Beyond’s the Bombing: The True Cost of Terrorism…

“Shall we put an end to the human race; or shall mankind renounce war?”— Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein, The Russell–Einstein Manifesto, 1955 War hysteria sweeping the world shows nothing more than absolute insanity on the part of all belligerent parties. Humanity can explore distant planets, communicate across continents within seconds and build machines capable of imitating human intelligence, yet it still appears incapable of resolving disputes without bombing cities, starving populations and producing generations of traumatised children. There are people struggling with poverty, food shortages, unemployment, high inflation, disease and homelessness. Then there are their so-called leaders—some elected, some imposed, some in uniform and others protected by manufactured democratic legitimacy—who remain obsessed with gunfire, drones, missiles, nuclear warheads and weapons of mass destruction. This is not leadership. It is organised madness presented as patriotism. Look at Gaza. Nearly 1.9 million of its 2.1 million inhabitants remain displaced, many of them repeatedly, while restrictions and operational constraints continue to obstruct humanitarian relief. Families are pushed from one devastated neighbourhood to another, carrying whatever they can salvage. For them, “strategic operations” mean ruined homes, unsafe water, inadequate food, fractured hospitals and children learning the geography of survival before they learn the alphabet. Look at Ukraine. During the first six months of 2026, the United Nations verified 1,396 civilian deaths and 7,978 injuries—a 37 per cent increase over the corresponding period of 2025. June recorded the highest monthly civilian casualty total since April 2022. Yet the war continues to be discussed through maps, territorial percentages and weapon packages, as though the dead were merely inconvenient entries in a military balance sheet. Look at Sudan, where a contest for power has become a war against the population itself. About 19.5 million people face acute hunger, five million are at emergency levels and an estimated 825,000 children under five are expected to suffer acute malnutrition during 2026. Several areas remain at risk of famine while humanitarian agencies struggle for access and resources. The world can finance bullets that arrive on time, but food and medicine are eternally delayed. Now look at the ever-expanding Middle Eastern conflict. What began as confrontation involving Israel, the United States and Iran has steadily drawn other states into its orbit. The latest joint military strikes by the United States and Saudi Arabia against Iran-aligned armed groups operating in Iraq demonstrate how quickly regional conflicts acquire new participants and new frontlines. Iraq, itself struggling to preserve its sovereignty and internal stability, has once again become a battleground for rival powers. Every new military operation is justified as retaliation or deterrence, yet each one merely widens the geography of destruction and pushes peace still further beyond reach. The consequences are not confined to the combatants. Energy infrastructure, shipping routes and humanitarian supply corridors remain vulnerable, while the risks of slower global growth, renewed inflation and economic instability continue to rise. Once again, decisions taken in heavily guarded capitals are paid for by ordinary families thousands of kilometres away. That is the cruel arithmetic of modern warfare. The latest strikes in Iraq also expose another dangerous reality. Countries that once claimed merely to support one side diplomatically are now becoming direct military participants. Every additional state entering the conflict reduces the space for negotiation while increasing the possibility of miscalculation. History repeatedly demonstrates that wars rarely remain confined within the boundaries imagined by those who initiate them. They expand geographically, economically and morally, dragging into their vortex nations and populations that neither sought nor desired confrontation. A missile is fired in the Middle East and transport and electricity can become more expensive in Pakistan. A shipping route is blocked and food prices rise in poor importing countries. Oil installations are attacked and workers whose wages were already inadequate are advised to “adjust” their household budgets. The poor neither declare wars nor negotiate ceasefires. They merely finance wars through taxes, inflation and deprivation—and then provide their bodies. The scale of this moral collapse is evident from global priorities. Military expenditure reached a record US$2.887 trillion in 2025, marking the eleventh consecutive annual increase. In the same world, approximately 645 million people faced hunger during 2025 and around 2.7 billion could not afford a healthy diet. There is no global shortage of money. There is a shortage of conscience, political courage and human decency. Governments insist that military expenditure ensures security. Security for whom? What security does a mother possess when she cannot feed her children? What security is enjoyed by an unemployed graduate, a patient unable to afford medicine or a farmer crushed by fuel and fertiliser prices? Of what use are supersonic aircraft to citizens living without clean water, functioning schools or basic healthcare? Even more frightening is the renewed worship of nuclear weapons. At the beginning of 2026, the world possessed an estimated 12,187 nuclear warheads. About 9,745 were held in military stockpiles for possible