Quotes of the Day:
“The Stoics are exhorters.And at their best, they exhort us to rise to our potential through reason, cooperations, and selflessness.”
- Nancy Sherman, Stoic Wisdom: Ancient Lessons for Modern Resilience.
“We train and prepare our military people for the war which we are not fighting and which we hope will never come, but we fail to train our own citizens and our representatives abroad to operate in the cold war — the only war which we are presently fighting.”
- Sen Karl Mundt, 1962
"For to know a man's library is, in some measure, to know his mind."
- Geraldine Brooks
1. Opinion | We Cannot Stand By and Watch Afghanistan Collapse
2. The US Needs a Department of Cybersecurity
3. Geomatics is vital to US national security; our advantage is at risk
4. Trio of exercises had soldiers and airmen island-hopping in the Pacific this summer
5. Information Operations are Critical to Defending Western Civilization
6. Navy's Top Admiral Said SEALs Had 'Character and Ethics' Issues
7. Sixty Special Forces soldiers involved in 1993 battle to have awards upgraded
8. How Democracies Can Win an Information Contest Without Undercutting Their Values
9. Japan’s Challenge in the Age of China-US Rivalry
10. The U.S. and China Must Rule Out an All-Out Cyberwar
11. Iranians Fear Turning Into Another 'North Korea' If Draconian Internet Censorship Bill Passes
12. Opinion | The battle for cyber dominance
13. Shoot It Straight on Taiwan
14. Lloyd Austin’s Philippine Progress
15. Duterte says US vaccine donations led him to keep VFA
16. Jihadists flood pro-Trump social network with propaganda
17. A Young American Girl Whose Mother Joined ISIS And Died Has Been Rescued, A Former US Diplomat Said
18. What Does Iraq Want from America?
19. Delta puts China on brink of a new Covid crisis
20. FDD | Universities Maintain Ties to Malign Chinese Entities Following Confucius Institute Closures
21. Hmong Americans are often obscured by model minority myth. Why Suni Lee’s win means so much.
22. Five Foreign-Policy Movies Worth Watching About Human Rights
1. Opinion | We Cannot Stand By and Watch Afghanistan Collapse
Well then I hope the international community will act. To the authors, please use your good offices, and past experience to influence the situation.
This would be a real tst for the UN.
Excerpts:
Yet no single country involved in Afghanistan is well placed to help. For its part in the conflict, the United States is now viewed with suspicion. Russia and China, which have different allies among Afghanistan’s neighbors, aren’t seen as neutral, either. Pakistan, regarded with hostility by the Afghan government for its ties to the Taliban, doesn’t want the involvement of India, which has opened its own channels of communication with the Taliban. Turkey, Iran and the Central Asian states are all important but cannot act alone.
The U.N. must step into this vacuum. In the first instance, the secretary general must immediately convene the Security Council and seek a clear mandate to empower the U.N., both in the country and at the negotiating table. That would mean the United States, Russia, China and other members of the council coming together to authorize a special representative to act as a mediator. With the pivotal support of member states, this would put pressure on both sides to halt the fighting and reach a settlement.
The U.N. mission in the country, whose mandate comes up for renewal in September, will also need support. The rapidly deteriorating security and humanitarian situation means that Afghans across the country will need more lifesaving assistance. The U.N. must also be able to continue its crucial work of reporting human rights violations, protecting children in conflict and supporting women and girls.
Opinion | We Cannot Stand By and Watch Afghanistan Collapse
By Kai Eide and Tadamichi Yamamoto
The authors served as United Nations envoys to Afghanistan, Mr. Eide from 2008 to 2010 and Mr. Yamamoto from 2016 to 2020.
Guest Essay
Aug. 2, 2021
Credit...Kiana Hayeri for The New York Times
The past few months in Afghanistan, even by the standards set by two decades of war, have been especially calamitous.
Since April, when President Biden announced the withdrawal of U.S. forces from the country, violence has escalated at a terrifying rate. Emboldened, the Taliban have advanced across the country and now surround major cities, including Kandahar, the second largest. The toll has been terrible: Vital infrastructure has been destroyed, hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced, and the number of people killed or injured has reached record levels. As the United States and its allies complete their withdrawal, Afghanistan, so long devastated by conflict, could be on the brink of something much worse.
It doesn’t have to be this way: Peace is still a possibility. For too long, there was a belief that the conflict could be resolved militarily. Throughout that time, the United Nations was too hesitant to step in. We should know: Between 2008 and 2020, across six years, we served as U.N. envoys to Afghanistan. In those years, the U.N. endeavored to create openings for the peace process but could not get one underway. Though last year’s agreement between the United States and the Taliban made possible the withdrawal of international forces, it sadly did not create conditions conducive to peace.
The U.N. must now step up and guide Afghanistan away from catastrophe. The alternative, as all-out civil war beckons, is too grim to contemplate.
The organization needs to do more. Though two U.N. envoys are currently assigned to Afghanistan, neither is sufficiently empowered to make a difference. The U.N.’s humanitarian appeal to support the basic needs of Afghans — nearly half of whom urgently need material assistance — remains woefully underfunded. At the diplomatic level, the Security Council has looked on blankly as peace talks, held in Doha, Qatar, have failed to make any serious headway.
Fortunately, in contrast to times in the past when disagreements among members hobbled effective responses to global crises, the U.N. is in a good position to act. The United States, Russia and China — three of the five permanent members of the Security Council — all have a stake in Afghanistan’s stability. Along with Pakistan, they issued statements in recent months calling for a reduction in violence and a negotiated political settlement that protects the rights of women and minorities. They also encouraged the U.N. to play “a positive and constructive role in the Afghan peace and reconciliation process.” Taken together, the statements demonstrate a hopeful amount of political will.
But there has not been a unified effort to hold the peace process together. The Taliban, resisting talks with the government, have focused instead on taking as much territory as possible, spreading violence across the country. Faced with a fight for its survival, the Afghan government has encouraged local warlords and leaders to take up arms. In the absence of international mediation, the two sides are raging against each other on the battlefield rather than engaging at the negotiating table. It’s a situation that revives dark memories of the 1990s, when the country descended into civil war.
Yet no single country involved in Afghanistan is well placed to help. For its part in the conflict, the United States is now viewed with suspicion. Russia and China, which have different allies among Afghanistan’s neighbors, aren’t seen as neutral, either. Pakistan, regarded with hostility by the Afghan government for its ties to the Taliban, doesn’t want the involvement of India, which has opened its own channels of communication with the Taliban. Turkey, Iran and the Central Asian states are all important but cannot act alone.
The U.N. must step into this vacuum. In the first instance, the secretary general must immediately convene the Security Council and seek a clear mandate to empower the U.N., both in the country and at the negotiating table. That would mean the United States, Russia, China and other members of the council coming together to authorize a special representative to act as a mediator. With the pivotal support of member states, this would put pressure on both sides to halt the fighting and reach a settlement.
The U.N. mission in the country, whose mandate comes up for renewal in September, will also need support. The rapidly deteriorating security and humanitarian situation means that Afghans across the country will need more lifesaving assistance. The U.N. must also be able to continue its crucial work of reporting human rights violations, protecting children in conflict and supporting women and girls.
The U.N. is often criticized for failing to deliver on its original purpose: to maintain international peace and security. This is an opportunity to show its worth. In the past, international diplomacy has helped bring an end to conflicts in places as varied as Cambodia, Mozambique, El Salvador and Guatemala. The organization now needs to summon the same spirit, courage and energy. It cannot stand by and watch Afghanistan collapse.
Kai Eide, a Norwegian diplomat, served as the United Nations secretary general’s special representative for Afghanistan from 2008 to 2010. Tadamichi Yamamoto, a Japanese diplomat, served in the same role from 2016 to 2020.
2. The US Needs a Department of Cybersecurity
In the pattern of Office the Director of National INtelligence and Homeland Security? We have created huge bureaucratic behemoths since 9-11. How will a Department of Cybersecurity
The first thing you will have to do is separate the word cybersecurity into cyber security so you can make a nice three letter acronym: DCS versus DC which just will not work.
The US Needs a Department of Cybersecurity
As the saying goes, when everyone is in charge, no one is in charge.
Everyone knows the U.S. has a cybersecurity problem and the Biden administration's emergency request for $10 billion starts out by acknowledging we are in crisis. The question is what to do about it.
Today the government has a fractured approach to cybersecurity. Just look at the emergency allocation and you’ll see those dollars flowing to at least five different departments and agencies: the General Services Administration, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the federal chief information security officer, and U.S. Digital Services. As the old saying goes, when everyone is in charge, no one is in charge.
Biden and Congress should fundamentally reorganize its disparate efforts into a centralized Department of Cybersecurity. This new department should have the mandate to organize the big-three triad—people, tech and processes—into a cohesive structure. The work that has started under both parties administrations, such as the creation of the federal information security officer within the Office of Management and Budget by President Barack Obama and the creation of CISA, an operational component of the Department of Homeland Security, under President Donald Trump are steps in the right direction, but it’s time to build on these efforts and together under a single, effective agency stop the “spread it like peanut butter” approach to cyber.
Cyber Department people would be responsible for cybersecurity throughout the federal government. This is not just a network defense role. There are at least three different times in computer systems’ life cycles that cybersecurity is needed. First, the department would serve as a resource for creating more modern DevSecOps efforts throughout the government. Second, the department would serve as evaluators who help the government determine whether new acquisitions are cyber fit for purpose. Third, the department would act as the central point for incident response and defensive operations.
The government needs to adopt a “shift left” mindset, where security is baked in as early as possible into development as possible. This is also the best value for the taxpayer. Studies show that fixing a problem after deployment can cost up to 100x more than if found early. A Cyber Department would provide the secure development framework and resources for implementation.
The department would also provide the in-house expertise to make sure systems are implemented with cybersecurity in mind. Portions of the Defense Department have already adopted this shift-left mindset and are reaping the benefits. For example, the Air Force is adopting a more DevSecOps-friendly approach with its program Platform One. We need this institutionalized as a practice throughout the government.
Second, a Cyber Department would provide evaluation expertise during procurement for new or modernizing existing systems from commercial vendors. The government procures billions of dollars of IT software each year, and the government needs experts to help evaluate whether that software is secure enough.
The Biden administration cites an IT modernization crisis. In fact, about $9 billion of the $10 billion in emergency budget requests will go into technology modernization. While technically correct IT systems need modernization, the larger context is missed. A recent congressional oversight scorecard shows the government currently is only doing one thing well: commercial license compliance. What they are falling behind on is risk management and cybersecurity because they are treating cyber like a widget to license.
The Government Accountability Office recently found that the government still is not implementing cybersecurity requirements in contracts for weapons. Because there are no contracting requirements, it’s not done. One of the Cyber Department’s tasks would be not just ensuring there are cybersecurity requirements but also providing the subject matter experts to evaluate whether vendors satisfy the criteria.
Lastly, a Cyber Department would serve as the natural extension to CISA, which is expected to provide cybersecurity across all levels of government, and where appropriate, industry. Within industry, this role would be called the “computer information security officer” and run a governmentwide security operations center.
The role would include a clear cybersecurity defense mandate. A Cyber Department, however, should not become a law enforcement agency. That means the department would be responsible for defending but still rely upon existing law enforcement agencies to pursue any action against domestic or foreign cyber threat actors.
Overall, such a centralized agency would provide a much needed authoritative source for moving cyber forward in the government. As stated by the GAO, “Despite the issuance of a National Cyber Strategy in 2018, it is still unclear which executive branch official is ultimately responsible for not only coordinating implementation of the strategy, but also holding federal agencies accountable once activities are implemented.” The Department of Cyber would finally provide a home for the cybersecurity efforts currently spread out throughout the government.
Dr. David Brumley is the chief executive officer of ForAllSecure.
3. Geomatics is vital to US national security; our advantage is at risk
Geomatics is not a word I would use. But maybe I will use it now that I have read this.
Excerpt:
Geomatics is a science the United States has traditionally dominated, but many U.S. competitors, including China, are investing heavily in geomatics — both in technological infrastructure and in the education of their students. To maintain our leadership in this field, the United States must also continue to invest in our own technological systems and, more importantly, create a steady stream of geomatics scientists, engineers and mathematicians who have the knowledge and vision to keep the United States at the forefront.
...
So, please, encourage the burgeoning STEM professionals around you to investigate the science of geomatics. And for those students interested in STEM, consider geomatics as a specialty. There are so many exciting developments at the forefront, and NGA is hiring! Many government organizations and industry are hiring too.
Bottom line — geomatics is crucial to U.S. national security. We’re calling out to all potential geomatics professionals of the United States: Your country, your family and your friends need you.
Geomatics is vital to US national security; our advantage is at risk
When you switch on a light, pay for an item with a credit card, or use your phone’s navigation app to avoid traffic or find your favorite restaurant, you benefit from the work of experts in geomatics— the science of determining the “where” and “when” — either in, on or above the ever-changing Earth’s surface.
Our navigation, banking, power grids and many other elements of American life — including our national security — depend on scientists’ precise knowledge of timing and the location of items across the Earth’s surface and in near-Earth orbit. Our lives are easier and safer today because of technological advances by geomatics experts in the U.S. government, industry and academia, but our agency and national population of experts in this tradecraft is declining. As director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, I know that to maintain that security into the 21st century, we need more students studying geomatics — to become the next generation’s geomatics experts.
Geomatics is a science the United States has traditionally dominated, but many U.S. competitors, including China, are investing heavily in geomatics — both in technological infrastructure and in the education of their students. To maintain our leadership in this field, the United States must also continue to invest in our own technological systems and, more importantly, create a steady stream of geomatics scientists, engineers and mathematicians who have the knowledge and vision to keep the United States at the forefront.
One possible threat to the United States’ world leadership in geomatics is what’s happening with the global positioning system. Developed by U.S. scientists, GPS is the premier system used worldwide for precise positioning and navigation, as well as maintaining precise time — critical for banking and numerous electronic grid systems. NGA, along with other U.S. government entities, supports the U.S. Space Force in maintaining the GPS system.
While our GPS is currently the worldwide standard, we must continue to develop and improve the technology to more safely support emerging technologies such as self-driving cars and 5G capabilities. We’re working on it, but so are others, including Russia and China. They are delivering their own global navigation satellite systems, or GNSS. Just last year, China launched the final satellite for its own GNSS, BEIDOU. It was a wake-up call for the United States — and I, along with many in the geospatial field, heard it loud and clear. We must continue to innovate in the field of geomatics — but we can’t do that without the next generation of geomatics professionals.
We are fortunate that NGA has some outstanding geomatics professionals on our team, helping us provide world-class geospatial intelligence to the U.S. armed forces, first responders and policymakers. Those geomatics professionals make our products more accurate, which saves lives. Geomatics fundamentally underpins our modern way of life. Quite frankly, we can’t do what we do without them. Geomatics experts are not only crucial to how NGA operates today, but they are crucial to our future success. As NGA director, I’ve announced the agency’s Moonshot — our imperative to sustain U.S. geospatial-intelligence superiority. To achieve this, NGA will need to harness the knowledge and talent of the next generation of geomatics scientists, engineers and mathematicians.
But a concern for NGA — and many in U.S. government and industry who deal with geomatics — is where will this next generation come from. As many current geomatics professionals approach retirement age, there aren’t enough young scientists trained and ready to step up and take their place in the U.S. A committee convened by the U.S National Research Council to discuss the future of geomatics found that there was a “lack of a trained workforce to develop and maintain the infrastructure in the coming decades.” Not only that, but as American students remain unaware of this important field, academic programs in geomatics have reached — or are trending to — reduction or dissolution, impacting generations of geomatics professionals to come. At the same time, our competitors are making significant investments to develop geomatics expertise in their own people, both in their home countries and in existing U.S. academic programs.
To cope with the scarcity of American geomatics professionals, NGA initiated a strategy to hire bright college graduates in science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM, and to educate them in geomatics through our innovative distance-learning program. This enables our graduates to increase their knowledge while serving the mission. Geomatics is a challenging science to master, and I am grateful to these team members for taking up the challenge, but the need for these professionals in the United States is so strong that individual programs like ours can’t be the only solution.
To achieve NGA’s Moonshot and maintain U.S. national security, we must continue to be the world’s leader in the field of geomatics. We need people to develop and manage cutting-edge geomatics methods and technology. To do that, we need students studying in this field now at our colleges and universities, and even delving into geomatics at the high-school level.
Creating more “geodetic professionals” is not merely a matter of developing interest. Our overall STEM programs need to focus on engagement, mentoring and broad communication across our communities — the K-12 educators who inspire students in the classroom, the parents of our young scientists-to-be, the villages that raise them. We must market, we must engage, we must mentor from kindergarten to college in order to assure the STEM professionals of the future are present to support the challenges of the future.
President Kennedy challenged America to put man on the moon inside a decade. We call on the nation to quadruple the number of STEM graduates in the next decade. Our economy and our national security rest upon our ability as a nation to meet this challenge.
