"...December 7, 1941 – a date that will live in infamy –"
Quotes of the Day:
"If we abandon our ideals in the face of adversity and aggression, then those ideals were never really in our possession. I would rather die fighting than give up even the smallest part of the idea that is 'America.' "
-Maj Ian Fishback in his letter to Senator John McCain
"This will not be the last time a virus threatens our lives and our livelihoods"
- Sarah Gilbert, Oxford vaccine creator
“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It's simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we've been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”
- Carl Sagan
1. A Guide to Extreme Competition with China
2. “Wars” of Influence: Expanding U.S. Unclassified Intelligence Reports on China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea and Investing in Other Major U.S. Official National Security Reports
3. Keeping the Wrong Secrets – How Washington Misses the Real Security Threat
4. IntelBrief: Traditional Espionage Challenged by Ubiquity of Emerging Technologies
5. FDD | Washington Seeks to Counter China’s Quantum Computing Drive
6. ICC prosecutor defends dropping US from Afghan war crime probe
7. Broad overhaul of military justice system being sidelined in favor of narrower focus on sexual assault
8. 34,000 Afghan refugees remain on seven military bases in the US three months after evacuation mission
9. Austin: Stopgap funding for a full year would limit Pentagon’s China-focused programs, harm troops
10. Call Putin Out by Negotiating
11. Amazon Offers 2nd Air-Gapped Cloud For Top-Secret Data
12. Here’s what America must do to counter Russian aggression against Ukraine
13. How to de-escalate Russia: Ukrainian advice
14. Biden’s Summit for Democracy gets under autocrats’ skins
15. Can the US military recover its reputation?
16. Defending Taiwan: Think globally and ‘look up’
17. Russia and China are testing Biden — and so far, he’s failing
18. Israel must not support a temporary Iranian nuclear deal
19. Ahead of Biden’s Democracy Summit, China Says: We’re Also a Democracy
20. Here’s what people with low trust in news learned attending a morning TV news meeting
21. Can America Take On Russia and China In the Grey Zone? (and north Korea too)
22. Foggy Bottom Bristles at Proliferation of Special Envoys
1. A Guide to Extreme Competition with China
I understand this was written prior to the major focus on integrated deterrence. I think this first recommendation supports DOD's concept of integrated defense. Or we could introduce a new term of "integrated competition."
- Draw on capabilities across the elements of U.S. national power and build international consensus in formulating strategies to compete with China.
A Guide to Extreme Competition with China
The U.S.-China competitive dynamic has been evolving rapidly and is at a critical crossroads. Policymakers can benefit from a new framework for thinking about this challenge that draws on an assessment of Chinese intentions, addresses how the dynamic does &mash; or could &mash; play out across various elements of national power, and offers realistic and actionable recommendations that are sensitive to the limits of U.S. competitiveness.
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Research Questions
- Where does China stand as a world leader, and what actions has it undertaken to reach its current position?
- What factors should U.S. policymakers consider in developing effective strategies to compete with China?
- What are the potential risks and rewards of diplomatic, economic, and military actions in support of U.S. competition with China, and what can be done to increase the U.S. advantage?
The U.S.-China competitive dynamic has been evolving rapidly and is at a critical crossroads. Rather than fostering greater cooperation, the global COVID-19 pandemic escalated tensions and is driving calls to rethink, reframe, and strengthen the U.S. competitive position. The United States might have the capacity and capability to counter China's influence, but China's rapid rise means that decisions about when and how to compete come with significant or even prohibitive costs. These decisions are also bounded by U.S. and international law, or even just the burden of upholding international norms and standards. China is opportunistic in exploiting these gaps.
In the long term, societal and economic trends will put the United States at a disadvantage as the next generations of policymakers assume responsibility for the China challenge. Now is the time to revise federal spending priorities to address current and emerging barriers to growth, innovation, and cooperation.
The purpose of this report is not to add to the overflowing catalog of policy guidance, strategic directions, and cautionary advice; it is, rather, to offer realistic, actionable policy options that align with U.S. interests but are mindful of the limits of U.S. influence. Policymakers can benefit from a new framework for thinking about this challenge that draws on an assessment of Chinese intentions and addresses how the competitive dynamic does — or could — play out across the diplomatic, informational, military, and economic elements of national power while remaining sensitive to the limits of U.S. competitiveness.
Key Findings
For the United States, there are risks in competing with China, but the risks of not competing are greater
- There is a widespread perception that China is breaking norms and "getting away with it," including by antagonizing neighbors over disputed territories, diplomatically marginalizing Taiwan, ensnaring developing countries with high and potentially unsustainable levels of debt, and coercing its diaspora, as well as engaging in widespread espionage, intellectual property theft, and surveillance.
- The United States has the capacity and capability to counter, compete with, or defeat China's influence, but there are risks associated with doing so.
- Decisions about how to compete with China are bounded by U.S. and international law or the burden of upholding international norms and standards, and China is opportunistic in exploiting gaps in these measures.
Policymakers can benefit from a new framework for thinking about U.S.-China competition that considers the risks and rewards to both sides
- Policy responses are likely to fall into five categories: (1) retaliating against, reciprocating, and deterring unacceptable behavior by China; (2) extending existing norms and promoting news ones, setting international rules and standards, and defining and exposing transgressive behavior by China; (3) sustaining U.S. leadership in providing for the global good; (4) supporting and building global coalitions and partnerships; and (5) restoring the health and vitality of the American system.
- International institutions can threaten or impose large-scale diplomatic, economic, and military costs, but such responses are all but impossible without accurate intelligence, continual gaming of strategies, and field-testing of capabilities and partner interoperability.
Recommendations
- Draw on capabilities across the elements of U.S. national power and build international consensus in formulating strategies to compete with China.
- Shore up U.S. domestic capabilities, and use tax incentives and other federal programs to diversify supply chains.
- Invest in military innovation and partnerships, which can allow the United States to take greater risks in competing with China.
- Sign on to treaties that enforce current norms and standards and join alliances to strengthen trade relationships, taking the lead on committees and commissions in policy areas that are of interest to China.
- Exercise leadership in cyberspace, bringing it under international laws of armed conflict and encouraging the adoption of standards that prioritize security.
- Actively counter economic practices that give China an outsized advantage.
- To enhance trust, promote an image of the United States that is cooperative, generous, protective of partners, and supportive of press freedom.
- Pursue development financing initiatives and offer carefully monitored incentives to encourage investment in countries that are vulnerable to Chinese economic coercion.
- Build partnerships, coalitions, and security cooperation arrangements that provide alternatives to alignment with China; this should include relationships with Chinese diaspora communities in the United States and elsewhere.
- Expand the organizational infrastructure to publicly disseminate messages of condemnation and discredit Chinese propaganda and coercion through a coordinated, centralized mechanism; credible messages should be backed by a comprehensive understanding of China's activities.
Table of Contents
Chapter One
What Does China Want, and What Will It Do to Get It? A Profile of China's Behavior and a Guide for U.S. Responses
Chapter Two
Chinese Diplomacy: Soft Power with Sharp Edges
Chapter Three
The New World Media Order: How China Controls the Narrative
Chapter Four
China's Use of Military Power, Espionage, Cyberattacks, Subversion, and Gray Zone Coercion
Chapter Five
The Unprecedented Rise and Long Shadow of China's Economic Power
Chapter Six
Conclusions and Policy Implications
Research conducted by
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Document Details
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- Pages: 71
- Document Number: RR-A1378-1
- Year: 2021
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Paul, Christopher, James Dobbins, Scott W. Harold, Howard J. Shatz, Rand Waltzman, and Lauren Skrabala, A Guide to Extreme Competition with China, Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND Corporation, RR-A1378-1, 2021. As of December 02, 2021: https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA1378-1.html
2. “Wars” of Influence: Expanding U.S. Unclassified Intelligence Reports on China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea and Investing in Other Major U.S. Official National Security Reports
I missed this when it came out.
I agree that we have to learn to "lead with influence." We have to conduct our superior form of political warfare.
But I think some of his criticism of the Military Power report is slightly misplaced. I think the north Korea report provides a useful unclassified baseline for public policy discussions.
Excerpt:
If the U.S. and its strategic partners are to compete successfully with Russia, China, and other major threats, they must also succeed in winning gray area conflicts and “white area” political, diplomatic, and economic competition.
...
It may be an exaggeration to talk about “wars” of influence, but if one focuses on “white area” operations and competition, the ability to shape perceptions of the Chinese, Russian, and other major threats will be critical, as will building a consensus about the gravity of such threats with the U.S.’s strategic partners.
The same will be true of building an understanding of the nature of global competition with China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. These are areas where the U.S. government needs to be as proactive as possible. This will include conducting regular diplomatic activity, informing the media, and supporting analysis outside the U.S. government. It also, however, means developing and promoting official studies and reports – ways of communicating the nature of the threat that can draw on all the assets used to develop classified and official information to produce “weapons of influence” in unclassified form.
“Wars” of Influence: Expanding U.S. Unclassified Intelligence Reports on China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea and Investing in Other Major U.S. Official National Security Reports
csis.org · by Emeritus Chair in Strategy · November 29, 2021
December 3, 2021
The shift in U.S. strategy from a focus on terrorist threats to a focus on the potential threats from China and Russia, as well as the lesser threats from Iran and North Korea, means the U.S. must look beyond building up deterrent forces and U.S. options for warfighting. So far, however, the U.S. has done far better in strengthening its military forces to compete with China and Russia, and lesser enemies like Iran and North Korea, than it has done to compete in political and gray area terms. A military response to such threats is critical in meeting the Chinese and Russian challenge, but it is only half the battle.
If the U.S. and its strategic partners are to compete successfully with Russia, China, and other major threats, they must also succeed in winning gray area conflicts and “white area” political, diplomatic, and economic competition.
As was the case in the Cold War, U.S. grand strategy must look beyond deterrence and warfighting. It must focus on finding areas of cooperation that reduce tension and the risk of war; on strengthening deterrence by competing for allies and economic partners; and on using diplomacy, trade, investment, and political influence to both support U.S. interests and counter hostile actions and influence building by its major competitors.
The U.S. needs to pay attention to Sun Tzu as well as Clausewitz for other reasons. Any war with China or Russia that escalates to a theater level or higher levels, any war that involves nuclear conflict, or any war that leads to major damage to critical facilities and infrastructure will inflict massive costs and damage to the U.S. and its partners, as well as to the enemy. Even a limited conflict over an objective like Taiwan will have high to massive immediate costs, and it will almost certainly trigger a process of costly further military competition that can extend for decades and trigger further conflicts in the process. Real victory will come from winning in the white and gray areas that can prevent a major conflict, not in “winning” serious wars and major battles.
It may be an exaggeration to talk about “wars” of influence, but if one focuses on “white area” operations and competition, the ability to shape perceptions of the Chinese, Russian, and other major threats will be critical, as will building a consensus about the gravity of such threats with the U.S.’s strategic partners.
The same will be true of building an understanding of the nature of global competition with China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. These are areas where the U.S. government needs to be as proactive as possible. This will include conducting regular diplomatic activity, informing the media, and supporting analysis outside the U.S. government. It also, however, means developing and promoting official studies and reports – ways of communicating the nature of the threat that can draw on all the assets used to develop classified and official information to produce “weapons of influence” in unclassified form.
Anthony H. Cordesman holds the Emeritus Chair in Strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. He has served as a consultant on Afghanistan to the United States Department of Defense and the United States Department of State.
csis.org · by Emeritus Chair in Strategy · November 29, 2021
3. Keeping the Wrong Secrets – How Washington Misses the Real Security Threat
Excerpts:
The inventor Charles Kettering once observed that “when you lock the laboratory door, you lock out more than you lock in.” In the early twentieth century, when the current classification system took shape, the information worth protecting was mostly located inside federal agencies, so locking the door made some sense. Today, however, Kettering’s observation applies more than ever. Private entities have access to more, and in many cases better, information than the government, so locking the door only isolates federal agencies without protecting much information worth keeping secure.
What a twenty-first-century approach to national security information requires is greater attention to privacy. Yet the United States has done little to protect the information about ordinary citizens that in a world of artificial intelligence and machine learning poses a growing threat to national security. The United States spends billions of dollars to protect classified information, much of which is already readily available from public sources. But it does little to enable its citizens, including those in important government positions, to keep their private lives from being documented, tracked, and exposed. In so doing, it is leaving pieces of the mosaic of U.S. national security lying around for its adversaries to gather up and put together.
Keeping the Wrong Secrets
How Washington Misses the Real Security Threat
January/February 2022
The United States keeps a lot of secrets. In 2017, the last year for which there are complete data, roughly four million Americans with security clearances classified around 50 million documents at a cost to U.S. taxpayers of around $18 billion.
For a short time, I was one of those four million. From 2014 to 2015, I worked for the general counsel of the Department of Defense, a position for which I received a security clearance at the “top secret” level. I came into the job thinking that all the classified documents I would see would include important national security secrets accessible only to those who had gone through an extensive background check and been placed in a position of trust. I was shocked to discover that much of what I read was in fact not all that different from what was available on the Internet. There were exceptions: events I learned about a few hours or even days before the rest of the world, for instance, and information that could be traced to intelligence sources. But the vast bulk of the classified material I saw was remarkable only for how unremarkable it was.
The U.S. system for classifying secrets is based on the idea that the government has access to significant information that is not available, or at least not widely available, to private citizens or organizations. Over time, however, government intelligence sources have lost their advantage over private sources of intelligence. Thanks to new surveillance and monitoring technologies, including geolocation trackers, the Internet of Things, and commercial satellites, private information is now often better—sometimes much better—than the information held by governments.
At the same time, these technologies have given rise to an altogether new threat: troves of personal data, many of them readily available, that can be exploited by foreign powers. Each new piece of information, by itself, is relatively unimportant. But combined, the pieces can give foreign adversaries unprecedented insight into the personal lives of most Americans.
Yet the United States has not begun to adapt its system for protecting information. It remains focused on keeping too many secrets that don’t really matter, treating government information like the crown jewels while leaving private data almost entirely unguarded. This overemphasis on secrecy at the expense of privacy isn’t just inefficient. It undermines American democracy and, increasingly, U.S. national security, as well.
EPIDEMIC OF ESPIONAGE
The U.S. government did not always keep so many secrets. At the turn of the twentieth century, in fact, it had no formal nationwide system of secrecy. That began to change after Japan defeated Russia in the Russo-Japanese War of 1905, stunning Western countries and signaling the rise of a new regional power in Asia capable of challenging the major powers in Europe. Japan had long prohibited emigration, but it had lifted this restriction in 1886, just as its military prowess was beginning to grow. By 1908, around 150,000 Japanese immigrants had entered the United States.
As the number of new arrivals ticked up, American newspapers began reporting stories about “Japanese spies roaming about the Philippines, Hawaii, and the continental United States, busily making drawings of the location of guns, mines, and other weapons of defense,” as The Atlanta Constitution put it in 1911. Journalists at The Courier-Journal detailed a sophisticated Japanese spying operation in Los Angeles, Portland, and the harbors around Puget Sound, including rumors that “agents of the Japanese War Office, in the guise of railroad section laborers or servants in families residing in the locality, are stationed at every large railroad bridge on the Pacific coast.” These stories were fantastic—and likely false, for the most part, as were widespread tales of Japanese candy store operators who were really mapmakers, Japanese fishermen who were really taking harbor soundings, and Japanese barbers who picked up military secrets from their unsuspecting clients.
Members of Congress, alarmed by the stories, decided to act. The Defense Secrets Act, passed in 1911, was the first U.S. law to criminalize spying. It provided that “whoever, . . . without proper authority, obtains, takes, or makes, or attempts to obtain, take, or make, any document, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, plan, model, or knowledge of anything connected with the national defense to which he is not entitled” could be fined or imprisoned.
The United States is focused on keeping too many secrets that don’t really matter.
After war broke out in Europe, President Woodrow Wilson appeared before Congress and asked it to strengthen the laws against sedition and the disclosure of information. His racist nativism on full display, he declared, “There are citizens of the United States, I blush to admit, born under other flags but welcomed under our generous naturalization laws to the full freedom and opportunity of America” who “have sought to pry into every confidential transaction of the Government in order to serve interests alien to our own.” The result was the Espionage Act of 1917—a law that, with a few revisions, still forms the main legal basis for proscribing the unauthorized disclosure of national security information in the United States. The law was extraordinarily broad, criminalizing the disclosure of “information respecting the national defence” that could be “used to the injury of the United States.”
Now there were rules criminalizing the disclosure of national security secrets. But what was a secret? Historians consider the American Expeditionary Forces’ General Order No. 64, also issued in 1917, to be the first attempt by the U.S. government to adopt a formal classification system for government information that had national security value. In the years that followed, the U.S. Army and the U.S. Navy adopted their own regulations on classified information, producing a mishmash of classification rules across the military branches. Then, in 1940, President Franklin Roosevelt displaced this series of decentralized classification rules with an executive order making it unlawful to record “certain vital information about military or naval installations” without permission. The rules applied to aircraft, weapons, and other military equipment, as well as to books, pamphlets, and other documents if they were classified as “secret,” “confidential,” or “restricted.”
Since then, many presidents have issued executive orders that define what information is classified, how it is classified, and who can access it. The latest comprehensive executive order, issued by President Barack Obama in 2009, lays out three levels of classification—top secret, secret, and confidential—along with a vast array of rules about what each level of classification means. Under the order, classified documents originate in two ways: one of the 1,867 officials designated as having “original classification authority” decides that a document should be classified or one of the four million or so individuals with access to classified material creates a new document using information that was already classified—so-called derivative classification. In 2017, more than 49 million government-generated documents were derivatively classified.
SECRECY BEGETS SECRECY
Almost everyone who has examined the U.S. system of keeping secrets has concluded that it results in mass overclassification. J. William Leonard, who led the Information Security Oversight Office during the Bush administration, once observed that more than half of the information that meets the criteria for classification “really should not be classified.” Others would put that number much higher. Michael Hayden, a former director of the National Security Agency and later of the CIA, once complained of receiving a “Merry Christmas” email that carried a top-secret classification.
One factor driving overclassification is the fact that those who do the classifying are almost always incentivized to err on the side of caution—classifying up rather than down. When I worked at the Pentagon, if I made a mistake and classified a document or an email at too high a level, there would likely be no penalty. As far as I know, no one in the offices I worked with was ever disciplined for classifying a document too high. Classifying a document too low, however, can bring serious professional consequences—not to mention potentially threaten U.S. national security. Secrecy, in other words, is the easiest and safest course of action.
Secrecy also begets more secrecy, because documents must be classified at the highest level of classification of any information they contain. If a ten-page memo contains even a single sentence that is classified as top secret, for instance, the memo as a whole must be classified as top secret (unless it is “portion marked,” meaning that each segment—the title, each paragraph, each bullet point, and each table, for instance—is given a separate mark of classification). This requirement fuels an endless progression of derivative classification that compounds the United States’ already enormous overclassification problem.
hidden harm
The democratic costs of overclassification are hard to overstate. To note the obvious: a state cannot keep secrets from its enemies without also keeping them from its own population. Massive government secret keeping undermines democratic checks and balances, since it makes it difficult, if not impossible, for the public—and, often, for members of Congress—to know what the executive branch is up to.
The U.S. government has done horrific things when acting in secret. CIA black sites, where detainees suspected of involvement in terrorist groups were tortured during the Bush administration, could not have survived public scrutiny—which is why they operated in secret for years. Secrecy also undermines American democracy in more subtle ways. When the government keeps secrets, those secrets enable—and sometimes require—lies. When those lies are exposed, public trust in the government takes a hit—as it did in 2013, when Edward Snowden, then a contractor for the National Security Agency, revealed the existence of a massive surveillance program under which the agency had accessed the email, instant-messaging, and cell phone data of millions of Americans. That revelation eroded trust in U.S. intelligence agencies, making it harder for them to operate—precisely the opposite of what the government’s secrecy was meant to achieve.
Snowden speaking in Strasbourg, France, March 2019
Vincent Kessler / Reuters
Secrets also have a chilling effect on free speech. In May 2019, the Department of Justice indicted Julian Assange, the founder of the whistle-blowing organization WikiLeaks, on 17 counts of violating the Espionage Act for obtaining and publishing classified documents. It was the first time the government had brought such charges for publication alone, raising fears in the media that the government might start using the Espionage Act to prosecute journalists. As The New York Times reported at the time, Assange had been charged for actions that the paper itself had taken: it had obtained the same documents as WikiLeaks, also without government authorization, and published subsets of them, albeit with the names of informants withheld.
