Byron Callan of the independent equity research firm Capital Alpa Partners, on key messages from the annual ComDef international security cooperation conference. The Defense & Aerospace Report is a media partner of the ComDef 2018 conference where the interview was recorded.

Bluffing may work in poker and real estate, but not when dealing with the most dangerous country in the world. And history has taught that escalating rhetoric by inexperienced or misguided leaders has unintended consequences.

Since 1909, the Paris Air Show has served as a showcase where the newest military-, commercial- and general-aviation aircraft make their international debuts. And for years, organizers have been hungry to feature the F-35 Lighting II, a game-changing Lockheed Martin jet that promises to transform air combat with its stealth and sophisticated sensor and networking capabilities.

In "Trump's 2019 Missile Defense Budget: Choosing Capacity over Capability," a February 28, 2018, installment of the Center for Strategic and International Studies' CSIS Briefs series, Tom Karako, PhD, director of CSIS' Missile Defense Project and a senior fellow in its International Security Program, and Wes Rumbaugh, an research assistant with the ISP, analyze the missile-defense side of the Trump administration's FY19 budget request, identify its priorities and shortfalls, lend historical context and deem the proposed budget "inadequate" to combat "the threat for both ballistic and nonballistic missile attack."

"The Malicious Use of Artificial Intelligence: Forecasting, Prevention, and Mitigation," a February 2018 joint report from the Center for a New American Security, the Future of Humanity Institute, the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, the University of Cambridge, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and OpenAI, looks at the potential for artificial intelligence to be weaponized in the digital, physical and political security domains, predicts the future AI threat landscape and offers preventative recommendations for policymakers to combat the risk of misused AI. "This report surveys the landscape of potential security threats from malicious uses of artificial intelligence technologies, and proposes ways to better forecast, prevent, and mitigate these threats," the report reads. "We analyze, but do not conclusively resolve, the question of what the long-term equilibrium between attackers and defenders will be. We focus instead on what sorts of attacks we are likely to see soon if adequate defenses are not developed.

In "Overview of the 2019 President's Budget Request for Defense," a Feb. 15, 2018, report from the Center for a New American Security, authors Susanna Blume, a CNAS Defense Strategies and Assessment Program fellow, and Lauren Fish, a research associate with the program, provide a bird's-eye look at what the White House's FY19 defense-budget request means for readiness, procurement, research, development, test and evaluation, the Missile Defense Agency, US Army, US Navy, US Marine Corps and US Air Force, and the US Defense Department, as a whole. "Even in these times of increasing budgets, DoD must still make tough decisions about what to prioritize and where to accept risk," they write.

In "Power and Influence in a Globalized World," a February 2018 joint report from the Atlantic Council's Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, the University of Denver's Frederick S. Pardee Center for International Futures and the Hague Center for Strategic Studies, authors Jonathon Moyer, PhD, Pardee Center director, Tim Sweijs, HCSS research director, Mathew Burrows, PhD, director of Scowcroft's Foresight, Strategy, and Risks Initiative, and Hugo Van Manen, a junior consultant at Ecorys, present "the Foreign Bilateral Influence Capacity (FBIC) Index," which looks to take an intersectional approach to evaluating the power and influence of global states. "The FBIC is tasked with identifying the key influencers in the international community, and analyzing those that register above or below their weight in the world, altogether clarifying where the United States and others stand in the international system," the Atlantic Council writes. "The FBIC Index is based on the interaction between states, as well as the relative dependence of one state on another.