use, while between 2,100 and 2,200 deployed warheads remained on high operational alert. Leaders speak of deterrence, escalation ladders and tactical nuclear options as though they were discussing pieces on a chessboard rather than devices capable of extinguishing cities and contaminating generations. The language of war has also been deliberately sanitised. Bombing becomes an “operation”; dead civilians become “collateral damage”; starvation becomes “food insecurity”; demolished homes become “infrastructure losses”; and children torn apart by explosives become “unintended consequences.” Such expressions do not explain reality. They hide it. They allow those ordering violence to sleep peacefully while others search for their loved ones through rubble. Responsibility in every conflict is not necessarily equal. International law distinguishes aggression from self-defence, occupation from resistance and military targets from civilians. But no invocation of history, religion, national security or territorial ambition can justify treating innocent human suffering as politically useful or morally irrelevant. Every party that deliberately attacks civilians, blocks essential relief, uses starvation as leverage or prolongs war for domestic political survival must be held accountable. Citizens must also confront their own complicity. War hysteria cannot survive without

By Ali Dar Every few weeks, Artificial Intelligence seems to produce another headline. A new model. A larger investment. A faster processor. A company valued in the hundreds of billions. The conversation has become almost entirely centered on the race to build more powerful machines.   I follow these developments with genuine interest. But I often find myself wondering whether we are all looking in the wrong direction. History has a curious habit of reminding us that the inventors of transformative technologies are not always the ones who transform society. James Watt improved the steam engine. It was factories that transformed economies. The internet was built by engineers. It was entrepreneurs, educators, governments and ordinary citizens who changed the way we lived because of it. Technology begins the story. Institutions decide how the story ends. That distinction has occupied my thoughts for some time. Perhaps because I spend more time thinking about government than algorithms. Perhaps because the questions that matter most are no longer technological. They are institutional. People often speak about bureaucracy as though it were an outdated mistake waiting to be dismantled. I see it differently. Modern government was designed for the world in which it existed. Information travelled slowly. Documents moved from one office to another because there was no practical alternative. Decisions climbed through layers of administration because knowledge itself moved through those same layers. Those systems were not inefficient by accident. They were remarkably effective for their time. They created order, consistency and accountability. They allowed governments to function at a scale that had previously been impossible. The challenge today is not that bureaucracy failed. The challenge is that the world around it has changed more quickly than bureaucracy itself. For the first time in history, governments are not struggling because they lack information. They are struggling because they have too much of it. A district administration receives more information in a single week than previous generations of public servants might have encountered in an entire year. Hospitals generate enormous volumes of clinical data. Schools continuously measure educational outcomes. Agriculture increasingly depends upon satellite imagery, weather intelligence and real-time market information. The constraint is no longer access. It is interpretation. That, I believe, changes everything. Artificial Intelligence is often described as a technological revolution. I am beginning to think it is something else. It is an institutional revolution. It’s greatest contribution may not be writing reports or generating images. It’s greatest contribution may be helping institutions distinguish what is important from what is merely available. That is a subtle difference. It is also an enormously important one. Governments have spent the past two decades becoming digital. That was necessary. Files became electronic. Services moved online. Citizens could access information without standing in long queues. These were meaningful achievements. Yet digitisation should never be confused with transformation. Replacing paper with screens does not automatically produce better judgement. A digital government stores information more efficiently. An intelligent government learns from it. There is a profound difference between the two. One preserves knowledge. The other improves decisions. This is why I believe the next chapter of public administration will not be defined by technology alone. It will be defined by institutional learning. Can governments recognise emerging problems before they become crises? Can public services adapt more quickly to changing circumstances? Can policymakers spend less time searching for information and more time exercising judgement? These are leadership questions. Technology merely provides new tools with which to answer them. Around the world, different countries are beginning to explore these possibilities in different ways. Estonia has shown what becomes possible when digital infrastructure is treated as a public utility rather than a technical project. Singapore continues to demonstrate that institutional discipline