And it is not just whistleblowers and journalists who need to worry; former government officials can also be caught in the classification vise. Even after leaving office, government employees are not only subject to potential criminal prosecution if they disclose classified information that they learned while in government but also required to submit their writings (and drafts of public talks) for “prepublication review.” John Bolton, who served as national security adviser to President Donald Trump, became an unexpected poster child for abuse of the prepublication review process after his book was subjected to delays that appeared politically motivated. He is far from alone. Millions of former government employees, including me, are bound by similar rules. The real harm of this system is not to former government employees, however. It is to the quality of public discourse, as former government employees with knowledge about the U.S. national security system too often decide that it is easier to simply stay silent.
Overclassification also makes it difficult to keep the secrets that really matter. As the Supreme Court justice Potter Stewart put it in his concurring opinion in the 1971 case ordering the release of the Pentagon Papers, the Defense Department’s classified history of the U.S. role in Vietnam, “When everything is classified, then nothing is classified, and the system becomes one to be disregarded by the cynical or the careless, and to be manipulated by those intent on self-protection or self-promotion.” Too much secrecy can also make it harder to protect the American public from national security threats—for instance, by limiting information sharing that could inform decision-making or identify new dangers. One reason the plot to carry out the 9/11 terrorist attacks was not detected in advance, the 9/11 Commission found, was too much secrecy: the failure to share information between agencies and with the public allowed the attackers to succeed. “We’re better off with openness,” said Thomas Kean, the chair of the commission. “The best ally we have in protecting ourselves against terrorism is an informed public.”
EYES AND EARS EVERYWHERE
But perhaps the biggest cost of keeping too many secrets is that it has blinded the United States to an emerging and potentially even more dangerous threat: new tracking and monitoring technologies that are making it increasingly difficult to conceal even the most sensitive information. Take the exercise app Strava, which allows athletes to record their runs and bike rides, among other activities, and share them with friends. In 2017, this seemingly innocuous app became a national security nightmare after a student in Australia began posting images that showed the activities of American Strava users on what appeared to be forward operating bases in Afghanistan and military patrols in Syria. Others quickly generated maps of a French military base in Niger and of an Italian base and an undisclosed CIA site in Djibouti. Soon, it became clear that Strava data could be used not only to reveal the inner workings of such military installations but also, with a few tweaks, to identify and track particular individuals.
Hundreds of similar apps track the locations of unwitting Americans every day, collecting information that is bought and sold by data aggregators. One such company, X-Mode, collects, aggregates, and resells location data so granular that it can track the movements of individual devices and even determine their hardware settings. X-Mode collects this information through its own applications, but it also pays app developers who use X-Mode’s software developer and its location-tracking code for their data. According to a 2019 news report, X-Mode had access to location information for an average of 60 million global monthly users. In late 2020, Apple and Google banned X-Mode from collecting location information from mobile devices running their operating systems, but the tracking technology remains widespread.
X-Mode is the best-known location-tracking data aggregator, but it is far from the only company taking advantage of publicly available information to track people’s private lives. The New York–based company Clearview AI has devised a groundbreaking facial recognition app that allows users to upload photos and run them against a database of more than three billion images scraped from Facebook, Venmo, YouTube, and millions of other websites to identify the people in the photos. Federal and state law enforcement agencies have found the app to be much better than the FBI’s own database for tracking down criminal suspects. In 2019, the Indiana State Police solved a case in 20 minutes after uploading to Clearview an image from a cell phone video shot by a bystander to a crime. The man identified as the criminal suspect did not have a driver’s license and was not in any government database, but someone (not the man himself) had posted a video of him on social media along with a caption containing his name. He was quickly arrested and charged.
Keeping too many secrets has blinded the United States to an emerging and dangerous threat.
The rise of the Internet of Things—networked devices—means that more information is being collected about people’s daily lives than ever before, including vast troves of voice data generated by voice-operated assistants such as Amazon’s Alexa. In a 2017 report, Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence, identified the cybersecurity vulnerabilities produced by the Internet of Things as a key threat to national security. But the report focused narrowly on the physical dangers that sophisticated cybertools might pose to consumer products such as cars and medical devices and did not address the threats that these tools might pose to information security. Late last year, Congress enacted the Internet of Things Cybersecurity Improvement Act, which established minimum security requirements for connected devices. But the law applies only to devices sold to the federal government. Private citizens are on their own. And devices are hardly the only way that companies collect personal information. Facebook makes third-party plug-ins, such as “like” and “follow” buttons and tracking pixels, that its advertising partners can add to their own, non-Facebook websites and applications. These plug-ins, in addition to collecting data for Facebook partners, enable Facebook to monitor the online activities of its users even when they are not on its site.
The spies that necessitated the Espionage Act a century ago have largely been replaced by this ubiquitous tracking and monitoring technology. If an app can expose the location and identity of U.S. soldiers on forward operating bases in Afghanistan, it can do the same to intelligence officers working at the CIA’s headquarters, in Langley, Virginia, or even to the secretary of defense and his or her family members. Forget trying to place operatives under cover again. No matter how careful they have been to keep their identities off the Internet, their friends’ photos of them on Facebook and Instagram and inescapable surveillance videos that data aggregators and their customers can easily access will make it nearly impossible to hide their true identities and contacts, much less the identities and whereabouts of their families and friends.
The U.S. government may have refrained from sounding the alarm in part because its own intelligence agencies are exploiting such vulnerabilities themselves. Documents disclosed by WikiLeaks in 2017, for instance, revealed that the CIA had exploited a vulnerability in Samsung-connected televisions to use them as covert listening devices. But while the U.S. government has kept mum, private industry has met and sometimes surpassed authorities’ ability to collect information. Nongovernmental organizations working in conflict zones now crowdsource conflict-related information that is often as good as or better than the information gathered by U.S. intelligence agencies. At the same time, private satellite companies provide on-demand access to sophisticated satellite imagery of practically any location on earth. In short, the government no longer has a monopoly on the information that matters.
THE MOSAIC THEORY
In the national security world, there is a concept known as “the mosaic theory.” It holds that disparate, seemingly innocuous pieces of information can become significant when combined with other pieces of information. This theory is one reason why the vast majority of individuals with access to classified information are told that they cannot judge what information should be classified. A document that appears meaningless might, when put together with other information, give away an important piece of the mosaic to an adversary.
Historically, intelligence analysts have pieced together bits of information to complete the mosaic. As specialists in their fields, good analysts come to know when a seemingly inconsequential piece of information may be significant in context. The advent of big data, combined with artificial intelligence, promises to upend this traditional approach. To understand why, consider the breakthrough made by the retail giant Target almost a decade ago. Like most companies, Target assigns its customers ID numbers tied to their in-store cards and to their credit cards, names, and email addresses. When a customer makes a purchase, that information is collected and aggregated. In 2012, a statistician working at Target figured out that he could use this information, together with purchase information from women who had set up baby registries, to determine who was likely pregnant. Women who were pregnant started buying unscented lotion, for instance, and they were more likely to purchase calcium, magnesium, and zinc supplements. Using this information, Target was able to create a “pregnancy prediction score,” calculate where women probably were in the course of their pregnancies, and send women coupons for products they may need. This technology only came to public attention after an angry customer complained to a manager at Target that the company was sending mailers to his daughter that clearly targeted pregnant women. Later, he called to apologize: “It turns out there’s been some activities in my house I haven’t been completely aware of. She’s due in August. I owe you an apology.”
Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg testifying on Capitol Hill, Washington, D.C., October 2019
Erin Scott / Reuters
That was one company monitoring one set of purchases nearly a decade ago with the help of a simple statistical analysis. Now consider what an adversary could do if it combined that kind of information with similar information from a variety of databases and then used modern artificial intelligence to detect patterns.
This is likely already happening. China is suspected of collecting the personal data of millions of Americans. William Evanina, former director of the U.S. National Counterintelligence and Security Center, warned in early 2021 that China had stolen personal information belonging to 80 percent of Americans, including by hacking health-care companies and smart home devices that connect to the Internet. In April, federal investigators concluded that Chinese hackers may have scraped information from social media sites such as LinkedIn to help them determine which email accounts belonged to system administrators, information that they then used to target Microsoft’s email software with a cyberattack. In other words, China appears to have built a massive data set of Americans’ private information using data illegally obtained and scraped from publicly available websites.
In March 2014, Chinese hackers broke into computer networks of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, which houses personal information of all federal employees, and obtained the files of tens of thousands of employees who had applied for top-secret security clearances—including me. Although these files were not classified, they contained valuable national security information: the identities of government employees with top-secret clearances, as well as their family contacts, overseas travel and international contacts, Social Security numbers, and contact information for neighbors and friends. Combined with the database of Americans’ personal information, this information has likely put China in a position to determine which federal government employees with top-secret access are carrying large credit card debts, have used dating apps while married, have children studying abroad, or are staying unusually late at the office (possibly signaling that an important operation is underway). In short, while the U.S. government has been wasting its energy protecting classified information, the vast bulk of which is unimportant, information with much greater national security value has been left out for the taking.
Ending overclassification
The current U.S. national security system was designed to protect twentieth-century secrets. At the time the system was created, most important national security information was in the government’s hands. It made sense to design a system devoted almost entirely to keeping spies from obtaining that information and preventing insiders from disclosing it. Today, however, government information has been eclipsed by private information. The United States needs an approach to national security information that reflects that new reality. It must fundamentally reform the massive national security system that has created a giant edifice of mostly useless classified information and reduce the amount of private information that is easily attainable.
In pursuit of the first aim, the United States should start by imposing an automatic ten-year declassification rule for all classified information. Currently, all classified records older than 25 years are supposed to be automatically declassified, but there are so many exceptions to that rule that many documents remain secret for a half century or more. It took until 2017 to declassify 2,800 classified records relating to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, for instance, and even then the Trump administration held some records back.
A ten-year declassification timeline should have only two exceptions: information classified as “restricted data” under the Atomic Energy Act and information identifying intelligence agency informants who are still alive. Decisions about whether declassifying any other information might harm national security should be left to an independent review board made up of former government officials, historians, journalists, and civil rights advocates. A government agency facing the automatic declassification of information it deemed potentially harmful could appeal to the board to extend the classification period—in essence, forcing the agency to justify any deviation from the rule. By making declassification the default, such a rule would incentivize the government to adequately resource the review process and to allow it to take place in a timely manner.
China is suspected of collecting the personal data of millions of Americans.
The government should also harness the power of artificial intelligence and machine learning to identify cases of overclassification. Individual government employees who routinely overclassify information relative to their peers could be identified, notified that they classify documents more often than others, and encouraged to be more careful to assess the true need to classify. Artificial intelligence may also eventually be able to suggest classification levels at the time employees are writing documents or emails, to challenge incorrect classification decisions at the time they are made, and to review the classification of stored documents.
Ending mass overclassification would free officials to think more creatively about addressing the emerging threat posed by enormous troves of readily available personal data. Washington can begin by following the lead of Beijing, which despite being an intrusive surveillance state recently enacted one of the strongest data privacy laws in the world—likely not primarily to protect its citizens’ privacy but to prevent their data from being collected and exploited by foreign adversaries. The law applies to all entities and individuals, both inside and outside China, that process the personal data of Chinese citizens or organizations, imposing controls on the data and allowing Chinese citizens to sue if the information is stolen, misused, or corrupted. In so doing, the law discourages companies doing business in China from collecting and retaining personal data that could be of interest to foreign intelligence services. In other words, China is working to close the door to foreign powers seeking to exploit the personal data of its citizens, while the United States has left that door wide open.
Privacy in the United States, meanwhile, relies on a patchwork of federal and state laws, each of which addresses elements of the problem, but none of which is comprehensive. For years, civil liberties groups have been calling on the federal government to protect the private information of individuals, but those calls have gone mostly unheeded. Today, however, it is increasingly clear that protecting the privacy of Americans is necessary not just to ensure their civil liberties but also to defend the country.
A twenty-first-century approach to national security information requires greater attention to privacy.
Congress should start by expanding to all Internet-connected devices the same security requirements that currently apply only to those such devices that the government owns or operates. One subset of Internet-connected devices poses an especially acute danger: those that monitor the human body. These include fitness trackers that are worn on the body but also devices that are implanted or inserted into it: pacemakers, cardioverter defibrillators, and “digital pills” with embedded sensors that record that the medication has been taken. To reduce the vulnerability of these devices to hacking, federal regulators must require manufacturers to improve their security protocols.
The government should also give consumers new and better tools to control the data that companies collect about them. The Information Transparency and Personal Data Control Act, introduced in March by Representative Suzan DelBene, Democrat of Washington, would require “opt in” and “opt out” consent and “plain English privacy notices.” These measures would certainly be improvements over the status quo. But research shows that consumers tend not to read disclosures, so even clear individual opt-in and opt-out requirements may not limit data collection from unwitting consumers. The proposed legislation would also preempt state laws that may be more protective than the federal law, meaning that it may actually reduce protections in some places. A better option would be for Congress to enact a federal law that follows the example recently set by California, requiring businesses to respect individuals’ choices to universally opt out of data collection. That would be an important step toward giving control back to consumers.
Last, Congress should create an independent federal agency to monitor and enforce data protection rules. The United States is one of only a few democracies that does not have an agency dedicated to data protection. Instead, it relies on the Federal Trade Commission, which has many competing obligations. The proposed Data Protection Act of 2021, introduced in June by Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Democratic of New York, would create an agency to “regulate high-risk data practices and the collection, processing, and sharing of personal data”—in particular, by data aggregators. Establishing such an agency would also allow the federal government to develop expertise in data privacy issues and to respond more quickly and effectively to new challenges and threats.
LOCKED OUT
The inventor Charles Kettering once observed that “when you lock the laboratory door, you lock out more than you lock in.” In the early twentieth century, when the current classification system took shape, the information worth protecting was mostly located inside federal agencies, so locking the door made some sense. Today, however, Kettering’s observation applies more than ever. Private entities have access to more, and in many cases better, information than the government, so locking the door only isolates federal agencies without protecting much information worth keeping secure.
What a twenty-first-century approach to national security information requires is greater attention to privacy. Yet the United States has done little to protect the information about ordinary citizens that in a world of artificial intelligence and machine learning poses a growing threat to national security. The United States spends billions of dollars to protect classified information, much of which is already readily available from public sources. But it does little to enable its citizens, including those in important government positions, to keep their private lives from being documented, tracked, and exposed. In so doing, it is leaving pieces of the mosaic of U.S. national security lying around for its adversaries to gather up and put together.
4. IntelBrief: Traditional Espionage Challenged by Ubiquity of Emerging Technologies
Conclusion:
Operating securely in the age of universal technology with tracking capabilities is among the primary challenges of all intelligence agencies. HUMINT remains a crucially important and valuable form of intelligence gathering, especially when so many forms of other data transmission and storage are being compromised so frequently, with devastating results. There are constant proclamations that HUMINT is increasingly irrelevant or outdated in the age of constant signals intelligence (SIGINT), and these proclamations are constantly wrong. Some secrets will only be shared face-to-face, and making sure these meetings are truly surveillance free is increasingly difficult but no less vital.
IntelBrief: Traditional Espionage Challenged by Ubiquity of Emerging Technologies - The Soufan Center
December 6, 2021
AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko
Bottom Line Up Front
- The need for human intelligence (HUMINT) never wanes, but the risks are evolving as new surveillance technologies proliferate.
- HUMINT in the age of ubiquitous cameras and biometrics is a challenge for all intelligence agencies, operatives, and sources.
- From alias travel through airports with biometrics to constant tracking by phone, there are few, if any, areas that can ever be considered “clean.”
- It is becoming difficult to detect surveillance in a constant surveillance environment where there is no need to follow individuals physically.
One of the cardinal rules of human intelligence (HUMINT) tradecraft is to always know your “status,” meaning whether an intelligence officer is under surveillance or not. Intelligence officers and the agents they handle must know that their meetings or activities are free from surveillance. Information obtained from a compromised relationship is itself compromised, with cascading effects if undetected. To that end, surveillance detection is a cornerstone of intelligence work. How that is accomplished in an age of surveillance across the board is a primary challenge for all intelligence agencies. The basics of an asset meeting are well known from Hollywood movies—the officer determines if they are free from surveillance by a carefully planned route and well-chosen locations. This and other tactics would reveal if someone (e.g. host country police or intelligence service, third-country rival intelligence service, terrorist or criminal entities, etc.) were following the officer. The task is risky and never ending, but it has been manageable. The issue now, one that has grown more important in recent years, is how do you detect if you’re being “followed” if no one is actually following you but you are still very much under surveillance?
Global Positioning System (GPS) trackers on vehicles are nothing new and have been something intelligence agencies have dealt with for some time. What is relatively new are modern cars with built-in operating systems that provide companies and governments real-time access not just to locations, but to the vehicle’s functions. Increasingly, all vehicles are “connected,” and this is a problem for officers who need to remain unnoticed. This is true especially when “going dark” itself brings notice. Additionally, license plate readers and street cameras, and even business surveillance cameras, record everything that passes by. Even if these systems are not monitored in real time, they can still prove effective in unraveling an operation and finding all the actors and their actions. Beyond tracking vehicles, the environment is even more formidable for face-to-face meetings or operations. The days of an informant or “watcher” on most street corners still exists, but now they are augmented by city cameras, in addition to the cameras on ubiquitous smart phones. Intelligence officers must act as if they are always under surveillance when they are in public or moving through public spaces. The “cleanest” (meaning surveillance free) meeting location is useless if the routes to that location are being filmed by every manner of surveillance system. These challenges have been exacerbated during the COVID-19 pandemicin a number of ways.
New technologies have lowered the barrier to entry for individuals to engage in surveillance. Smart phones track every step, every location, every interaction, and now not having a phone, or going “dark” (i.e. turning phones off, or not carrying one) is an indication for rival services that something could be awry. Accordingly, officers must stay within a pattern they create, and do so at all times—an incredibly difficult feat. Fitness apps know where you are, and often broadcast that information; smart watches are not so smart for intelligence work; email and social media accounts know where you are and often broadcast that information. Every function or app on a smart phone is a spy, and a persistent one at that. Intelligence officers want to operate in “airplane mode” at critical times given that everything around them and their personal technology demand to know who they are, where they are going, and what they’re doing.
Operating securely in the age of universal technology with tracking capabilities is among the primary challenges of all intelligence agencies. HUMINT remains a crucially important and valuable form of intelligence gathering, especially when so many forms of other data transmission and storage are being compromised so frequently, with devastating results. There are constant proclamations that HUMINT is increasingly irrelevant or outdated in the age of constant signals intelligence (SIGINT), and these proclamations are constantly wrong. Some secrets will only be shared face-to-face, and making sure these meetings are truly surveillance free is increasingly difficult but no less vital.
5. FDD | Washington Seeks to Counter China’s Quantum Computing Drive
Excerpts:
The Biden administration’s recent sanctions will hamper China’s ability to acquire U.S. technologies to aid its quantum computing research and development. However, this will not be enough. The U.S. government must encourage allies and partners to take similar steps and do more to establish quantum-resistant algorithms sooner rather than later. Encrypted data collected now may not remain secret for long and will be vulnerable to decryption by quantum computers in the not-too-distant future.
In October, public revelations about China’s surprise test of a nuclear-capable hypersonic missile underscored that Washington underestimates China’s timeline for technical developments at America’s peril. Instead of assuming that quantum computing remains a distant threat, Washington must work with industry to begin developing standards, educating the private sector, and exploring regulations to shift toward quantum-secure encryption today.
FDD | Washington Seeks to Counter China’s Quantum Computing Drive
fdd.org · by Dr. Georgianna Shea CCTI and TCIL Chief Technologist and Cara Cancelmo CCTI intern· December 6, 2021
December 6, 2021 | Policy Brief
Washington Seeks to Counter China’s Quantum Computing Drive
Cara Cancelmo
Intern
The U.S. Department of Commerce last month sanctioned eight Chinese companies for supporting the efforts of the People’s Republic of China to develop quantum computing technology for military applications. While the computer and security industry initially regarded quantum technology, which conducts calculations at an exponentially faster speed than traditional computers, as a threat 10 to 15 years in the future, the U.S. government’s actions reflect a recognition that the timeline is shrinking.
The Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security added the eight Chinese firms to its Entity List, thereby barring them from importing U.S.-origin technologies and equipment that would advance the People’s Liberation Army’s capabilities and threaten the United States. The department noted that China is exploring quantum-enabled “counter-stealth and counter-submarine applications.”