So, please, encourage the burgeoning STEM professionals around you to investigate the science of geomatics. And for those students interested in STEM, consider geomatics as a specialty. There are so many exciting developments at the forefront, and NGA is hiring! Many government organizations and industry are hiring too.
Bottom line — geomatics is crucial to U.S. national security. We’re calling out to all potential geomatics professionals of the United States: Your country, your family and your friends need you.
Vice Adm. Robert Sharp is director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency.
4. Trio of exercises had soldiers and airmen island-hopping in the Pacific this summer
I wonder who will be in charge - MacArthur or Nimitz or both?
From the interwebs:
General MacArthur and Admiral Nimitz employed a strategy of “triphibious” warfare to advance through the Pacific. This strategy involved combing air, land, and sea forces to navigate the challenging geography and distances. Overtime, this strategy came to be known as Island Hopping.
Leapfrogging, also known as island hopping, was a military strategy employed by the Allies in the Pacific War against the Empire of Japan during World War II. The key idea is to bypass heavily fortified enemy islands instead of trying to capture every island in sequence en route to a final target.
The US “island hopping” strategy targeted key islands and atolls to capture and equip with airstrips, bringing B-29 bombers within range of the enemy homeland, while hopping over strongly defended islands, cutting off supply lanes and leaving them to wither.
General MacArthur and Admiral Chester W. Nimitz seized the initiative, launching an 'Island Hopping' campaign. Their strategy was to capture the Pacific islands one by one, advancing towards Japan and bypassing and isolating centres of resistance.
Ultimately, the island hopping campaign was successful. It allowed the US to gain control over sufficient islands in the Pacific to get close enough to Japan to launch a mainland invasion. ... Fearing a drawn out war with many more casualties, the US made plans to end the war quickly and force Japan's surrender.
Trio of exercises had soldiers and airmen island-hopping in the Pacific this summer
Soldiers from the 82nd Airborne, 1st Special Forces Group and Japan Ground Self Defense conduct Forager 21 airborne operations on Guam. (Cpl. Carlie Lopez/Army)
Over the weekend, U.S. soldiers and airmen in the Pacific saw the conclusion of what their commanders termed an “agile combat deployment” of at least 4,000 troops across the islands of Oceania.
More than 150 soldiers with the 82nd Airborne Division, 1st Special Forces Group and allies in the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force parachuted into Guam early Friday morning as part of Exercise Forager 2021, which had kicked off on July 11.
Forager is one of two supporting exercises, along with Pacific Iron, supporting Defender Pacific, a large-scale effort to align the United States with partners such as Japan, South Korea and other nations in a combined effort at countering potential Chinese military maneuvers.
Why this fight won't look like any other for the growing number of soldiers headed there.
Todd South
May 8, 2019
Forager has been the primary training exercise in support of the Defender Pacific 21 exercise, according to an Army statement.
U.S. Army Gen. Charles A. Flynn, head of Army Pacific, and Lt. Gen. Jon T. Thomas, Pacific Air Forces deputy commander, spoke with regional media during a short press conference Sunday.
Forager is centered on Guam, with reach into the Northern Mariana Islands.
“We are demonstrating our commitment here to the defense of Guam, to the defense of the nation, and to the values and the principles inherent in a free and open Pacific,” Flynn said. “This is the foundation of why we conduct exercises like we have today across the Pacific.”
Thomas shared the goals of the parallel Pacific Iron exercise.
“Pacific Iron is our largest and most comprehensive exercise to date to exercise what we call ‘agile combat employment,’” said Thomas. “We are exercising the ability to disperse a large force to multiple locations and then to operate in intense pace and tempo over a two-week period. This small, agile footprint across multiple locations is how we will conduct operations when the situation may require it and we can do it today at scale.”
Flynn said these and other exercises hit three key areas for regional security:
- Strategic deployment of forces into the region immediately followed by an operational maneuver.
- Command and control of those deployed forces from dispersed locations.
- Rehearsing joint all-domain operations followed by rehearsals of those capabilities.
Forager showcases an ability to rapidly deploy a force to protect Guam as a strategic site. Pacific Iron brought 35 aircraft and 800 airmen into the Indo-Pacific Command area of operations, which included:
- Ten F-15E Strike Eagles from the 389th Fighter Squadron at Mountain Home Air Force Base, Idaho.
- Twenty-five F-22 Raptors from the 525th Fighter Squadron at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska, and the 199th Fighter Squadron, from the Hawaii Air National Guard at Joint Base Pearl Harbor Hickam.
- Two C-130J Hercules from the 374th Airlift Wing at Yokota Air Base, Japan, to conduct combat dispersal operations in Guam and Tinian.
Ohio Army National Guardsmen with 1st Battalion, 174th Air Defense Artillery Regiment, ran Avenger Air Defense Systems and Sentinel Radars starting in early July on Guam and Tinian, as part of the early stages of Forager.
Alpha and Bravo batteries set up systems at Andersen Air Force Base, while Charlie Battery flew to Tinian, in the Northern Mariana Islands, on CH-47 Chinooks in late July, according to the Army.
“It gives our Soldiers that real-feel,” said Ohio National Guard Capt. Abby Schroll, Charlie Battery Commander of the 1-174th, in an Army news story. “You train as you fight. This gives us the confidence to go and be able to conduct our operations successfully.”
Both Pacific Iron and Forager are supporting exercises for the much lager Pacific Defender event, a division-sized exercise across INDOPACOM.
The larger exercise is growing in scale to match Defender Europe, which brings together U.S. forces stationed on that continent with forces deployed from the United States mainland, along with partners and allies in Europe. Defender Europe is aimed at countering potential Russian military maneuvers.
As Forager and Pacific Iron conclude this week, soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines have also wrapped up a 17,000-troop exercise, Talisman Sabre, on water and in costal areas of Australia, simulating an attack on the country by the Chinese Navy.
More than 100 paratroopers from 4th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division, conducted a parachute jump from Royal Australian Air Force C-17A Globemaster III aircraft onto a drop zone in northeastern Australia on July 28.
5. Information Operations are Critical to Defending Western Civilization
We can do this better, We must.
Ponder this excerpt. We have the superior message, values, and ideology.
What dictators fear most isn’t foreign militaries. What they fear most are their own citizens. Why? Because an informed citizenry is capable of vanquishing every myth tyrants desperately seek to preserve.
Yet many Western nations fail to understand this elementary truth. That is why we spend billions on military hardware yet a fraction of that on the tactics that can actually defeat extremist ideologies and tyrannical regimes: political warfare and information operations.
Information Operations are Critical to Defending Western Civilization
The truth is that dictators are beating the West when it comes to sophisticated information operations.
What are tyrants most afraid of? To answer that question, one must look at where they allocate their resources. Dictators like Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and North Korea’s Kim Jong-un spend billions to keep their citizens in the dark. They spare no expense to ban social media and suppress the Internet. They jail journalists and bloggers. They fund massive security agencies to silence their people.
What dictators fear most isn’t foreign militaries. What they fear most are their own citizens. Why? Because an informed citizenry is capable of vanquishing every myth tyrants desperately seek to preserve.
Yet many Western nations fail to understand this elementary truth. That is why we spend billions on military hardware yet a fraction of that on the tactics that can actually defeat extremist ideologies and tyrannical regimes: political warfare and information operations.
Though these tactics don’t line the pockets of the military-industrial complex, they are devastatingly effective.
The truth is that dictators are beating the West when it comes to sophisticated information operations. Authoritarian regimes are buying up media publications in order to distort global media coverage, divert attention from their crimes, and pressure their adversaries. They are hacking and leaking, producing deep fakes, and spying on journalists.
Put simply, terrorists and extremist regimes are running rings around liberal democracies. If we don’t reverse the tide, this imbalance could ultimately be our downfall. Perhaps this sounds alarmist, but from my deep knowledge of information operations, few people can imagine the scope and power of today’s disinformation campaigns by hostile actors.
In a Congressional testimony of tech CEOs, Congressman Jamie Raskin (D-MD) asked Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg the following:
...can you just address the proliferation of fake accounts? I understand annually you get 6.5 billion fake accounts produced there, but in some sense you have a profit motive that’s linked to that because that’s what is reported to your investors, the number of accounts. Are you working zealously to try to ferret out these fake accounts that are used to spread hate and disinformation?
Zuckerberg answered as unflappably as ever:
Congressman, absolutely. We work hard on this. We take down billions of fake accounts a year—a lot of that is just people trying to set up accounts to spam people for commercial reasons. A very small percentage of that are nation-states trying to interfere in elections but we’re very focused on trying to find those. Having fake and harmful content on our platform does not help our business, it hurts our business. People do not want to see that stuff—and they use our services less when they do. So we are aligned with people in order to take that down and we invest billions of dollars a year in doing so.
Consider for a moment what percentage of these fake accounts are bad actors trying to undermine democracies and what percentage are democracies trying to undermine bad actors. In my informed estimation, 99 percent of the actual propaganda and fake news flows from dictators and extremist organizations towards free societies.
Thanks to these bad actors, it is hard to believe anything anymore. When the distinction between fact and fiction is blurred, the foundation of democracy is eroded. They are trying to take advantage of our core values to undermine the foundations of our societies.
What is the solution to this civilizational challenge? It is to fight back. We must use every tool at our disposal to mirror the methods that our enemies use against us. Publicly, we must double down on a political discourse that reaffirms the classical liberal foundations of our civilization—namely an abiding faith in freedom and individual rights. We cannot let political correctness slowly gnaw away at our freedoms and identity.
Behind the scenes, an army of decentralized cyber defenders must wage relentless offensive campaigns to fight back against the enemies of liberty and peace. Having worked with many such individuals, I can say with confidence that one should never underestimate the creativity and influence of a group of motivated dissidents, former intelligence operators, and human rights activists.
These cyber activists often remain in the shadows, conducting anonymous online campaigns to counter the propaganda of authoritarian regimes and expose the truth. You don’t know their names, but they are heroes.
Sadly, in this post-truth era, too many people throw around the term “fake news” and blur the distinction between the sides in this narrative war. In World War II, both the Allies and Axis alliances spread fake news to deceive their enemy. Yet it would have been senseless to condemn “deception” equally regardless of the aim of each side. It was vital that the Allies deceive the Axis and a mortal danger that the Axis deceived the Allies.
So too it is today in the war between tyrants and terrorists and the cyber-activists who fight them. The former spared no cost to win. They fight dirty and are committed to victory. It’s high time we fought back.
Joel Zamel is the founder of Wikistrat, the world’s first crowdsourced intelligence platform for conducting geopolitical studies and foresight monitoring for governments and multinational corporations around the world.
Image: A supporter holds a copy of Apple Daily newspaper during a court hearing outside West Magistrates’ Courts, after police charge two executives of the pro-democracy Apple Daily newspaper over the national security law, in Hong Kong, China, June 19, 2021. Reuters/Lam Yik.
6. Navy's Top Admiral Said SEALs Had 'Character and Ethics' Issues
Excerpts:
Gilday said the Navy Special Warfare community has now "placed great emphasis on [character and ethics] in terms of their mentoring and their training."
"I just spoke with the Naval Special Warfare commander and he had just finished interviewing a number of chief petty officers to go overseas in a ... high-risk operation," Gilday said.
Gilday explained that the chiefs that didn't make the cut are "now ... going through remedial training to get them back to a level where future missions they will compete."
When asked for more details on the mission or the remedial training, Naval Special Warfare spokeswoman Lt. Kara Handley said that "for the security of our service members, we do not disclose operational details of missions."
"We do not have anything further to add to [the] CNO's comments," she said.
I have to take exception to the Public Affairs officer's comments. She gave the wrong boilerplate response to the question which was not about disclosing operations details of missions. The question needed a response to help restore trust and confidence in the force. A description of the type, scale, and scope of remedial ethics training should be at the top of her list of strategic communications talking points.
Navy's Top Admiral Said SEALs Had 'Character and Ethics' Issues
The Navy's highest-ranking officer acknowledged on Monday that the branch's elite warfighting unit, the SEALs, had a problem with character and ethics.
Speaking at the annual Sea Air Space conference at a convention center just outside of Washington, D.C., Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Michael Gilday noted that the special warfare community underwent "a comprehensive review" that he likened to the review the surface warfare community conducted after the collisions of the Fitzgerald and the McCain. That review looked at the collisions the two destroyers had with merchant ships in 2017 that claimed the lives of 17 sailors.
The evaluation of special forces was conducted by the U.S. Special Operations Command and found that unrelenting demand -- along with the command's willingness to take on the missions when overtasked -- has taken a toll across special warfare units.
According to Gilday, the issue "with the SEALs -- it wasn't professional competency like it was in the surface community; it was character and ethics."
The military-wide review was directed by Army Gen. Richard Clarke, head of U.S. Special Operations Command, in 2019. Clarke's directive followed several prominent and embarrassing events within the command - many of which included Navy SEALs, which he said threatened the trust Americans place in their special operators.
"I ordered this review to keep faith with the American people and our policy leaders regarding the good order and accountability of SOF," Clarke said in a statement in August 2019.
In 2019 the three top leaders of SEAL Team 7 were fired after the unit was booted from Iraq mid-deployment. Rear Adm. Collin Green relieved the men "due to a loss of confidence that resulted from leadership failures that caused a breakdown of good order and discipline within two subordinate units while deployed to combat zones," according to a Navy statement.
Gilday said the Navy Special Warfare community has now "placed great emphasis on [character and ethics] in terms of their mentoring and their training."
"I just spoke with the Naval Special Warfare commander and he had just finished interviewing a number of chief petty officers to go overseas in a ... high-risk operation," Gilday said.
Gilday explained that the chiefs that didn't make the cut are "now ... going through remedial training to get them back to a level where future missions they will compete."
When asked for more details on the mission or the remedial training, Naval Special Warfare spokeswoman Lt. Kara Handley said that "for the security of our service members, we do not disclose operational details of missions."
"We do not have anything further to add to [the] CNO's comments," she said.
-- Konstantin Toropin can be reached at konstantin.toropin@military.com. Follow him on Twitter @ktoropin.
7. Sixty Special Forces soldiers involved in 1993 battle to have awards upgraded
Some more details on Gothic Serpent for those unfamiliar. It looks like there will be separate ceremonies at the units. I don't know if we will see a list of the names of all of the recipients.
Sixty Special Forces soldiers involved in 1993 battle to have awards upgraded
| The Fayetteville Observer
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Storytellers Project: J.T. Cooper, We All Bleed Red
Storytellers Project: JT Cooper recalls his frightening 'Black Hawk Down' battle in Somalia
Ayrika Whitney and Kyleah Dunn/USA Today Network - Tennessean, USA TODAY
FORT BRAGG — Sixty Special Forces soldiers involved in the 1993 Battle of Mogadishu, known as “Black Hawk Down,” will have their awards upgraded, according to an Army news release.
The soldiers were part of Operation Gothic Serpent, which was led by U.S. Special Operations Forces from August 1993 to October 1993 during the Somali Civil War, the news release states.
On Oct. 3, 1994, two MH-60 Black Hawk helicopters were shot down by armed militants, which led to the attack of ground forces attempting to recover the downed personnel and the deaths of 18 American soldiers.
Two awards have been upgraded to the Distinguished Flying Cross, and 58 were upgraded to the Silver Star, the news release states.
The Silver Star Medal is the third-highest military combat award and is given in recognition of a valorous act performed during combat operations while under fire from enemy forces.
The Distinguished Flying Cross is awarded in recognition of heroism or extraordinary achievement while participating in aerial flight.
In October, former Secretary of the Army Ryan McCarthy directed the Senior Army Decorations Board to reevaluate previously approved awards for valor, according to the news release.
The upgraded awards will be presented later this year in separate ceremonies hosted by the units in which the soldiers served at the time of the mission.
Here’s what we know about the October 1993 battle based on news accounts and The Fayetteville Observer archives.
Bragg soldiers deploy to Somalia
In August 1993, Fort Bragg sent 140 soldiers to Somalia to join United Nations forces providing humanitarian relief in the East African country.
The soldiers were from the 1st Corps Support Command, the 82nd Airborne Division's 782nd Maintenance Battalion, 18th Airborne Corps headquarters, 18th Finance Group and the 18th Personnel Group's 129th Postal Company.
Other Fort Bragg units with soldiers in Somalia included the 44th Medical Brigade, 4th Psychological Operations Group and U.S. Army Special Operations Command.
By October, Pentagon officials confirmed Americans were killed Oct. 3, 1993, during a U.N. military operation against Somali warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid, according to an Oct. 4, 1993, wire report.
According to the report, a Pentagon statement confirmed that two Army Black Hawk helicopters were shot down during the operation.
By Oct. 6, 1993, the Associated Press reported that three Fort Bragg Green Berets were among soldiers killed by Somali gunmen in the gunfight.
They were: Master Sgt. Timothy L. Martin, 38, of Aurora, Indiana; Sgt. 1st Class Earl R. Fillmore Jr., 28, Blairsville, Pennsylvania; and Staff Sgt. Daniel D. Busch, 25, of Portage, Wisconsin.