remains one of the greatest competitive advantages any nation can possess. Neither model should be copied uncritically. Every society carries its own history, institutions and public expectations. Punjab will do the same. Our objective should never be to imitate another government’s technology. It should be to strengthen our own capacity to govern. That is the thinking behind The Office of AI. Contrary to popular perception, its purpose is not simply to introduce Artificial Intelligence into government. Technology, on its own, has never transformed institutions. People do. Leadership does. Culture does. The real ambition is more demanding than digital transformation. It is to cultivate public institutions that learn continuously, coordinate more effectively and ultimately deliver better outcomes for citizens. That is a much harder challenge. It is also a far more worthwhile one. I suspect history will remember this period rather differently from the way we describe it today. It may not be remembered as the moment machines became intelligent. It may be remembered as the moment governments were compelled to become more thoughtful. Perhaps that is the real revolution. Not smarter software but smarter institutions. And if that proves to be true, the defining governments of this century will not be those that purchased the most advanced technology. They will be the ones that developed the wisdom to use it well. About the Author Ali Dar is a software engineer by education, business leader and Advisor to the Chief Minister of Punjab on Artificial Intelligence and Special Initiatives. He writes on the future of governance, Artificial Intelligence, digital transformation and public policy.

President Donald John Trump occupies a singular place in the history of American leadership. He is at once a politician, a successful businessman, and an enthusiast of freestyle wrestling. His manner of thinking, planning, and decision-making bears a character distinctly different from that of his predecessors; indeed, many observers contend that it has few, if any, precedents in the annals of modern American politics. Analysts frequently describe him as a man of remarkable flexibility, yet they also acknowledge that a position defended with absolute conviction at one moment may, in the next, be replaced by its very opposite without the slightest hesitation. This characteristic became strikingly evident following the commencement of large-scale military operations against Iran on 28 February 2026. A careful examination of the period, particularly up to the defence of the Memorandum of Understanding concluded in June, reveals no fewer than seven significant shifts in President Trump’s strategic approach. At the outset, he dismissed economic concerns altogether, declaring that the financial difficulties of the American people were of no consequence and that the sole imperative was to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. By the time of the G7 summit, however, his tone had undergone a marked transformation. He began advocating the necessity of an agreement capable of shielding the global economy from a crisis comparable to the Hoover era and the Great Depression, pointing to instability in the financial markets as evidence supporting this revised position. His initial call for regime change in Iran was equally unequivocal. In a video address, he urged the Iranian people to rise against their government, declaring that the moment might represent their final opportunity for generations to come. Yet subsequent statements quietly abandoned this objective. Instead, he began speaking of normalising relations with Iran and cooperating with its existing leadership, occasionally describing those very leaders as more “reasonable” than before. During the early phase of the conflict, the complete destruction of Iran’s missile program, the industries responsible for its production, and the naval forces supporting it was presented as a principal objective. Later, however, his position softened considerably. He observed that while missiles might inflict damage upon limited areas, they were incapable of destroying the world, and since other nations possessed similar capabilities, Iran might also retain a limited missile arsenal. It was for this reason that the Memorandum of Understanding contained no provision requiring the dismantlement of Iran’s missile program. A similar evolution occurred regarding Iran’s nuclear program. Following the military operations of 2025 and again in 2026, it was asserted that Iran’s entire uranium enrichment capability would be eliminated and that the nuclear threat would be extinguished permanently. In time, however, the objective was narrowed simply to ensuring that Iran would not acquire a nuclear weapon. Rather than insisting upon total dismantlement, reliance shifted towards international monitoring and continued negotiations. Control over highly enriched uranium, initially regarded as a non-negotiable and indispensable condition, was subsequently treated as a matter of secondary importance. It was argued that preventing the production of a nuclear weapon remained the essential objective, while questions concerning enriched uranium would be addressed in future negotiations. The instruments of pressure likewise underwent a profound transformation. Economic sanctions and financial restrictions, once regarded as the principal means of coercion, gradually gave way to incentives. Discussions emerged concerning the release of frozen assets, temporary licences for Iranian oil exports, and the possibility of reconstruction assistance amounting