While quantum computing has many peaceful applications, it could also give China a decisive edge in cryptography. An October 2021 report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s National Counterintelligence and Security Center warns that development of quantum capabilities by U.S. adversaries puts “at risk the infrastructure protecting today’s economic and national security communications. In short, whoever wins the race for quantum computing supremacy could potentially compromise the communications of others.” Technology research company Gartner likewise identifies quantum computing as an emerging technology that will provide a competitive advantage over the next 10 years.
The People’s Republic of China is preparing for the day it has robust quantum computing capabilities. Last month, a report by Booz Allen Hamilton warned that Chinese cyber threat groups likely now seek to gather “encrypted data with long-term utility,” with the expectation they can decrypt it within the decade. This type of data includes biometric markers, social security numbers, weapon designs, and the identities of covert intelligence officers and sources.
Quantum computing will undermine the effectiveness of current encryption methods, which secure daily digital communications, including credit card payments, military operational information, and other government secrets. Today’s encryption is unbreakable because it uses algorithms — essentially mathematical equations — that require too much computing power to decipher. Yet because quantum computers are exponentially faster, they dramatically reduce the time required to perform calculations needed to break present-day encryption.
Theoretically, it is possible to create unconditional security, resistant to both quantum and classical computers, while maintaining compatibility with existing communications protocols and networks. Deploying what is called “post-quantum” cryptography, users can encrypt data in a way that quantum computers cannot break. The National Institute of Standards and Technology is developing cryptography standards, slated for release in 2024, that users can implement to prepare for employing post-quantum cryptography. However, without additional education about the reality of the threat, it may take years for businesses and the public to understand and adopt these standards and transition to new technologies.
The Biden administration’s recent sanctions will hamper China’s ability to acquire U.S. technologies to aid its quantum computing research and development. However, this will not be enough. The U.S. government must encourage allies and partners to take similar steps and do more to establish quantum-resistant algorithms sooner rather than later. Encrypted data collected now may not remain secret for long and will be vulnerable to decryption by quantum computers in the not-too-distant future.
In October, public revelations about China’s surprise test of a nuclear-capable hypersonic missile underscored that Washington underestimates China’s timeline for technical developments at America’s peril. Instead of assuming that quantum computing remains a distant threat, Washington must work with industry to begin developing standards, educating the private sector, and exploring regulations to shift toward quantum-secure encryption today.
Dr. Georgianna Shea is the chief technologist of the Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation (CCTI) at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), where she also contributes to FDD’s China Program. Cara Cancelmo is a CCTI intern. For more analysis from the authors, CCTI, and the China Program, please subscribe, HERE. Follow FDD on Twitter @FDD and @FDD_CCTI. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
Issues:
fdd.org · by Dr. Georgianna Shea CCTI and TCIL Chief Technologist · December 6, 2021
6. ICC prosecutor defends dropping US from Afghan war crime probe
Surprising statements:
The International Criminal Court’s (ICC) prosecutor has defended omitting the United States from an investigation in Afghanistan, saying the “worst crimes” were committed by the Taliban and the ISIL (ISIS).
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He added that the “time for change is ripe” at the ICC in general, reiterating earlier promises to focus on cases with a likely chance of conviction and drop those where successful prosecution is unlikely.
ICC prosecutor defends dropping US from Afghan war crime probe
Rights groups have criticised Karim Khan’s decision not to investigate US forces and CIA for war crimes.
Rights groups criticised prosecutor Karim Khan's decision in September to 'deprioritise' the investigation into American forces [File: Reuters]
Published On 6 Dec 20216 Dec 2021
The International Criminal Court’s (ICC) prosecutor has defended omitting the United States from an investigation in Afghanistan, saying the “worst crimes” were committed by the Taliban and the ISIL (ISIS).
Rights groups criticised Karim Khan’s decision in September to “deprioritise” the investigation into American forces, and focus instead on Afghanistan’s new rulers and the rival Islamic State in Khorasan Province, ISKP (ISIS-K), an ISIL affiliate.
“I made a decision, based upon the evidence, that the worst crimes in terms of gravity and scale and extent seem to be committed by the so-called Islamic State [in] Khorasan and also the Taliban,” Khan told a meeting of ICC countries in The Hague on Monday.
“And I said I would prioritise these and I have asked the judges for authorisation to carry out those investigations,” added the British prosecutor.
The ICC’s Afghan investigation into US crimes had long enraged Washington, and prompted the administration of then-President Donald Trump to impose sanctions on Khan’s predecessor Fatou Bensouda.
The world’s only permanent war crimes court launched a preliminary investigation in Afghanistan in 2006, and Bensouda asked judges to authorise a full investigation in 2017.
Bensouda said there was “reasonable” suspicion of war crimes by the Taliban and US forces in Afghanistan and the CIA in secret detention centres abroad.
Inquiry suspended
The now-deposed government in Kabul then asked the court in early 2020 to pause its inquiry while it investigated war crimes domestically.
However, Khan in September asked judges to relaunch the process, saying the Taliban’s takeover in August meant war crimes would no longer be investigated properly.
Judges have asked for more clarity over who is officially in charge in Afghanistan before deciding.
The British prosecutor, meanwhile, said while the recent coup in Sudan had “caused a bit of a hiatus”, he expected his team to be able to return soon to continue its war crimes investigation there.
Khan visited Khartoum in August to sign a cooperation deal to push through a “genocide” trial for ex-leader Omar al-Bashir over the Darfur conflict.
He added that the “time for change is ripe” at the ICC in general, reiterating earlier promises to focus on cases with a likely chance of conviction and drop those where successful prosecution is unlikely.
7. Broad overhaul of military justice system being sidelined in favor of narrower focus on sexual assault
Excerpts:
Gillibrand and her partners are upset that negotiators have embraced the House bill’s approach of letting commanders continue convening courts-martial, distrusting the House proposal’s stipulation that the special prosecutor’s “binding” charging decisions will be enough to prevent cases from being drawn out. Instead, they want to create an entirely separate courts-martial convening authority, though it would be left to the individual service chiefs — the generals and admirals who lead the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps and Coast Guard — to determine what that should look like.
The dispute has exacerbated tensions within the community of lawmakers advocating for sexual assault reforms. Leading House Democrats say their version is not only sufficient but better than Gillibrand’s, in certain respects. Officials point out that only their approach makes sexual harassment a punishable crime and that, overall, it is more specific in its instruction to the Pentagon.
“Only the House bill ensures true independence by establishing an Office of the Chief Special Victim Prosecutor in each military department that would be under civilian control, not under the judge advocate generals who . . . have been quietly lobbying Congress to water down the House bill,” said Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.), chief architect of that chamber’s military sexual assault legislation, who, like Gillibrand, is a longtime critic of the Pentagon’s existing approach to prosecuting sexual assaults.
Commanders, Speier added, would have “no meaningful role” in convening the courts-martial — and would be subject to discipline themselves if they don’t heed the special prosecutor’s charging decisions.
Broad overhaul of military justice system being sidelined in favor of narrower focus on sexual assault
A widely popular proposal to force sweeping changes in how the military prosecutes felony crimes is likely to be left out of this year’s defense authorization bill, according to people familiar with the matter, ending for now what advocates called watershed legislation for equal justice in favor of a competing plan that focuses more narrowly on sexual assault and related offenses.
The proposal to establish an independent authority to determine when charges should be filed for numerous crimes was spearheaded by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.). For years, she has promoted this approach as the best way to dissociate the military justice system from the biases of commanders and ensure crime victims — particularly women and minorities — cannot be silenced or denied justice by their superiors.
Gillibrand’s legislation struck a rare sweet spot in congressional politics this year, winning the support of most Democrats and a broad coalition of Republicans, and clear majorities in the Senate and the House. But last-minute procedural setbacks, coupled with resistance from the Pentagon, have sapped the momentum it previously enjoyed.
Based on more than a dozen interviews with senior officials and advocates familiar with private negotiations on Capitol Hill, it appears the Gillibrand provision, short of a miracle, is out. Those talks involve the top Democrats and Republicans on the Senate and House Armed Services committees. The senior officials familiar with their discussions spoke on the condition of anonymity because the $768 billion defense bill, which dictates funding for the Pentagon and other defense operations, has not been finalized.
In place of Gillibrand’s legislation, the defense bill is expected to incorporate an alternative proposal that will revolutionize how the military justice system approaches cases of sexual assault and certain related crimes, and which already received the backing of three-fourths of the House as part of its version of the defense bill, officials said. Charging decisions in those cases will become the purview of an independent special victims prosecutor, reflecting recommendations the Pentagon endorsed earlier this year. The final defense bill is also likely to designate the crimes of murder and kidnapping as falling under the authority of the special prosecutor, according to officials involved in negotiations.
But for many advocates of sexual assault reform in the military, those changes fall short. And lawmakers who want to address discrimination more broadly in military prosecutions point out that the list of crimes that would fall under the special prosecutor’s purview does not include offenses for which service members who are racial minorities are disproportionately charged.
The forces behind Gillibrand’s legislation are blunt in their assessment of the baseline changes contained in the House’s legislation.
“It’s not good enough,” Sen. Joni Ernst, the Iowa Republican who has been Gillibrand’s chief partner in pressing for a more sweeping overhaul, said in an interview. “Sure, anything is better than nothing. But it doesn’t solve the problem. It doesn’t go nearly as far as we need it to.”
Gillibrand, in a statement, responded to questions about the potential demise of her legislation by emphasizing its broad backing in Congress. To excise it from the National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, as the larger bill is known, would be a “disservice” to military personnel, she said.
“Our reform has the bipartisan support of 66 senators and 220 House members,” Gillibrand said. “The only way it does not become law in the NDAA is if a handful of powerful men rip it out behind closed doors.”
Much of Gillibrand’s frustration is and has been directed toward Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Jack Reed (D-R.I.), who has expressed skepticism about her approach, despite allowing it into his panel’s defense bill draft this year.
“Senator Reed is working hard to deliver the most transformative and historic reconfiguration of the U.S. military justice system in decades,” Reed’s spokesman Chip Unruh said in a statement. “He’s working with colleagues on both sides of the aisle to make our military justice system better.”
A spokeswoman for House Armed Services Committee Chairman Adam Smith (D-Wash.) declined to comment. A spokeswoman for that panel’s top Republican, Rep. Mike D. Rogers (Ala.), did not respond to a request for comment. The Senate Armed Services Committee’s top Republican, Sen. James M. Inhofe (Okla.), said in an interview that negotiations surrounding Gillibrand’s bill were too much of “a moving target” to discuss publicly.
The campaign to improve crime victims’ ability to seek remedy through the military justice system dates back more than a decade. Most of the public debate has centered around correcting how the military prosecutes cases of sexual assault in particular, given that the Pentagon’s own numbers show it is a rampant problem and there are reports that thousands of cases go unreported.
But the debate about what reforms are necessary has been complicated by differences in Congress and within the military, many of them political and generational, about how to level the playing field for women and minorities, and disagreement over what lawmakers should — and should not — demand from the Pentagon.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin began the year by convening an independent commission to review how the military prosecutes sexual assaults. His and President Biden’s speedy embrace of its recommendations, including that prosecutors outside the chain of command determine when such sexual assault charges should be filed, was acknowledgment that the problem needed fixing.
The congressional debate grew complicated in the past few weeks as the Senate defense bill — which contains Gillibrand’s legislation — hit what are amounting to insurmountable roadblocks. Now, there is a race against the clock as lawmakers rush to get a defense bill to Biden’s desk before the end of the year.
The breakdown has occurred over two main points: how many types of offenses should fall under the new special prosecutor’s purview and who, ultimately, is responsible for convening the courts-martial that will hear the cases at trial.
Gillibrand’s proposal puts charging decisions for nearly any crime that is not exclusive to the military and carries a potential maximum sentence of over a year in prison into the hands of a special victims prosecutor. It has the support of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), who has told Pelosi that he wants to see it in the final defense legislation, though the Senate has thus fair failed to pass its version of the defense bill, according to a person familiar with their discussions.
But people involved in the negotiations said that congressional leaders are homing in on a narrower roster of crimes. There are competing explanations as to why. Those who support the more limited approach argue that renegotiating the list could threaten the balance of the entire defense bill. Those who support a more aggressive approach argue that the resistance is born of cowardice and a reluctance to stand up to pressure from the Pentagon not to push military leaders where they don’t want to go.
Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said, “There’s absolutely nothing but support from Pentagon leadership in removing the prosecution of sexual assault and sexual assault related crimes outside the chain of command and into the hands of special victims prosecutors.”
Gillibrand and her partners are upset that negotiators have embraced the House bill’s approach of letting commanders continue convening courts-martial, distrusting the House proposal’s stipulation that the special prosecutor’s “binding” charging decisions will be enough to prevent cases from being drawn out. Instead, they want to create an entirely separate courts-martial convening authority, though it would be left to the individual service chiefs — the generals and admirals who lead the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps and Coast Guard — to determine what that should look like.
The dispute has exacerbated tensions within the community of lawmakers advocating for sexual assault reforms. Leading House Democrats say their version is not only sufficient but better than Gillibrand’s, in certain respects. Officials point out that only their approach makes sexual harassment a punishable crime and that, overall, it is more specific in its instruction to the Pentagon.
“Only the House bill ensures true independence by establishing an Office of the Chief Special Victim Prosecutor in each military department that would be under civilian control, not under the judge advocate generals who . . . have been quietly lobbying Congress to water down the House bill,” said Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.), chief architect of that chamber’s military sexual assault legislation, who, like Gillibrand, is a longtime critic of the Pentagon’s existing approach to prosecuting sexual assaults.
Commanders, Speier added, would have “no meaningful role” in convening the courts-martial — and would be subject to discipline themselves if they don’t heed the special prosecutor’s charging decisions.
But such assurances have failed to mollify Gillibrand and many minorities in Congress, who worry that lawmakers are missing an opportunity to make necessary change.
Members of the Congressional Black Caucus, in particular, have urged Pelosi and Smith in recent days to put more crimes under the special prosecutor’s purview. At a minimum, they want to see larceny, robbery and assault charging decisions added to the list.
“Those crimes, like stalking and like kidnapping, are often associated in these special victims scenarios,” Rep. Anthony G. Brown (D-Md.) said in an interview. And, he added, “this is where you really begin going after the racial and ethnic disparity.”
Black and Brown service members tend to be disproportionately court-martialed for disputes involving alleged theft or fights compared with their White counterparts, minority lawmakers have argued. The Pentagon does not collect such data, but a separate provision in the House legislation aims to change that. Putting such cases in the hands of a special victims prosecutor, they contend, is the only way to guarantee that commanders — who are disproportionately White — do not perpetuate such bias.
Congressional Black Caucus members have the backing of sexual-assault-reform advocates, who say that it is better for the military to address prosecutorial discrimination in all forms. Otherwise, many advocates for broader reforms fear that singling out sexual assault — where the victims are disproportionately women — could lead to more institutional bias.
8. 34,000 Afghan refugees remain on seven military bases in the US three months after evacuation mission
34,000 Afghan refugees remain on seven military bases in the US three months after evacuation mission
An Afghan girl carries oranges in Liberty Village on Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, N.J., on Nov. 8, 2021. The Defense Department is providing transportation, temporary housing, medical screening, and general support for Afghan evacuees at military bases in the U.S. (Matt Hecht/U.S. Air National Guard)
WASHINGTON — About 34,000 Afghan evacuees are still living on seven military bases in the United States more than three months after the U.S. military’s final flight out of Kabul on Aug. 30, chief Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said Monday.
The number is down from 53,150 evacuees living on eight installations in the U.S., which was reported Oct. 26. Since then, Fort Lee, Va., on Nov. 17 ceased its participation in Operation Allies Welcome, the name of the mission supporting Afghan evacuees in their transition to America, Kirby said.
The military has been housing Afghan evacuees at eight installations in the U.S. since late July when evacuations began in the final weeks of the 20-year U.S. involvement in Afghanistan. The drop in numbers could mean nearly 20,000 Afghan evacuees have processed out of the camps and are now settling throughout the United States.
“We now have we have fewer Afghans on military bases than ever before, and more now have processed out than we have waiting to get processed,” Kirby said.
The bases in the U.S. that continue hosting Afghans are Fort Bliss in Texas, Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in New Jersey, Fort McCoy in Wisconsin, Camp Atterbury in Indiana, Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico, and Fort Pickett and Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia.
At the peak of the mission’s operations, the bases had a capacity of 64,000. After Fort Lee completed its part, the capacity is down to 46,000, Kirby said.
“We're glad to see that a majority of those who came to the United States have now been resettled,” he said.
Kirby could not say Monday how much longer the mission will last and which base might be next to end its evacuee-support operations. Fort Lee was the first to help with the mission, and the first to end operations.
So far, the U.S. has pledged about $13.3 billion to Afghan resettlement efforts, about half of which came in a September spending bill. The second half came as part of the continuing resolution signed into law Friday to keep the government funded until Feb. 18.
The funds have drawn criticism from some Republican lawmakers, such as Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla..
“The only response I’ve seen from this administration when it comes to the Afghanistan withdrawal debacle is to throw more money at the problem — and now Democrats want another $7 billion for the Afghan resettlement process on top of the $6 billion they have already spent in the last three months,” Lankford said in a statement Friday.
Rep. Jim Banks, R-Ind., also criticized the move in a tweet on Thursday, noting “Congress wouldn’t even approve $8.6 billion for Trump’s border wall.”
In total, the U.S. helped evacuate about 120,000 people out of Afghanistan. About 69,000 of those evacuees, which included Afghans who had helped Americans during the 20-year conflict, have come to the U.S., Lankford said.
Caitlin Doornbos
Caitlin Doornbos covers the Pentagon for Stars and Stripes after covering the Navy’s 7th Fleet as Stripes’ Indo-Pacific correspondent at Yokosuka Naval Base, Japan. Previously, she worked as a crime reporter in Lawrence, Kan., and Orlando, Fla., where she was part of the Orlando Sentinel team that placed as finalist for the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news. Caitlin has a Bachelor of Science in journalism from the University of Kansas and master’s degree in defense and strategic studies from the University of Texas at El Paso.
9. Austin: Stopgap funding for a full year would limit Pentagon’s China-focused programs, harm troops
A year long continuing resolution?
Not the way to run a railroad (or a military).
Austin: Stopgap funding for a full year would limit Pentagon’s China-focused programs, harm troops
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin delivers the keynote address during at the Reagan National Defense Forum at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif., on Saturday, Dec. 4, 2021. (Chad J. McNeeley/Office of the Secretary of Defense via AP)
A full-year stopgap spending measure to fund the federal government — including the military — for fiscal 2022 could irreparably harm Pentagon efforts to check a rising Chinese military and halt planned moves for troops, the top U.S. defense official warned Monday.
“I strongly urge Congress to seize this opportunity to sustain American competitiveness, advance American leadership, and enable our forces by immediately reaching a bipartisan, bicameral agreement on full-year 2022 appropriations,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin wrote in a statement issued Monday, more than two months since the beginning of the fiscal year. “It’s not only the right thing to do, it’s the best thing they can do for our nation’s defense.”
Austin’s statement came just days after President Joe Biden on Friday signed into law the second stopgap spending measure — known as a continuing resolution — passed by Congress to fund the federal government in fiscal 2022, which began Oct. 1. The latest continuing resolution passed in the absence of a fiscal 2022 budget allows federal institutions to continue operating through Feb. 18.
Neither chamber of Congress has yet passed a fiscal 2022 defense appropriations bill, and lawmakers have indicated they are not yet close to voting on the critical measures. The Senate’s version of the bill would provide the Pentagon about $725.8 billion, and the House version — in line with Biden’s budget request — would provide $705.9 billion. Congress also has yet to pass a 2022 National Defense Authorization Act, a separate bill which sets policy priorities and directions how the Pentagon spends the funds that it is provided in the annual appropriations bill.
Some Capitol Hill lawmakers have floated the possibility of passing a full-year continuing resolution to cover all of 2022, which ends Sept. 30. Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., who is the vice chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said last week at least “a handful” of his Republican colleagues would be on board with such a move, but he also said he would prefer to pass an appropriations bill. The White House and others have opposed further continuing resolutions, which fund the federal government at fiscal year 2021 amounts.
In Austin’s statement on Monday, he noted the Pentagon would be unable to begin new programs, including some aimed at keeping pace with Chinese advancements under a continuing resolution. He said a CR would also continue funding some programs that the Pentagon has planned to eliminate this year.
More so, the defense secretary said, a full-year CR would represent a “significant” budget cut to the Pentagon, considering high levels of inflation this year.
