War is "the war to end all wars between Israel and Hezbollah." To understand why, listen here or wherever you get your podcasts. open.substack.com/pub/noahhtan...
open.substack.com
BLUF #18: The Iran War in Lebanon
What exactly is going on in Lebanon? Can Hezbollah really be eradicated? And what does this all say about the humanitarian implications of this war writ large?
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Noah Tan @noahhtan.bsky.social · 04/04/2026
As the Iran War rages on, I sat down with Katharine Sorensen, a reporter at The Beiruter, to discuss the international security and humanitarian implications of the Iran War in Lebanon. The newest episode of Bottom Line Up Front drops tomorrow. Listen and subscribe at: www.roemedia.org
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Noah Tan @noahhtan.bsky.social · 16/03/2026
BLUF #17: Claude in the Crosshairs Why did Anthropic sue the Department of War? Will Anthropic win its case? And how would its outcome impact the way in which international conflicts are fought? open.substack.com/pub/noahhtan...
open.substack.com
BLUF #17: Claude in the Crosshairs
Why did Anthropic sue the Department of War? Will Anthropic win its case? And how would its outcome impact the way in which international conflicts are fought?
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Noah Tan @noahhtan.bsky.social · 22/02/2026
What was this recent SCOTUS case about? Why did the court strike down the Trump administration's broad tariffs? And why is or isn't this a big deal for Trump's foreign policy agenda? BLUF #14: SCOTUS Says, "No Taxation Without Congressional Authorization!" open.substack.com/pub/noahhtan...
open.substack.com
BLUF #14: SCOTUS Says, "No Taxation Without Congressional Authorization!"
What was this case about? Why did the court strike down the Trump administration's broad tariffs? And why is or isn't this a big deal for Trump's foreign policy agenda?
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Noah Tan @noahhtan.bsky.social · 29/01/2026
In my latest piece for @lawfaremedia.org, I explore what the Nexperia crisis reveals about the limits of unilateral export controls and need for allied coordination economic resilience.
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Noah Tan @noahhtan.bsky.social · 26/01/2026
What went down at the World Economic Forum summit this past week? Why is everyone talking about Mark Carney's speech, and why is Beijing in a great position after it all went down? BLUF #10: Davos Handed China a Huge Win...Courtesy of the United States? substack.com/@noahhtan/no...
substack.com
BLUF #10: Davos Handed China a Huge Win...Courtesy of the United States?
What happened at the World Economic Forum summit this past week? Why is everyone talking about Mark Carney's speech, and why is Beijing in a great position after it all went down?
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