Other soldiers killed in the attack were assigned to Company B, 3rd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment,at Fort Benning, Georgia.
According to the Associated Press report, the United Nations accused Mohamed Farrah Aidid, a fugitive warlord, of trying to incite Somalis to further violence against U.N. forces at that time.
The Associated Press also reported that a Somali cameraman filmed the interrogation of Chief Warrant Officer Michael Durant, the pilot of one of two U.S. Black Hawk helicopters was shot down Oct. 3, 1993.
A fourth Fort Bragg soldier, Sgt. 1st Class Matthew L. Rierson, 33, of Nevada, Iowa, was confirmed dead in an Oct. 6, 1993, mortar attack in Mogadishu.
Rierson was assigned to Fort Bragg's U.S. Army Special Operations Command.
A fifth U.S. Army Special Operations Command soldier — Master Sgt. Gary Gordon, 33, of Lincoln, Maine, who had been listed as missing in action on Oct. 3 and Oct. 4, 1993 — was confirmed dead, according to an Oct. 9, 1993, article in The Fayetteville Observer.
A sixth U.S. Army Special Operations Forces Command soldier — Sgt. 1st Class Randall D. Shughart, 35, of Newville, Pennsylvania who had been listed as missing and unaccounted for in the attack, was confirmed as dead, according to an Oct. 13, 1993, Fayetteville Observer article.
Fort Bragg Medal of Honor recipients
The families of Gordon and Shughart were presented with the Medals of Honor during a May 23, 1994, ceremony at the White House.
President Bill Clinton presented the medals to Stephanie Shughart and Carmen Gordon, the soldiers' wives.
“Let there be no debate about the professionalism of those who served there and the valor of those who died there,'' Clinton said.
Shughart's and Gordon's families had said the men were members of Delta Force, the Army's counter-terrorist and hostage-rescue unit.
Clinton told Gordon’s and Shughart’s families that they saved the life of the helicopter pilot, Durant.
According to the award citations, Gordon was serving as a sniper team leader for the U.S. Army Special Operations Command under Task Force Ranger in Somalia.
When Gordon learned that ground forces were unable to secure a helicopter crash site, he and Shughart, a sniper team member, volunteered to protect the four wounded, despite the enemy closing in on the site.
Shughart was under intense automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenade fire, when he provided precision sniper fire from the lead helicopter during an assault on a building and at two helicopter crash sites.
Shughart and Gordon fought their way under intense small arms fire through a dense maze of shanties and shacks to reach the critically injured crew members at the crash site.
The two soldiers pulled Durant and injured crew members from the aircraft and established a perimeter.
Shughart used his long-range rifle and sidearm to kill an undetermined number of attackers while traveling the perimeter to protect the downed crew.
He continued his protective fire until he depleted his ammunition and was fatally wounded, the citation states.
Gordon went back to the wreckage to recover the crew’s weapons and ammunition and provided ammunition to Durant.
After Shughart was fatally wounded and Gordon spent his rifle ammunition, he went back to the wreck to recover a rifle with the last five rounds of ammunition and gave it to Durant.
Using his pistol, Gordon continued to fight until he, too, was fatally wounded.
Durant was captured by Aidid's followers, but he was released 11 days later when United Nations commanders in Somalia backed off from their efforts to capture Aidid.
Durant spoke about the attack during a visit to the Airborne & Special Operations Museum in Fayetteville in 2003.
He said his treatment didn’t start out well but somewhat improved because of the way he treated his captors.
He said he owed his life to Shughart and Gordon and that he thought they deserved the Medal of Honor.
Schools at Fort Bragg have since been named after the soldiers, with Gordon Elementary and Shughart Elementary and Middle.
Part of a sculpture outside the U.S. Army Special Operations Aviation Command contains steel taken from the wreckage of one of the UH-60 Black Hawk that crashed during the Battle of Mogadishu in 1993.
The Airborne and Special Operations Museum in Fayetteville also has an exhibit that includes a piece of one of the downed aircraft.
By February 2001, Actors filming the movie “Black Hawk Down”, based on Mark Bowden’s book with the same name that recounts the Battle of Mogadishu, visited Fort Bragg to prepare for the movie.
Generals testify before Congress
Maj. Gen. William Garrison took responsibility for the raid that left the soldiers dead but defended his actions during a May 12, 1994, Senate committee.
Garrison was commander of the Joint Special Operations Task Force that hunted for Aidid in Mogadishu in September and October.
Maj. Gen. Thomas Montgomery, former deputy commander of the U.S. forces in Somalia, told members of Congress he requested tanks in September 1993, but the request was denied.
His military superiors cited reluctance in Washington to increase U.S. forces because the public was becoming disillusioned that people the Americans were supposed to be helping were responding with hostility.
Garrison said most of the causalities in the battle were from the first downed helicopter, which was Ranger forces and “other forces that are classified in nature.”
Garrison said his forces were not pinned down and intentionally stayed with the downed helicopters as the battle raged around them.
Pope airmen honored for their roles
Three Pope airmen were given valor awards Jan. 31, 1994, for their roles in the battle.
Tech. Sgt. Timothy A. Wilkinson received the Air Force Cross, the second-highest honor an airman can receive after the Medal of Honor.
Master Sgt. Scott C. Fales and Sgt. Jeffrey W. Bray each received the Silver Star, the next-highest award presented to all ranks of the armed services.
All three airmen were part of the 24th Special Tactics Squadron.
Wilkinson and Fales were combat rescue medics trained to get to a site by land or parachute.
Wilkinson responded to a U.S. helicopter that was shot down by a rocket-propelled grenade.
According to his citation, Wilkinson slid down a rope from a hovering helicopter into the crash site "under extremely heavy enemy fire from three directions" to treat three wounded Rangers.
Fales was attached to a joint task force search-and-rescue security team responding to the crash.
Fales lost part of his calf to an AK-47, but patched himself up, started intravenous injections on himself and tended to other wounded, Air Force officials said.
His citation states that he disregarded his wound to continue to provide medical care to his team and provided covering fire against enemy attacks.
Bray was attached to “an elite Army special operations task force conducting combat operations in support of Task Force Ranger,'' his citation states.
In response to the helicopter crash, he exposed himself to enemy fire, developed a perimeter and called in fire support against concealed enemy targets.
Bray's citation states that he worked throughout the night to keep enemy forces at bay and that his efforts were instrumental in limiting casualties and getting U.S. soldiers out of the situation.
In addition to the 18 soldiers who died during the October 1993 attack, about another 75 were wounded, according to published reports.
The wounded were operators from Fort Bragg's 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta, along with Rangers from the 3rd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment, and pilots and crewmen from the elite 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment.
Wounded soldiers
Maj. Gen. Gary Harrell, who is depicted in the movie “Black Hawk Down,” was among the wounded.
Harrell twice denied the requests of Delta operators wanting to rescue the crew of one of the downed helicopters being overrun by a mob in Mogadishu.
He approved Gordon’s and Shugart’s requests to rescue the crew.
“That’s one of those that makes you ask, ‘Where do we find men like that?’” Harrell said. “It wasn’t like they just decided they’d hop off the helicopter and thought that somebody would come to their rescue. We had two helicopters down. We had the capacity to get one. We didn’t have the capacity to get two. They knew what was going on.”
During Harrell’s retirement ceremony, Lt. Gen. Robert Wagner — then-commander of the U.S. Army Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg — said that a mortar round detonated near Harrell during the battle.
Wagner said Harrell’s leg was nearly severed, and he suffered other life-threatening injuries.
According to a 2019 obituary for retired Sgt. Maj. James McMahon, of Fayetteville, he was wounded in one of the helicopter crashes during the 1993 battle in Mogadishu.
McMahon’s obituary states that although he was wounded, he “continued fighting to protect his fallen comrades until reinforcements arrived.” He received a Purple Heart and the Silver Star for distinguished valor.
Staff writer Rachael Riley can be reached at rriley@fayobserver.com or 910-486-3528.
8. How Democracies Can Win an Information Contest Without Undercutting Their Values
It is not about undercutting our values. And the author is right. We do not need to (and must not) borrow from our enemies' playbook. Our values will win the information war. But it is a marathon and not a sprint. There will not be quick decisive "victories" in the information and ideological war we are in (political warfare).
Excerpts:
Next Steps for Democracies
For deterrence to work, the United States and its allies would need to somehow convince Russia and China that these cyber operations, sanctions, and other actions would stop if Moscow and Beijing ceased their information manipulation. Likewise, efforts to improve global financial transparency could face pushback from vested interests around the world. Success is far from guaranteed. But democracies need to take bold, responsible action in the face of competition and disinformation from authoritarian rivals.
Democratic governments should do all of this in coordination with one another, leveraging what might well be their most important strategic advantage: a strong network of partners and alliances. Democratic governments should stand shoulder to shoulder, sharing information about threats and collaborating on responses that are rooted in their values, because those values are strengths. The information competition is not just a contest between nations, but a struggle over systems and principles. African democracies have a stake in the fight. They should be partners in this effort, not collateral damage.
The challenge that autocratic information manipulation campaigns pose for democracies is urgent. But adopting the techniques of choice for authoritarians leads free societies down the wrong path. Rather than cede the moral high ground—a critical asset in the various geopolitical struggles between Western democracies and their autocratic adversaries—democracies should pursue a strategy that is rooted in democratic values and leverages democratic strengths in order to reframe the contest on their own terms. That is how they will prevail.
How Democracies Can Win an Information Contest Without Undercutting Their Values
As cybersecurity threats grow, democracies should avoid borrowing the authoritarians’ playbook. Here’s what democracies need in developing a cyber strategy of their own.
Dueling French and Russian trolls sparred with one another online as they vied for influence in multiple African countries, Facebook revealed late last year. It was the first time the platform called out individuals affiliated with a Western liberal democratic government for coordinated inauthentic behavior on its platform. The French operation, which had been underway since 2018, used fake accounts to pose as locals in target countries, commenting on content related to current events and pushing back on criticisms of French foreign policy posted by the Russian operation. “We have these two efforts from different sides of these issues using the same tactics and techniques,” Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook’s head of cybersecurity policy, said of the episode, “and they end up looking sort of the same.” That is a problem.
Democracies should not emulate the disinformation tactics of authoritarian regimes like Russia and China. Specifically, democracies should not seek to covertly influence public debate either by deliberately spreading information that is false or misleading or by engaging in deceptive practices, such as the use of fictitious online personas. While it can be tempting to fight fire with fire and combat authoritarian information manipulation with equivalent tactics, doing so will only deepen public distrust of political discourse—eroding the very basis of democracy and bolstering arguments used to defend autocratic rule. Responding to information manipulation in kind allows autocrats to dictate the terms of the competition—and it all but ensures that the contest will play out on terrain where democracies are at a disadvantage. These long-term costs outweigh any transitory foreign policy benefits that democracies may seek to gain. Instead, democracies should leverage their comparative advantages—which for advanced democracies often include strong rule of law, a healthy respect for human rights, considerable soft power, advanced cyber capabilities, and a vibrant network of partners and allies—and respond on their own terms.
Why Democracies Need a New Approach
As the French example shows, democracies in the transatlantic community are scrambling to find ways to combat information manipulation by authoritarian rivals. Russia and China in particular have made coordinated use of social and traditional media to manipulate and influence public debate, often by engaging in deceptive practices like misrepresenting the provenance of content or its intent. In different ways, both countries use such tactics as part of their broad-based geostrategic competition with U.S.-aligned democracies. Beijing seeks to shore up power at home and influence public discourse abroad on issues it cares about. Moscow has similar goals, and, worse, also tries to weaken democratic systems from within.
Jessica Brandt
Jessica Brandt is Policy Director of the AI and Emerging Technology Initiative at the Brookings Institution and a fellow in its Foreign Policy Program.
These tactics leverage asymmetric advantages that give authoritarian regimes an upper hand. While open information spaces may confer important strategic advantages on free societies over the long run, they also create vulnerabilities in the short term: outside actors can, at low cost and with plausible deniability, inject themselves into and try to influence domestic discourse—and efforts to foreclose that activity bump up against rights to expression. In contrast, autocratic states often tightly control their domestic information environments, which in the near term affords them a degree of immunity. Moreover, countries like Russia and China can freely exploit Western-based social media platforms without caring about the commercial damage to these companies. They can also use deception with relative impunity because their political systems impose virtually no normative restraints on government lying.
Democracies are different. Unlike authoritarian systems, democratic ones depend on the idea that the truth is knowable, that citizens can discern it, and that they can use it in order to make decisions of self-government. When democratic governments pollute the information space with manipulated content, they risk eroding these ideas and the authority of their own institutions. When citizens of democracies learn about their governments’ covert subterfuge abroad, they may lose trust in official pronouncements at home. The deliberate manipulation of democratic discourse is also likely to reduce the global prestige of democracy, making it harder for democratic governments to build and exercise soft power abroad. And by reinforcing the perception that information manipulation is pervasive, such activity undermines the notion of objective truth, which will ultimately do more harm to democratic societies than to their competitors.
Granted, democratic governments and their leaders have also sometimes deceived their own citizens and foreign audiences. To pick just a few well-known U.S. examples, the American government used a false account of the Gulf of Tonkin incident to escalate the Vietnam War, and it conducted numerous nontransparent information campaigns in third countries throughout the Cold War. But while democratic governments have sometimes used falsehoods, these are (or should be) much rarer and more limited than those of authoritarian counterparts due to normative and institutional restraints. In the United States, for example, a series of political reckonings and transparency reforms in the 1970s—in wake of the Watergate scandal, the Vietnam War, and the Church Committee investigation, among other catalysts—have helped to curtail official deception about government activities and policies. Although these restraints remain incomplete and fragile—as vividly illustrated by former U.S. president Donald Trump’s falsehood-laden presidency—they still matter a great deal. As social media continue to shape global discourse and provide new opportunities for deception, now is the time for democracies to reaffirm their basic commitment to truth.
The French operation was particularly egregious because of the consequences it imposed on unwitting citizens of multiple countries. It put African civilians in the middle of two rival campaigns that were duplicitous in nature and crowded out the authentic public discourse on which democracy depends. If one of Russia’s aims was to frustrate democratic deliberation, the French operation played into their hands. The French actors may have thought they were protecting their country’s interests, but they lost sight of the big picture: in the competition with autocrats, democratic values are themselves interests.
How Democracies Should Respond
Rather than a reactive, tit-for-tat approach to autocratic attacks on the health and strength of democratic systems, democratic governments should instead seize on their own asymmetric advantages—some of them in the information domain, others in the political, economic, and technological domains. And they must do so with an eye on consolidating long-term gains rather than short-term wins.
To start with, democracies can seize the initiative by harnessing truthful information to defend their interests and the integrity of the global information environment. To do this, democratic governments should take the so-called persistent engagement approach that the United States has applied to cyberspace and carry it into the information domain. This would involve concerted campaigns that are grounded in truthful messaging in order to expose the failures and false promises of harmful autocratic policies. Such an approach would be in keeping with a strategy of pushing back on Moscow’s and Beijing’s advances by exploiting their weaknesses, recognizing that competition is ultimately about the pursuit and use of advantages.
With that in mind, the French government could have publicly exposed Russia’s information campaigns, rather than imitating them or engaging with them. It could also have explored substantive cooperation with affected African governments to help build resilience against a shared threat. This might include, for example, building the capacity of government and civil society organizations to help facilitate healthy democratic discourse. This approach would have been in closer keeping with the recommendation of France’s own foreign affairs ministry, which has cautioned that democratic decisionmakers ought not “yield to the temptation of counter-propaganda.”
Policymakers in many democracies may question whether this marketplace of ideas model still works. After all, research shows that debunking falsehoods is at best partially effectual and can in some cases even help to entrench false beliefs. Importantly, the focus of democratic efforts should not be on refuting false information, but on affirmatively highlighting the strengths of democratic governance models and exposing the corruption and repression of autocratic adversaries. One audience for this messaging would be individuals who live within repressive societies. Another audience would be individuals who live in places where democracy is backsliding or not fully consolidated, where truthful information can help build resilience against authoritarian advances.
To that end, democracies should also uphold freedom of information worldwide—not just because it is consistent with democratic principles, but because it puts Russia and China in a defensive position, given their fragility to open information. This strategy should include encouraging investments in local and independent media at home and supporting objective media abroad, particularly in closed spaces. Robust civil societies and news ecosystems speak truth to power and keep citizens informed.
Ultimately, defending democratic interests in the information domain will require thinking beyond it. Democratic governments should use the diplomatic and economic tools at their disposal to impose costs that might deter authoritarian regimes from conducting manipulative information operations, recognizing that deterrence alone will not be sufficient. When it comes to Russia, this could include leveraging the strength of Western financial institutions, on which the Kremlin’s network of kleptocrats are largely reliant, to target the regime’s financial assets. Such an approach might also entail using cyber capabilities where appropriate, and within existing authorities, to undercut the ability of authoritarian regimes to conduct information operations—as U.S. Cyber Command reportedly did ahead of the 2018 U.S. midterm elections, when it temporarily took Russia’s Internet Research Agency offline, and again last year, when it deployed teams abroad to learn how adversaries might target the 2020 election. The United States in particular could build on this approach by pursuing a broad effort within the Treasury Department to prioritize tracking down graft hidden in Western financial markets, including by publishing a National Corruption Risk Assessment, focusing on kleptocracies and their oligarchs.