New programs aimed at boosting the Pentagon’s efforts in critical areas such as hypersonic weapons, artificial intelligence and cyber operations would all be impacted without a full-year appropriation, Austin said. Meanwhile, adversaries such as China and Russia will continue investing in those areas.
“At a time when our adversaries are advancing their concepts and capabilities to erode our strategic advantages, and as we begin to knit together a truly groundbreaking vision of integrated deterrence, our hands will be tied,” Austin wrote. “We will be forced to spend money on things we don’t need and stop spending money on investments we desperately do need.”
John Kirby, the Pentagon’s top spokesman, said Monday that Austin was particularly concerned the military without a new budget would not be able to move forward with its largest-ever plans for science and technology research and development this year.
“Not being able to start these initiatives will definitely have an impact, not just on hypersonics — and I understand the interest in hypersonics — but it goes beyond that,” Kirby told reporters at the Pentagon. “You’ve heard the secretary talk about integrated deterrence and making sure we have … the technology in place to better defend this nation against threats, such as the kinds of threats that could emanate from places like Russia and China. When you can't start new programs, when you don’t have money to spend on that sort of investment, it absolutely impacts your abilities, your capabilities going forward.”
Austin warned an unprecedented full-year continuing resolution would “cause enormous, if not irreparable, damage for a wide range of bipartisan priorities — from defense readiness and modernization, to research and development, to public health.”
A full-year CR would also halt more than 100 military construction projects, including barracks and family housing, he noted.
Austin said some troops likely would not be able to move to new duty stations in long-planned permanent changes of station because funds for the moves would instead need to be used to offset the 2.7% pay raise service members are due to receive Jan. 1. The increase in troops pay could also limit how many new recruits the military services can afford to ship to boot camp in fiscal 2022, Austin said.
“And it would result in over $5 billion in cuts to our operating accounts, too, hurting the readiness of our troops and curtailing our ability to cover the health care needs of military families,” the defense secretary wrote.
Stars and Stripes reporter Caitlin Doornbos contributed to this report.
Corey Dickstein
Corey Dickstein covers the military in the U.S. southeast. He joined the Stars and Stripes staff in 2015 and covered the Pentagon for more than five years. He previously covered the military for the Savannah Morning News in Georgia. Dickstein holds a journalism degree from Georgia College & State University and has been recognized with several national and regional awards for his reporting and photography. He is based in Atlanta.
10. Call Putin Out by Negotiating
Excerpts:
It is far from clear to me how Ukraine, which is quite far from the North Atlantic, meets this criterion. Even some of Ukraine’s biggest boosters in Washington acknowledge that the country would be hard-pressed to ever meet the requirements to be admitted to the alliance. If that is the case, then, why accept such a destabilizing policy for a distant fantasy?
To those who insist that American strength can overcome Russian aggression, it would be wise to reflect on the fact that Russia has shown the world for the last decade at least that it is happy to accept pain, setbacks, and sanctions — over Ukraine and Syria, for example — because its leaders have a clear conception of how they prioritize various objects and interests.
It is not obvious that there is a constructive and stable way to end the current crisis and longstanding tensions between Moscow and the West. But the Biden administration ought to give diplomacy a chance. Sometimes, when tensions between two countries grow, opportunities present themselves which, if handled tactfully, might paradoxically contribute to more lasting peace.
Call Putin Out by Negotiating - War on the Rocks
As Russian and Belarusian forces gather around Ukraine’s borders in the biggest military build-up in Europe since the Cold War, Western capitals seem stuck between two deeply held desires: to keep the door to NATO membership open and to forestall an invasion that could devastate the Ukrainian military and millions of ordinary people. Calls are growing louder in Washington for President Joe Biden to act forcefully by demanding that Russia stand down and effectively extending the U.S. security umbrella over Ukraine, perhaps by deploying a trip-wire force. This, however, would risk a general war as Russian President Vladimir Putin has forcefully and repeatedly drawn a red line around that outcome, among others.
The most effective policy would be to test the seriousness of Putin’s repeated public claims through a bold act of diplomacy: During his scheduled phone call with Putin tomorrow, Biden should offer to launch talks with Russia about European security on the condition that Moscow demobilizes its looming invasion force. Comprising the agenda would be each side’s most pressing concerns: for Moscow, NATO expansion and the U.S. force posture in the alliance’s east and for Washington, the territorial integrity of Ukraine, Russia’s force posture in its Western Military District, as well as cyber operations and criminality. Both sides will likely be interested in discussing arms control. They could even rejuvenate discussions over the Conventional Armed Forces in Europe Treaty. Each side should be expected to engage in substantive conversations and to forswear destabilizing moves — political or military — while these negotiations are underway. European countries whose interests are involved will be invited to send delegates, including Ukraine.
Putin’s response to this opportunity will reveal the truth of Russian intentions. If the United States offers such talks and Russia proceeds on its course of military build-up toward invasion, it will become clearer that Putin is both insincere and inexorably aggressive. To deal with that scenario, the United States can do what it seems like the Biden administration is doing now: It can publicize and warn about Russian preparations in order to mobilize, in advance, as powerful a set of planned responses as can be agreed with Europe, including the new German government. This might include cutting Russia off from the international financial system, which the White House has reportedly considered. The Biden administration might even encourage Sweden, and perhaps even Finland, to join NATO. Regardless, Washington would be unwise to make this crisis a test of U.S. military strength.
If Putin takes Biden up on his offer and complies with its conditions, then it will become apparent that there is perhaps a constructive deal to be made, and these negotiations might even become the basis of a new understanding for European security.
This seems to be the most productive way to ensure stability in the short term and gain a more durable long-term understanding with Russia. This proposal tests a series of assumptions on the situation that I hold. The first is that Russian elites — including Putin — are genuinely paranoid: It is an embedded part of Russian strategic culture and history, and while Russian leaders and spokespeople certainly ham it up and exaggerate for propaganda purposes, the paranoia is — at its core — sincere. Washington serially underestimates this basic fact and many think it is all just an act. Second, for Putin himself, stature and acknowledgement carry a great deal of weight. Third, Putin has been consistent on his red lines. He has recently given us a clear statement on his top two: no more eastern expansion of NATO and limiting the types of U.S.-supplied weapons systems in Ukraine. On the latter, Putin seems mostly concerned with U.S. defense cooperation with Ukraine, U.S. military presence in Ukraine, what U.S. weapons are deployed there, and the transfers of select technologies. Fourth, Russia’s recent mobilization is not just a signal and it is certainly not a bluff. Putin is indeed planning to invade Ukraine unless something changes. And finally, Russia’s behavior vis-à-vis Ukraine, its destabilizing cyber operations and tolerance of cyber criminality from within its borders, and its general disregard for international norms are of a greater whole.
Why should the United States and its allies entertain such talks in the face of all this aggression? Quite simply, it would be in their interests to do so. And it would be an effective way to test the assumptions I laid out above and chart a realistic path forward on U.S.-Russian relations. There is a deal to be explored, at the very least. Doing so might thwart or at least meaningfully delay a further Russian invasion of Ukraine.
In the years since Russia’s 2014 assault on Ukraine, decision-makers and elected officials in Western capitals have told us that we should keep relying on more of the same to deter Moscow: sanctions against Russia, military-to-military training and aid for Ukraine, and military build-ups in the Baltic Sea region. But that is, in part, what led us to the current crisis. Under three administrations, Washington has developed a robust military-to-military relationship with Kyiv. Meanwhile, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and other senior Biden administration officials repeatedly affirm that NATO’s door is open to Georgia and Ukraine. When it comes to supplying materiel and weaponry to Ukraine, this would turn on what can practically be done and what the Ukrainian armed forces can meaningfully absorb and employ. Supplying hardware is rarely a military panacea. Unfortunately, Kyiv failed to reform or modernize its military since 2014. Its defense spending stands at less than 3 percent of its gross domestic product.
The case for diplomacy is powerful. Unfortunately, however, diplomacy is often portrayed as a sign of weakness, a gift to the other side, and representative of a naïve view of the world. This is a dangerous sentiment. If we decline to negotiate with those countries that we have serious problems with, the world will become a far more dangerous place. We negotiate because we do not trust. Furthermore, ceasing NATO’s eastward expansion would be wise. It would serve European and U.S. security interests. It would avoid leveraging U.S. credibility for a state that represents, at best, a peripheral interest. It would avoid an expensive security commitment to Ukraine, a highly corrupt state that is under mortal threat but cannot bring itself to be serious about its own defense. The path to Ukraine in NATO would contribute to insecurity, not security. The same is true for Ukraine in NATO itself.
There is a bizarre argument on Ukraine and NATO that is now commonly surfaced: that Washington would be encroaching on the rights and independence of Ukraine by agreeing to halt NATO’s eastward expansion. This makes no sense to me. Ukraine is free to be an independent actor. But so is the United States. NATO is a club with a clear first among equals. Joining NATO does not just affect Ukraine, of course. It affects the entire alliance. The idea of outsourcing important strategic decisions to another country and abdicating America’s independence would be nonsensical.
In private discussions and social media exchanges, I am often told that my recommendations involve acknowledging a Russian sphere of influence. That is simply not the case. This is about restricting entry into an alliance that not every country ought to have the right to join just because they meet certain requirements. It is high time to revisit NATO’s open-door policy. The talks I recommend could be a constructive and stabilizing mechanism to do so. This policy is traditionally justified with reference to the North Atlantic Treaty’s 10th article, which states:
The Parties may, by unanimous agreement, invite any other European State in a position to further the principles of this Treaty and to contribute to the security of the North Atlantic area to accede to this Treaty.
It is far from clear to me how Ukraine, which is quite far from the North Atlantic, meets this criterion. Even some of Ukraine’s biggest boosters in Washington acknowledge that the country would be hard-pressed to ever meet the requirements to be admitted to the alliance. If that is the case, then, why accept such a destabilizing policy for a distant fantasy?
To those who insist that American strength can overcome Russian aggression, it would be wise to reflect on the fact that Russia has shown the world for the last decade at least that it is happy to accept pain, setbacks, and sanctions — over Ukraine and Syria, for example — because its leaders have a clear conception of how they prioritize various objects and interests.
It is not obvious that there is a constructive and stable way to end the current crisis and longstanding tensions between Moscow and the West. But the Biden administration ought to give diplomacy a chance. Sometimes, when tensions between two countries grow, opportunities present themselves which, if handled tactfully, might paradoxically contribute to more lasting peace.
Ryan Evans is the founder and CEO of War on the Rocks. His opinions are his own.
11. Amazon Offers 2nd Air-Gapped Cloud For Top-Secret Data
Excerpts:
The battle for the government’s cloud dollars is a microcosm of the jostling for dominance in a global cloud computing market that could soon be worth $1 trillion as nearly every major private sector company invests in cloud services. Third parties like Gartner have rated AWS as cloud computing’s market leader since the technology’s nascent days, but the company was also the first to specifically service government customers.
In 2011, AWS launched GovCloud (US-West), becoming the first commercial cloud provider to meet the federal government’s stringent security requirements and compliance designations to host unclassified government workloads. Today, nearly every major cloud service provider offers government solutions for unclassified workloads in a growing federal cloud market Bloomberg Government estimates is approaching $7 billion, but Peterson said AWS is not slowing its pace of innovation.
"Today, with the launch of AWS Top Secret-West, we continue our support for mission workloads that span the full range of U.S. government classifications," Peterson said. "As we continue to innovate with our customers, they gain tools to achieve their missions with greater speed, agility, and security."
Amazon Offers 2nd Air-Gapped Cloud For Top-Secret Data
The new cloud's data centers are "more than 1,000 miles" away from the northern-Virginia complex that serves U.S. intelligence and defense agencies.
Amazon Web Services today announced a second cloud computing region designed specifically to host the federal government’s top secret classified information.
Called AWS Top Secret-West, the region provides additional geographic availability and resiliency of AWS cloud services for U.S. intelligence and defense agencies, including the CIA and NSA, on which to host, analyze and run applications.
AWS Top Secret-West is the company’s second commercial cloud accredited for classified workloads that is air-gapped—or shut off—from the rest of the internet. The new region joins AWS Top Secret-East, which has been hosting the government’s top secret data since 2014.
AWS did not disclose the location of the region except to say it is “over 1,000” miles away from AWS Top Secret-East, which is located in northern Virginia.
“With two top secret regions, customers in the U.S. defense, intelligence and national security communities can deploy multi-region architectures to achieve the highest levels of resiliency and availability essential to their most critical national security missions,” AWS Vice President of Worldwide Public Sector Max Peterson said in a blog post Monday. “In addition, they gain proximity to new geographically distributed workloads and mission users.”
The new cloud region comes almost eight years after AWS won a $600 million cloud computing contract with the CIA. Since then, the intelligence community’s use of commercial cloud services has increased significantly, as has AWS’ investments—including its new region—serving those unique cloud customers.
As AWS’ market share grows, only one of AWS’ current rivals for government business—Microsoft—has achieved government accreditations necessary to host top secret classified data, which the company announced in August.
In November 2020, the CIA announced AWS and Microsoft were two of five companies—along with IBM, Oracle and Google—to be awarded its Commercial Cloud Enterprise, or C2E contract, which procurement documents indicated could be worth “tens of billions” of dollars over the next 15 years. After canceling its Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure cloud contract, the Pentagon announced in November that AWS, Microsoft, Oracle and Google will bid on its upcoming multibillion-dollar Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability, or JWCC contract.
The NSA, too, is investing in commercial cloud computing services, awarding AWS a contract worth up to $10 billion in August to modernize its primary data repository. Microsoft challenged the award with the Government Accountability Office, which ultimately recommended in October the agency reevaluate proposals from both companies.
In an October interview with Nextgov, acting Intelligence Community Chief Information Officer Mike Waschull offered some insight into why commercial cloud computing is figuring so heavily into defense and intelligence agency missions. Washull said the cloud provides a scalable environment where a mix of open-source and classified datasets can be brought together for various purposes, such as processing, storage or analysis, and noted that cloud also helps in the retirement of old hardware systems and data centers.
“We’re looking real hard at the data centers that we have and where it’s appropriate, we’re trying to bring those to closure, if you will, and retire them in favor of moving to the commercial cloud,” Waschull said.
The battle for the government’s cloud dollars is a microcosm of the jostling for dominance in a global cloud computing market that could soon be worth $1 trillion as nearly every major private sector company invests in cloud services. Third parties like Gartner have rated AWS as cloud computing’s market leader since the technology’s nascent days, but the company was also the first to specifically service government customers.
In 2011, AWS launched GovCloud (US-West), becoming the first commercial cloud provider to meet the federal government’s stringent security requirements and compliance designations to host unclassified government workloads. Today, nearly every major cloud service provider offers government solutions for unclassified workloads in a growing federal cloud market Bloomberg Government estimates is approaching $7 billion, but Peterson said AWS is not slowing its pace of innovation.
"Today, with the launch of AWS Top Secret-West, we continue our support for mission workloads that span the full range of U.S. government classifications," Peterson said. "As we continue to innovate with our customers, they gain tools to achieve their missions with greater speed, agility, and security."
12. Here’s what America must do to counter Russian aggression against Ukraine
Excerpts:
Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the United States has largely been kept safe because we’ve proactively kept our global neighborhood safe. But peace from great powers like Russia and China are not certainties. If the United States fails to demonstrate reliable partnership to partners in the crosshairs of terrorists or thugs like Vladimir Putin, we can expect more attacks on democracies and vulnerable nations. We could quickly see Putin expand his aggression to other neighboring states, and China attack Taiwan and roll back the sovereignty of other Asian nations. Latin America could see a rise in authoritarian leaders. Around the globe, we could see freedom and liberty under attack and the rise of oppressive authoritarianism.
The world needs American leadership. We must demonstrate we have the will and strength to defend our values; and, that we are the essential partner for ensuring rights and freedoms for all people, protecting and advancing democracies, and defending international norms that provide peace and prosperity for all.
Here’s what America must do to counter Russian aggression against Ukraine
America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan put vulnerable democracies around the globe at severe risk. Allies and partners who stood beside us in our fight now question our nation’s commitment to those difficult tasks. Nations who routinely balance the challenges of building their democracies against the seeming ease of aligning with autocrats now question the strength and validity of American support in that endeavor. Worse, opportunistic adversaries are plotting and calculating the ways they can undermine American efforts and capitalize on perceived weakness in our commitment and resolve.
Just a couple short months after America’s exit from Afghanistan, we can already see the geostrategic effects in the aggression of Russian President Vladimir Putin against the vulnerable country of Ukraine.
The Russian army is now amassing forces along the extended border between Russia and Ukraine. As Russia has done in the past, it is expanding its information and cyberattacks against Ukraine, it is fomenting dissent within the minority ethnic Russian population in eastern Ukraine and it is positioning a formidable military force to intervene in any strife that may occur in Ukraine as a result of Russia instigation.
Further, Putin publicly announced during his April 2021 state of the nation address his intentions to see a reunified Russo-Ukrainian state. All the pieces are in place for a Russian military offensive into Ukraine. Many feel the attack is imminent.
Now is the time for the United States to reassert its leadership. Freedom-loving people around the globe are looking to America for assurances we will live up to our values and defend those sacred ideals of life, liberty and opportunity that we hold so dearly. If we fail to act, we may very well see the rapid decline of freedom and democracy in all corners. The international order we rely on will be upended and our national prosperity will be imperiled.
The response to Russia’s aggression needs to be swift and across all aspects of American strength. I propose a concerted effort of diplomatic, economic and military activities. The administration has a key role to play. Congress can provide legislative tools and support; and our allies must join in the effort.
In quick order, the administration must make clear to Putin and other Russian leaders the costs they will personally incur if aggression against Ukraine does not stop. This means imposition of crippling personal sanctions and the seizure of personal assets of Russian oligarchs. Putin must be made to understand his failure to abide by the norms of international relations and his disrespect for the sovereign rights of nations will cause him and his cronies to be expelled from the international system and denied the prosperities they could achieve.
Congress can act now to define the extent of those sanctions and build legislative triggers to automatically authorize and impose sanctions if Russian actions become too aggressive. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee is examining such legislation right now. Let’s bring it to the Senate floor for debate and discussion. Congress’ attention and input in this matter will send a powerful message of U.S. commitment.
The United States must further dismantle the economic pressure points Russia is using on Ukraine. This means preventing the completion and operation of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. If this pipeline becomes operational, Putin will have a powerful means to isolate Ukraine from a strong and reliable revenue source while entangling the energy sectors of our European allies with Russian gas just as winter arrives.
The pipeline is the economic version of a poison pill that we must save our friends and allies from being forced to swallow. Measures to prevent the completion of the pipeline have been proposed for consideration in the Senate version of the National Defense Authorization Act. They should be carefully considered and passed. And the Biden administration should reinstitute the key measures they rescinded on Nord Stream 2. Pressure must be maintained so the pipeline is not completed.
Lastly, the United States must show commitment to Ukraine’s defense through the provision of additional defensive capabilities: anti-tank weapons, anti-aircraft weapons, enhanced cyber defenses, training and partnership. All of these capabilities will make Ukraine a more challenging problem for Putin and his imperialist designs.
These defensive capabilities should be augmented by multilateral training and exercise events with the U.S. and NATO partners. Even rotational deployments to Ukraine show a resolve that may cause Putin to think twice before continuing aggression.
Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the United States has largely been kept safe because we’ve proactively kept our global neighborhood safe. But peace from great powers like Russia and China are not certainties. If the United States fails to demonstrate reliable partnership to partners in the crosshairs of terrorists or thugs like Vladimir Putin, we can expect more attacks on democracies and vulnerable nations. We could quickly see Putin expand his aggression to other neighboring states, and China attack Taiwan and roll back the sovereignty of other Asian nations. Latin America could see a rise in authoritarian leaders. Around the globe, we could see freedom and liberty under attack and the rise of oppressive authoritarianism.
The world needs American leadership. We must demonstrate we have the will and strength to defend our values; and, that we are the essential partner for ensuring rights and freedoms for all people, protecting and advancing democracies, and defending international norms that provide peace and prosperity for all.
Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, is a combat veteran and member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
13. How to de-escalate Russia: Ukrainian advice
Excerpts:
At the same time, gaps in the technical support of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, especially in the areas of air and missile defense, and Russian dominance in the Black and Azov Seas, create certain opportunities for Russia to avoid a direct land collision with Ukraine in which Russia will not have sufficient advantage. Preserving these vulnerabilities in Ukraine’s defense is critical to Russia’s ability to maintain military pressure and blackmail, both against Ukraine and its Western counterparts. Unfortunately, Ukraine in its current economic state is unlikely to be able to solve the problems of technical equipment of its own air and naval forces in a short time. But this is quite possible with the support of Western partners, especially with the help of the United States. This is well understood in the Kremlin. And the current “escalation for de-escalation” on Ukraine’s borders is directed against such assistance.