to hundreds of billions of dollars, with additional concessions to be granted subject to Iran’s future conduct. Likewise, the original determination to terminate Iran’s support for regional proxy groups gradually receded into the background. In its place, greater emphasis was placed upon securing a direct ceasefire and addressing the broader requirements of peace and stability throughout the Middle East. These strategic adjustments were accompanied by repeated tactical oscillations, in which stern threats were frequently followed by the postponement or cancellation of military action. A chronological review compiled up to 3 August reveals numerous announcements of major strikes that were ultimately abandoned. The latest example occurred on 1 and 2 August, when military action was suspended following requests from Iran and several regional parties, together with the emergence of preliminary outlines for a possible understanding involving the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz and measures aimed at removing the nuclear threat. On 7 April, shortly before the expiration of an ultimatum in which President Trump had threatened strikes against bridges and power stations, a two-week ceasefire was agreed. He had warned that such attacks could extinguish an entire civilisation. On 21 April, at the request of international mediators, the ceasefire was extended indefinitely, although hostilities resumed at a later stage. On 18 May, a major military operation was deferred to allow serious negotiations to proceed, but when those negotiations faltered, military action recommenced. On the night of 11 June, President Trump threatened an overwhelming assault upon Iran together with the seizure of its oil and gas resources. Yet only hours later, citing what he described as a significant diplomatic breakthrough, he cancelled the operation, thereby paving the way for the Memorandum of Understanding. Signed on 17 June, the Memorandum provided for a ceasefire, the temporary reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, limited economic relief, and a framework for sixty days of negotiations. It nevertheless expressly reserved the right to resume bombing should its provisions prove unsatisfactory. At the beginning of July, following attacks upon commercial shipping, the ceasefire was declared terminated. Military strikes were launched against dozens, and subsequently scores, of targets. Congress was formally notified, and the Administration adopted an increasingly uncompromising public tone. Yet negotiations continued simultaneously. The naval blockade was reimposed, retaliatory operations persisted, and on 27 July the intensive daily bombardment was once again suspended in order to afford diplomacy another opportunity. Even in early August, fresh threats eventually yielded to renewed consideration of a possible political framework. Oil sanctions followed a similarly fluctuating course. Temporary export licences were granted, only to be withdrawn as sanctions were reimposed.

Walk into any classroom and everything seems perfectly normal. Students are taking notes, chatting before class, and waiting for the lecture to begin. No one is arguing, no one is fighting, and everything appears calm on the surface. Yet for many students, there is a side of campus life that often goes unnoticed: bullying. For years, bullying has been treated as just a normal part of growing up, and honestly, many people will still argue that it is. Plenty still see it as harmless teasing, or worse, some rite of passage every student is simply expected to survive. The common response is often, “ignore it,” or “everyone deals with it, get over it,” as if that settles the matter. But ask the person actually on the receiving end, and it rarely feels harmless at all. What one student brushes off as a joke can leave another feeling embarrassed, isolated, and like they don’t belong anywhere in that room. The moment passes, but the hurt from it usually doesn’t, it lingers quietly while everyone else has already moved on. A student who gets mocked enough times eventually just stops raising his hand, or talking at all. Someone left out again and again stops trying to be included and stops showing up for activities.  Confidence is often the first thing to suffer, and academic performance also follows, when a student’s energy goes into avoiding attention rather than engaging in the class. By the time anyone notices, the damage is usually already done. Many would agree that this is because it does not appear all at once, it builds gradually and people mistake it for a bad mood, a phase, or anything but what it really is. As a student myself, this isn’t just something I’ve read about, I’ve seen how it feels to watch someone go quiet, to sit in a room that should feel safe and doesn’t. What I believe makes bullying so difficult to address is that it does not always look the way people expect. When people hear the word “bullying,” they often imagine physical confrontations. That’s not always how it turns out, though. In many cases, it is far less obvious and therefore much easier to overlook. It can take the form of repeated jokes at someone’s expense, hurtful nicknames, deliberate exclusion from social groups, or rumours spread behind a person’s back, things many of us have seen or experienced at some point. These behaviours are often considered as “just joking,” so a student ends up laughing along anyway, just to avoid seeming too sensitive, even when the comment is genuinely hurtful.  