Next Steps for Democracies
For deterrence to work, the United States and its allies would need to somehow convince Russia and China that these cyber operations, sanctions, and other actions would stop if Moscow and Beijing ceased their information manipulation. Likewise, efforts to improve global financial transparency could face pushback from vested interests around the world. Success is far from guaranteed. But democracies need to take bold, responsible action in the face of competition and disinformation from authoritarian rivals.
Democratic governments should do all of this in coordination with one another, leveraging what might well be their most important strategic advantage: a strong network of partners and alliances. Democratic governments should stand shoulder to shoulder, sharing information about threats and collaborating on responses that are rooted in their values, because those values are strengths. The information competition is not just a contest between nations, but a struggle over systems and principles. African democracies have a stake in the fight. They should be partners in this effort, not collateral damage.
The challenge that autocratic information manipulation campaigns pose for democracies is urgent. But adopting the techniques of choice for authoritarians leads free societies down the wrong path. Rather than cede the moral high ground—a critical asset in the various geopolitical struggles between Western democracies and their autocratic adversaries—democracies should pursue a strategy that is rooted in democratic values and leverages democratic strengths in order to reframe the contest on their own terms. That is how they will prevail.
9. Japan’s Challenge in the Age of China-US Rivalry
Excerpts:
While it may be tempting to lay the blame for these issues at the feet of the FEFTA amendments, the problems faced by Japan are more fundamental. Japan currently has no strategy to integrate its national security and economic concerns and the government lacks the operational structure to execute such a strategy even if it existed. Security and economic policymakers work in isolation in their distinct spheres, with only superficial efforts made to bring these two areas together. Thus, to move forward, it is necessary to demolish the factionalism of the outdated bureaucracy. This should be achieved not simply by changing the structure of bureaucratic staffing appointments but also by attracting talent away from the private to the public sector. In this way, government will be home to a variety of viewpoints and opinions that can inform a unified approach to national security and economy.
Japan is at a crossroads and inaction is not an option. In the era of the China-U.S. rivalry, Japan must learn how to adapt to a constantly shifting geopolitical landscape — or it risks being left behind.
Japan’s Challenge in the Age of China-US Rivalry
Tokyo must find a way to synthesize national security and economic strategy amid increased competition between Beijing and Washington.
By Michio Ueda
August 02, 2021
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One of Japan’s base strategic calculations has been to leverage China’s economic growth while maintaining its reliance on the United States for its national security. However, this ambition is under threat from the continuing rivalry between the U.S. and China, a situation that looks to become the new status quo. Against this backdrop, Tokyo seems ill-equipped to address emerging external challenges and adapt to this shift in the geopolitical environment, particularly regarding its ability to synthesize its national security and economic objectives.
The difficulties Japan must confront moving forward are clearly illustrated by the issues that have emerged around the recent amendments to Japan’s Foreign Exchange and Foreign Trade Act (FEFTA). In November 2019 the act was revised, with the amended version enacted in June the following year. The new FEFTA stipulates that foreign investors must obtain approval from the Japanese government to acquire a 1 percent share or more of a specified entity. This is a dramatic reduction from the previous threshold of 10 percent and aims to make Japan’s screening procedure for foreign investment more exacting and to bring it closer in line with that of other nations such as the United States. This legislative change can be interpreted as an important move by Japan to prevent itself from becoming a “soft touch” among its allies vis-à-vis China.
However, recent events have highlighted certain shortcomings in the act. In early 2021, Rakuten, a Japanese company which operates in numerous industries such as e-commerce, financial services, and mobile telecommunications, revealed that a subsidiary of the Chinese tech giant Tencent would be acquiring a 3.65 percent share of the company. This acquisition was taking place without the Chinese subsidiary seeking approval from the government to acquire the greater than 1 percent share, despite Rakuten being a specified entity under the FEFTA. How were they allowed to bypass the amended legislation? Reportedly, they claimed an exemption available to foreign investors who do not intend to participate in managing the company in which they are acquiring a share. However, how they used the exemption was clearly not in the spirit of the amended act. Chinese investment in Rakuten, a specified entity and part of Japan’s fundamental infrastructure network, is precisely the type of investment that the amendments are designed to target. In fact, reports suggest that U.S. authorities have already expressed concern about the acquisition and, alongside Japanese authorities, have announced their intention to monitor the situation.
The shortcomings of the amended FEFTA, specifically its focus on national security, is further highlighted by the recent actions of Toshiba, a leading Japanese electronics company. Toshiba has been accused of using the act to manipulate corporate governance mechanisms. One report claimed that during its July 2020 shareholder meeting, Toshiba once tried to reject shareholder proposals put forward by foreign activist investors on the grounds that no national security considerations were at play. More worryingly, Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) became involved and placed pressure on foreign investors according to the report. An investigation conducted by lawyers concluded in June 2021 found that the proposals did not involve any relevant national security considerations, but the involvement of the METI was not in line with the intention of the FEFTA. This episode raises questions about the validity of the FEFTA amendments given their focus on regulating foreign investment exclusively in relation to national security concerns. Japan’s attempts to enhance corporate governance and transparency has undoubtedly been harmed by this episode and the finding that management at Toshiba and the METI attempted to exploit the FEFTA to reject unwanted shareholder proposals.
As can be seen from the examples above, Tokyo is still struggling to align its national security and economic policy directions. Certain national security issues have not been successfully integrated into the country’s economic policy, leaving Japan several steps behind its allies and partners. One can argue that these two domains are not only misaligned but have been brought into conflict, with national security being used to undermine corporate governance, damaging Japan’s reputation on the international stage. Not only does this have the potential to endanger Japan’s national security, but it can also taint the country’s market and discourage foreign investment.
While it may be tempting to lay the blame for these issues at the feet of the FEFTA amendments, the problems faced by Japan are more fundamental. Japan currently has no strategy to integrate its national security and economic concerns and the government lacks the operational structure to execute such a strategy even if it existed. Security and economic policymakers work in isolation in their distinct spheres, with only superficial efforts made to bring these two areas together. Thus, to move forward, it is necessary to demolish the factionalism of the outdated bureaucracy. This should be achieved not simply by changing the structure of bureaucratic staffing appointments but also by attracting talent away from the private to the public sector. In this way, government will be home to a variety of viewpoints and opinions that can inform a unified approach to national security and economy.
Japan is at a crossroads and inaction is not an option. In the era of the China-U.S. rivalry, Japan must learn how to adapt to a constantly shifting geopolitical landscape — or it risks being left behind.
10. The U.S. and China Must Rule Out an All-Out Cyberwar
It is a nice thought. How do we think Russia and China will respond to this effort. We need to understand the nature of their regimes, objectives, and strategies. They do not mirror-image ours. When we think about mutually assured destruction in cyber space do Russia and China think they have the same dependency on cyber as the US? If all three lost complete access to the cyber domain, which countries would experience catastrophic results and which countries could survive (and possibly thrive in terms of their economy, culture, and society)? If Russia and China think they can survive without cyber or survive better than the US then we will not have mutually assured destruction.My fear is the US is much more dependent on cyber than Russia and China.
Excerpts:
Nations do not typically start looking to settle an arms race until the possibility of mutually assured destruction is an imminent reality. The United States cannot wait this long. Since the 1990s, reliance on digital infrastructure and systems has only increased, meaning the scope and scale of the damage inflicted by criminal or state-based cyber-attacks is set to get worse—fast. The attack on Microsoft’s Exchange application earlier this year allowed hackers to access the email systems of a wide range of private and public sector organizations, affecting at least 30,000 globally. If the United States wants to gain control of cyberspace before it's too late, it must set up formal, high-level dialogue channels with more than just our traditional like-minded allies—starting with China and Russia.
The U.S. and China Must Rule Out an All-Out Cyberwar
If the United States wants to gain control of cyberspace it must set up formal, high-level dialogue channels with more than just our traditional like-minded allies—starting with China and Russia.
The United States can’t play Cold War politics forever—diplomacy is going to have to come back around. In its latest attempt to back China toward the edge of the global stage following a wave of disruptive cyber-attacks, the United States is missing a crucial opportunity to correct the course of international security. Indeed, America has historically mastered the domains of land, air and sea. Cyberspace won’t be so easy.
In a game in which the players are constantly changing, the line between ally and adversary becomes blurred. Both state and non-state actors are able to shoot their best shot without crossing a single border, putting critical U.S. infrastructure, supply chains and sensitive information in boundless danger.
The traditional rules of war theory are made irrelevant in cyberspace. That’s why the chaos of espionage and election interference seems almost inevitable. But a road to rules is possible. In 2015, the Obama administration reached an agreement with Beijing to stop mutual espionage in cyberspace for commercial advantage. The agreement silenced critics when Chinese intrusions in U.S. infrastructure dropped by an astonishing ninety percent. For those who still need convincing, this proves the power of words over the blame game. In fact, when Trump took office and began a trade war that would obliterate all goodwill, China once again resorted to hackers for the intel it could no longer obtain legitimately.
The Obama-era agreement may now be void, but the lessons remain.
But Biden’s frantic defense of America’s position as king of the world continues to add insult to injury. Despite China’s being less than subtle in its ambitions to become a bigger player on the world stage, it is only America that ties its national identity to the role of global hegemon. Both the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and experts on China agree that Chinese ambition is rooted in the idea of making up for the past humiliations endured at the hands of foreigners. This timeless U.S. tactic of splitting the world into teams of good against evil is a lazy one at best.
This isn’t the first time that the U.S. has been reluctant to stop the name-calling, either. For years, Putin has been keen to sit down and lay out some form of global peace treaty for cyberspace and resume formal, high-level dialogue which stopped after Russia’s annexation of Crimea. Of course, Russia has a far from saint-like record when it comes to cyber-attacks—last year’s SolarWinds hack breached the networks of at least nine Federal government agencies and more than 100 companies.
But that doesn’t mean the United States should be quick to turn our back on engagement. After all, when it comes to cybercrimes, America's hands aren’t clean either.
If talks are to have a chance of working, the United States must first get off its high horse and recognize China and Russia as the equal players they’ve become.
What’s more, it must be understood that China’s cyber strategy does not exist predominantly in a military context, unlike that of the United States and Russia. China still views economic strength as the foundation of national power, as recognized in 2019 by former assistant director of the counterintelligence division of the FBI, Bill Priestap. This view shapes its cyber strategy and provides an angle for diplomatic accord today.
Nations do not typically start looking to settle an arms race until the possibility of mutually assured destruction is an imminent reality. The United States cannot wait this long. Since the 1990s, reliance on digital infrastructure and systems has only increased, meaning the scope and scale of the damage inflicted by criminal or state-based cyber-attacks is set to get worse—fast. The attack on Microsoft’s Exchange application earlier this year allowed hackers to access the email systems of a wide range of private and public sector organizations, affecting at least 30,000 globally. If the United States wants to gain control of cyberspace before it's too late, it must set up formal, high-level dialogue channels with more than just our traditional like-minded allies—starting with China and Russia.
Ariana Wolde is a contributor at Young Voices UK and senior researcher at Elevation Policy Ltd. She tweets @arianawolde.
Image: Reuters
11. Iranians Fear Turning Into Another 'North Korea' If Draconian Internet Censorship Bill Passes
I do not know much about Iran but I am pretty sure the Iranian people do not want to live like Koreans in the north.
Iranians Fear Turning Into Another 'North Korea' If Draconian Internet Censorship Bill Passes
Iranians are warning of public anger and drawing parallels with the world's most oppressive regimes as legislation makes its way through the country's parliament that could intensify online censorship and further restrict Internet access.
Iranian authorities already block tens of thousands of websites and regularly throttle or cut Internet connectivity during crucial periods, including a near-total shutdown for nearly a week amid antiestablishment protests following a disputed election in 2019.
On July 28, the draft of a bill to hand control of Iran's Internet gateways to the armed forces and criminalize the use of virtual private networks (VPN) was sent for review to a parliamentary committee, despite fierce public criticism.
Of the 209 lawmakers present, 121 voted in a closed-door session to advance the bill.
The committee is expected to endorse the bill and could order several years of "experimental" implementation if the hard-line Guardians Council that vets all Iranian legislation gives its blessing.
End Of Foreign Platforms
Internet experts and media-freedom advocates fear the bill will put the final nail in the coffin of Internet freedom in Iran, where citizens are forced to access banned websites, including social media and news sites, via anti-filtering tools.
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said last year when the draft was submitted to parliament that it could further buttress the “digital wall” that already exists in Iran.
The legislation could result in bans on the few social-media platforms that have not yet been filtered in Iran and are popular among Iranians, including Instagram and the encrypted messaging app WhatsApp.
“What this bill could do is tighten or even eclipse the small [accessible] spaces...remaining online,” Mahsa Alimardani, a digital-rights researcher with the human rights organization ARTICLE19, told RFE/RL.
“If implemented as we see, we will see the end of foreign platforms that are the backbone of communications, e-commerce, freedom to access media not controlled by the strict censors of the Iranian authorities, and any sense of privacy,” Alimardani added.
'Betrayal' Bill
Many Iranians have publicly blasted the bill, which has alarmed ordinary citizens who use social media to make a living, communicate with each other, or in some cases access censored information.
It is officially called the Bill To Protect The Rights Of Users In Cyberspace And Organize Social Media.
An Iranian woman shows off her phone cover depicting Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Tehran. Many warn that the Internet censorship under consideration could widen the gap between Iranians and the clerical establishment.
Critics have used the hashtag #Betrayal_bill to condemn the bill and note that instead of protecting users it will further curb Internet access.
“What we’re seeing is North Korea,” journalist Javad Heydarian said on Twitter.
Reformist politician Azar Mansuri warned Iranian authorities that it would stoke popular "anger."
It could also cause significant economic damage by depriving tens of thousands of Iranians of their current sources of income.
“What are you going to do about the large number of unemployed amid the coronavirus crisis and [U.S.] sanctions?” Mansuri asked.
Ordinary Iranians And The Clerical Establishment
Many warned that the bill would widen the gap between Iranians and the clerical establishment, which has recently faced angry protests over water shortages in the southwestern province of Khuzestan that spread to other cities.
Iranian Minister of Information and Technology Mohammad Javad Azari Jahromi cautioned that not only would the bill "not create a system for cybergovernance," as claimed by supporters, but it would “undermine the country's real-world governance system.”
“It’s like [authorities] are determined to fight the people. Every day [they] start a new game and [they] are happy about the torment they are inflicting on Iran," Saeedeh Khashi, who lives in Sistan-Baluchistan, one of Iran’s poorest provinces, said on Twitter. She added that many women in the province use the Internet to make a living.
The bill, which has been pushed by hard-liners who have repeatedly bemoaned what they see as a lack of control of cyberspace, also prompted criticism from some conservatives.
An Iranian woman checks messages on her smart phone in Tehran. “It’s like [authorities] are determined to fight the people.... [They] are happy about the torment they are inflicting on Iran," said Saeedeh Khashi, who lives in Sistan-Baluchistan, one of Iran’s poorest provinces. (file photo)
Mohsen Rezaei, a former commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and secretary of the Expediency Council, an institutional dispute arbitrator, questioned the necessity of the bill at a time when the country faces numerous economic problems. He said the bill would create "a serious challenge" for the recently elected hard-line president, Ebrahim Raisi, who takes office on August 5.
Others speculated that lawmakers had moved the bill forward knowing that Raisi and his team would support the measure.
"I think that because the future government agrees with this bill, it has advised its friends in the parliament to approve it sooner so that it doesn’t end up in its name," Mohammad Ali Abtahi, who served as vice president under former reformist President Mohammad Khatami, said on Twitter.
Amid the anger, some people suggested that the legislation was likely to fail in the same way a 1994 ban on private ownership of satellite equipment has missed its mark. That ban and police raids to enforce it have not prevented millions of Iranians from using satellite dishes to watch foreign networks for news and entertainment.
“History has shown that obscurantism has always failed technology,” Iranian entrepreneur Pedram Soltani said on Twitter, while posting a copy of the law that bans the domestic use of satellite equipment.
12. Opinion | The battle for cyber dominance
Opinion | The battle for cyber dominance
As noted in David Ignatius’s July 21 op-ed, “Russia and China become Internet allies,” there are serious national security implications behind Russia and China’s recent move to form a strategic alliance based on their “unity of positions on the management of the Internet.”
It’s no secret that both countries have been trying for years to establish cyber dominance; however, this latest accord suggests a greater strategic alliance is being formed when both have been linked to a string of ransomware and cyberattacks against the United States and other Western entities.
