Quotes of the Day:
"Of all tyrannies.....those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end..."
"Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." ~C.S. Lewis
“A dying culture invariably exhibits personal rudeness. Bad manners. Lack of consideration for others in minor matters. A loss of politeness, of gentle manners, is more significant than is a riot.”
- Robert A. Heinlein, Friday
1. Austin Administers Speedy Swearing-In for DOD's New Indo-Pacific Policy Guru
2. U.S. Population Growth, an Economic Driver, Grinds to a Halt
3. Secret files suggest Nazis knew about Great Escape and let it go ahead
4. U.S. Intensifies Airstrikes in Afghanistan as Taliban Offensive Nears Kandahar
5. Leaders Discuss Reforms in the Special Operations Community
6. Disinformation for Hire, a Shadow Industry, Is Quietly Booming
7. Al Lord Profited When College Tuition Rose. He Is Paying For It.
8. Cold reception: US diplomat arrives in China for a ‘good tutorial’ in how to behave
9. CORDS drastically reduces E. Visayas insurgency problem
10. Senate authorizers want to fund the Army’s entire wish list
11. What China’s Vast New Cybersecurity Center Tells Us About Beijing’s Ambitions
12. Opinion | Afghan resistance to the Taliban needs U.S. support — and a big morale boost
13. The US Army’s new iron triangle: The coming budget crunch and its implications for modernization
14. Confronting Cyber Threats: Challenges and Opportunities
15. Climate Scientists Meet As Floods, Fires, Droughts And Heat Waves Batter Countries
16. Foreign Policy Should Be Evidence-Based
17. China Urges Washington To Stop ''Demonising'' It During US Official Visit
18. America’s real plan for Afghanistan
19. ‘Buffs’ could rain death on the Taiwan Strait
20. Huawei hiring former Democratic super lobbyist Tony Podesta
1. Austin Administers Speedy Swearing-In for DOD's New Indo-Pacific Policy Guru
Austin Administers Speedy Swearing-In for DOD's New Indo-Pacific Policy Guru
At 614 miles per hour, it may have been the fastest oath ceremony for an assistant secretary of defense ever as Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III today administered the oath of office to Ely Ratner aboard an Air Force E-4B headed to Singapore.
Ratner, who is now the assistant secretary of defense for Indo-Pacific security affairs, had helmed DOD's China Task Force.
Oath of Office
On board an Air Force E-4B bound for Singapore, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III administers the oath of office to Ely Ratner, the Defense Department's new assistant secretary of defense for Indo-Pacific security affairs, July 25, 2021. Austin is on a week-long trip to reaffirm defense relationships and conduct bilateral meetings with senior officials in Singapore; Hanoi, Vietnam; and Manila, Philippines.
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Photo By: Chad McNeeley, DOD
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The Senate approved Ratner's nomination July 22. Senators also approved Heidi Shyu as undersecretary of defense for research and engineering; Gina Ortiz Jones as undersecretary of the Air Force; Meredith Berger as assistant secretary of the Navy for energy, installations, and environment; Shawn Skelly as assistant secretary of defense for readiness; and Caroline Krass as DOD's general counsel.
"These deeply qualified public servants represent decades of combined expertise and leadership in national security and defense policy, and I am grateful for their willingness to serve the country at this critical time," Austin said in a written statement.
Austin swore in Ratner in the press room of the so-called "doomsday plane." The 747-derivative was flying at 30,000 feet at N 52.22, W 168.05, according to the crew. The aircraft had left Fairbanks, Alaska, earlier in the day.
Austin and Ratner
On board an Air Force E-4B bound for Singapore, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III shakes hands with Ely Ratner, the Defense Department's new assistant secretary of defense for Indo-Pacific security affairs, July 25, 2021. Austin is on a week-long trip to reaffirm defense relationships and conduct bilateral meetings with senior officials in Singapore; Hanoi, Vietnam; and Manila, Philippines.
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Photo By: Chad McNeeley
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Austin welcomed Ratner to the job and said the new assistant secretary had "fire in his eyes and energy in his belly." The secretary praised Ratner for his work leading the China Task Force, saying it had helped define the situation between the United States and China.