Unfortunately, there is a risk that the Russians will, at least in part, achieve the desired results. I would like to warn against this. Even the smallest concessions that can be made to Putin in the current situation will only preserve opportunities for Russia to continue its aggressive wars and blackmail by their conduct to achieve the desired political results. The only adequate response to the Kremlin’s criminal behavior should be to use its own “escalation for de-escalation”, which should include increasing sanctions on Russia and its leadership, intensifying defense and security cooperation with NATO members and partners, and substantially increasing military and technical assistance to Ukraine. Ukraine, which during the eight years of war with Russia with minimal Western assistance proved that Ukrainian soldiers do not flee, leaving weapons to the enemy, as happened in Afghanistan.
How to de-escalate Russia: Ukrainian advice
The Russian Federation’s demonstrative accumulation of troops on the border with Ukraine for the second time in 2021 has raised serious concerns about a possible full-scale Russian aggression against Ukraine and forced the West to seek dialogue with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The most desirable participants in the dialogue for the Kremlin are representatives of the new United States administration and President Joe Biden personally, with whom Putin has already met this summer in Geneva and with whom he hopes to hold video talks in early December.
It is no secret that the desired outcome of these talks for Russia is concessions from the U.S., reduction of sanctions, military exercises on NATO’s eastern flank, military-technical assistance to Ukraine and recognition of Moscow’s exclusive sphere of influence, which should include at least a significant part of the post-Soviet space and where Russia will have the right to interfere in the domestic politics of independent countries, including through the use of military force.
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Biden and Putin will hold a video conference on Tuesday to discuss tensions in the region.
The only thing that Russia can offer in exchange for such concessions is to solve the problems that it creates on its own. Since restoring international order and ending the occupation of Crimea and Donbas is not part of the Kremlin’s plans, Moscow can only create new problems, hoping that the West will eventually fail and will have to negotiate on Russian terms.
Since the problems that Russia creates for the West are much more significant than those that the West creates for Russia, we do not have to accuse Moscow of lack of logic and excessively risky behavior. The risks of negative undesirable consequences for Russia are extremely low and are well calculated by its leadership. A clear example of this approach is the beginning of U.S. cooperation with Russia to combat cyber threats, although it is clear that cyberattacks against the U.S. from Russia were not only known in advance to Russian intelligence, but also conducted by hacker groups directly subordinate to them.
A similar model applies to possible military escalation. The logic of this behavior is fully consistent with the methodology of the Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation General Valery Gerasimov with his use of the military threat to achieve non-military goals, and previous Russian and Soviet practices of strategic influence on the enemy, also based on military, especially nuclear threats. Such a universal approach to creating threats to further eliminate them in exchange for concessions from the object of influence is called “escalation for de-escalation” and the resumption of its active use after the Cold War is personally associated with Vladimir Putin.
In 1999, immediately after the appointment of Vladimir Putin as Secretary of the RF Security Council, he began drafting a new military doctrine, which was promulgated in 2000. For the first time, this doctrine allowed Russia to use nuclear weapons in a non-nuclear conflict in situations “critical to Russia’s national security.” The main purpose of the new military doctrine of the Russian Federation was to deter the West from supporting then de facto independent Chechnya, against which the Russians were preparing a military operation. The new doctrine was the use of nuclear deterrence for local conflict, a message about the importance of Chechnya for Russia to the point of readiness to use nuclear weapons.
To analyze the current behavior of the Russian Federation, it is important to understand that both the military doctrine of 2000 and subsequent doctrines, which also included elements of “escalation for de-escalation” should be considered in the context of strategic deterrence, rather than guidelines for military action. At the same time, it should be understood that Russia’s understanding of deterrence differs significantly from the Western one, and is aimed not at avoiding conflict as such, but at deterring the West and especially the U.S. from participating in it. In other words, the task of such deterrence is to preserve Russia’s ability to put pressure on third countries, including by using its own military forces against such countries, without a high risk of U.S. intervention on the part of victims of such pressure.
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Now is the time for the United States to reassert its leadership.
From the Russian point of view, deterrence is not only and not so much about military plans and the availability of weapons. Deterrence for Russians is about the psychology and application of reflexive control, the hidden influence on the decision-making process. This influence of the Russian Federation is exercised, inter alia, through the publication of strategic military documents, military exercises, public and non-public statements of its diplomats. For example, in 1993, Russian military doctrine included provisions on the readiness to carry out nuclear strikes on the territory of countries that are allies of nuclear powers. The sole purpose of these innovations was to influence the population and, consequently, the politicians of the former Warsaw Pact countries, in order to reduce the popularity of the idea of joining NATO countries.
The real military plans of the Russian Federation, which will actually be applied in case of failure of “deterrence”, differ significantly from the public ones. These plans are governed by secret documents and are not subject to public communication at all. In 2008, during the aggression against Georgia and in 2014 during the aggression against Ukraine, the Russians did not demonstrate the accumulation of troops, hiding not only preparation but also their own participation in military operations. The search for dialogue with the West was also not observed at that time. The military operations were for military purposes and were not a means of strengthening the Kremlin’s negotiating position.
Unfortunately, neither after 2008 nor after 2014, Russia was not punished enough to stop the practice of military pressure. As a result, the Kremlin’s arsenal includes not only military bluffing, but also the possibility of direct military aggression. It is obvious that Ukraine, of all the countries bordering Russia, except China, is almost the only country that is able to give a tangible and perhaps even unacceptable military response to Moscow in the event of such a large-scale conflict. For more than 8 years of Russian aggression, the Armed Forces of Ukraine have become well-prepared, tested by constant hostilities, a highly motivated military machine, which has the ability in a short time to involve in combat more than 500,000 people (mostly veterans of the Ukrainian-Russian war).
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Russia is building toward the ability to carry out an attack on Ukraine, the head of it's defense intelligence agency told Military Times.
At the same time, gaps in the technical support of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, especially in the areas of air and missile defense, and Russian dominance in the Black and Azov Seas, create certain opportunities for Russia to avoid a direct land collision with Ukraine in which Russia will not have sufficient advantage. Preserving these vulnerabilities in Ukraine’s defense is critical to Russia’s ability to maintain military pressure and blackmail, both against Ukraine and its Western counterparts. Unfortunately, Ukraine in its current economic state is unlikely to be able to solve the problems of technical equipment of its own air and naval forces in a short time. But this is quite possible with the support of Western partners, especially with the help of the United States. This is well understood in the Kremlin. And the current “escalation for de-escalation” on Ukraine’s borders is directed against such assistance.
Unfortunately, there is a risk that the Russians will, at least in part, achieve the desired results. I would like to warn against this. Even the smallest concessions that can be made to Putin in the current situation will only preserve opportunities for Russia to continue its aggressive wars and blackmail by their conduct to achieve the desired political results. The only adequate response to the Kremlin’s criminal behavior should be to use its own “escalation for de-escalation”, which should include increasing sanctions on Russia and its leadership, intensifying defense and security cooperation with NATO members and partners, and substantially increasing military and technical assistance to Ukraine. Ukraine, which during the eight years of war with Russia with minimal Western assistance proved that Ukrainian soldiers do not flee, leaving weapons to the enemy, as happened in Afghanistan.
Oleksandr Danylyuk, chairman of the Ukrainian Center for Defense reforms, is a senior fellow in the Potomac Foundation, a former Chief Adviser to Ukraine’s Minister of Defense, a member of Ukrainian government inter-agency platform for countering hybrid threats and one of the leaders of Ukrainian Revolution of Dignity.
Editor’s note: This is an Op-Ed and as such, the opinions expressed are those of the author. If you would like to respond, or have an editorial of your own you would like to submit, please contact Military Times managing editor Howard Altman, haltman@militarytimes.com.
14. Biden’s Summit for Democracy gets under autocrats’ skins
Excerpts:
The run-up to the summit has been bumpy and it remains unclear how success will be measured, especially when the United States has limited leverage over other countries who sign up for initiatives.
Michael Abramowitz, president of the democracy watchdog Freedom House, said that’s one reason it’s important to have civil society groups engage in the summit and its aftermath — so that they can monitor the progress of countries that make commitments.
“It’s important that the United States and the other democracies make real commitments because otherwise it will be seen as a PR exercise and it will increase cynicism,” he said. His group has released scorecards on the state of democracy in the countries participating in the summit.
U.S. officials are wagering that there’ll be enough momentum — if not from an outright love of democracy, then concern about China and Russia — that the summit’s impact will be significant and long-lasting.
In speeches and other forums ahead of the gathering, they have stressed, however, that governments will need to partner with the private and NGO sectors in the process.
“We know that by recommitting ourselves to the cause of democratic renewal and broadening our coalition of partners, we can turn this moment of truth into a moment of opportunity,” Uzra Zeya, an undersecretary of State who focuses on democracy and human rights issues, said in remarks about the summit last month.
Biden’s Summit for Democracy gets under autocrats’ skins
12/07/2021 04:31 AM EST
The run-up to the president’s long-promised event shows both promise and peril.
The Biden administration is counting on participating countries to commit to initiatives designed to strengthen and promote democracy and to spend the next year fulfilling those promises. | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
12/07/2021 04:31 AM EST
In some ways, President Joe Biden’s long-promised Summit for Democracy could not be better timed.
The virtual gathering, set for Thursday and Friday, comes as people from Cuba to Belarus have hit the streets in recent years to demand a say in their governance — or, at least, some accountability from their leaders. And it comes as Western leaders have grown increasingly wary of the tactics and intentions of the ruling Chinese Communist Party and alarmed about renewed Russian aggression toward Ukraine.
But the summit also is being held as the very concept of democracy appears unusually vulnerable. This past year alone has seen a half-dozen coups, from Myanmar to Sudan. Even the United States’ own democracy faces threats, from partisan fighting that is undermining law-making to insurrectionists attacking the Capitol over the lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.
Those negatives, however, are just more reasons to hold the summit, advocates insist.
“It is precisely because there are so many challenges out there that a summit like this one is so timely and important,” said Derek Mitchell, a former U.S. ambassador to Myanmar who now leads the National Democratic Institute. “Convening global democratic leaders and others to reaffirm that democracy and democratic values remain the best answer to what ails us sends a message of solidarity, confidence, commitment and clarity.”
Aides to Biden say they are approaching the summit with humility. On the main website, the administration says the event will “showcase one of democracy’s unique strengths: the ability to acknowledge its imperfections and confront them openly and transparently.”
The decision to hold the summit, and invite more than 100 governments, has upset some left out — a testament to the global influence the United States continues to wield.
In a recent joint op-ed published in The National Interest, the Russian and Chinese ambassadors to the United States slammed the summit as a product of America’s “Cold-War mentality” and warned that it “will stoke up ideological confrontation and a rift in the world, creating new ‘dividing lines.’”
The ambassadors, Anatoly Antonov of Russia and Qin Gang of China, decried the notion that the Biden administration is deciding what counts as a democracy, while describing their countries’ systems as democratic — despite the obvious communist one-party domination in China and dictatorial rule of Vladimir Putin in Russia. China, the envoys write, has an “extensive, whole-process socialist democracy,” while democracy is the “fundamental principle” of the Russian system.
“There is no need to worry about democracy in Russia and China,” the pair write. “Certain foreign governments better think about themselves and what is going on in their homes. Is it freedom when various rallies in their countries are dispersed with rubber bullets and tear gas? It does not look very much like freedom.”
The public relations offensive has continued. The Global Times, a Chinese Communist Party media mouthpiece, this month launched a series about the “evils committed in the name of democracy.” One representative headline: “GT investigates: US war-mongering under guise of ‘democracy’ inflicts untold damage on the world.”
Taiwan’s inclusion in the summit has especially rankled China, which claims the island as its turf. Given repeated U.S. promises to support the island in the face of recent aggressive moves by Beijing, the Biden administration likely determined that excluding Taiwan from the summit would have suggested a weakened resolve.
Many such geopolitical considerations were clearly in play in deciding who was invited and who was not.
Hungary and Turkey didn’t make the cut — their leaders have been undermining their democratic institutions for years despite U.S. reproach. But Poland, where similar anti-democratic forces have been on the rise for years, did get an invite. One likely reason? The United States saw fit to stand by the country as it faces aggressive moves along its border from Russian-backed Belarus.
India, for instance, has faced accusations of a backslide in democracy amid growing oppression of the country’s Muslims. But the Biden team views New Delhi as a key partner in the rivalry with Beijing and doesn’t want to snub it.
Because India made the list, Pakistan did, too — an effort by the administration to balance its interests in those two archnemeses, despite the Pakistani military’s continued influence on Islamabad’s governing system.
In the Middle East, only Iraq and Israel made the cut, despite concerns about Iranian influence in Iraq and the treatment of Palestinians in land that Israel occupies.
U.S. officials have resisted speaking about individual invitees, though some privately acknowledge the geopolitical factors in play. At the same time, they note that the event is called a “Summit for Democracy,” not a “Summit for Democracies” or a “Summit of Democracies.” The goal is to make the case to the world that democracy is still the most ideal governance system while encouraging participants to stay on the democratic path.
While the administration had originally hoped to hold this first summit earlier, and in person, its selection of Dec. 9-10 carries some meaning.
Dec. 9 (Thursday) is International Anti-Corruption Day, while Dec. 10 (Friday) is Human Rights Day. The administration is expected to unveil new sanctions against kleptocrats and human rights abusers on those days — following a tradition begun under the Trump administration.
In the run-up to this week’s gathering, the administration has been unveiling initiatives and plans, while along with it outside groups are staging side and preview events. Many revolve around the summit’s three main themes: Defending against autocracy; fighting corruption; and promoting human rights. Some of the events are open to the public, while others are limited to summit participants.
On Monday, the administration unveiled its anti-corruption strategy — its many pieces include efforts to crack down on the use of the American real estate market as a venue for money laundering and other illicit acts.
The role of technology in the furtherance or undermining of democracy is poised to be a major theme. Last week, the administration said one of the summit’s initiatives will be a multilateral effort to impose limits on the export of surveillance and other technology that can be used to target dissidents and otherwise undermine human rights.
The Biden administration is counting on participating countries to commit to initiatives designed to strengthen and promote democracy and to spend the next year fulfilling those promises. A second summit is then to be held, likely toward the end of 2022, and — if the coronavirus pandemic allows — in person.
The run-up to the summit has been bumpy and it remains unclear how success will be measured, especially when the United States has limited leverage over other countries who sign up for initiatives.
Michael Abramowitz, president of the democracy watchdog Freedom House, said that’s one reason it’s important to have civil society groups engage in the summit and its aftermath — so that they can monitor the progress of countries that make commitments.
“It’s important that the United States and the other democracies make real commitments because otherwise it will be seen as a PR exercise and it will increase cynicism,” he said. His group has released scorecards on the state of democracy in the countries participating in the summit.
U.S. officials are wagering that there’ll be enough momentum — if not from an outright love of democracy, then concern about China and Russia — that the summit’s impact will be significant and long-lasting.
In speeches and other forums ahead of the gathering, they have stressed, however, that governments will need to partner with the private and NGO sectors in the process.
“We know that by recommitting ourselves to the cause of democratic renewal and broadening our coalition of partners, we can turn this moment of truth into a moment of opportunity,” Uzra Zeya, an undersecretary of State who focuses on democracy and human rights issues, said in remarks about the summit last month.
15. Can the US military recover its reputation?
Excerpts:
The Reagan Institute poll reported Americans still want to engage with the world and they recognize that China is the biggest threat to the U.S.
On the other hand, only 42 percent think the U.S. should be “More engaged and take the lead” (down from 51 percent in February 2021) which may offer less leeway for military adventures. Worrying for military bosses, only 33 percent of those polled regard “Military leadership, such as officers and generals” as the best, likely due to the disorganized retreat from Kabul, the abandonment of billions of dollars of military equipment to the Taliban and not being aware the Taliban were placing sleeper agents in most every Afghan government agency and institution.
If the Pentagon were a publicly traded company, the board of directors would have fired the managers and would be in fear of a shareholders’ lawsuit. That’s what the 2016 election started, and it’s up to the next president to finish the job.
Can the US military recover its reputation?
The Hill · by James Durso, opinion contributor · December 6, 2021
Is the U.S. military’s reputation in free fall? It sure looks that way.
The Ronald Reagan Institute just announced that public confidence in the military has continued its precipitous drop. The institute’s November 2021 poll found that only 45 percent of those polled report “a great deal of trust and confidence in the military” — down 25 points in three years. The institute adds “Increasing numbers of Americans say they have little or not much confidence in the military, which is up 15 points in the last three years.”
The military isn’t the only public institution suffering a bad reputation, but it is used to basking in public esteem. As a result, it may not know how to recover.
The slide from the February 2021 poll – where the military was at 56 percent – may have been exacerbated by the actions of military leaders in the wake of the violent demonstration at the Capitol on Jan. 6. Though some Americans feel military leaders stopped a coup by Donald Trump, the actions of General Mark “We’re the guys with the guns” Milley likely repelled many Americans who though he sounded like a Turkish generalissimo.
It was likely the chaotic retreat from Kabul in August — the first time the American people witnessed a defeat in real-time — that pushed the poll numbers lower. Added to that were the deaths of 13 service members killed by a suicide bomber at the gate of Kabul’s airport as they worked to speed the humanitarian evacuation. Of the 13, 12 were in their 20s, and all were volunteers.
How can the military recover?
The worst way would be to fight another war.
The Pentagon may think like the coach of the Navy football team who, if he has a bad season, will get some slack if he still manages to beat Army. Their judgement in these matters is poor, so what missions will both protect America and raise them in the eyes of their countrymen?
America’s military leaders may be unreconciled by the ending of the Cold War with the Soviet Union, which wasn’t marked by an epic armored battle à la Kursk, but by Soviet citizens deciding it was over because the Soviet economy couldn’t deliver a decent standard of living. The brass missed the Big Game and may think that a scrap with Russia in eastern Ukraine might redeem their sagging reps, forgetting that those Russians will be fighting with their backs to their border.
Unique in the world’s militaries, the Pentagon doesn’t think it is responsible for defending its country’s borders. Instead of defending America, it defends American interests, which are not viewed overseas as positively as they are in Massachusetts Avenue think tanks and in television green rooms.
The to-do list for the brass might be:
-
Start a conversation about how the military can help defend the country’s borders. In the U.S., this is regarded as a civilian, law enforcement function, but it’s time the taxpayers get something back for the $700 billion they give the Pentagon every year.
-
Instead of misdirection about some scattered right-wing extremists in the ranks, end the military’s epidemic of sexual assault. Why any father of a daughter would allow her to enlist is a mystery, and this issue is the Deathwatch Beetle inside the service.
-
End the culture of impunity that excuses the accidental killing of civilians on the battlefield — as long as they are foreigners. The recent drone killing of ten members of the innocent Ahmadi family in Kabul was excused by the Air Force’s Inspector General because the shooters “truly believed” they were targeting a threat to U.S. forces. Well, OK then.
The military is an economic enterprise. It relies on a generous budget to not just pay itself but also the captive defense contractors that build weapons and provide services — and hire former servicemembers. It’s not “Military, Inc.” like in Pakistan or Egypt, but its economic interests aren’t always the same as those of the American people, and it’s time to stress the organization so it starts to provide value for money.
A 10 percent across-the-board budget cut — including paring back the executive jet fleet — would get the attention of the E-Ring, especially since the Pentagon just reminded us that the terrorist group ISIS-K may be able to launch attacks from Afghanistan against the U.S. in as little as six months. Why these baddies are still standing after 20 years of unlimited funding and battlefield authority for the commanders wasn’t explained.
ISIS-K isn’t a threat to the U.S. military. The guy they have to worry about is the ambitious Republican congressman who suffers no consequences for repeatedly voting against the interests of the military, despite military leaders’ usual empty exhortations of “Support the troops!” or “Putin!!!” That politician will succeed because Middle America, which is the foundation for recruiting and a strong national defense, won’t risk its children’s lives for the brass, after it overlooked military officials’ ethical lapses or personal enrichment.
The Reagan Institute poll reported Americans still want to engage with the world and they recognize that China is the biggest threat to the U.S.
On the other hand, only 42 percent think the U.S. should be “More engaged and take the lead” (down from 51 percent in February 2021) which may offer less leeway for military adventures. Worrying for military bosses, only 33 percent of those polled regard “Military leadership, such as officers and generals” as the best, likely due to the disorganized retreat from Kabul, the abandonment of billions of dollars of military equipment to the Taliban and not being aware the Taliban were placing sleeper agents in most every Afghan government agency and institution.