As the former White House Homeland Security adviser, I strongly urge U.S. leaders to pay attention. As foreign adversaries ramp up their efforts to control the Internet, we cannot afford to be complacent. Allowing bad actors to dominate the global digital landscape will threaten our national security while undermining our nation’s influence in critical geopolitical matters.
We must remain vigilant against Russian and Chinese efforts to seize on the current political landscape in that mutual quest for control. Lawmakers must carefully consider the unintended consequences of recent anti-competition proposals against the reality we are facing today. We cannot afford to have China, Russia and other foreign adversaries dominate the digital landscape and weaken the United States’ technological edge.
Frances Townsend, Vienna, Va.
The writer is National Security
Advisory Board co-chair for
the American Edge Project.
13. Shoot It Straight on Taiwan
Conclusion
Although there is no silver bullet for staving off a conflict, clarifying the American commitment to defend Taiwan could put cross-strait ties on firmer footing. Today, it is China that is the primary source of tension in the Taiwan Strait. Although it has refrained from using lethal force against Taiwan since the second Taiwan Strait crisis in the late 1950s, its goal remains fundamentally revisionist: to annex a foreign country that is independent in all but name. A Taiwanese move toward formal independence would likewise be revisionist in nature. But there is an elementary difference between the two: While the Chinese party-state is avowedly committed to “reunification,” there is no such commitment to independence in Taiwan. And while future Taiwanese leaders may not be the responsible stewards of cross-strait ties that Tsai Ing-wen is today, it is difficult to imagine a future in which any party besides China is the one that opts for war.
That is why deterring Beijing, not Taipei, should be the name of the game. What is more, this imbalance of risk comes at a time when the post-1979 Taiwan Strait settlement — based on a “One China” fiction — is fraying. China appears less willing to go on feigning that peaceful unification is possible. Taiwan, for its part, is less willing to embrace a “One China” framework in its engagement with China. The United States, meanwhile, is less keen to pretend that Taiwan is not a sovereign state with which it should be able to engage at will.
The fundamental question is whether China, Taiwan, and the United States can find a new modus vivendi in the Taiwan Strait. Can a new arrangement secure Taiwan’s functionally independent existence, avoid creating regime-threatening domestic political difficulties for the Chinese leadership, and safeguard the U.S. position in Asia? Strategic clarity could ultimately help create the conditions for such a settlement to emerge.
Shoot It Straight on Taiwan - War on the Rocks
Last month, a spokesperson from the office of Taiwan’s president told China to grow up. “The [Chinese Communist Party] wants Taiwan for their 100th birthday. Just pick something else. Grow up.” The statement, via Twitter, was a response to Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s speech marking the Chinese Communist Party’s centenary. In his remarks, Xi warned, “Resolving the Taiwan question and realizing China’s complete reunification is a historic mission and an unshakable commitment.” To reinforce his point, he added that China would “take resolute action to utterly defeat any attempt toward ‘Taiwan independence.’” The informality of Taiwan’s public response belies a new, more dangerous era in the Taiwan Strait.
Changing circumstances merit fresh thinking about how to ensure peace between China and Taiwan going forward, but a decades-old policy framework restrains American flexibility in reacting to those changes. The result is a Taiwan Strait that edges ever closer to crisis while Washington tinkers with policies that may no longer be sufficient to avert catastrophe.
Beyond official Washington, however, there is a robust debate about how best to ensure continuing peace in the Taiwan Strait. That debate most notably features an ongoing reappraisal of America’s ambiguous commitment to defend Taiwan against Chinese aggression. Some argue that “strategic ambiguity” — in which Washington keeps both Beijing and Taipei guessing about its willingness to intervene in a cross-strait conflict — remains an effective way to restrain each side’s destabilizing impulses. Others argue that ambiguity leaves too much room for doubt in the halls of Zhongnanhai about American will and intentions, thus opening the door to Chinese adventurism.
Alastair Iain Johnston, Tsai Chia-Hung, George Yin, and Steven Goldstein have made a novel contribution in War on the Rocks by using survey data to explore the pros and cons of clarifying that commitment. The potential effects of clarity on Taiwan’s people is an underexplored area of investigation, making Johnston et al.’s effort particularly worthwhile. But although the authors essentially endorse the current U.S. approach of strategic ambiguity, their results arguably support the opposite conclusion — that strategic clarity will positively contribute to deterring China.
But is strategic clarity possible? Josh Rovner maintains that efforts to resolve ambiguity are a waste of time because neither Beijing nor even Washington can know with certainty how the United States will react in a crisis. But this is true even of America’s formal alliance commitments. Deterrence has always been a challenge. If American leaders could persuade their Soviet counterparts that the United States would wage a nuclear war to defend the free half of a divided city behind the Iron Curtain during the Cold War, it should be within the wherewithal of U.S. leaders today to clearly convey seriousness of purpose in defending Taiwan going forward. With the growing threat to peace in the Taiwan Strait emanating primarily from China — not from Taiwan — American officials should begin the hard work of doing so.
Outlining the Debate
The intersection of a number of trends makes a Taiwan Strait crisis in the next 10 years far more likely than it had been over the last two decades. Xi appears to be a true believer in the cause of “reunification” and has exerted personal control over a Chinese military that will soon have a reasonable shot at successfully invading Taiwan. His inflexibility in dealing with the Tsai government in Taipei, which has been cautious and conservative in its approach to cross-strait relations, and his disinterest in winning hearts and minds in Taiwan both suggest he recognizes peaceful unification is not in the cards anytime soon. With domestic challenges mounting — an arguably stagnating economy, environmental degradation, demographic implosion — at a time when Xi’s leadership is set to extend beyond the two-term norm set by his predecessors, solving the “Taiwan question” might be enormously appealing. If the People’s Liberation Army begins telling Xi “yes, we can” instead of “no, we cannot,” the temptation to resort to force against Taiwan will only grow.
Meanwhile, although Taiwan lies only 80 miles from China at its closest point, the two are separated by yawning political and societal gaps. Those gaps are growing wider. According to public opinion surveys, the number of people in Taiwan identifying as Taiwanese has trended consistently upward over the past three decades, while the numbers identifying as either Chinese or both Taiwanese and Chinese have trended downward. Today, 64.3 percent of survey respondents identify as Taiwanese, up from 17.6 percent in 1992. There has also been growing support for independence and shrinking support for unification since the early 1990s, although the majority of respondents prefer to maintain the status quo for the time being.
In other words, physicists may soon get an answer to a question that has long vexed them: What happens when an unstoppable force (in this case, China) meets an immoveable object (Taiwan)? To avert such a collision, some (myself included) have argued that it is time for Washington to set aside its policy of strategic ambiguity in favor of strategic clarity. Proponents of clarity see a number of benefits, foremost among them lessening any doubts in Beijing about American intentions.
Johnston et al. get the basic gist of the pro-ambiguity and pro-clarity arguments correct, but they miss important points on both sides. For those favoring strategic clarity, for example, it is important to consider that the balance of risk has changed, a point the authors overlook. Today, China using force appears far more likely than a Taiwanese declaration of independence: While Beijing is committed to unification one way or another, Taiwan’s voters have proved themselves cautious custodians of cross-strait relations, even rejecting a proposal to compete at the Olympics under the name of “Taiwan” instead of “Chinese Taipei” as recently as 2018. But to date, that shift has not led to a fundamental change in the American approach. The United States continues trying to deter both outcomes with one policy: strategic ambiguity. Proponents of clarity would prefer Washington focus its efforts on deterring the real threat to peace in Asia, which they argue comes from the intersection of China’s advancing military capabilities and what they see as Beijing’s emerging intent to use them.
The authors also miss a key pro-ambiguity argument. Clarity would be destabilizing, this argument goes, not because it would encourage Taiwan to declare independence, but rather because it could eliminate nonviolent routes to unification. If Taiwan knows that the United States will definitely intervene on its behalf, the thinking in Beijing might go, Taipei will have reduced incentive to submit to less violent forms of coercion. But why would Taiwan ever agree to unification if it has a U.S. security guarantee? If Beijing did embrace such thinking, it could make use of force more likely as force will be the only path by which China can secure unification.
This compelling argument for ambiguity, however, relies on two questionable assumptions: that the Chinese leadership has not already given up on peaceful unification and that the leadership is content with accepting Taiwan’s de facto independence indefinitely. But Xi Jinping can read the public opinion polling referenced above as easily as we can. He almost certainly knows there are few if any paths to a future in which Taiwan would willingly choose subsummation. He has, moreover, made unification a key aspect of the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation,” which he has promised to deliver by midcentury. Indeed, even if as-yet unforeseen developments do not lead China to act in the coming decade, there may well be a deadline for unification: 2049 is the all-important centenary of the People’s Republic of China.
What the Data Show (And What They Don’t)
One argument in support of strategic clarity is that it will enhance morale in Taiwan, which will in turn contribute to more effective deterrence vis-à-vis China. Some public polling points to defeatist attitudes among Taiwan’s population regarding the country’s ability to defend itself and personal willingness to contribute to such a fight. A 2019 survey, for example, “found that a plurality (almost 45 percent) plan to ‘leave the country,’ ‘unhappily accept the situation,’ ‘hide’ or ‘choose to surrender’ if there is war. … 23 percent ‘don’t know’ how they might respond.” When lives and livelihoods are on the line, it may turn out that such polling was not predictive — and some political scientists have tracked growing willingness to fight over time — but for now, these results do little to give Beijing pause.
On the other hand, the theory goes, if Taiwan knows that it will not have to fight alone, it will be less likely to conclude that resistance to Chinese aggression will be futile and, in turn, more likely to commit the blood and treasure required to fight for what otherwise might be a lost cause. Johnston et al. found evidence to support this contention. Their 2019 survey sought to measure whether “the degree of certainty with which Americans would come to Taiwan’s military defense” has an effect on Taiwanese “willingness to fight” in the event of a hypothetical Chinese attack. Unsurprisingly, “willingness to fight” goes up as the U.S. position shifts from nonintervention to ambiguity to clarity. As a result, the authors argue, “strategic clarity would appear to be better for deterring China so long as there is no prior declaration of independence.”
The authors also explored the potential effects of strategic clarity on Taiwanese views toward independence. In particular, they sought to measure “the likelihood that respondents will support Taiwanese independence after being attacked by the People’s Republic of China” under conditions in which U.S. support is unclear and in which the United States comes to Taiwan’s defense. Johnston at al. conclude that “confidence in American military intervention appears to increase support for independence” in the event that China uses force. Put plainly, this is not a useful scenario to present to respondents when trying to suss out the deterrent effects of strategic ambiguity versus clarity. The authors contend that clarity increases support for independence, which makes Chinese use of force more likely. But in the scenarios they present, China’s use of force is an independent variable. In effect, deterrence has already failed, irrespective of Taiwanese views on independence.
These findings, in fact, lead to a conclusion at odds with that presented by the authors. If strategic clarity leads to greater support for independence following an attack on Taiwan, this arguably bolsters the case for clarity. In such a scenario, and especially in the event China does not achieve rapid victory, the already-limited space for a negotiated settlement is far narrower than if there were less support for independence. In other words, under conditions in which the United States is committed to defending Taiwan, China’s use of force is more likely to result in a nightmare outcome for Beijing — defeat in battle and Taiwan’s de jure independence. Or put another way, it will be far more difficult for China to find a way to declare victory on the homefront even while failing to annex Taiwan if Taipei has adopted a maximalist goal in response to Chinese aggression. Strategic clarity, then, should give Beijing more cause to think twice.
Conclusion
Although there is no silver bullet for staving off a conflict, clarifying the American commitment to defend Taiwan could put cross-strait ties on firmer footing. Today, it is China that is the primary source of tension in the Taiwan Strait. Although it has refrained from using lethal force against Taiwan since the second Taiwan Strait crisis in the late 1950s, its goal remains fundamentally revisionist: to annex a foreign country that is independent in all but name. A Taiwanese move toward formal independence would likewise be revisionist in nature. But there is an elementary difference between the two: While the Chinese party-state is avowedly committed to “reunification,” there is no such commitment to independence in Taiwan. And while future Taiwanese leaders may not be the responsible stewards of cross-strait ties that Tsai Ing-wen is today, it is difficult to imagine a future in which any party besides China is the one that opts for war.
That is why deterring Beijing, not Taipei, should be the name of the game. What is more, this imbalance of risk comes at a time when the post-1979 Taiwan Strait settlement — based on a “One China” fiction — is fraying. China appears less willing to go on feigning that peaceful unification is possible. Taiwan, for its part, is less willing to embrace a “One China” framework in its engagement with China. The United States, meanwhile, is less keen to pretend that Taiwan is not a sovereign state with which it should be able to engage at will.
The fundamental question is whether China, Taiwan, and the United States can find a new modus vivendi in the Taiwan Strait. Can a new arrangement secure Taiwan’s functionally independent existence, avoid creating regime-threatening domestic political difficulties for the Chinese leadership, and safeguard the U.S. position in Asia? Strategic clarity could ultimately help create the conditions for such a settlement to emerge.
Michael Mazza is a nonresident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a senior nonresident fellow at the Global Taiwan Institute, and a nonresident fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States.
14. Lloyd Austin’s Philippine Progress
Excerpts:
Mr. Austin said the agreement, which governs the legal status of U.S. troops in the country, “enables us to respond swiftly and seamlessly to disasters or crisis.” It also facilitates “major training exercises such as Balikatan”—an annual collaboration between the Philippine and American militaries.
This alliance helps maintain Manila’s independence as China tries to dominate the waters of Southeast Asia by militarizing islands and deploying maritime militias disguised as fishing fleets. U.S. access to the Philippines is also significant because of its proximity to Taiwan, which Beijing has in its sights.
Southeast Asia’s strategic significance is growing, and Mr. Duterte is in the last year of his presidency. Continued engagement with the Philippines will be crucial to balancing China and protecting American interests in the Pacific.
Lloyd Austin’s Philippine Progress
In a blow to Beijing, Manila will keep hosting U.S. forces.
By The Editorial Board
Aug. 2, 2021 6:14 pm ET
Defense secretary Lloyd Austin and Filipino President Rodrigo Duterte during a meeting inside Malakanang presidential palace in Manila, July 29.
PHOTO: ROBINSON NINAL HANDOUT/SHUTTERSTOCK
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Too often U.S. diplomatic meetings with allies end with vague promises and high-minded boilerplate. So credit to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin for concluding his visit to the Philippines Friday with a concrete strategic success: Manila announced it would officially restore the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) that makes it easier for American troops to operate on the archipelago.
That’s a blow to China’s strategic ambition to push America’s military out of the Western Pacific. Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte announced early last year he was terminating the 1998 VFA. Though the U.S. and the Philippines have been treaty allies since 1951, the mercurial Mr. Duterte has courted Beijing and wants to play the two largest Pacific powers against one another.
Yet China’s maritime provocations in Philippine-claimed waters have intensified in the months since Mr. Duterte threw the future of the VFA into doubt. Standing next to Mr. Austin in Manila, the Philippine defense minister announced that Mr. Duterte had “decided to recall, or retract, the termination letter for the VFA.”
Mr. Austin said the agreement, which governs the legal status of U.S. troops in the country, “enables us to respond swiftly and seamlessly to disasters or crisis.” It also facilitates “major training exercises such as Balikatan”—an annual collaboration between the Philippine and American militaries.
This alliance helps maintain Manila’s independence as China tries to dominate the waters of Southeast Asia by militarizing islands and deploying maritime militias disguised as fishing fleets. U.S. access to the Philippines is also significant because of its proximity to Taiwan, which Beijing has in its sights.
Southeast Asia’s strategic significance is growing, and Mr. Duterte is in the last year of his presidency. Continued engagement with the Philippines will be crucial to balancing China and protecting American interests in the Pacific.
Appeared in the August 3, 2021, print edition.
15. Duterte says US vaccine donations led him to keep VFA
Excerpts:
(We did a give and take. We thank them and I made a concession. I conceded the continuance of the Visiting Forces Agreement, in gratitude.)
"I'd like to thank the President of the United States, si Biden, the government, and the people of America for not forgetting us. Do not forget us because we share the same outlook in geopolitics, especially in Southeast Asia," the Philippine leader added.
Duterte says US vaccine donations led him to keep VFA
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte admitted it was the United States' donations of COVID-19 vaccines that pushed him to ultimately keep the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) after repeatedly threatening to scrap it.
"Give and take lang tayo. Pasalamat tayo sa kanila at may naibigay naman ako sa kanila na concession. I conceded the continuance of the Visiting Forces Agreement, in gratitude," said Duterte on Monday, August 3, during a televised address.
(We did a give and take. We thank them and I made a concession. I conceded the continuance of the Visiting Forces Agreement, in gratitude.)
"I'd like to thank the President of the United States, si Biden, the government, and the people of America for not forgetting us. Do not forget us because we share the same outlook in geopolitics, especially in Southeast Asia," the Philippine leader added.
The Philippines received over three million doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine from the US last July 16 and 17 and is set to receive three million more doses, this time of the Moderna vaccine, from its Western ally on Tuesday, August 4.