While there have been many reenlistments aboard the E-4B, this may have been the first swearing in of an assistant defense secretary aboard the aircraft.
2. U.S. Population Growth, an Economic Driver, Grinds to a Halt
One reason why we need effective immigration reform. We need to get mmigration right because it is what is going to keep American strong in the face of declining demographics. It is what has helped American grow and remain strong throughout our history.
Excerpts:
The depth of the problem hinges on several variables that could change direction in the coming years. Immigration, which accounted for between a third and half of U.S. population growth during the past decade, is moving toward a resurgence because the Biden administration eased some restrictions enacted during the Trump years. The reviving economy is also drawing job seekers. Years of strong immigration could help offset fewer births.
Nicholas Eberstadt, a researcher at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, noted that China, Russia and nations in the European Union have had fertility rates below replacement level for much longer than the U.S.—and have older populations in general.
“The United States’ demographic situation is comparatively favorable,” he said. “The big wild card is going to be what happens with immigration.”
This year, the U.S. will record at least 300,000 fewer births because the uncertain economy and the pandemic dissuaded women from having babies, according to projections by economists Melissa S. Kearney and Phillip Levine. Provisional government data already show births in the first three months of 2021 declined compared with 2020.
The longer-term decline stems from millennials having fewer children. Extended financial insecurity among young adults and women’s rising educational attainment are among factors overlapping with the pandemic year’s health and financial shocks, many demographers say.
U.S. Population Growth, an Economic Driver, Grinds to a Halt
Covid-19 pandemic compounds years of birth-rate decline, puts America’s demographic health at risk
WSJ · by Janet Adamy and Anthony DeBarros
Some demographers cite an outside chance the population could shrink for the first time on record. Population growth is an important influence on the size of the labor market and a country’s fiscal and economic strength.
One bad year doesn’t automatically spell trouble for future U.S. demographic health. What concerns demographers is that in the past, when a weak economy drove down births, it was often a temporary phenomenon that reversed once the economy bounced back.
Yet after births peaked in 2007, they never rebounded from the nearly two-year recession that followed, even though Americans enjoyed a subsequent decade of economic growth.
With the birthrate already drifting down, the nudge from the pandemic could result in what amounts to a scar on population growth, researchers say, which could be deeper than those left by historic periods of economic turmoil, such as the Great Depression and the stagnation and inflation of the 1970s, because it is underpinned by a shift toward lower fertility.
“The economy of the developed world for the last two centuries now has been built on demographic expansion,” said Richard Jackson, president of the Global Aging Institute, a nonprofit research and education group. “We no longer have this long-term economic and geopolitical advantage.”
A boy awaits the whistle to blow for children to be able to re-enter the public pool in Lincoln, Kan., which has been losing population for decades.
Photo: Doug Barrett for The Wall Street Journal
The depth of the problem hinges on several variables that could change direction in the coming years. Immigration, which accounted for between a third and half of U.S. population growth during the past decade, is moving toward a resurgence because the Biden administration eased some restrictions enacted during the Trump years. The reviving economy is also drawing job seekers. Years of strong immigration could help offset fewer births.
Nicholas Eberstadt, a researcher at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, noted that China, Russia and nations in the European Union have had fertility rates below replacement level for much longer than the U.S.—and have older populations in general.
“The United States’ demographic situation is comparatively favorable,” he said. “The big wild card is going to be what happens with immigration.”
This year, the U.S. will record at least 300,000 fewer births because the uncertain economy and the pandemic dissuaded women from having babies, according to projections by economists Melissa S. Kearney and Phillip Levine. Provisional government data already show births in the first three months of 2021 declined compared with 2020.
The longer-term decline stems from millennials having fewer children. Extended financial insecurity among young adults and women’s rising educational attainment are among factors overlapping with the pandemic year’s health and financial shocks, many demographers say.
William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution, said he didn’t think the total population would decline, in part because immigration will drive growth. He said the pandemic’s impact on fertility could be short-lived if an improving economy prompts millennials and members of Gen Z, born starting in 1997, to start catching up on births.