If the Pentagon were a publicly traded company, the board of directors would have fired the managers and would be in fear of a shareholders’ lawsuit. That’s what the 2016 election started, and it’s up to the next president to finish the job.
James Durso (@james_durso) is the Managing Director of Corsair LLC, a supply chain consultancy. He was a professional staff member at the 2005 Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission and the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Mr. Durso served as a U.S. Navy officer for 20 years and specialized in logistics and security assistance. His overseas military postings were in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, and he served in Iraq as a civilian transport advisor with the Coalition Provisional Authority. He served afloat as Supply Officer of the submarine USS SKATE (SSN 578).
The Hill · by James Durso, opinion contributor · December 6, 2021
16. Defending Taiwan: Think globally and ‘look up’
Excerpts:
One imagines a scenario where Beijing makes its move on Taiwan and tells Washington to “stand back” – and that includes sanctions and attacks on China’s supply lines – or it will face “blinding” and nuclear attack “from above.”
This is, of course, something of a poker game if things reach this point. The Chinese might be bluffing, or they might not. And it will take a certain type of president to call their bluff.
Mr Biden perhaps isn’t that president. But whoever it is, if the Chinese get “the high ground”, there’ll be any number of people telling him that “Taiwan isn’t worth it” and to “let it go.”
So while the current focus is on Taiwan and conventional hardware and capabilities needed to deter a Chinese assault, the United States would do well to prepare to “expand the battlefield” and hit China where it is most vulnerable.
But the US also needs to “look up” and do what is necessary to dominate outer space and counter China’s hypersonic and FOBS capabilities that potentially “checkmate” America’s earthbound advantages.
Not surprisingly America’s military leadership knew of the PRC’s developing hypersonic capabilities some years back, and by and large ignored it. One hopes they do better this time.
Defending Taiwan: Think globally and ‘look up’
While US would likely lose a conflict confined to Taiwan its prospects would improve considerably by hitting China’s vulnerable supply lines
US Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin said the other day that Chinese air force movements towards Taiwan look like a “rehearsal” for an invasion.
It is good America’s military leadership is finally realizing that Xi Jinping is serious when he says he will use force, if necessary, to seize Taiwan.
Yet, in recent years whenever the US military has “war gamed” a fight with China over Taiwan, the Americans reportedly have “failed miserably” or in military-speak “got their asses handed to them” every time.
But there are war games and there are war games. Depending on how you construct the scenario things might turn out better for the United States.
You see…if the fight is confined to Taiwan and the surrounding area the Chinese have a big advantage. They can deploy far more ships than the US Navy can, and the same goes for aircraft.
Chinese land-based missile and anti-aircraft batteries will further make things difficult for US forces trying to “get in close” to help Taiwan. One doesn’t envy a US destroyer skipper who has two dozen supersonic anti-ship missiles coming his way and arriving in 90 seconds.
And the People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force’s ballistic missiles able to hit moving targets at sea will give US aircraft carriers much to worry about. The missiles are nicknamed “carrier killers” for a reason.
US bases in Japan and Guam from which American forces would be deploying to aid Taiwan will also be getting Chinese missile attention.
This just covers a few of the problems facing US forces, and the Americans can of course strike some blows of their own.
But if it’s just a fight between the Americans and the Chinese, and it takes place right around Taiwan, the Americans will have a hard time.
However, expand the battlefield, say, to include the entire globe, and the United States’ prospects improve considerably.
Here’s why: The PRC does not produce enough food to feed itself, nor does it have enough energy or natural resources to power its economy. That’s why the Chinese buy up Brazilian and Ukrainian farmland, Australian milk companies, and American pork producers.
The same goes for Chinese oil concessions in Iran, Iraq, and Venezuela and mines in Africa and South America.
A March 24, 2021, aerial picture of container cranes and containers at the Lianyungang Port Container Terminal in Lianyungang, Jiangsu province. Photo: AFP / Hector Retamal
China not only depends on seamless (and long) supply lines to import commodities and raw materials, but it also depends on the same supply lines to export manufactured products that earn vital foreign exchange – and keep people employed and the economy humming.
If the Americans and their allies and partners “expand the battlefield” and cut off China from its overseas “assets”, as one Western expert puts it: “without these commodities arriving in China from around the world the China we know and the Chinese know will not exist…it will be 1,400,000,000 persons desperate for food, energy, commodities, natural resources.”
So if the US musters the fortitude needed to impound or sink Chinese shipping and clamp down on air transport in and out of the PRC, the Chinese Communist Party will be in dire straits.
The People’s Liberation Army (PLA), despite carrying out the biggest, fastest defense buildup in history – including progress towards a “blue-water” global navy – over the last 20 years still cannot defend China’s overseas assets. And it will probably be another decade before PLA global “power projection” capabilities can do so.
Compounding Beijing’s problems, China is also vulnerable to US financial sanctions that could exclude the PRC from the US dollar network. And Washington might also prohibit US corporate business dealings with the People’s Republic of China in a conflict scenario.
So while Beijing might like its prospects in a straight-up (and confined) fight to seize Taiwan, it is extremely vulnerable if the United States and other free nations “decouple” China from its overseas assets – and the convertible currency and inward foreign investment and trade that powers the Chinese economy.
But the Americans should not breathe easy.
If China can seize the high ground in outer space and the upper atmosphere — and threaten the US with surprise (and undefendable) nuclear attack – as well as blinding US forces by taking out their satellites – it might be able to checkmate the Americans.
At that point, America’s existing conventional advantages, both kinetic and non-kinetic, won’t matter much.
A surface-to-air missile is fired from a missile launcher by the air force under the PLA’s Southern Theater Command during an air defense training exercise. Photo: eng.chinamil.com.cn / Zhang Hengping and Yuan Hai
China’s recent tests of hypersonic delivery vehicles and the so-called Fractional Orbital Bombardment System (FOBS) give the Americans plenty to worry about in this regard.
These are hard to track and to defend against – not least as they allow nuclear warheads to be launched from directions where American anti-missile systems aren’t looking.
And in a further move to dominate the high ground, the PRC (and the Russians) are aiming for offensive operations against US satellites on which America’s defense depends. They have, in fact, already started interfering with US space assets.
Earlier this year, the commander of the US Space Command, General James Dickinson, stated in a congressional hearing:
“China is building military space capabilities rapidly, including sensing and communication systems and numerous antisatellite weapons….Similarly concerning, Russia’s published military doctrine calls for the employment of weapons to hold us and allied space assets at risk.”
In his written testimony, Dickinson added:
“One notable object is the Shijian-17, a Chinese satellite with a robotic arm. Space-based robotic arm technology could be used in a future system for grappling other satellites. China also has multiple ground-based laser systems of varying power levels that could blind or damage satellite systems. China will attempt to hold US space assets at risk while using its own space capabilities to support its military objectives and overall national security goals.”
So far, the Americans are apparently just playing defense in outer space – rather than building up the offensive capability to do to the Chinese (and the Russians) what they are planning to do to them – and more.
According to one observer, Team Biden’s response so far is “finger-wagging and scolding.” Not exactly a winning approach.
One imagines a scenario where Beijing makes its move on Taiwan and tells Washington to “stand back” – and that includes sanctions and attacks on China’s supply lines – or it will face “blinding” and nuclear attack “from above.”
This is, of course, something of a poker game if things reach this point. The Chinese might be bluffing, or they might not. And it will take a certain type of president to call their bluff.
President Biden is presiding over a nation facing a growing credibility crisis, Photo: AFP / Drew Angerer / Getty Images
Mr Biden perhaps isn’t that president. But whoever it is, if the Chinese get “the high ground”, there’ll be any number of people telling him that “Taiwan isn’t worth it” and to “let it go.”
So while the current focus is on Taiwan and conventional hardware and capabilities needed to deter a Chinese assault, the United States would do well to prepare to “expand the battlefield” and hit China where it is most vulnerable.
But the US also needs to “look up” and do what is necessary to dominate outer space and counter China’s hypersonic and FOBS capabilities that potentially “checkmate” America’s earthbound advantages.
Not surprisingly America’s military leadership knew of the PRC’s developing hypersonic capabilities some years back, and by and large ignored it. One hopes they do better this time.
17. Russia and China are testing Biden — and so far, he’s failing
Excerpts:
The Biden administration needs to face up to these authoritarian challenges with a more direct and forceful strategy.
First of all, it should continue recent administrations’ efforts to ensure Taiwan is able to defend itself and initiate a formal military financial assistance program to this beleaguered democracy to accelerate the effort. Next, invest in key US military capabilities that put China’s military forces on their back feet, such as expanded submarine production. Hold Russia accountable with tough, high-impact sanctions for its abetting of ransomware attacks and cyber espionage. Specifically, target the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline and advocate for Moscow’s removal from the SWIFT financial transaction system, a crucial link to the global economy.
Finally, we need a national-security strategy that identifies our adversaries clearly, explains the nature of the threats we face and details a long-term investment plan to ensure we can deter the threats and, if deterrence fails, defeat the enemy.
Russia and China are testing Biden — and so far, he’s failing
Russia has relentlessly attacked Ukrainian sovereignty since Moscow’s initial invasion in 2014. After illegally annexing Crimea, Russian gray-zone operatives have consistently supported breakaway regimes in eastern Ukraine and conducted disinformation campaigns against the elected government in Kiev.
Russian President Vladimir Putin initiated the current crisis with his decision not to withdraw Russian forces and equipment back to their home bases following “Zapad 21,” a large annual military exercise. These forces now threaten Ukrainian sovereignty and challenge Western assurances to support and defend democracies being targeted by authoritarian states.
Putin has been equally dismissive of President Biden’s warnings to cease and desist cyberattacks on our national critical infrastructure. A senior FBI official testifying to Congress reports that in the four months since Biden gave an ultimatum to Putin to stop harboring and supporting Russian hackers, “we have not seen a decrease in ransomware attacks in the past couple of months originating from Russia.” Russian cyber espionage efforts continue unabated despite Biden’s rhetoric.
Russian President Vladimir Putin continues to infringe on Ukrainian sovereignty.
Sputnik/Mikhail Klimentyev/Kremlin via REUTERS
China’s challenge is even more concerning. China’s massive and highly successful 20-year military buildup have made US naval and air operations in the Western Pacific extremely risky. China now threatens US citizens in Guam with ballistic and cruise missile systems. The Chinese Navy actually has surpassed the US Navy in number of ships, and given the Chinese Navy’s proximity to potential flashpoints in Taiwan, and the East and South China Seas, this reduces or eliminates remaining US military advantages in technology and experience.
China is now looking to spread its military influence outside East Asia. Beijing has a well-developed military base on the East Coast of Africa in Djibouti (in close proximity to a smaller and less well-equipped US facility). The Chinese have garnered naval and air “access” to many commercial facilities through their Belt and Road Initiative investments, even gaining ownership of facilities following defaults of host nation borrowers. The latest report of Chinese investments in Barbados show Beijing wants to gain access in the United States’ backyard.
The Chinese investment in Equatorial Guinea, on Africa’s Atlantic coast, is a long-term investment and more than the typical BRI “access grab.” This base could provide China with logistics and repair facilities on the Atlantic seaboard. This is not for today’s Chinese Navy (which is still focused on the Western Pacific) but for their navy of the 2030s and 2040s. This strategic investment once again demonstrates China’s extended vision of competition with the Unites States and other democracies throughout the 21st century.
Chinese President Xi Jinping has been building up his nation’s military presence outside of Asia.
Ding Haitao/Xinhua via ZUMA Press
The Biden response to this authoritarian challenge has been both muted as well as anchored in rhetoric about working with allies and partners. This is belied by a “go it alone” decision on Afghanistan that left our allies and partners flatfooted and embarrassed, led to a humanitarian debacle and ignored 20 years of strong partnership. This was followed by the embarrassing treatment of our oldest ally, France, in setting up a pact with Australia and the United Kingdom to deal with issues in the Pacific. This was especially ham-fisted as France is the European country with the largest military footprint in both the Pacific and Africa.
The Biden administration needs to face up to these authoritarian challenges with a more direct and forceful strategy.
First of all, it should continue recent administrations’ efforts to ensure Taiwan is able to defend itself and initiate a formal military financial assistance program to this beleaguered democracy to accelerate the effort. Next, invest in key US military capabilities that put China’s military forces on their back feet, such as expanded submarine production. Hold Russia accountable with tough, high-impact sanctions for its abetting of ransomware attacks and cyber espionage. Specifically, target the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline and advocate for Moscow’s removal from the SWIFT financial transaction system, a crucial link to the global economy.
Finally, we need a national-security strategy that identifies our adversaries clearly, explains the nature of the threats we face and details a long-term investment plan to ensure we can deter the threats and, if deterrence fails, defeat the enemy.
Mark Montgomery is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
18. Israel must not support a temporary Iranian nuclear deal
Israel must not support a temporary Iranian nuclear deal
The US wants to maintain the fictitious image of progress toward a diplomatic solution, albeit a temporary one, at any cost. Such a deal will likely be very bad.
Brig. Gen. (Res.) Professor Jacob Nagel is a former national security adviser to the prime minister and a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
Responding to the latest failed round of nuclear talks in Vienna, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and President Isaac Herzog demanded that the US and the world not allow Iran to continue setting the tone and dragging its feet in negotiations while the Iranians continue developing their abilities and approach nuclear threshold status.
As Herzog noted, Israel would be happy to see a good, comprehensive deal that would permanently prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, but that is far from what is happening in Vienna and what will happen down the line.
The approach of US President Joe Biden and US Special Envoy to Iran Robert Malley, which the Europeans have also reluctantly adopted, is not to punish the Iranians for their repeated violations of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty; their lack of cooperation with International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors; and their failure to comply with any agreement they sign, including the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). The US wants to maintain the fictitious image of progress toward a diplomatic solution, albeit a temporary one, at any cost, and it will likely be a very bad one.
The American aspiration is to reach a "less for less" deal or a "different for different" deal. This effectively means a "more for less" or even a "much more for much less" deal. Even partial removal of sanctions will inject billions of dollars into Iran, allowing it to rehabilitate its economy and support terrorism, and will signal to markets that business can and should be conducted with Iran.
Just as I predicted in an opinion piece last week, Iran has shown up at the negotiating table with maximal, absurd demands. The Iranians spoke only of the full removal of sanctions; American guarantees that a future US administration will not withdraw from the deal; and the full closure of all IAEA investigations. As for changes to their nuclear activities and regional actions, not a word was said.
This is unsurprising to those familiar with the Iranian doctrine, which is based on the following assumptions: That the US is weak and will not attack; that Israel does not have the ability to attack (and inaccurate, irresponsible reports in Israel assist them in believing they are right); that the Iranian economy can withstand pressure; and that there is no credible military and economic threat to the regime, its leaders' lives, or their personal property.
In Israel, articles by and interviews with certain irresponsible officials, some who used to hold high-ranking positions, have been published in which they recommend accepting the fact that Iran will become a nuclear threshold state and preparing for this outcome because it is inevitable. This would be a grave mistake and harm national security.
On the other hand, at this stage, it seems that decision-makers in Israel are not falling into this trap. All those proposing that we encourage or accept a partial deal have failed to realize that this is the worst of all possible options. This is not a temporary agreement, but an agreement that will become permanent. Anyone who thinks this is how we will buy time and better prepare ourselves to tackle the Iranian nuclear program in a few years is wrong and is misleading others.
A "more for less" type of deal, which the Americans hope to secure, will certainly allow Iran to quickly reach the "immunity zone" and become a nuclear threshold state, meaning a state that has the ability to build a bomb solely based on its own, independent decision to do so, without any outside player being able to stop it and regardless of the time it would take. Israel should pressure the US and other world powers to revert to maximum economic pressure against Iran, as well as ensure that there is a credible military threat on the table.
We are approaching the moment of truth when it comes to Iran's nuclear program, and Israel might need to act on its leaders' promises to protect the security of the state and its citizens on its own. It would be a mistake to play for time and build a stable for horses that will be long gone once those stables are ready.
19. Ahead of Biden’s Democracy Summit, China Says: We’re Also a Democracy
"Chinese characteristics."
Ahead of Biden’s Democracy Summit, China Says: We’re Also a Democracy
Dec. 7, 2021
Updated 8:33 a.m. ET
Beijing argues that its system represents a distinctive form of democracy, one that has dealt better than the West with challenges like the pandemic.
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President Biden and China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, at their virtual summit last month, as seen on a Chinese news program on a giant outdoor screen in Beijing.Credit...Roman Pilipey/EPA, via Shutterstock
Dec. 7, 2021Updated 8:46 a.m. ET
BEIJING — As President Biden prepares to host a “summit for democracy” this week, China has counterattacked with an improbable claim: It’s a democracy, too.
No matter that the Communist Party of China rules the country’s 1.4 billion people with no tolerance for opposition parties; that its leader, Xi Jinping, rose to power through an opaque political process without popular elections; that publicly calling for democracy in China is punished harshly, often with long prison sentences.
“There is no fixed model of democracy; it manifests itself in many forms,” the State Council, China’s top governing body, argued in a position paper it released over the weekend titled “China: Democracy That Works.”
It is unlikely that any democratic country will be persuaded by China’s model. By any measure except its own, China is one of the least democratic countries in the world, sitting near the bottom of lists ranking political and personal freedoms.
Even so, the government is banking on its message finding an audience in some countries disillusioned by liberal democracy or by American-led criticism — whether in Latin America, Africa or Asia, including in China itself.
Officials attending a news conference at the State Council Information Office in Beijing on Saturday.Credit...Mark Schiefelbein/Associated Press
“They want to put on a back foot, put on the defensive, what they refer to as Western democracy,” said Jean-Pierre Cabestan, a political scientist at Hong Kong Baptist University.
China’s paper on democracy was the latest salvo in a weekslong campaign seeking to undercut Mr. Biden’s virtual gathering, which begins on Thursday.
In speeches, articles and videos on state television, officials have extolled what they call Chinese-style democracy. At the same time, Beijing has criticized democracy in the United States in particular as deeply flawed, seeking to undermine the Biden administration’s moral authority as it works to rally the West to counter China.
Get Ready for the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics
Just a few months after Tokyo, the Olympics will start again in Beijing on Feb. 4. Here is what you need to know:
“Democracy is not an ornament to be used for decoration; it is to be used to solve the problems that the people want to solve,” Mr. Xi said at a gathering of top Communist Party leaders in October, according to Xinhua, the state news agency. (In the same address, he ridiculed the “song and dance” that voters are given during elections, contending that voters have little influence until the next campaign.)
On Sunday, the foreign ministry released another report that criticized American politics for what it described as the corrupting influence of money, the deepening social polarization and the inherent unfairness of the Electoral College. In the same way, officials later sought to play down the White House announcement that no American officials would attend the Winter Olympics in Beijing in February by saying none had been invited anyway.
A journalist takes a copy of a Chinese government-produced report titled “Democracy that Works” before a news conference at the State Council Information Office in Beijing on Saturday.Credit...Mark Schiefelbein/Associated Press
China’s propaganda offensive has produced some eyebrow-raising claims about the fundamental nature of Communist Party rule and the superiority of its political and social model. It also suggests that Beijing may be insecure about how it is perceived by the world.
“The fact that the regime feels the need to consistently justify its political system in terms of democracy is a powerful acknowledgment of the symbolism and legitimacy that the term holds,” said Sarah Cook, an analyst who covers China for Freedom House, an advocacy group in Washington.
When officials introduced the government’s policy paper on Saturday, they seemed to compete over who could mention “democracy” more often, while muddying the definition of the word.
China’s system “has achieved process democracy and outcome democracy, procedural democracy and substantive democracy, direct democracy and indirect democracy, and the unity of people’s democracy and the will of the country,” said Xu Lin, deputy director of the Communist Party Central Committee’s propaganda department.
The campaign carries echoes of the rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union, which sparred for decades over the merits of their political systems, said Charles Parton, a China specialist at the Royal United Services Institute, a British research group.
Senior Communist Party officials at a meeting in November in Beijing. Credit...Yan Yan/Xinhua, via Associated Press
“They are more keen, in a way, on an ideological competition, and that takes you back to the Cold War,” Mr. Parton said, referring to China.
Mr. Biden’s democracy summit, which administration officials have said is not explicitly focused on China, has also faced criticism, in the West as well as from China, in part for whom it invited and whom it left out.