Duterte did not grace the arrival ceremony for the Johnson & Johnson vaccines but he was expected to be present to welcome the Moderna donation.
In between the arrival of these donations, Duterte was visited by his first Biden Cabinet member, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin III. It was the day after their meeting when the government announced Duterte's decision to keep the VFA.
Duterte’s decision ended over a year of uncertainty over the fate of the deal which provides the legal framework for the presence of US troops in the Philippines for war games and other joint activities.
Duterte had also publicly laid down conditions for the continuance of the VFA – demanding, first, COVID-19 vaccines, and then "payment" for the VFA.
No changes had been made to the original text of the military deal. But a side agreement was being eyed to address contentious provisions such as those on the custody of erring American troops. – Rappler.com
16. Jihadists flood pro-Trump social network with propaganda
I hope it is "jihadists" really doing this. I hope it is not some anti-Trump faction in the US doing this as it will certainly have a lot of blowback if it is anyone other than "jihadists." This would be a very bad information operation done by some US political faction.
Jihadists flood pro-Trump social network with propaganda
08/02/2021 04:30 AM EDT
Updated: 08/02/2021 04:42 PM EDT
GETTR, the new platform started by members of the former president’s inner circle, is awash with beheading videos and extremist content.
The proliferation of terrorist propaganda on GETTR underscores the challenges facing former President Donald Trump and his followers in the wake of his ban from the mainstream social media platforms. | Jenny Kane/AP Photo
08/02/2021 04:30 AM EDT
Just weeks after its launch, the pro-Trump social network GETTR is inundated with terrorist propaganda spread by supporters of Islamic State, according to a POLITICO review of online activity on the fledgling platform.
The rapid proliferation of such material is placing GETTR in the awkward position of providing a safe haven for jihadi extremists online as it attempts to establish itself as a free speech MAGA-alternative to sites like Facebook and Twitter.
It underscores the challenges facing Trump and his followers in the wake of his ban from the mainstream social media platforms following the Jan. 6 Capitol Hill riots.
Islamic State “has been very quick to exploit GETTR,” said Moustafa Ayad, executive director for Africa, the Middle East and Asia at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a think tank that tracks online extremism, who first discovered the jihadi accounts and shared his findings with POLITICO.
“On Facebook, there was on one of these accounts that I follow that is known to be Islamic State, which said ‘Oh, Trump announced his new platform. Inshallah, all the mujahideen will exploit that platform,’” he added. “The next day, there were at least 15 accounts on GETTR that were Islamic State.”
While GETTR does not provide access to its data to track the spread, or virality, of such extremist material on its platform, POLITICO found at least 250 accounts that had posted regularly on the platform since early July. Many followed each other, and used hashtags to promote the jihadi material to this burgeoning online community.
In the months since he was kicked off Twitter and suspended from Facebook, Trump has sought alternative ways to engage with his base online. While his supporters decamped to other online venues — including the social network Parler, where they could express themselves without facing increased scrutiny — Trump’s own effort to create an internet bullhorn has stalled.
In May, he launched a blog — titled “From the Desk of Donald J. Trump” — but it was taken down just weeks later amid widespread ridicule and poor readership.
So far, GETTR has been the highest-profile pro-Trump platform launch, given the names behind it: Jason Miller, former Trump spokesperson, is its chief executive, and the site is partially funded by Miles Guo, the business partner of former Trump advisor Steve Bannon. Trump, himself, is not directly involved in the operation, nor has he officially signed up to the platform. The social network has touted a “free speech” policy that, purportedly, would allow users to fully express themselves without the censorship of tech giants.
Yet this MAGA exodus to fringe social networks that champion unfettered speech has also caught the attention of supporters of Islamic State and other jihadist groups, according to extremism experts.
GETTR did not respond to repeated requests for comment about jihadi material being shared on its network.
These terrorist communities have similarly faced widespread removals from the largest social networks, which have often promoted their clampdown on Islamic extremists as an example of how the tech companies are policing their global platforms for harmful content.
In response, Islamic State supporters have quickly shifted gears, looking for new spaces online where they can spread their hateful material, as well as piggybacking on tactics and platforms first used in the United States.
“Is Daesh here?” asked an account whose profile photo was of the Islamic State flag account, using the Arabic acronym for jihadi movement. The replies were in the affirmative, with some praising the social network for its willingness to host such content.
Days after GETTR was launched on July 1, Islamic State supporters began urging their followers on other social networks to sign up to the pro-Trump network, in part to take the jihadi fight directly to MAGA nation.
“If this app reaches the expected success, which is mostly probable, it should be adopted by followers and occupied in order to regain the glory of Twitter, may God prevail,” one Islamic State account on Facebook wrote on July 6.
Some of the jihadi posts on GETTR from early July were eventually taken down, highlighting that the pro-Trump platform had taken at least some steps to remove the harmful material.
Larger platforms like Facebook and Twitter now work via the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism, an industry-funded nonprofit which shares terrorist content between companies — via a database of extremist material accessible to its members — so that the material can be taken down as quickly as possible.
GETTR has yet to sign up.
In the platform’s terms of service, it outlines how offensive or illegal content, including that related to terrorism, may be removed from GETTR. “This may include content identified as personal bullying, sexual abuse of a child, attacking any religion or race, or content containing video or depictions of beheading,” a clause reads.
Though the site has had notoriously spotty luck in moderating users on the platform — in its early days, it was flooded with a wide spectrum of pornography — Miller has drawn the line at doxxing, or sharing other people’s addresses, or advocating physical harm.
Four days after POLITICO submitted several requests for comment to GETTR, many of these accounts and videos are still up.
The overall amount of terrorist propaganda that POLITICO found on GETTR represented a mere fraction of the mostly right-wing content — which also includes the promotion of the Proud Boys white supremacist movement. More mainstream conservative influencers and policymakers like Sean Hannity and Mike Pompeo also regularly post on the platform.
Still, the fact that such jihadi material was readily available on the social network, and GETTR’s failure to clamp down on such extremism, underlined the difficulties that the company faces in balancing its free speech ethos with growing demands to stop terrorist-related material from finding an audience online.
“The content we’re coming across on small platforms is basically similar to the content that is being automatically removed from Facebook and Twitter,” said Adam Hadley, director of Tech Against Terrorism, a nonprofit organization that works with smaller social networks, but not GETTR, in combating the rise of extremist content online.
“Many of the smaller platforms do not have the resources to automatically remove this type of content,” he added. His organization’s membership includes Tumblr and Wordpress, the blogging platform.
Extremism analysts who reviewed POLITICO’s findings said that Islamic State supporters’ use of GETTR appeared to be an initial test to see if their content would escape detection or be subject to content moderation.
In their ongoing cat-and-mouse fight with Western national security agencies and Silicon Valley platforms, jihadi groups are quickly evolving their tactics to stay one step ahead of online removals.
“The terrorist organizations are always experimenting, because they're fighting a real battle to continue to have access to public spaces to spread their propaganda,” said Emerson Brooking, a senior fellow at the Digital Forensic Research Lab and the author of “LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media.”
So far, Islamic State supporters are enjoying their incursion into GETTR and the possible new audience they could reach. “We will come at you with slaying and explosions you worshippers of the cross,” wrote an account whose name referenced the extremist group, adding: “[H]ow great is freedom of expression.”
Rym Momtaz contributed to this report from Paris.
17. A Young American Girl Whose Mother Joined ISIS And Died Has Been Rescued, A Former US Diplomat Said
A fascinating story. With no disrespect to Buzzfeed but I wonder why this has not been picked up by the mainstream media.
A Young American Girl Whose Mother Joined ISIS And Died Has Been Rescued, A Former US Diplomat Said
Eight-year-old Aminah Mohamad, the daughter of an American woman from Tennessee who joined ISIS in 2014, awaits her fate outside a Syrian detention camp.
An American-born girl who grew up under ISIS control was rescued from a Syrian detention camp last month after the girl’s mother — a US citizen who left the country and in 2014 joined the terrorist organization — and her father were killed while living under the terror group, according to a former US diplomat.
The 8-year-old girl is in a secure location in northeast Syria and on Saturday was interviewed by a member of the International Center for the Study of Violent Extremism (ICSVE) about her life under ISIS.
The diplomat, Peter Galbraith, 70, has worked for the past three years to repatriate foreign women and children from detention camps that hold tens of thousands of people linked to ISIS. The camps are run by the Kurdish-led, US-allied Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). Among Galbraith’s many formal roles, including serving as the US ambassador to Croatia from 1993 to 1998, he spent decades as an integral figure in US dealings with the Kurdish people, a stateless ethnic minority in the Middle East who are spread across Syria, Turkey, Iraq, and Iran.
Galbraith told BuzzFeed News that the girl, Aminah Mohamad, was rescued in large part due to the information provided by a Canadian woman who joined the terrorist group in 2014 but has since regretted that decision and denounced the organization. Galbraith helped secure the release of the Canadian woman, and she is now waiting in Iraq to be repatriated to Canada.
Galbraith and the Canadian woman, who spoke to BuzzFeed News on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation from ISIS supporters, detailed their efforts over the past year and a half to rescue Aminah after she was left in the custody of one of her stepfather’s other wives — a Somali woman who remained an unwavering ISIS supporter. As the SDF reclaimed territory from the terrorist group, Aminah and her caretaker would eventually be forced to settle — in a Syrian camp for people linked to ISIS.
Aminah’s caretaker and her companions had gone to great lengths to hide her from the Kurdish guards who patrol the camps and anyone who might report that they had custody of an American girl.
“They knew the camp authorities were always searching for orphans,” the Canadian woman said, explaining there were sections in both the Roj and al-Hol detention camps in Syria where women of Somali origin lived together and “all helped each other avoid being identified by the Kurds.”
In the camps, Aminah was made to wear long robes and a niqab, a veil that exposes only the eyes, to conceal her identity and race, since her caretaker was Black and she was white and “very sickly and pale,” the Canadian woman said.
“It’s in no way part of Islam for children to wear niqabs, it was just a disguise,” she told BuzzFeed News.
On the night of July 17, a team of SDF soldiers descended on the Somali enclave within the Roj camp and retrieved Aminah, according to messages sent to Galbraith from a senior SDF official who had been briefed on the raid.
Aminah’s future remains uncertain; US officials from the State Department, FBI, and Department of Defense declined all requests for comment on her specific case. A State Department spokesperson would not confirm whether she had been rescued from the detention camp and if they are involved with her return to the US, but said that the country’s official policy is to “repatriate, prosecute when appropriate, rehabilitate when possible, and reintegrate their foreign terrorist fighter (FTF) nationals and associated family members currently in northeast Syria and Iraq.” There is a formal process, which includes DNA testing, to determine the citizenship status of orphaned children before they are returned to the US.
A return to America would be the beginning of a life unlike anything Aminah has known. She has spent more than seven years under terrorist ideology in a war-torn country with little schooling and no healthcare. Her parents and youngest brother are dead; her one remaining sibling is missing.
Aminah was born on Dec. 8, 2012, in a Chattanooga hospital weighing 7 pounds, 5.5 ounces with a length of 21 inches. As BuzzFeed News exclusively reported in 2015, Aminah’s parents met via a Muslim arranged marriage website in August 2011. Her mother, Ariel Bradley, grew up as an evangelical Christian in Tennessee and had converted to Islam a few months earlier. Her father, Yasin Mohamad, lived in Borås, Sweden, and before he and Bradley had ever met in person, they got engaged after a few months of Skyping and exchanging messages on WhatsApp.
In December 2011, Bradley took her first international flight to meet and marry Mohamad in Sweden, where they eventually settled. When Bradley became pregnant with Aminah, she returned to the US alone for prenatal care and to give birth in her hometown.
After Aminah was born, Bradley and her newborn daughter rejoined Mohamad in Sweden.
The family appears to have traveled to the Middle East sometime in early 2014, because in April 2015 Bradley tweeted that they had been living in ISIS-controlled territory for more than a year. According to her social media posts, the family was living in al-Bab, Syria, and Bradley had given birth to a second child — a son named Yaqub. His whereabouts are currently unknown.
Bradley’s social media posts from January to July 2015 reveal a picture of Aminah’s young life as the child of ISIS members. She wrote about the annoyance of bombs dropping in the early morning as she and her children ate breakfast and playdates in the park that ended with public screenings of the latest ISIS propaganda videos, and shared anecdotes that could have come from any mother.
“Turn around & my daughter is covered in white. Never leave baby powder at eye level of a 2-year-old,” she said in one tweet. In April, she posted several photos of Aminah, then a curly-haired toddler, looking out a window and pointing at birds in the sky, captioning one photo “How quickly they grow.”
Aminah Mohamad during an interview with ICSVE in northeast Syria on July 31, 2021
Soon after BuzzFeed News’ July 2015 story profiling Bradley was published, her social media accounts were suspended. Since then, no information about her or her children had been available — until now.
According to Galbraith and the Canadian woman, Bradley’s husband, Mohamad, who had joined the mujahideen — the word ISIS fighters use to describe themselves — died at some point after June 2015. The Canadian woman said that Bradley later remarried an Australian pediatrician, Tareq Kamleh, a prominent ISIS member who had appeared in several of the terrorist group’s propaganda videos. She had another son, Yousef, with him in 2016.
Since Bradley is an American citizen, all of her children are also citizens of the US. A State Department spokesperson confirmed to BuzzFeed News that the involvement in terrorist or other criminal activity by a US citizen parent does not impact the citizenship status of their children.
It was while Bradley was pregnant with her third child that the Canadian woman first met her and the children, she told BuzzFeed News in a WhatsApp conversation facilitated by Galbraith. She answered questions from Erbil, Iraq, where she had moved after being released from an ISIS detention camp in June.
She told BuzzFeed News that she had been friendly with Bradley and had visited the family’s home on a few occasions. The Canadian woman described Aminah and her brother Yaqub as “well-mannered… speaking very politely to their mother and guests, saying all their ‘pleases’ and ‘thank yous.’”
“When I was at Ariel's house one day, Aminah was helping her mom by sweeping the living room since her mom was pregnant,” she said. “I thought it was cute and funny because the broomstick was taller than she was.”
She said that Aminah had celiac disease and was thin as a result of that, and had brown hair and brown eyes. Like her mother, she only knew a little bit of Arabic and spoke English with an American accent.
The Canadian woman said that Bradley and her family successfully escaped the city of Raqqah before it fell to SDF and US-led coalition forces in October 2017. She said she saw Bradley in the city of Hajin in Syria’s Deir ez-Zor governorate after the siege on Raqqah was over.
She told BuzzFeed News that Bradley and her third child, Yousef, were killed in an airstrike on a hospital, in a village near Hajin in late 2018.
Beginning in September 2018, SDF and American-led coalition forces launched a new wave of attacks on ISIS forces in this area as phase three of “Operation Roundup,” to reclaim the Deir ez-Zor governorate and surrounding areas from ISIS control.
Based on the information provided by the Canadian woman, it seems likely that Bradley and her youngest child died in a coalition airstrike on Al Yarmouk Women’s Hospital in the village of Al Sha'afa on Nov. 29, 2018. According to a report from Airwars, a nonprofit that tracks civilian deaths from airstrike attacks in conflict zones, the attack killed between 10 and 45 people, including medical personnel, women, and children.
In a Dec. 5, 2018, press release US Central Command (CENTCOM) confirmed that the US had conducted airstrikes “near Hajin” on the date of the hospital attack (Al Sha’afa is approximately 9 miles southeast of the city). When asked specifically about a hospital attack, a spokesperson for US CENTCOM told BuzzFeed News that “after a review of all available strike records it was determined that, more likely than not, civilian casualties did not occur” as a result of US actions taken on Nov. 29, 2018.
Yet media reports of the Deir ez-Zor campaign back up what the Canadian woman said. Al Jazeera noted that the families of doctors lived on the second floor of Al Yarmouk hospital. It also quoted unnamed US officials claiming that the hospital had also been an ISIS command center.
Officials at the State Department, Department of Defense, and FBI would not confirm Bradley’s death, citing Department of Justice policy.
The Canadian woman told BuzzFeed News that after Bradley’s death, Aminah was taken into the custody of one of her stepfather’s other wives, a Somali nurse who had worked at the hospital with him. According to the Canadian woman, the nurse who has cared for the child for more than two years is a radical whose loyalty to ISIS has never flagged in these past years, even while living in detention camps.
And it was in one of these camps in northern Syria where the plan to rescue Aminah was born.
By 2020, Galbraith’s name was whispered about in the detention camps for his ability to successfully return mothers and their children — including repentant former ISIS members — to their home countries.
Galbraith has been a key figure in the United States’ foreign policy with the Kurds for more than 30 years. In 1988, while serving as a staff member on the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, he discovered proof that then–Iraqi president Saddam Hussein was using chemical weapons on the Kurds and shared that information with the world. He actively supported the Kurdistan Regional Government during the drafting of Iraq’s constitution in 2005, which resulted in the formal recognition of an autonomous Kurdish-controlled region in the country’s north.