Over the past decade, more communities across the U.S. have started to grapple with an aging population and a dearth of young people. There were more deaths than births in about 55% of U.S. counties for the year ended June 30, 2020, census figures show, up from about 37% of counties at the start of the previous decade.
Every type of U.S. county, from the most urban to the most rural, on average saw a decrease in the number of births per death in the second half of the 2010s compared with the first half, according to census estimates.
The phenomenon is most acute in rural America, where small towns and lightly populated counties often lack the jobs, housing and child-care options young families need. The combination of aging residents and fewer young people in such counties has helped push deaths higher on average than births for the past eight years, according to the estimates.
Metropolitan counties, generally with younger populations, have higher births-to-death ratios than their rural counterparts. Still, about 20% of 368 counties in the suburbs of the largest metropolitan areas—those with a million or more people—saw deaths exceed births collectively during the past decade. They include Rowan County outside Charlotte, N.C., and Lake County near Orlando. In both cases, a surplus of people moving into those counties masked the natural decrease and led to overall population growth during the decade.
Mobile and Baldwin, two metropolitan counties at the southwest tip of Alabama, saw only 156 more births than deaths in the year ended June 30, 2020, according to census estimates. Just outside the area, eight counties fared worse. Rural and with median ages of 40 and older, compared with a U.S. median age of 38, the counties collectively experienced more deaths than births for each year in the past decade. Statewide, for the first time on record, more people died in Alabama last year than were born.
Rev. Trey Woolfolk, who has delayed starting a family as he established his career, preached outside Aimwell Baptist Church in Mobile, Ala. Friends hugged before the service, and parishioners listened to the sermon.
Photo: Akasha Rabut for The Wall Street Journal
Rev. Trey Woolfolk, 37 years old, of Mobile, says the pandemic “stopped me 12 months in the search of settling down.” Rev. Woolfolk, senior pastor at Aimwell Baptist Church, hopes eventually to get married and have children, but other priorities keep getting in the way. For most of his 30s, he was consumed with studying to earn his master of divinity degree. He watched as friends who wed in their 20s ended up divorced.
“I saw it as a warning to take my time,” he said. “I’ve kind of opted to establish myself career-wise before I started a family.”
Before the pandemic, in 2019, only a handful of states ended the year with a deaths surplus: West Virginia, Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont. Now the states where deaths exceed births are all over the U.S., from Wisconsin and Michigan to South Carolina and Florida to Montana and Oregon, according to provisional data from the National Center for Health Statistics at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
While many of those states are likely to shift back to a births surplus once the pandemic ends, deaths will continue to outpace births in large sections of the U.S. as the population ages, said Kenneth Johnson, senior demographer at the University of New Hampshire.
Historically, nearly half of the country’s economic growth has been driven by the expansion of the working-age population, including immigrants, said Neil Howe, an economist, demographer and managing director at Hedgeye Risk Management, an investor-oriented research company. Recent federal-budget projections suggest the potential labor-force growth rate will hover just above zero for years to come, down from a range of 2.5% starting in the mid-1970s to 0.5% from 2008 through last year.
The shifts will make the U.S. more reliant on immigration to grow the workforce, economists say, although that faces its own pressures. Mexico’s fertility rate has steadily declined, while China and India—two other top suppliers of immigrants to the U.S.—face talent shortages of their own, along with China’s own flattening population growth.
In the short term, given how the pandemic suppressed immigration, a small chance exists that the Census Bureau’s annual population update will show a tiny decline for the year ended July 1, 2021, said Mr. Howe. What is more likely is that total U.S. deaths end up exceeding births for that period, he said.
Jamie Meyer fixes a tire in Lincoln, Kan., part of a block of roughly three dozen rural counties from central Kansas to the Nebraska border with some of the nation’s lowest county birth-to-death ratios.