Angola, Iraq and Congo, countries that Freedom House classifies as undemocratic, will participate, while two NATO allies, Turkey and Hungary, will not.
In a move likely to anger Beijing, the White House also invited two officials from Taiwan, the island democracy China claims as its own; and Nathan Law, a former legislator in the semiautonomous territory of Hong Kong who sought asylum in Britain after China’s crackdown.
At the heart of Beijing’s defense of its political system are several core arguments, some more plausible than others.
Officials cite the elections that are held in townships or neighborhoods to select representatives to the lowest of five levels of legislatures. Those votes, however, are highly choreographed, and any potential candidates who disagree with the Communist Party face harassment or worse.
People in Causeway Bay, Hong Kong, protesting new security laws in May 2020.Credit...Lam Yik Fei for The New York Times
The legislatures then each choose delegates for the next level, up to the National People’s Congress, a parliamentary body with nearly 3,000 members that meets each spring to rubber-stamp decisions made behind closed doors by the party leadership.
China has also accused the United States of imposing Western values on other cultures, an argument that might resonate in regions where the two powers are competing for influence.
China’s ambassador to the United States, Qin Gang, recently joined his Russian counterpart, Anatoly Antonov, to denounce Mr. Biden’s summit as hypocritical and hegemonic. Writing in The National Interest, the conservative magazine, they alluded to support for democratic movements in authoritarian countries that became known as “color revolutions.”
“No country has the right to judge the world’s vast and varied political landscape by a single yardstick,” they wrote.
Pointing to the ways that American and other Western societies have been torn by political, social and racial divisions and hobbled by the coronavirus pandemic, China is also arguing that its form of governance has been more effective in creating prosperity and stability.
Health workers during a Covid alert in Wuhan, China in January.Credit...Gilles Sabrie for The New York Times
As officials often note, China has achieved more than four decades of rapid economic growth. More recently, it has contained the coronavirus outbreak that began in Wuhan, with fewer deaths throughout the pandemic than some countries have had in a single day.
Skeptics reject the argument that such successes make China a democracy.
They cite surveys like the one done by the University of Würzburg in Germany, which ranks countries based on variables like independence of the judiciary, freedom of the press and integrity of elections. The most recent put China near the bottom among 176 countries. Only Saudi Arabia, Yemen, North Korea and Eritrea rank lower. Denmark is first; the United States 36th.
In China, the Communist Party controls the courts and heavily censors the media. It has suppressed Tibetan culture and language, restricted religious freedom and carried out a vast detention campaign in Xinjiang.
What’s more, China’s vigorous defense of its system in recent months has done nothing to moderate its prosecution of dissent.
Two of China’s most prominent human rights lawyers, Xu Zhiyong and Ding Jiaxi, are expected to face trial at the end of this year on charges that they called for more civil liberties, according to Jerome Cohen, a law professor specializing in China at New York University. A Chinese employee of Bloomberg News in Beijing has remained in detention for a year, as of Tuesday, with almost no word about the accusations against her.
Under Mr. Xi’s rule, intellectuals are now warier of speaking their minds in China than at practically any time since Mao Zedong died in 1976.
“This is an extraordinary time in the Chinese experience,” Mr. Cohen said. “I really think that the totalitarianism definition applies.”
A police officer in 2020 walking past placards of detained rights activists taped on the fence of the Chinese liaison office in Hong Kong protesting Beijing’s detention of Xu Zhiyong, the prominent anti-corruption activist.
Keith Bradsher reported from Beijing and Steven Lee Myers reported from Seoul.
20. Here’s what people with low trust in news learned attending a morning TV news meeting
More of us need to be educated in how news reporting works.
Of course no matter how transparent the process or how much outsiders are allowed to observe ther experience there are those who will still question the authrenticiy.
Excerpt:
- After attending the morning meeting, more than half of the participants said they have a more favorable and trustworthy view of WCPO while the others either said they had a similar view and level of trust in WCPO or were still skeptical of the process they watched, questioning its authenticity.
Here’s what people with low trust in news learned attending a morning TV news meeting
Medium · by Lynn Walsh · November 30, 2021
WCPO invited community members to attend a morning news meeting via Zoom, to see how the journalists decided which stories to cover. This is a screenshot of the participants’ view.
At Trusting News we know audiences notice what stories get covered by news organizations and pay particularly close attention to the stories that don’t get covered.
As journalists, we know a lot of the decisions we make around story selection happen intuitively. We have conventions we follow about what’s newsworthy and what’s not. We have big-picture fairness we’re trying to achieve when it comes to who and what gets attention. We know what stories we did last year and try not to repeat them. But, most news organizations do not have a strict rubric to follow about what’s “news.” Our definition is loose, and it’s often dependent on circumstances and resources.
This lack of specifics about how stories are selected leads news consumers to make all kinds of assumptions about journalists’ and newsrooms’ motivations and decision-making, including:
- I bet they didn’t cover that issue because it would have made an advertiser mad.
- They cover crime from this neighborhood more than others because they want to make us look like criminals.
- They cover this school’s sports more often because they’re fans. What about the rest of us?
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They’re covering this issue because it fits their political agenda (an assumption relevant to our Road to Pluralism work).
These (often negative) assumptions do not help build trust with news consumers. Instead, they create a greater divide in the understanding of how news works and continue to allow false, negative narratives, about how journalists do their jobs, thrive.
How important is story selection in building trust?
The importance of explaining story selection is something Trusting News has been focused on since we launched in 2016. Last year, through a series of focus groups, Trusting News and the Center for Media Engagement found that TV newsrooms can build trust with their audiences by explaining why a story is covered, providing additional resources at the end of stories and inviting audience participation.
This year, we decided to dig into the topic once again. We wanted to know if the trust a news consumer has in a news organization would change if they were able to see the story selection process first hand. Working with WCPO, an E.W. Scripps-owned station in Cincinnati and a Trusting News newsroom partner, we recruited news consumers to watch one of three newsroom morning meetings. Keep reading for details about what we did (and how you can do it too).
Here’s what we learned:
- Prior to attending the morning meeting, most participants said they did not know how stories were selected by news organizations, but most had assumptions about the process.
- When asked if they thought story selection decisions were being made locally at WCPO or influenced by someone or something else, most said they thought there was influence from somewhere else, especially when it comes to covering national issues. Participants said they believed there was less influence on local story selection decisions.
- All participants expressed distrusting the “media.” Prior to the morning meeting, when asked specifically if story selection impacts that trust, most participants expressed having more concerns with how a story was covered than which stories were covered.
- After attending the morning meeting, more than half of the participants said they have a more favorable and trustworthy view of WCPO while the others either said they had a similar view and level of trust in WCPO or were still skeptical of the process they watched, questioning its authenticity.
- Most participants expressed being surprised by the number of story ideas the newsroom had to choose from. Several participants specifically mentioned being surprised at the use of social media in finding story ideas.
- Participants expressed wanting more information and clarification about what being an affiliate means and how the relationship between ABC (WCPO is an ABC affiliate) and WCPO works.
- All participants expressed gratitude to WCPO for allowing them to participate in the process. Most said they would want to participate in a longer, more in-depth shadowing opportunity with a reporter or editor.
Other common themes outlined in research and polling about how people feel about the news surfaced during these conversations as well.
Most of the participants discussed or mentioned the importance of wanting “the why.” They said they want to see more in-depth stories about issues (local and national) even if it means covering fewer stories. One participant said, “reporting tends to not go very deep and misses the why…I understand timelines and trying to come up with a SOT, good for TV, but it would be nice to build in more in-depth reporting.”
Themes and common complaints from our Road to Pluralism work came up too. Participants complained about how the news overgeneralizes and does not cover religion enough. They also said journalists make it seem like it is always one side against another when instead the reality is more complicated.
Lack of understanding about story selection process
Prior to attending the morning meeting, most participants said they did not know how stories were selected by news organizations, but most had assumptions about the process. Those assumptions included:
- The mainstream media is very tilted to the left. If a story puts those on the left in a good light they will go with that story. If it puts Republicans and conservatives in a bad light they will push that story.
- It’s kind of a popularity thing. Not in a negative aspect but it’s about what is going to draw viewers and readers to a website.
- The owner of the network or staff at the top picks the angle they want, and that’s what is done.
- It’s based on what journalists perceive to be the important events of the day/week.
- The number one focus is finding something that is going to have an impact on the demographic the newsroom is trying to reach.
- Journalists pick stories they think their viewers would want to see; stories that would improve their ratings. In some cases, news organizations pick news stories that advance an agenda they want to advance.
Who has influence over story selection?
In addition to being asked how they think news organizations choose stories, participants were asked if they thought story selection decisions were being made locally at WCPO or influenced by someone or something else. Most said they thought there was influence from somewhere else, especially when it comes to covering national stories.
Prior to the morning meeting participants said the following:
- I think probably for the most part they are based somewhere else.
- Most local news stations are owned by conglomerates, and conglomerates want to get their views out. So you will see news stations report the same thing word for word, almost like it is a script they are given.
- I do not know how it works but I would assume national stories that come from ABC (WCPO is an ABC affiliate), come from there and flow from there. Local is their own choice though.
- I think national news stories are influenced by affiliate headquarters.
- I think on local news, your producers and editors have more authority and leeway to make their own decisions.
- I think they are made locally. Local topics, local issues
After attending the morning meeting, participants were almost unanimous in their belief that decisions about which local stories are covered were made locally. Most still said there was influence from outside WCPO when it came to national coverage, though. Participants also expressed wanting more information and clarification about what being an affiliate means and how the relationship between ABC (WCPO is an ABC affiliate) and WCPO works.
In the post-meeting conversations, most participants said they learned something new about how a newsroom operates. Several made comments about the meeting itself, being surprised by its casualness and comparing it to their own work meetings.
Specifically, the participants mentioned:
- This was not unlike a meeting that we would have had at work about who is working on what and when are you going to do it.
- Happy to hear and see that someone is actually looking at social media and other websites to find stories and see if they are pertinent. That was encouraging.
- I appreciated the opportunity. They appeared to really make an effort to make sure both sides were represented. I think that should be done for any story.
- It’s kind of obvious, but you guys have really tight deadlines. It’s impressive how you are able to put it all together.
- Interesting to see where story ideas come from. I had no idea. My impression was you predominantly get new information and new leads from people calling in or emailing and have some established sources. But the use of social media was interesting,
- It surprised me how few people were there.
- I wanted to compliment everyone about how they are able to pull this together even though they are not meeting face-to-face. That was a surprise to me.
- I was surprised by how many competing demands for attention. Hundreds of emails from various sources wanting coverage and time. It also occurred to me how much power you have. Whether or not you ignore it or go after it. It’s what you think is important.
- Impressive. It seemed like a lot of information was going around the room. Very professionally run, but at the same time casual. The air was not stale, everyone was comfortable.
- The casualness surprised me. Where I work it is stuffy at times. I thought it was professional but comfortable. Everyone seemed to be enjoying their work and could speak up if they wanted.
- I thought it was interesting. They had a lot of information coming in. I thought they would go out to get more information but they have hundreds, maybe thousands of pieces of information coming in. It’s kind of shocking but very interesting. I did not think they had that much information coming in.
Story selection and trust
When asked if story selection impacts whether or not they trust a news organization (and specifically WCPO), most did not mention story selection as something that influences their trust in a news organization during the pre-meeting conversations. Instead, the participants expressed a general distrust in “media” (and some of WCPO’s coverage) and said it is how a story is covered that impacts whether or not they trust a story or news organization.
The participants mentioned:
- I do not trust very many news organizations at all. I do not have full faith or trust in them.
- There are some stories, especially on the political side, that will come across as biased. Not sure if it is intentional or not but they just read that way.
- The more in-depth a story is, the more likely I am to trust them because I have more confidence in what they are presenting.
- If it is a controversial topic, I better see both sides. How it is being covered is going to matter more to me than what stories are covered.
- If a controversial topic I want both sides presented. Do not downplay one side or the other. If they are wrong, call them out on it. Present balanced views.
- I trust what they are saying but I would not say I give them any more trust than any other news source.
- Trust is one of those things you really have to earn. I do not think I would ever trust one news source in order to form an opinion. I do have confidence in the local news and I believe in 90% of what they report.
After attending the morning meeting, more than half of the participants said they have a more favorable and trustworthy view of WCPO while the others either said they had a similar view and level of trust in WCPO or were still skeptical of the process they watched, questioning its authenticity.
Specifically, the participants mentioned:
- I do believe there is bias in the newsroom. Did I see anything during the time I watched? No, I didn’t. I do not know how you could do something like that, that was not scripted. They knew they were on the Zoom call with me. It’s not quite a fly-on-the-wall experience when they know they have outsiders observing. In those cases you are always going to be on your best behavior, watch what you say and chances are you may script it for the circumstances.
- I would say my criticism is the same as it was before, as I predicted it would be. When it comes to a station in Cincinnati, I would trust them over anyone else.
- I started watching them (WCPO) more, so yes, I view them more favorably and more trustworthy.
- I feel a little bit better about them. I did not have a hugely negative opinion about the local stories they were choosing to begin with so I would say it helped in a positive way. It wasn’t like the clouds opened and the sun came through though. But, I have faith in the local people.
- I have a more favorable view as a result of having seen how hard they work, how hard it is to put it together and how they are being bombarded with requests for coverage by so many competing agencies and organizations. A lot of squeaky wheels having to respond to. This did increase my trust in WCPO.
- I would say this increased my trust. I was not very skeptical before this but I definitely think my trust has increased. I have been looking at the website more than I normally did. It definitely increased my confidence.
- I liked what was discussed in the meeting. It made the news seem a little more personal. I feel differently about WCPO in a positive way.
What’s next
While this mini-focus group with nine news consumers isn’t going to provide all the answers, I think it demonstrates and reinforces several key things.
- Inviting the public into our news process is valuable. No participant expressed having a bad experience. Even the most skeptical person said he would like to follow someone in the newsroom for an entire day. Participants thanked WCPO and Trusting News for the opportunity and continued to ask questions about how news works during their post-meeting conversations. People who participated also said they learned new things. Some of what they said they learned is very basic: News organizations have tight timelines to put stories together, news organizations have a lot of story ideas to choose from and news organizations use social media to find story ideas and see what the community is talking about.
- There is an appetite for understanding how news works. Most of the participants wanted to continue learning about WCPO’s process after their post-interview with Trusting News. There was a suggestion from a participant to lead a version of “take your kid to work day” but instead have it be “take the public to the newsroom day.” Two participants suggested a reporter shadowing opportunity, where they get to follow a reporter from the inception of the news story (when it is presented in the morning meeting) all the way until it airs. They would see how sources are selected and be there for interviews and the writing and editing process. Another wanted to follow around the producer and news managers making final decisions and ask them “why?” Another said he wanted his kids to participate in something like this.
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Talking about how and why we tell stories is important. We wanted to specifically focus on story selection and how what we choose (or choose not to cover) may influence trust in news. This has shown me that while talking about story selection is important, it alone is most likely not going to move the needle in a positive direction toward rebuilding trust. People value the “how” in our reporting and want journalists to explain their decision-making. How a story is put together, including the sources we use, how much air time we give people and how in-depth the coverage is, influences a person’s likelihood to trust news coverage. (Trusting News has more tips and advice on how to do this in lesson three of our “How Any Journalist can Build Earn” course.)
- People want in-depth coverage. I cannot tell you how many times I have heard people say this, how many times I have read research saying this or how many times I have heard newsrooms say they will do this. My only question is: As an industry are we finally willing to do it? Yes, it will probably mean fewer stories are covered. Yes, it will probably mean longer stories on TV. And yes, it will probably mean experimenting with different formats for a newscast, website, podcast, etc. But, can we try it already (I mean really try it, not do two newscasts a year that go in-depth into an issue) and see what happens? Also, are we willing to make it really obvious when we’re doing it, by drawing attention to it and explaining why we’re making the investment in the topic and why doing so is consistent with our values? And can we please make sure that reporting stands out from daily coverage, especially on our websites and social media feeds?
- The industry should do more of this. If we can answer more people’s questions about how news works, I think we can take steps toward rebuilding trust in news. Of course, that is not all it is going to take, but I think it’s an important step to take. Let’s be transparent with the public about how we do things and then let them see first hand. Maybe we do more focus groups like this? Maybe these conversations become more longer-term where we check in with a group of sources or community members through newsletters or social media once a week? A few times a month? Could a newsroom commit to having a rotating journalist bring in one guest a month?
If you are doing similar work I would love to see links or set up a time to talk about any ongoing work in this area. And if you want to brainstorm an idea you have, I would love to hear from you: Lynn@TrustingNews.org.
How these focus groups worked
WCPO recruited individuals to participate by contacting a list of people who had previously participated in a survey project with the newsroom and expressed low levels of trust in news.
Of those recruited a total of nine people participated, which involved:
- Participating in a short conversation with Trusting News (via Zoom) prior to attending a WCPO morning meeting.
- Attending a morning meeting. (The meetings took place via Zoom due to COVID-19 protocols in the newsroom. Participants did not all attend the same meeting. In total there were three meetings where at least one participant observed the news process.)
- Participating in a short conversation with Trusting News (via Zoom) after attending a WCPO morning meeting.
The goal of the conversations prior to the morning meeting was to gain insight into what each participant thought about general story selection, WCPO’s story selection and how both related to their likelihood to trust news organizations. The goal of the conversations after the morning meeting was to see if the participant’s perception of news organizations and WCPO changed after attending the morning meeting and to generally gain insight into what they thought of the story selection process in a local TV newsroom. (The specific questions we asked during the pre-and-post conversations are listed at the end of this post).
Before each morning meeting started, participants were introduced to newsroom leaders who would be running the meeting and organizing the daily news coverage. The journalists explained their role in the newsroom and briefly explained how a morning news meeting works. The newsroom then began the morning meeting while the participants watched. After the morning meeting ended, the same newsroom leaders stayed on the call to answer questions from the participants.
The following questions were asked during the pre-morning meeting conversations:
- Talk to me about how you think news organizations select which stories to cover.
- Do you think story selection decisions are being made locally at WCPO? Or influenced by something or someone else? (Some of this may come up in the first question)
- What do you think about the stories WCPO covers? Do you agree with their selections? Wish they covered other types of stories or topics?
- Does story selection impact what you think about WCPO as a news organization?
- Do the stories they choose to cover/not cover make you trust them more/less?
The following questions were asked during the post-morning meeting conversations:
- What did you learn from this experience? Any surprises? Anything unexpected?
- After experiencing this, now talk to me about how you think news organizations select which stories to cover. Did anything you previously thought change?
- Do you think story selection decisions are being made locally at WCPO? Or influenced by something or someone else?
- What do you think about the stories WCPO covered? Did you agree with their selections? Wish they covered other stories or topics?
- Does story selection impact what you think about WCPO as a news organization?
- Do the stories they choose to cover/not cover make you trust them more/less?
Trusting News is designed to demystify the issue of trust in journalism. We research how people decide what news is credible, then turn that knowledge into actionable strategies for journalists. We’re co-hosted by the Reynolds Journalism Institute and the American Press Institute. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook. Subscribe to our Trust Tips newsletter. Read more about our work at TrustingNews.org.
Medium · by Lynn Walsh · November 30, 2021
21. Can America Take On Russia and China In the Grey Zone? (and north Korea too)
Of course I want to highlight a north Korean excerpt:
North Korea’s grey zone lets them play both aggressor and victim
North Korea’s ballistic missile tests could easily be considered grey zone hostile acts, but it’s worth noting the soft power of grey zone activities as well, and North Korea’s own narrative campaigns are under-discussed. While China’s soft-power foreign influence comes in the form of bags of money (investment) and Russia’s often looks like social media troll farms, North Korea’s adoption of a Chinese narrative about the United States acting as an imperial “bully” in the Pacific demonstrates the value of international media as a coordinated tool for grey zone operations.
As the Trump administration applied pressure to North Korea’s Kim Jong Un to end his nation’s pursuit of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles to ferry them to far-flung targets, the nation that usually trades in aggressive threats had a sudden change of heart. Instead, Kim assumed the role of embattled leader trying to keep the American wolves at bay as the United States bullied the small nation into submission. The truth, of course, was that Kim’s nuclear efforts were always about securing leverage for international negotiations, and the North Korean regime simply saw the value in discrediting a polarizing president’s approach to pressuring them on the world’s stage.
The switch from disputatious fight-mongering to playing the role of the victim is not, in itself, a very hostile act — but the coordination between North Korea’s chosen narrative and China’s public statements in the same vein had specific intent. Delegitimizing America’s position on the Korean continent in the world press not only helped to present China as the reasonable diplomatic leader in the region, it helps to discredit America’s own critical statements about China’s own aggressive acts.