Galbraith said that his involvement in the detention camps began in 2018 when the Syrian Kurds asked him to consult on possible solutions to the crisis of the large numbers of foreign ISIS prisoners and family members of ISIS members in Syria whose home countries refused to take them back.
“This is a part of the world where I’ve worked for decades,” he told BuzzFeed News. “I have friendships and contacts in a part of the world where relationships are very important. I have the knowledge that goes with having spent a career as a diplomat, but liberated from the constraints of an official role.”
He was able to draw on that experience in November 2019, when he coordinated with the Kurds for the release and return of a German woman and her three children from the camps and also arranged for a young American orphan, the child of an American woman who had joined ISIS and died, to be returned to the US. Abdulkarim Omar, cochair of the Department of Foreign Relations of the Autonomous Administration of North and East of Syria (AANES), reported this news in a tweet on Nov. 23, 2019, and a State Department spokesperson confirmed to BuzzFeed News that a minor US citizen was repatriated from northeast Syria at this time.
Eventually, Galbraith’s phone number circulated among some of the women at the al-Hol and Roj camps. Many of them, who say they no longer support ISIS but have not been allowed to return to their home countries even to face charges, have been stuck in the camps for years. Among those women in limbo who have been in communication with Galbraith are UK-born Shamima Begum and US-born Hoda Muthana, whom BuzzFeed News has also profiled extensively.
Courtesy of Peter Galbraith
Peter Galbraith is pictured with former ISIS members Hoda Muthana, Shamima Begum, and the Canadian woman, whose face has been blurred at her request.
The Canadian woman, who is 30, contacted Galbraith in early 2020 in the hope that she and her young daughter could return to Canada. She told BuzzFeed News she joined ISIS in 2014 because she “was young and made a stupid mistake.” She said that she rejected the ideology while still living under ISIS control and attempted to escape, but was caught and threatened with death if she ever attempted it again.
The Canadian woman, knowing the risk she faced if women in the camp learned what she was doing, passed along “extensive” intelligence from within the camps to Galbraith over the past year “related to the recovery of children and information to possibly assist in the criminal prosecution of ISIS members for law enforcement in the United States and other countries,” he said.
In one of her early calls, she told Galbraith that she knew a group of radical Somali women in the detention camps were hiding an American girl whose mother, an American woman known as “Umm Aminah,” had died in an airstrike in 2018. Galbraith said he shared this information with the FBI, who he said identified her as Bradley. The FBI has declined to comment to BuzzFeed News.
The Canadian woman told BuzzFeed News she wanted to help Aminah and other children get out of the camps “because it was the right thing to do,” and Galbraith emphasized to BuzzFeed News that she shared the information “without expectation” of any sort of quid pro quo arrangement.
“Children in the camps have the worst start to life,” the Canadian woman said. “They are already traumatized by losing one or more parents and growing up around violence, poverty, and misery. They deal with constant danger, lack of food, lack of education, and their lives are simply going to waste.”
Galbraith said the children are victims of ISIS and that the detention camps are the “perfect breeding grounds for the next generation of jihadis.”
“[The children] haven’t committed any crime, their mothers have,” he said.
Once he learned that Aminah was alive, Galbraith said he “couldn’t just leave her there if it was possible to get her out.”
“I’d feel this way about any child, but the fact that she was an American, that also counts. It’s in my DNA to be looking out for American citizens,” he said.
Citing his longtime relationship with the Kurds, Galbraith said that last year he made a personal request to the head of the SDF, Gen. Mazloum Kobani Abdi, to retrieve Aminah.
But at this time, Aminah and the Somali nurse were living in the largest of the ISIS detention camps, al-Hol, which houses more than 60,000 people, and it was determined that the operation was too risky as there was a significant threat that Aminah would be smuggled out of the camp if her caretaker learned that people were looking to return the child to US custody.
Galbraith traveled to Iraq and Syria in March 2021 to coordinate the release of 12 children of Yazidi women who had been forced into sex slavery by ISIS from an orphanage. Also on that trip he was able to bring the sister of the Canadian woman to Roj camp and secure the release of her 4-year-old daughter into her aunt’s custody, but not that of the woman herself.
In the first of two trips to Syria in June, Galbraith had a one-on-one meeting with Mazloum to once again ask the Kurdish commander to stage a raid to retrieve Aminah from the custody of the Somali nurse.
In the time since Galbraith had first asked Mazloum to intervene in Aminah’s rescue, the young girl and her caretaker had been moved into the Roj camp, the smaller and more secure detention facilities for women and children with foreign citizenship.
During this meeting, Galbraith asked Mazloum if he would commit his forces to the rescue mission, and if he would release the Canadian woman from the camps before it was carried out.
The general, he said, agreed to both requests. The Candian woman was released into Galbraith’s custody later in June after an SDF investigation determined that she had not been an active participant in ISIS’s terrorist activities, as had been previously reported by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. She is currently waiting for the Canadian government to repatriate her.
Mazloum kept the promise he had made to Galbraith: On July 17, a team of SDF soldiers raided the area of the Roj camp where Aminah and the Somali nurse had been living, the diplomat told BuzzFeed News.
While few details are known about the raid and how it transpired, Galbraith said an SDF official contacted him hours afterward to tell him that Aminah was now in their custody. He said she was found in the exact place the Canadian woman described to Galbraith and the Kurdish authorities.
“Without her, [Aminah] would not have been saved,” Galbraith said.
Galbraith said that he was the person to inform the State Department and the FBI that she had been rescued. According to Galbraith, Aminah is at a rehabilitation center in northeast Syria waiting for the US government to certify her citizenship and begin the process of returning her to the country. Custody arrangements for orphaned children of Americans who joined terrorist organizations are handled by individual states, a State Department spokesperson said; Aminah’s maternal grandparents, as well as her aunts and uncles, live in the suburbs of Chattanooga.
“She clearly self-identified as Aminah and talked about her family with deep sadness,” Speckhard said. She said that the girl was fluent in English but “doesn’t have clear context as to where she is from.”
Speckhard emphasized the importance of placing Aminah in “a safe, predictable and loving environment to replace the traumatic one [she] lived under.”
The State Department declined to go on the record to discuss the matter with BuzzFeed News, only saying, “The United States has repatriated 12 adult US citizens and 16 US citizen minors from Syria and Iraq. Of the adults, DOJ has charged ten with federal criminal charges. We have no comment on specific numbers of US citizens remaining in facilities in Northeast Syria.”
While the young girl’s future remains unknown, Gailbraith told BuzzFeed News that he wants to do whatever he can to ensure that it will be a life very different from the one she has known so far; where she plays with other children, attends school, and “gets the counseling and the mental health support she’s clearly going to need.”
“My ability to do anything is limited, but I want the people who make the decisions to know where she came from and what she went through,” he said. ●
More on this
18. What Does Iraq Want from America?
Excerpts:
The better option for the U.S. would be to terminate negotiations with Tehran and immediately double down on maximum pressure. The Iranian regime is already facing significant ongoing internal domestic instability. Maximum pressure will only magnify their difficult position and leave them fewer resources for overseas meddling.
Further, the U.S. administration should reenergize both support for the Abraham Accords and a Middle East collective security and economic framework that will be a block to Iranian influence and a magnet pulling Iraq into a regional grouping of stabilizing states – and away from Iran’s orbit.
Sadly, there is little likelihood we will see this kind of leadership from this White House. The Biden administration seems much more interested in helping stabilize and dealing with the
What Does Iraq Want from America?
It’s easy to read too much into the agreement that U.S. President Joe Biden and Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi recently forged to end the U.S. combat mission there. As much as some observers might wish otherwise, this doesn’t signal a larger strategy shift. It looks to be more an act of political expediency.
Our impending exodus is basically a symbolic political favor for the Iraqi government, which is trying to straddle a difficult balance between Iranian and American influence – and to survive the upcoming parliamentarian elections in October.
Iran continues to expand its influence there, principally through the Shia militias in the country. In this regard, American support is a valuable counterbalance against Tehran’s encroachment on the nation’s sovereignty, as well as persistent concerns about a resurgence of transnational Islamist terrorist activity. On the other hand, the government wants to minimize criticism that the regime is allowing the Americans to impinge on their national sovereignty. The high-profile announcement of the end of U.S. combat action is the country is meant to address that.
Obama made a similar declaration, proclaiming an end to the American combat mission in Iraq in 2010. In addition, while Biden stated that the U.S. troops would shift to a training and advisory role, the reality is that they’ve been playing this role for years already.
Further, the announcement does not preclude U.S. forces acting in self-defense, much as they did under President Trump, when the administration targeted Qasem Soleimani, the Iranian military leader killed in Iraq in 2020 for organizing attacks against American forces.
It’s no surprise that the current administration was happy to comply with the Iraqi prime minister’s request. On the one hand, the White House definitely sees the current Iraqi administration as the best option for a stable government going forward and has no compulsion about helping better posture them for the upcoming parliamentarian elections. On the other, the White House is still in pursuit of reentry into the Iran nuclear deal and continues to seek ways to deescalate bilateral relations.
The U.S. announcement is a tactical move that makes sense. But a tactic is not a strategy, and it is not at all clear that the administration has a suitable, feasible, and acceptable strategy to protect America’s interests in the Greater Middle East over the long term.
A future stable Iraq really rests in dealing with Tehran. The best the U.S. can achieve in the near term is enabling a non-aligned Iraq that does not fall fully into the Iranian orbit. And the best means to achieve that is to substantially weaken Iran’s ability to influence its neighbors and meddle in their affairs.
Biden’s myopic pursuit of reentering the Iran Deal works against the goal of a stable and independent Iraq. The Iranian regime has been aggressive and intransigent in its demands for U.S. entry into the deal. The worst-case scenario is that the Biden administration will reenter the deal at all costs, resulting in the maximum humiliation for the U.S. and doing virtually nothing to constrain Iran’s regional and nuclear ambitions.
Another possible option is that the talks will ultimately fail, but the U.S. will continue to “go soft” on Iran hoping to reengage later. Either scenario will likely mean more Iranian pressure on Iraq and more regional instability.
The better option for the U.S. would be to terminate negotiations with Tehran and immediately double down on maximum pressure. The Iranian regime is already facing significant ongoing internal domestic instability. Maximum pressure will only magnify their difficult position and leave them fewer resources for overseas meddling.
Further, the U.S. administration should reenergize both support for the Abraham Accords and a Middle East collective security and economic framework that will be a block to Iranian influence and a magnet pulling Iraq into a regional grouping of stabilizing states – and away from Iran’s orbit.
Sadly, there is little likelihood we will see this kind of leadership from this White House. The Biden administration seems much more interested in helping stabilize and dealing with the current regime in Iran than working to limit its aggressive influence.
Now a 1945 Contributing Editor and currently a Heritage Foundation vice president, James Jay Carafano directs the think tank’s research program in matters of national security and foreign affairs.
19. Delta puts China on brink of a new Covid crisis
Everytime I read "Delta" I think of the airlines or the national missions force.
Delta puts China on brink of a new Covid crisis
China faces its biggest Covid outbreak this year after it largely banished the disease in 2020, with the Delta variant now spreading far and wide
China’s seemingly impregnable Covid-19 firewall is springing leaks, with the country logging more local cases in 20 days than in the previous five months combined.
At least 15 of the nation’s 31 provinces have confirmed Delta strain infections over the past two weeks, marking China’s biggest outbreak this year. The disease’s spread is believed to have started from a foreign flight at Nanjing’s airport in early July.
The National Health Commission (NHC) said 328 cases have been reported since last month, including in the central city of Wuhan, the original epicenter of the global pandemic. Authorities reported 99 new cases on Monday, according to reports.
Millions are now in lockdown as authorities close down cities and restrict travel to arrest the contagion’s further spread. The outbreak has been sparked in part by a recent easing of mask-wearing and social distancing, a laxity caused by the fact the country was Covid-free for many months.
China’s strict Covid containment measures, including mass testing as soon as a case appears, pervasive contact tracing, widespread use of quarantines and targeted lockdowns, have subdued more than 30 previous flareups over the past year.
While the infection figure is still modest by international standards, the NHC does not count asymptomatic carriers in its case tally and official figures are known to be conservative given the widespread tendency for underreporting.
The NHC added 55 local cases on Sunday but there were also 44 patients with no outward symptoms and thus were not categorized as confirmed infections. The highly contagious Delta variant is known for spreading among mostly asymptomatic people.
A man goes through a temperature screening gate at a subway station in Nanjing. Photo: Xinhua
Temporary testing labs are built inside an exhibition center in Nanjing, as the city scrambles to test all of its 9.6 million residents. Photo: China Central Television screengrab
State media have trumpeted China’s zero-case approach to Covid control but shutting out the Delta strain is proving a taller order. The disease’s spread is also raising questions about the efficacy of locally made vaccines against Delta in particular.
Nanjing, the capital of the eastern Jiangsu province, is believed to be ground zero of the current nationwide flare-up. The city’s airport workers, most of whom were fully vaccinated, reportedly first contracted the Delta strain from arrivals from Moscow on July 10, before passing it to transit passengers who spread it to their destinations across China.
At least 52 communities and residential quarters in Nanjing and its neighboring cities like Yangzhou have been red-flagged by the NHC as high or medium-risk areas to be locked down. Anyone leaving these areas will face 14-21 days of compulsory quarantine and criminal charges. Three rounds of city-wide testing in Nanjing yielded 204 cases as of August 1.
Zhengzhou, the capital of central Henan province, now faces a double whammy of flooding and Covid-19. Large tracts of the city were swamped by disastrous rainstorms two weeks ago with fatalities still being reported.
Some Zhengzhou cadres are now shifting the blame to Nanjing’s “viral spillover” but most known infections center on a hospital in the city treating imported cases.
Key foreign factories in Zhengzhou including Nissan and Apple’s OEM partner Foxconn are faced with additional challenges to test their staff and apply more health inspection red tape as they continue to count losses from last month’s deluge.
The popular resort city of Zhangjiajie in Hunan province has rushed to close its UNESCO World Heritage Site park and all other scenic spots and hotels following the revelation that at least three confirmed patients linked to Nanjing had rubbed shoulders with unmasked tourists and watched an hours-long performance in a packed auditorium of 2,000-plus spectators in the city.
Authorities there have had to hit the brakes on tourism in the summer peak travel period and dole out financial help to impacted retailers and hoteliers. Zhangjiajie has reported 31 subsequent infections with an unspecified number of asymptomatic cases, and some infected tourists reportedly brought the virus to their home cities when they returned.
A worker in protective gear disinfects the deserted Nanjing Railway Station. Photo: Xinhua
Medical staff in Nanjing take their oath while holding Communist Party flags before their deployment across the city to battle the resurgence. Photo: Handout
The municipal government of Beijing has also stepped up checks at airports, stations and expressways to turn away anyone from Nanjing, Zhengzhou, Zhangjiajie and other places with reported infections. Both Beijing and Shanghai have reported cases as well.
Other key cities like Chengdu, Chongqing, Shenyang, Dalian and Changsha have also reported cases linked to Nanjing and are cordoning off places visited by patients. More provinces including Hubei, Hunan, Hainan, Sichuan, Fujian and Yunnan have areas labeled by the NHC as “medium-risk.”
Wuhan, capital of Hubei and Covid’s initial epicenter, is now reinstating some anti-epidemic measures and is on the lookout for close contacts after news broke on Monday afternoon that seven migrant workers there tested positive.
While China had administered close to 1.67 billion doses of locally made vaccines as of Sunday, according to the NHC, concerns are spreading as fast as the disease about their efficacy against Delta.
Yang Xiaoming, the president of CNBG, a subsidiary of the state-owned Sinopharm that supplies Covid vaccines, told state media over the weekend that his company’s shots would still work and would have a certain “effect” to neutralize new variants. Yet he also revealed that new jabs would be developed quickly to better deal with the Delta strain.
Yang did not respond to reports that Constantino Chiwenga, the vice president of Zimbabwe who was in charge of public health and had been fully vaccinated with Sinopharm shots donated by Beijing, tested positive after landing in the Chinese capital at the end of July.
Beijing is still pressing ahead with its plan to expand vaccination to all healthy teenagers before the start of the academic year in September. Most provinces have banned students from traveling outside their home provinces.
Read more:
Inside China’s mega-farm where the Covid virus grows
Nanjing airport: Delta virus’s China transit hub
China starts to crack on need for mRNA vaccines
20. FDD | Universities Maintain Ties to Malign Chinese Entities Following Confucius Institute Closures
We need to establish Reagan or Lincoln Institutes in China and all along the One Belt One Road route.
FDD | Universities Maintain Ties to Malign Chinese Entities Following Confucius Institute Closures
fdd.org · by Craig Singleton Adjunct Fellow · August 2, 2021
The University of Central Arkansas (UCA) announced the closure of its Confucius Institute (CI) in early July, ending the university’s 14-year involvement in a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) program aimed at promoting Beijing’s preferred political narratives. However, in a move consistent with CI closures in other states, UCA has elected to maintain a relationship with its former CI partner university in China, raising important questions for policymakers seeking to monitor China’s malign influence on college campuses.