Emotional bullying is another common form including constant criticism, manipulation, or certain behaviours that slowly damages a person’s confidence and sense of belonging. This is probably the one most of us have gone through at some point in our student life, quietly, without ever really talking about it. And these days, it doesn’t even need a classroom to happen in. Social media, group chats, and anonymous messages have given it a whole new stage, extending its reach far beyond the campus walls. There is also a less-discussed form of bullying that affects some students whose parents work at the same school or college. These students are assumed to receive special treatment regardless of their actual performance. Their achievements may be dismissed as favouritism, and their hard work can be unfairly questioned. I admit it sounds strange, but it is a reality many students live with. While this may not involve insults or physical intimidation, constantly feeling judged for something beyond your control can be frustrating and humiliating. So why does bullying continue? Part of the answer is that mostly people underestimate its impact. A comment that seems minor to one person may stay with someone else for days or weeks. When unkind behaviour is overlooked, it can become normalized. What starts as a joke can slowly turn into a pattern. Worth asking too, is what drives a bully. Often, it is not insecurity but the confidence that comes from believing there will be no consequences. When nobody challenges the actions, it becomes a way of gaining attention, influence, or social status. That does not excuse the harm, but it helps explain why simply telling victims to ignore it doesn’t solve the problem. Now, the good part is that bullying is not inevitable. Small actions can make a meaningful difference. Teachers who recognize warning signs and students who choose to speak up when they witness unfair treatment all help create a better environment. Educational institutions should also make it easier for students to report problems without fear of embarrassment or retaliation. Perhaps most importantly, students themselves have more influence than they realize. A kind word, an invitation to join a group, or simply refusing to laugh at someone can change the atmosphere of a classroom.  Creating a respectful environment isn’t really about rules on a wall. It just needs one person willing to say something when everyone else stays quiet.

Development is the process of creating lasting improvements in the lives of people by addressing their genuine social, economic, and public needs and not merely constructing new infrastructure, completing projects, impressive photographs, or utilising the allocated public funds. In a true sense, the real measure of development is whether the real problem has been solved, and whether the interventions have created sustainable public value and an evident change in social or economic conditions of the society. A project should begin with a clearly defined problem and public need. Its vision, goals, activities, and measurable indicators should follow the problem. In professional project management practices, all these elements are recorded in the planning and design phase. In Pakistan, we have mastered the art of reporting these elements without achieving any meaningful results. Imagine a public park surrounded by a steel fence. Children and families using the park are visible from the road. If funds are available and privacy is the genuine concern, the executing agency can add steel sheets, plant trees, or use temporary screens. Each solution is inexpensive and retains the existing structure. However, if the focus is primarily on expenditure, the agency may remove the functioning fence and replace it with a new brick wall. This may have a longer life, but is not necessarily the most economical or appropriate solution. Considering Pakistan’s fragile economic outlook, many major development projects are financed through foreign loans. Such funds are eventually repaid, often with interest. Money spent on an unnecessary intervention is no longer available for genuine public need. This is a recurring weakness in Pakistan, where success is measured by the money spent, not by the effectiveness of the solution. This recalls Peter Drucker’s observation. “There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.” The continued existence of infrastructure built during the Mughal and British periods is in contrast with contemporary projects, which deteriorate within years. This might be a romantic comparison, influenced by the fact that we see only the structures that survived, but durability and long-term public value are not central to our project culture. The same mindset is evident in urban beautification schemes. Imagine a local government installs a 15-foot-high statue. The project is indeed beautiful and will produce attractive photographs for official reports, but if the same statue is mounted on thoughtfully designed columns, the shaded seating can be utilised by daily wage workers who gather at bus stops, on footpaths, and in other public spaces because no designated facility is available. This is not an encroachment issue, but a planning failure. Planners and designers should use one intervention to achieve multiple objectives. Imagine a decades-old roundabout, with a working fountain surrounded by grass. During hot afternoons, labourers and children visit the site to cool themselves in the fountain’s spray. Officials might consider this behaviour undesirable and wish to block access. They can barricade it through small trees or shrubs, but the typical response will be to uproot the entire structure, construct a new fountain, and