Photo: Doug Barrett for The Wall Street Journal
Among the industries most affected are retail and hospitality, because they rely on younger workers who turn over quickly, said Rob Sentz, who until last month was chief innovation officer at the labor-market data firm Emsi. Sectors such as healthcare, engineering and information technology will struggle to replace senior management as millions of baby boomers retire.
Over time, a lower fertility rate will lead to a higher ratio of retired beneficiaries to taxpaying workers, which is expected to raise the cost of Social Security and Medicare.
The Biden administration hopes to support family growth through its proposed $1.8 trillion American Families Plan, which includes paid parental leave, subsidized child-care and free preschool. Such policy approaches have had a mixed record of lifting fertility rates in other countries, researchers say.
Families in rural America are feeling the impacts of a compound demographic problem, with today’s lower birthrates magnifying a continuing, decadeslong exodus of younger people. Many support systems for people raising children haven’t kept pace with women’s greater presence in the workforce, leaving today’s families with two working parents struggling for services such as child care. Rural families who need child care find there may not be enough children around to support a daycare center.
In Lincoln, Kan., where the population has been steadily dwindling as in so many places in rural America, a man used a tractor to cut grass and a woman worked in the town’s community garden.
Photo: Doug Barrett for The Wall Street Journal
In Lincoln County, Kan., pop. 2,986, about 40 miles west of Salina, Kan., economic development director Kelly Gourley set out to build the county’s first day-care center not run out of someone’s home. A child-care shortage was making it difficult to work and raise children, she saw. The town’s handful of in-home daycares were the only options, and they tended to come and go.
Ms. Gourley estimated it could cost as much as a half-million dollars to build the facility, and she didn’t think it could weather fluctuations in demand. “In a rural community, you lose one kid and you might be in the red all the sudden,” she said. She shelved the plan and instead is working to increase the supply of in-home caretakers.
Allison Johnson, a 32-year-old nursing home speech pathologist, grew up in Lincoln County and hoped one day to have three children. She no longer thinks that is feasible after she had to wait a year to get an in-home daycare spot when her first child was born. Now she and her husband, who owns a residential-construction business, are trying to figure out how they would juggle having a second child.
Her father, a farmer, watches her son, now 2, when her in-home daycare provider isn’t available. But he and her brother are in their busy season, and “they’re not going to be able to do anything but throw him in the tractor.”
In Lincoln County, Kan., which has few daycare options for families, farmer Alan Aufdemberge sometimes takes his grandson, Halston, in the cab of his tractor while watching him for his daughter Allison Johnson and her husband, Brennan.
Photo: Doug Barrett for The Wall Street Journal
Lincoln has a median age about eight years older than the national median of 38. For the decade ended June 30, 2020, the county saw one of the nation’s lowest county birth-to-death ratios—302 births and 376 deaths. The problem extends across a block of 35 mostly rural counties including Lincoln from central Kansas to the Nebraska border. Collectively, deaths in the counties have outpaced births for the past seven years.
Civic leaders have tried luring more young families to the area to offset the aging population and the steady flow of people moving away.
In Mankato, Kan., population 804, near the Nebraska border, city manager Barry Parsons says one of the biggest problems is that seniors aren’t moving out of their longtime homes because there is a shortage of senior living.
That has led to a tight housing market. “When young families want to move in for teaching jobs or jobs at the hospital, it is hard for them to find housing at all,” said local real-estate agent Deb Warne.
To combat low population growth, a handful of towns, including Lincoln, have offered free plots of land to anyone willing to build a home in an empty subdivision. Such programs have failed to gain traction because most families want homes that are move-in ready.
More than 15 years after the program in Lincoln started, only two lots have been claimed. The remaining 19 sit empty.
Many rural counties dangle perks to get people to move in, including Lincoln, which is offering free lots to people interested in locating there.
Photo: Doug Barrett for The Wall Street Journal
WSJ · by Janet Adamy and Anthony DeBarros
3. Secret files suggest Nazis knew about Great Escape and let it go ahead
Fascinating. I am sure some historians are going to dig into this further.