CIs are CCP-sponsored educational organizations that offer Chinese language, culture, and history programming at the primary, secondary, and university levels. They are also a key element in China’s “United Front,” a network of groups and key individuals that seek to co-opt and neutralize sources of potential opposition to the CCP’s policies and legitimacy. In 2019, FBI Director Christopher Wray testified to Congress that CIs “offer a platform to disseminate Chinese government or Chinese Communist Party propaganda, to encourage censorship, and to restrict academic freedom.”
UCA established its CI in 2007 in partnership with the East China Normal University (ECNU), which has ties to China’s defense and military establishment. These ties include links to China’s military-civil fusion (MCF) program, a national strategy aimed at acquiring the world’s cutting-edge technologies — including through theft — in order to achieve Chinese military dominance.
For example, ECNU’s Institute of Urban Development maintains a cooperative relationship with an MCF research center with ties to the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology’s Yangtze River Economic Belt Joint Innovation Committee. An ECNU lab also signed an agreement to work on sensitive next-generation technologies with a subsidiary of the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), a defense conglomerate with extensive ties to the People’s Liberation Army. The ECNU lab and the CASC subsidiary have conducted joint research, some of which has potential military applications.
In 2020, Australia revoked the visa of an ECNU professor, Chen Hong, as part of a foreign-interference investigation conducted by the Australian Security Intelligence Organization and the Australian Federal Police. Chen had served as the director of the university’s Australian studies center since 2001.
UCA representatives confirmed to FDD that following the closure of UCA’s CI, the university entered into an exchange agreement with ECNU along with two other Chinese entities: Xi’an Foreign Studies University and Qingdao University. UCA officials would not confirm, however, whether UCA’s new center will have any direct or indirect affiliation with China’s Centre for Language Education and Cooperation (formerly known as Hanban), the Chinese government entity responsible for overseeing the CI program.
UCA’s decision to close its CI yet maintain a relationship with ECNU mirrors similar moves by several other U.S. universities, many of which are likely eager to avoid the negative publicity that comes with hosting a CI. In some cases, these universities have established new China-focused initiatives while retaining CI staff and programs.
The University of Michigan continued to receive funding from Hanban after the university’s CI closed, according to foreign-gift disclosures. Similarly, Tufts University established a new partnership with the same Chinese university previously involved in Tufts’ shuttered CI. Professors from that entity, Beijing Normal University, have worked on China’s development of unmanned aerial vehicles as well as with MCF entities that facilitate transfers of sensitive technology between universities and Chinese industry.
In the absence of legislation that mandates the closure of all remaining CIs or requires universities to disclose contractual relationships with Chinese universities, it will be incumbent upon elected officials to publicly pressure universities to terminate relationships with entities that maintain links to China’s defense establishment. Similar campaigns have proven successful in the past, even if some universities continue to downplay the national security risks stemming from ties to China’s United Front.
Craig Singleton, a national security expert and former U.S. diplomat, is an adjunct China fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), where he contributes to FDD’s China Program and Center on Military and Political Power (CMPP). For more analysis from Craig, the China Program, and CMPP, please subscribe HERE. Follow FDD on Twitter @FDD and @FDD_CMPP. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
fdd.org · by Craig Singleton Adjunct Fellow · August 2, 2021
21. Hmong Americans are often obscured by model minority myth. Why Suni Lee’s win means so much.
A key point:
For many Hmong people, “there is no other country than the U.S.,” Kham Moua, director of national policy at the Southeast Asia Resource Action Center, told NBC Asian America.
“We don't have any significant ties anymore, at least the population here, to really any other country. This is really our country. This is our home,” Moua, who woke up before dawn every day to watch Lee compete, said. “My Facebook has been just filled with posts about Suni from Hmong folks all over the country. It's super exciting.”
Excerpts:
Moua said the existence of so many people of color on Team USA is a testament to those communities themselves, like the Hmong. Government documents from the secret war era once interpreted the Hmong, an oral culture, as “preliterate,” “meaning that they just can't learn, can't acclimate, can't become accustomed to the U.S,” he explained. Fast-forward to Lee’s win, and a much different image is projected on the Olympic podium.
“I think it is amazing that the Hmong community, just 45 years ago, was considered too ‘preliterate’ to even be accepted into the U.S. And yet, here we are today, with a Hmong American representing our country on an international stage winning gold,” he said. “I think it speaks more to the power of our community to love and support each other.”
Of course, Vang said, amid conversations about Lee’s community, the gymnast’s own strength must not be forgotten.
“It would be remiss to not just mention the resilience of Suni herself, certainly embedded within her family and then the larger community, but it takes a lot to get to where she's at,” Vang said. “That is personal resilience, in addition to the community resources that she may have drawn upon, to get to where she is.”
Vang said she hopes when people see Lee’s story, they’ll be prompted to put more resources and investment into communities like the Hmong.
Hmong Americans are often obscured by model minority myth. Why Suni Lee’s win means so much.
Experts say both the struggles and achievements of the Hmong community, an ethnic group with origins in Southeast Asia, have long been shrouded in decades of model minority stereotypes attached to the greater Asian American diaspora. So Lee’s win is far more than another addition to the nation’s medal count.
Sunisa Lee's parents Yeev Thoj, left, and John Lee and other family and friends react as they watch Sunisa Lee clinch the gold medal in the women's Olympic gymnastics all-around at the Tokyo Olympics on July 29, 2021 in Oakdale, Minn.Elizabeth Flores / Star Tribune via AP
For many Hmong people, “there is no other country than the U.S.,” Kham Moua, director of national policy at the Southeast Asia Resource Action Center, told NBC Asian America.
“We don't have any significant ties anymore, at least the population here, to really any other country. This is really our country. This is our home,” Moua, who woke up before dawn every day to watch Lee compete, said. “My Facebook has been just filled with posts about Suni from Hmong folks all over the country. It's super exciting.”
In the past, Lee has gushed about her tight-knit community in Minnesota, which boasts a Hmong population of roughly 66,000, many of whom ended up in the area due to refugee resettlement. Though the group’s origins in the U.S. began roughly a half-century ago, fleeing war and genocide, experts say its story has been obscured by tropes and images of wealthy Asian Americans who enjoy a much higher degree of privilege compared to that of the community.
About 60 percent of Hmong Americans are low-income and about a quarter live in poverty, according to a 2020 SEARAC report. Compared to all other racial groups, Hmong Americans fare the worst across nearly all measures of income. When it comes to educational attainment, almost 30 percent of Southeast Asian Americans haven’t completed high school or passed the GED tests, compared to the 13 percent of the general population who have experienced the same, the report said.
Zoua Vang, associate professor of sociology at McGill University, in Canada, said many of these structural inequalities can be traced back to the United States' treatment of refugees following what has become known as the “secret war” of the 1960s. The U.S. had recruited many members of the Hmong community in Laos to fight on their behalf. Though the objective was to stave off communist control in the country, Laos fell to the Pathet Lao, communist national forces, in 1975. When U.S. troops pulled out, many Hmong fled for Thailand and various refugee camps before resettling across America.
Sunisa Lee of Team United States poses with her gold medal after winning the Women's All-Around Final on day six of the Tokyo Olympic Games at Ariake Gymnastics Centre on July 29, 2021.Jamie Squire / Getty Images
“Certainly a lot of people, and I would count myself in this camp, feel that the government has let us down in terms of its obligations to help Americans, Hmong immigrants more generally, resettle and thrive in America,” Vang said. “The U.S. government has basically, like it does to most immigrants once they're here, stopped their responsibility to help these immigrants integrate into society.”
Hmong veterans continue to struggle with the lack of equal recognition and benefits for their sacrifices compared to U.S. vets, Vang said, which has become a “long-standing fight and struggle for people of that generation.”
With little government support, responsibility fell on private organizations and religious institutions to help the refugees, Vang said. Many Hmong Americans were forced to turn to or create their own support networks.
“Suni is so different from all those narratives because, certainly, there are echoes of war and trauma in her family's narrative. Her narrative is not a war narrative; it's a narrative about success,” Moua said. “We are talking about her as an individual, as an American, and quite honestly, it's so different from what we've seen. It's a positive narrative, too.”
However, experts stress that though Lee’s story is one of achievement and grit, it’s important that her narrative does not further perpetuate the idea that such extraordinary accomplishments are inevitable by just “pulling yourself up by the bootstraps.” Lee’s success isn’t so much proof of the opportunities or meritocracy in the U.S. but more so a reflection of the resilience of her community, they said.
Family and friends react after Sunisa Lee of Team United States won gold in the Women's All-Around Final on day six of the Tokyo Olympic Games at a watch party on July 29, 2021 in Oakdale, Minn.Stephen Maturen / Getty Images
While Lee’s family couldn’t afford a balance beam, her father built one himself, installing it in the backyard where it sits to this day, she told NBC’s “TODAY” show. Each year, the community held a fundraiser for the gymnast, chipping in so she would be able to compete competitively in the sport.
Moua said the existence of so many people of color on Team USA is a testament to those communities themselves, like the Hmong. Government documents from the secret war era once interpreted the Hmong, an oral culture, as “preliterate,” “meaning that they just can't learn, can't acclimate, can't become accustomed to the U.S,” he explained. Fast-forward to Lee’s win, and a much different image is projected on the Olympic podium.
“I think it is amazing that the Hmong community, just 45 years ago, was considered too ‘preliterate’ to even be accepted into the U.S. And yet, here we are today, with a Hmong American representing our country on an international stage winning gold,” he said. “I think it speaks more to the power of our community to love and support each other.”
Of course, Vang said, amid conversations about Lee’s community, the gymnast’s own strength must not be forgotten.
“It would be remiss to not just mention the resilience of Suni herself, certainly embedded within her family and then the larger community, but it takes a lot to get to where she's at,” Vang said. “That is personal resilience, in addition to the community resources that she may have drawn upon, to get to where she is.”
Vang said she hopes when people see Lee’s story, they’ll be prompted to put more resources and investment into communities like the Hmong.
“If we put investments and resources, what amazing diversity can we see on the world stage representing America, and how many more unsupported untapped talent is in communities of color, and the Hmong community,” Vang said.
22.
Five Foreign-Policy Movies Worth Watching About Human Rights
It’s Friday, so it’s time for another installment of foreign-policy-themed movies worth watching. This week we’re looking at films about the fight for human rights.
Here are five movies about human rights worth watching, plus a bonus pick from one of our colleagues.
The Water's Edge
James M. Lindsay analyzes the politics shaping U.S. foreign policy and the sustainability of American power. 2-4 times weekly.
Judgment at Nuremberg (1961). We make the rules, so we can break them, too. Any list of movies worth watching about human rights has to include director Stanley Kramer’s 1961 courtroom drama starring Spencer Tracy, Montgomery Clift, Marlene Dietrich, Judy Garland, Burt Lancaster, Maximilian Schell, and Richard Widmark. (The movie also features William Shatner, who more famously played Captain James T. Kirk on Star Trek, and Werner Klemperer, who played Colonel Klink on Hogan’s Heroes.) But the film is not currently available to rent online. You can, however, stream the 1959 televised play Judgment at Nuremberg, which was written by Abby Mann, who won an Oscar for the movie’s script. Three years after top Nazi leaders were tried in Nuremberg, retired U.S. judge Dan Haywood (Tracy) hears the case of four German judges accused of abetting Nazi atrocities. Faced with the defense’s arguments about Germany’s collective culpability, harrowing witness testimony, and political pressure to forget the past, Haywood has to decide whether and how to punish the four men. Schell, a native Austrian and a staunch anti-Nazi in real life, won the Oscar for best actor for his role as defense counsel, Hans Rolfe. The film was also nominated for nine Oscars, including best picture. (West Side Story took that prize.) The American Film Institute ranks Judgment at Nuremberg as the tenth best American courtroom drama of all time. The 1959 television version, which was directed by George Roy Hill and stars Schell, Claude Rains, and Paul Lukas, has won fewer accolades. But you can watch it on Amazon Prime.
In the Name of the Father (1993). At the height of the Troubles in Northern Ireland in 1974, five people were killed and sixty-five injured when IRA bombs exploded in two pubs in Guilford, England. Gerry Conlon, a Belfast resident who had been in the area but had no connection to the bombings, was arrested and tortured into confessing responsibility. Along with three others, he was sentenced to life in prison. In the Name of the Father follows Conlon’s passionate fight to clear both his name and that of his father, who was wrongly convicted for aiding the bombing. Daniel Day-Lewis and Pete Postlethwaite received Oscar nods for their roles as son and father. Emma Thompson was nominated for her turn as the solicitor appealing their convictions. In the Name of the Father was nominated for four other Oscars, including best picture and best director for Jim Sheridan. You can rent it on Amazon Prime, Google Play, or YouTube.
The Pianist (2002). Władysław Szpilman was playing Chopin when the first bombs hit Warsaw on September 1, 1939. Drawing on Szpilman’s 1946 memoir of the same name, The Pianist follows the Polish-Jewish musician’s struggle to survive under the Nazi occupation. Adrien Brody lost 31 pounds to play Szpilman as he deteriorated from confident performer to gaunt survivor, torn from the people and piano that he loved. Director Roman Polanski, a Holocaust survivor whose mother was killed in Nazi gas chambers, realistically relates Szpilman’s story as one of tremendous luck, not Hollywood heroism. The Pianist won three Oscars: best actor for Brody (who accepted his award in a surprising way), best director for Polanski, and best adapted screenplay. The Pianist was nominated for four other Oscars, including best picture. You can rent it on Amazon Prime, Netflix, or YouTube.
Beasts of No Nation (2015). The United Nations reported nearly 8,500 children were recruited and used in armed conflict in 2020. Beasts of No Nation offers an intimate and harrowing look at not only the trauma but also the perseverance of one of those victims. When civil war engulfs the home of twelve-year-old Agu (Abraham Attah), he flees his massacred village only to run into a faction of rebel guerilla fighters. Trained to fight and kill by the charismatic and tyrannical Commandant (Idris Elba), Agu’s innocence is quickly and brutally torn away. Director Cary Joji Fukunaga spent years researching Sierra Leone’s civil war before discovering Uzodinma Iweala’s 2005 debut novel Beasts of No Nation as the perfect foundation for a movie about humanity and children, specifically, in war. You can stream Beasts of No Nation on Netflix.
The Report (2019). A 6,700-page government report doesn’t sound like the stuff of a Hollywood storyline. Director Scott Z. Burns, however, turns the Senate investigation of the Bush administration’s “enhanced interrogation techniques” after the September 11 attacks into a serious but “riveting” film. Based on actual events, The Report features Senate staffer Doug Jones (Adam Driver), who is tasked by Senator Diane Feinstein (Annette Benning) to investigate the CIA’s destruction of interrogation videos in 2005. Jones uncovers evidence that the CIA misrepresented its methods, the number of detainees it tortured, and the quality of information it gained. But not everyone wants that information uncovered. Jones and Feinstein fight resistance within the CIA and the Obama administration before they succeed in releasing their report in 2014. Driver and Benning, who are joined by Jon Hamm, Ted Levine, and Corey Stoll, elevate this procedural into a gripping look at recent abuse of human rights by the United States. You can watch The Report on Amazon Prime.
This week we asked David Scheffer to make a bonus pick. David is a senior fellow at CFR, a recent fellow at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Ferencz International Justice Initiative, and a law professor emeritus at Northwestern’s Pritzker School of Law. He previously served as the first U.S. ambassador at large for war crimes issues in the Clinton administration. David chose:
The Whistleblower (2010). Director Larysa Kondracki tells the real-life story of Kathryn Bolkovac, a former policewoman from Lincoln, Nebraska, who was hired by UN-contractor DynCorp Aerospace in 1999 to investigate human rights abuses in postwar Bosnia. She soon discovered that many of her fellow UN peacekeepers were participating in the very sex trafficking of women and girls that they were supposed to stop. Bolkovac’s superiors covered up her complaints, and she was eventually fired for “falsifying time sheets.” She sued DynCorp in 2002 for wrongful termination and won. However, no one was ever prosecuted for the crimes she witnessed. Rachel Weisz starred as Bolkovac, and her castmates include Vanessa Redgrave, Monica Bellucdi, and David Strathairn. Then-UN General Secretary Ban Ki-moon held a special screening of film for UN officials, but activists say that sexual abuse by peacekeepers remains a problem. David says: “The Whistleblower offers you both the truth and relentless drama. This film reminds us that a single woman’s courage can challenge the entire dynamic of confronting human rights abuses, particularly for leaders who tolerate such hideous crimes.” You can find The Whistleblower on Amazon Prime, Pluto TV, or Vudu.
Next week we will offer suggestions for films about actual world events.
Check out our other recommendations from this summer:
And here are our recommendations from last summer:
Still looking for something to watch? You can find all film (and book) recommendations from The Water’s Edge here.
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.