replace the grass with artificial green carpet. The public behaviour may reflect the unavailability of affordable recreational areas or public bathing facilities. Yet, the official solution destroys a functioning public asset, removes a natural green area, and spends substantial funds without addressing the underlying need. Needs assessment appears in project reports, but they are rarely conducted with sufficient depth. Imagine a posh housing society, where tubewells were eventually replaced by private borewells. Residents have spent a considerable amount to arrange their own water supply. Now, if any government agency has received funds for water distribution, they should spend it in areas where the people are still digging borewells or have no access to clean drinking water. However, again the typical response will be to spend millions in this posh area, where households have already arranged their own water supply. The fall of the water table is the real problem, which in this case will persist after spending millions. Pakistan has an extensive planning structure, which includes the federal and provincial bodies, planning departments in government organizations, consultants, and project management units. In 2025-26 alone, the National Economic Council approved the national development portfolio of 4.224 trillion. Such substantial expenditure should produce visible and lasting improvement in people live. The problem, therefore, is not insufficient funding, but how projects are identified, designed, approved, and evaluated. The same problem is visible in education, health, and administrative projects. Consider a basic health unit or education facility with a leaking roof. The available funds should be directed to fix the roof. However, funds are allocated to boundary wall, new signage, and in some cases, for an entirely new building. Similarly, for decade, government departments are trying to digitise their operations. For a quick solution, these departments procure specialised softwares, which has high licensing costs, and inadequate training mechanisms. After years of implementation, enforcement, and expenditure, the same departments revert to paper files or to a new software. The first step should be, to strengthen the capacity of all relevant staff in problem identification and root cause analysis. Every project initiation document should clearly identify the problem, public need, examine alternatives, and link the proposed intervention to public value. These elements should always be in quantifiable terms. Moreover, the project indicators should measure the extent to which the problem is solved and the post-completion evaluation should validate the visualized public benefits. Institutions move energetically, spend heavily, and report extensively, but bypass the original problem. Pakistan does not simply need more projects; it needs projects to solve problems; it needs interventions that respond to genuine needs, preserve what already works, and provide sustainable public value. The true measure should not be the amount spent but the resolution of the problem. Unless problem-solving becomes central to planning and evaluation, fund utilisation will continue to be mistaken for development and detour away from progress we seek. Writers  Dr. Sikandar Bilal Khattak  Academician with Research Interest in Sustainable Systems Can be

The development of decentralized finance represents a material reconfiguration of financial intermediation rather than a peripheral experiment in virtual assets. DeFi enables trading, lending, borrowing, liquidity provision and asset management through blockchain based smart contracts, with continuous availability, programmable execution, global accessibility and reduced dependence on conventional intermediaries. The FATF records total value locked at USD 86.644 billion in 2026, approximately 85 percent above the 2023 level, while institutional investors, virtual asset service providers and regulated entities are increasingly committing capital to DeFi arrangements. This track suggests that DeFi will not simply compete with traditional finance, but will progressively intersect with it through tokenized assets, settlement, payments, liquidity and market infrastructure. The policy significance of that convergence lies in the need to preserve innovation without permitting functional substitutes for regulated finance to escape equivalent safeguards. Traditional finance provides legal accountability, prudential discipline, customer identification and institutional channels for enforcement, while DeFi contributes automation, composability, transparency of public ledger transactions, broader access and rapid settlement. The future architecture is therefore likely to be hybrid: regulated institutions will use decentralized infrastructure where it produces efficiency, whereas supervisors will require comparable financial integrity outcomes whenever equivalent financial functions are performed. FATF, the Financial Stability Board, IOSCO and the IMF converge on a technology neutral and function oriented conception under which substance, activity, control and risk prevail over labels or technological form. The July 2026 FATF Targeted Report is consequently best understood as an implementation instrument that updates the 2021 Guidance in light of DeFi’s expansion. Its scope is to identify emerging money laundering, terrorist financing and proliferation financing risks, clarify when the FATF Standards apply. It also provide practical tools for identification, regulation, supervision and investigation, develop criteria for