Can America Take On Russia and China In the Grey Zone?
America has a massive grey zone disadvantage.
Here's What You Need to Remember: The unfortunate result is an ever-expanding grey zone that has come to encompass acts as innocuous as public officials’ remarks on Twitter and as nefarious as literal assassinations.
In recent years, the phrase “Grey Zone” has seen a great deal of use among military strategists and the media alike. Like so many buzz words (or phrases in this case) to come before it, the concept of the grey zone began as an important topic of discussion among military academics and policy makers, but quickly spiraled into headline fodder about America’s strained relations with global competitors like Russia, and increasingly, China.
So what exactly is the grey zone? It’s the metaphorical gap between peace and war, in which nations increasingly find themselves competing. Activities or operations in the grey zone, oversimplified, are clearly hostile acts that don’t meet the criteria to be considered an overt act of war. While the term itself does not have a single, unanimously-agreed upon definition, the Cambridge Dictionary offers a slightly more confusing explanation:
Grey Zone: Activities by a state that are harmful to another state and are sometimes considered to be acts of war, but are not legally acts of war.
The domain of America’s enemies
Russia’s grey zone activities may be among the most highly publicized, owing to both the nation’s heavy-handed use of cyber warfare campaigns and the aggressive actions of the nation’s covert operatives on foreign soil. Russia’s high-profile activities in the grey zone in recent years include the nation’s influence campaigns during the 2016 American presidential election, the attempted assassination of Sergei Skripal on UK soil in 2018, Russia’s successful hacking of the U.S. electrical grid in 2019, and countless others. Each of these actions prompted a critical response from the United States or other affected nations, but one could argue, none of those responses amounted to serious deterrence regarding future operations of the sort.
Russia is far from the only nation to engage in grey zone operations against the United States or its interests in recent years, however. China, Iran, and North Korea are all on the list of nations leveraging grey zone tactics of one sort or another in ongoing campaigns aimed at reducing or eliminating American advantages in realms ranging from kinetic capabilities to popular perception–and let there be no mistake, losing ground in either realm represents a security risk for the United States.
China’s grey zone is the size of the Pacific
China’s approach to the grey zone is perhaps best displayed throughout the vast South China Sea, where the nation’s illegal claims of sovereignty and military efforts to enforce them encroach on what would have once been considered literal acts of war, but are now relegated to the grey zone because open war is too severe an option to pursue. Chinese maritime forces, split between its Navy, Coast Guard, and Maritime Militia, amount to a massive 700-vessel fleet. China has used this numbers advantage to great success, surrounding Vietnamese oil platforms and starving the workers out to take control of natural resources, bullying nations off of their own fishing territory, and even fortifying island chains that international courts clearly ruled don’t belong to them.
China is able to act with relative impunity within the region, provided its forces don’t directly engage American personnel or equipment, for a simple reason: The world’s choices are to call China’s bluff and dive into a terrible war between nuclear powers and massive Naval forces… or resort to yet another round of public statements decrying China’s aggressive and illegal pursuits of territory and resources in the Pacific.
Iran’s grey zone can fit surface to air missiles in it
Iran’s downing of a U.S. Air Force RQ-4A Global Hawk remotely piloted aircraft in 2019 offers another powerful example of grey zone aggression. According to U.S. forces, the RQ-4 never came closer than 21 miles from Iranian shores, but Iran claims it closed to within just eight (international waters begin 12 miles from shore). Iran’s Revolutionary Guard fired on the Global Hawk with a Russian-made S-125 surface-to-air missile and the resulting hit cost the U.S. Navy a $220 million drone.
Firing on a military aircraft ostensibly flying over international waters is certainly a hostile act, but not hostile enough to warrant a new full-fledged war in the Middle East.
North Korea’s grey zone lets them play both aggressor and victim
North Korea’s ballistic missile tests could easily be considered grey zone hostile acts, but it’s worth noting the soft power of grey zone activities as well, and North Korea’s own narrative campaigns are under-discussed. While China’s soft-power foreign influence comes in the form of bags of money (investment) and Russia’s often looks like social media troll farms, North Korea’s adoption of a Chinese narrative about the United States acting as an imperial “bully” in the Pacific demonstrates the value of international media as a coordinated tool for grey zone operations.
As the Trump administration applied pressure to North Korea’s Kim Jong Un to end his nation’s pursuit of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles to ferry them to far-flung targets, the nation that usually trades in aggressive threats had a sudden change of heart. Instead, Kim assumed the role of embattled leader trying to keep the American wolves at bay as the United States bullied the small nation into submission. The truth, of course, was that Kim’s nuclear efforts were always about securing leverage for international negotiations, and the North Korean regime simply saw the value in discrediting a polarizing president’s approach to pressuring them on the world’s stage.
The switch from disputatious fight-mongering to playing the role of the victim is not, in itself, a very hostile act — but the coordination between North Korea’s chosen narrative and China’s public statements in the same vein had specific intent. Delegitimizing America’s position on the Korean continent in the world press not only helped to present China as the reasonable diplomatic leader in the region, it helps to discredit America’s own critical statements about China’s own aggressive acts.
America’s massive grey zone disadvantage
Every nation, from the smallest to the largest, operates in the grey zone, and that includes the United States. Most of the operations conducted by the CIA, as well as many conducted by America’s special operations forces, could all be classified as grey zone operations–or hostile actions taken in foreign territory that are not considered acts of war. The truth is, there’s always been a grey zone, the concept has just benefited from better branding in the 21st century.
Despite political infighting and social issues that have risen to the forefront of American consciousness in recent years, the nation itself remains incredibly safe, prosperous, and powerful. That’s actually a problem when it comes to deterring or defending against grey zone operations. Nobody wants a new war, and the truth is, nobody would benefit from one either. Bad actors are just as aware of that as good ones.
Economic sanctions like those levied on Russia and North Korea have proven to be rather effective at making life harder for specific facets of aggressive governments, but not quite effective enough to serve as a real means of deterrence. North Korea’s situation has steadily worsened as a result of new sanctions levied by the U.S. and its allies in recent years, but even as troops literally starve on their posts, Kim’s nuclear ambitions remain undeterred.
Russia’s heavily sanctioned economy has left the nation unable to fund its military modernization efforts and has forced its military-industrial complex to pursue headline-grabbing pseudo-technologies aimed at foreign sales, rather than strategic capability. But, Russia has proven no less apt to engage in aggressive grey zone activities after new sanctions are levied. There’s good reason for this in both cases: The damage of economic sanctions has already been done. The deterrent value of sanctions diminishes as they’re levied. You can only take away the same dollar so many times.
That leaves the United States with little recourse but to threaten retaliation when it comes to the grey zone, but that’s where things get a lot more complicated. If the U.S. chooses to retaliate in kind within the grey zone, it discredits America’s initial complaint about the legality of the inciting incident. If the U.S. hacks Russia’s electrical grid in response to Russia hacking America’s, it legitimizes hacking for both nations as a necessary defense exercise. If, however, the U.S. opts to respond with conventional military force, it risks a new World War between nuclear powers.
Neither is a particularly enticing proposition.
Why doesn’t America just get dirty in the grey zone?
If the global community were as simple as your local bar, nations like Russia could be likened to the shorter-statured but stout guy who’s always looking for a fight, but benefits from the policing presence of the community. Even if you’re sure you could beat that guy up, there’s no real value in doing it. You’ll just have to eat a few punches, get blood all over your shirt, and spend the night in a jail cell. Likewise, the United States would almost certainly win a war with Russia… but to what end? America, and the world, would almost certainly be worse off when the dust finally settled.
So, in the same way you’ll tolerate sarcastic remarks and sideways glances from the bar’s resident tough-guy, America is forced to tolerate increasingly aggressive acts from bad actor nations. Part of the problem is actually rooted in America’s strength as a nation and the world’s success at avoiding the horror of global war for the past 75 years: It’s just not worth risking World War III over a Russian spy ring infiltrating NATO defense files in Bulgaria.
The unfortunate result is an ever-expanding grey zone that has come to encompass acts as innocuous as public officials’ remarks on Twitter and as nefarious as literal assassinations. In once case, Russian mercenaries who were likely working on behalf of the Russian government even attacked U.S. special operations forces in Syria. When the dust settled, the Russians were soundly defeated by the Americans and their Syrian counterparts, and Moscow claimed to have had nothing to do with it. Yet again, the grey zone grew to swallow up what would normally be seen as a clear act of war.
The more the grey zone grows, the more complex the defense environment becomes. Warfare isn’t always the answer, but with sanctions often failing to have the intended effect, America is left with precious few alternatives but to engage its enemies in kind. Unfortunately, therein lies another challenge. While nations like Russia and China do hold events they refer to as elections, America’s nation-level opponents are largely not beholden to the will of the populous they preside over.
China’s Xi Xinping and Russia’s Vladimir Putin, like North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, have no expiration date on their rule and maintain strict governmental control over all media within their borders. Put simply, the people have very little say in what their governments do, and as a result, the governments can get away with a great deal. In the United States, on the other hand, the American people play an active and vocal role in politics. Often, the American people are the ones to shine a critical light on America’s behavior on foreign soil for the world to see. Americans demand that America play the role of the good guy despite the complexities of the geopolitical world, and while that’s a moral and ethical strength, it can often play out like a strategic weakness in the grey zone.
America’s covert grey zone efforts are the subject of extensive debate and criticisms when revealed, limiting America’s ability to fight on an even footing with more aggressive states that don’t hold public hearings. Again, that’s not an assessment of what’s right or wrong–which is as essential an issue for the American people as it is inconsequential to this discussion–this is an observation about systems of government and how they can create strengths and vulnerabilities under different circumstances.
The truth is, it’s better to live in a democracy where the ethics of warfare can be openly debated, but when we say better, we mean for people, not for the pursuit of strategic goals. A good thing can still be a limiting thing.
It’s only going to get worse in a new era of great power competition
The United States has recently pivoted away from the counter-terror operations of the past two decades and back toward near-peer competition with nations like China and Russia, and with this new Cold War of sorts will inevitably come a rapid expansion of the grey zone as it pertains to each. With both nations now fielding their own stealth fighters, developing stealth bombers, deploying hypersonic missile platforms, and expanding ever further into space, America’s technological lead is rapidly diminishing.
As China and Russia continue to approach technological parity, they will grow ever more aggressive in the grey zone, all while remaining diplomatically and politically committed to avoiding war. In fact, it’s likely that China, in particular, will leverage America’s responses to their own grey zone activities as a symptom of America’s aggression, capitalizing on the general public’s lack of understanding or simple disinterest in the nuanced world of covert operations.
In order to counter this seemingly inevitable erosion of America’s defensive positioning, the United States has to find a way to pose a sub-existential threat to its opponents, without compromising the moral and ethical framework established by its people. This covert or diplomatic tool will have to be threatening, but not so threatening that it breaches the barrier into overt acts of war. This tool will need to offer the same or similar results every time, as opposed to the diminishing returns of economic sanctions, and perhaps most importantly, it needs to seem humane when compared to kinetic options.
America needs a new weapon to compete in the grey zone in the 21st century, and it needs one soon.
This article first appeared at Sandboxx.
Image: Reuters.
22. Foggy Bottom Bristles at Proliferation of Special Envoys
Excerpts:
During the Trump administration, then-U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson tried to cut back the proliferating number of special envoys in Washington—one of the few measures in his controversial efforts to redesign the State Department that gained broad support from rank-and-file diplomats. His efforts were short lived.
For team Biden, one unique advantage for special envoys is—unlike other senior State Department posts—they don’t require Senate confirmation. The Biden administration’s State Department has been struggling with depleted ranks from the outset; Biden was slow to name nominees for many ambassadorships and other senior State Department posts. Then, a spat with Senate Republicans over a controversial Russian gas pipeline project prompted Sen. Ted Cruz to issue an unprecedented hold on all State Department nominees, leading to a growing backlog in Senate confirmations that left many posts unfilled for months. Assigning special envoys to address leading diplomatic crises, some administration officials argue, helped fill that gap, at least on an interim basis.
Phee proposed the State Department takes the lead in fashioning policy, saying the department’s desk officers responsible for Ethiopia, Sudan, and South Sudan will lead policy paper-drafting on those crises, with the special envoy signing off on them. In the inevitable cases when Feltman wields the pen, State Department experts should act as co-drafters.
U.S. officials are slated to meet this week to discuss next steps in U.S. policy on the Sudan coup, including weighing whether to remove its hold on some $700 million in assistance funding it paused after Burhan launched his power grab last month.
In the email, Phee struck a conciliatory tone with Feltman and his deputy.
“I am … proud of my friendship with Amb Feltman,” she wrote. “He has unparalleled contacts with Arab states engaged in the Horn, across U.N. agencies, and with regional and international leaders. He came out of retirement to help us, and I count us extremely lucky to have him on the team.”
Foggy Bottom Bristles at Proliferation of Special Envoys
The State Department’s Africa chief addresses concerns that special envoys shut out other diplomats from policymaking.
By Colum Lynch, a senior staff writer at Foreign Policy, and Robbie Gramer, a diplomacy and national security reporter at Foreign Policy.
NEW FOR SUBSCRIBERS: Click + to receive email alerts for new stories written by Robbie Gramer, Colum Lynch
Jeffrey Feltman, the U.S. special envoy for the Horn of Africa, leaves after meeting with Sudanese Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok in Khartoum, Sudan on Sept. 29. Ashraf Shazly/AFP via Getty Images
In the words of Molly Phee, the new U.S. assistant secretary of state for African affairs, career diplomats are apples and special envoys are oranges—and not particularly tasty ones at that. The challenge facing the U.S. State Department’s top Africa official is making a diplomatic fruit salad that prevents some of Africa’s worst political crises from spiraling out of control.
In the early days of U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration, the White House team, including National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, moved quickly to appoint or reappoint several special envoys to tackle a variety of challenges, including the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, nuclear diplomacy with Iran, and a series of political crises in the Horn of Africa—thereby placing the White House stamp on foreign policy.
The State Department, which has confronted a painfully slow nomination process in the Senate, is now trying to catch up. In an internal Oct. 15 email to State Department staff and Jeffrey Feltman, the U.S. special envoy for the Horn of Africa, Phee detailed divisions of labor to handle major crises in Ethiopia, which is in danger of breaking apart, and Sudan, where a military coup has undercut the country’s tenuous transition to democracy and roiled U.S. plans to patch up relations with Khartoum. Phee, who was sworn in on Sept. 30, five months after Feltman was appointed, wrote “there will inevitably be instances of overlap and lane sharing, so I ask everyone to be as charitable and generous as possible in working through those occasions. … This is not a zero sum game. There is more than enough work for all of us.”
In the words of Molly Phee, the new U.S. assistant secretary of state for African affairs, career diplomats are apples and special envoys are oranges—and not particularly tasty ones at that. The challenge facing the U.S. State Department’s top Africa official is making a diplomatic fruit salad that prevents some of Africa’s worst political crises from spiraling out of control.
In the early days of U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration, the White House team, including National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, moved quickly to appoint or reappoint several special envoys to tackle a variety of challenges, including the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, nuclear diplomacy with Iran, and a series of political crises in the Horn of Africa—thereby placing the White House stamp on foreign policy.
The State Department, which has confronted a painfully slow nomination process in the Senate, is now trying to catch up. In an internal Oct. 15 email to State Department staff and Jeffrey Feltman, the U.S. special envoy for the Horn of Africa, Phee detailed divisions of labor to handle major crises in Ethiopia, which is in danger of breaking apart, and Sudan, where a military coup has undercut the country’s tenuous transition to democracy and roiled U.S. plans to patch up relations with Khartoum. Phee, who was sworn in on Sept. 30, five months after Feltman was appointed, wrote “there will inevitably be instances of overlap and lane sharing, so I ask everyone to be as charitable and generous as possible in working through those occasions. … This is not a zero sum game. There is more than enough work for all of us.”
Phee sought to allay concerns from State Department Foreign Service Officers (FSO) who are being cut out of policymaking, explaining there has been some “confusion and discontent about who is doing what” in Ethiopia and Sudan.
“I know the mechanics of working with an orange while we are apples can be confusing,” she wrote. “I have no interest in sidelining you or undermining the bureau’s performance. I welcome and indeed expect your ideas and inputs and look to you to help drive us forward.”
In doing so, Phee acknowledged the State Department’s longstanding misgivings about special envoys. “The State Department is historically uneasy about special envoys,” she wrote. “We have all been victim on occasion of envoys run amok and this experience will hopefully help us avoid mistakes.”
“But I am not a typical FSO,” she added. “I genuinely welcome the energy, perspective and reach of special envoys to complement our work. … Our embassies with the support of the bureau properly have the lead on our bilateral relationships, but in crisis cases there is often an urgent need for dedicated supplementary support.”
Phee also heaped praise on Feltman (“one of our best diplomats—brilliant, innovative, dynamic”), who was selected for envoy by Sullivan and Robert Godec, who served at the time as acting assistant secretary of state for African affairs at the time. She said Feltman and his special assistant, Payton Knopf, “intentionally avoided acquiring a large staff because they have no desire to replicate what you are doing. With my strong backing they prefer to fully integrate their efforts into the Africa bureau.” She wrote that given her vast responsibilities overseeing U.S. policy with African countries, she doesn’t have the bandwidth to devote sufficient personal attention to the crisis in Ethiopia and Eritrea and wholeheartedly supports Feltman’s role.
The email came to light amid a report in Foreign Policy that Phee and Feltman have clashed over applying sanctions on Sudan’s coup plotters, with Feltman advocating for penalties and Phee opposing them on the grounds they wouldn’t work. A month after the email was sent, Phee declined an offer by Feltman to have his deputy accompany her to Khartoum to meet with Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the top military leader who orchestrated a coup and briefly detained the country’s prime minister. The incident reflected a rift in how Phee and Feltman thought Washington should respond to the crisis in Sudan.
State Department officials characterized the rift as a natural disagreement that arises in policymaking, and said the two are now largely in agreement on a wait-and-see approach to determine whether a recent agreement between Burhan and the once-ousted, then-restored prime minister, Abdalla Hamdok, will lead to a more democratic outcome.
Presidents and secretaries of state have relied on special envoys with increasing frequency to tackle complex diplomatic crises or specific global issues that don’t fall under other top diplomats’ job descriptions, such as countering antisemitism or securing the release of U.S. hostages detained abroad. But some veteran diplomats oppose the practice of assigning special envoys for specific regions—such as envoys for Syria, Libya, or some regions of Africa—arguing new envoys can add bureaucracy and undercut a U.S. ambassador’s authority in their assigned country.
During the Trump administration, then-U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson tried to cut back the proliferating number of special envoys in Washington—one of the few measures in his controversial efforts to redesign the State Department that gained broad support from rank-and-file diplomats. His efforts were short lived.
For team Biden, one unique advantage for special envoys is—unlike other senior State Department posts—they don’t require Senate confirmation. The Biden administration’s State Department has been struggling with depleted ranks from the outset; Biden was slow to name nominees for many ambassadorships and other senior State Department posts. Then, a spat with Senate Republicans over a controversial Russian gas pipeline project prompted Sen. Ted Cruz to issue an unprecedented hold on all State Department nominees, leading to a growing backlog in Senate confirmations that left many posts unfilled for months. Assigning special envoys to address leading diplomatic crises, some administration officials argue, helped fill that gap, at least on an interim basis.
Phee proposed the State Department takes the lead in fashioning policy, saying the department’s desk officers responsible for Ethiopia, Sudan, and South Sudan will lead policy paper-drafting on those crises, with the special envoy signing off on them. In the inevitable cases when Feltman wields the pen, State Department experts should act as co-drafters.
U.S. officials are slated to meet this week to discuss next steps in U.S. policy on the Sudan coup, including weighing whether to remove its hold on some $700 million in assistance funding it paused after Burhan launched his power grab last month.
In the email, Phee struck a conciliatory tone with Feltman and his deputy.
“I am … proud of my friendship with Amb Feltman,” she wrote. “He has unparalleled contacts with Arab states engaged in the Horn, across U.N. agencies, and with regional and international leaders. He came out of retirement to help us, and I count us extremely lucky to have him on the team.”
Colum Lynch is a senior staff writer at Foreign Policy. Twitter: @columlynch
Robbie Gramer is a diplomacy and national security reporter at Foreign Policy. Twitter: @RobbieGramer
V/R
David Maxwell
Senior Fellow
Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Phone: 202-573-8647
Twitter: @davidmaxwell161
FDD is a Washington-based nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