identifying controllers or persons exercising sufficient influence, and recommend measures for public and private actors. The report is expressly non-binding, but its analytical significance is substantial because it translates Recommendation 15 into a functional supervisory methodology for a market whose legal form, governance and territorial nexus are frequently indeterminate. The defining characteristics of DeFi create both utility and vulnerability. Similarly, smart contract automation removes many conventional execution functions, open source and composable architecture permit rapid replication and interaction among protocols, algorithmic market mechanisms automate liquidity, pricing and liquidation, pseudonymous liquidity provision permits participation without conventional identification, permissionless access may eliminate customer due diligence, and reliance on oracles imports external data into automated decisions. These characteristics permit rapid and complex movement of value but also allow illicit proceeds to be layered through liquidity pools, decentralized exchanges, bridges, swaps and multiple chains before supervisory or enforcement systems can react. The regulatory fragmentation, weak compliance, cyber vulnerabilities and diminishing dependence upon regulated entry and exit points further aggravate supervisory difficulty. The applicable legal framework begins with technological neutrality. The recommendation 15 applies where a natural or legal person, as a business, conducts or actively facilitates activities falling within the VASP definition. The software itself is not regulated merely because it executes a financial function, but persons exercising control or sufficient influence over a DeFi arrangement may fall within the regulatory perimeter. FATF differentiates centralized arrangements with identifiable controllers, centralized arrangements in which control exists but controllers are difficult to identify, and truly decentralized arrangements in which no person maintains control or sufficient influence. The first two categories fall within the Standards, the third falls outside direct application, although it remains subject to alternative risk mitigation through adjacent regulated actors. The principal implementation deficit is therefore institutional rather than conceptual. FATF’s 2026 survey found that only 26 of 142 responding jurisdictions had assessed DeFi risks, 132 had not identified qualifying DeFi arrangements operating in their territory, only four had implemented licensing or registration requirements, and only two had licensed or registered such arrangements. The resulting supervisory gap facilitates regulatory arbitrage and demonstrates why national authorities must integrate DeFi into national, sectoral or virtual asset risk assessments, calibrated to materiality, domestic exposure, cross border activity, governance structures and actual financial crime threats. The financial crime typologies identified by FATF demonstrate that DeFi risk is not confined to speculative misconduct. The fraudsters have used purported DeFi structures to misrepresent liquidity and divert investor assets, professional money laundering networks fragment funds across wallets and then use decentralized exchanges, bridges, mixers, swaps and chain hopping to obscure provenance, ransomware groups and hackers use DeFi immediately after compromise to convert and disperse proceeds, and proliferation financing actors have exploited governance weaknesses, oracles, bridges and limited compliance environments. The policy concern is intensified by speed: automated movement can complete layering before authorities, intermediaries or analytics providers can identify the event, establish attribution and initiate restraint. The decisive supervisory question is the identification of control or sufficient influence. FATF treats control as the practical ability to determine or materially influence key operations, service delivery or economic benefits. The relevant indicators include authority to modify or pause smart contracts, alter protocol parameters, control oracles, administer treasury assets, determine participation, appoint key actors, receive material fee flows, control governance votes, operate public interfaces, manage corporate entities, determine development priorities, control essential infrastructure, or direct branding and communications. No single indicator is conclusive. Additionally, authorities should combine public blockchain evidence, governance records, audits, service provider information, financial intelligence and investigative material, and should assess economic reality rather than formal claims of decentralization. The assessment of control must remain continuous because governance can migrate from a company or foundation to a decentralized autonomous organization without relinquishing substantive authority. The concentrated governance tokens, delegated voting blocs, special proposal rights, veto powers, administrative keys, clustered wallets and continuing receipt of protocol revenues may disclose retained control. On the contrary, a genuinely decentralized arrangement, after independent assessment, falls outside direct FATF obligations because no accountable person can be identified. That conclusion does not equate to absence of risk. The authorities should instead influence stablecoin issuers, regulated VASPs, financial institutions and controlled application interfaces, whereas encouraging digital identity, embedded customer due diligence and blockchain analytics within genuinely decentralized environments. The licensing and