Secret files suggest Nazis knew about Great Escape and let it go ahead
Nazis knew about The Great Escape: Secret files show SS Commanders 'let mass breakout go ahead so they could make an example of the ringleaders' and allow Heinrich Himmler's reign of terror
- National Archive documents suggest Germans knew about Great Escape plan
- Experts claim Germans allowed it to go ahead so escapees could be punished
- National Archive research project reveals anti-escape measures were stepped down ahead of the now-infamous plan which resulted in execution of 50 PoWs
- Research suggests Germans allowed it to go ahead so they could punish PoWs in line with rules handed down by Himmler who had authorised use of executions
PUBLISHED: 08:22 EDT, 25 July 2021 | UPDATED: 11:01 EDT, 25 July 2021
Daily Mail · by Katie Feehan For Mailonline · July 25, 2021
Nazi leaders knew about The Great Escape in advance and let it go ahead because they wanted to make an example of the ringleaders, it is claimed.
Secret files on the mass breakout from the 'escape proof' POW camp Stalag Luft III in Poland suggest it was rigged to allow a reign of terror by Heinrich Himmler.
In mid-1943, Heinrich Himmler assumed overall control of POW security and introduced draconian punishments for escapees including the 'Bullet Order' permitting executions in March 1944.
The Great Escape took place the same month, giving Himmler the perfect excuse to lambast 'lax security' by the Luftwaffe, who ran the camps without the regime of fear he advocated.
The triumph of the digging of the three tunnels, Tom, Dick and Harry, ended tragically in the murder of 50 Allied airmen and the biggest British war crimes investigation of the war.
Newly discovered documents from the National Archives suggest the Germans allowed the infamous Great Escape go ahead so they could exact punishment on escapees. Pictured: a picture taken by the Germans of the inside of the narrow tunnel, named 'Harry', in 1944
Pictured: Harry's exit, showing the rope that was used to alert the next escaper that he could set off for the tree line, using the rope to guide him away from the POW camp in Poland
But long-lost documents found in the National Archives suggest the Nazis wanted the break-out to go ahead, so Himmler could cold-bloodedly hunt down the brave airmen and punish them.
As Germans casualties mounted, escapes by servicemen had soared because there were fewer guards - and there were fears they would team up with partisans to cause havoc.
At Stalag Luft III, escape had been treated as a game by the prisoners with the Germans discovering at least 80 tunnels.
This led to a vast array of microphones being buried around the camp perimeter from late 1943, which detected large-scale digging.
A National Archives research project has revealed during the countdown to the Great Escape some very strange events took place at the camp.
In November 1943, a three-week inspection by experts bizarrely concluded there was no more tunnelling and ordered the microphones turned off so the camp could be extended.
Colonel Friedrich von Lindeiner, Commandant of Stalag Luft III, May 1942 to March 1944
Pictured: Prisoners used trolleys to shift the dirt from the three tunnels they were digging which were a great improvement on the sledges used in previous tunnel attempts at the camp
Camp Commandant Colonel Friedrich Wilhelm von Lindeiner-Wildau protested an escape was now imminent and 'feared the consequences', according to the files.
In February 1944, he called in SS Major Erich Brunner, the Reich's top expert on preventing escapes, and pleaded with him to improve security.
Brunner chatted with the commandant but shunned his duty of inspecting the camp's anti-escape measures - or ordering the anti-tunnelling mics to be reconnected.
Meanwhile, prisoners had began work on three tunnels codenamed 'Tom', 'Dick' and 'Harry', under the theory that if the Germans discovered one tunnel, their guard would relax so they could continue work on the others.
Cunning methods had to be devised to remove the soil from the tunnels without getting caught, and typically, soldiers would shake the dirt out of their trousers at various points around camp, earning themselves the nickname 'penguins'.
Records show Camp Commandant Colonel Friedrich Wilhelm von Lindeiner-Wildau had warned of an imminent escape attempt Pictured: A crowded barrack wash room at the camp
As the Allied airmen tunnelled beyond the wire in March 1944, the camp commandant met the British officers to warn them of the 'increased dangers facing any recaptured escapees'. Pictured: a photograph from the camp shows how crowded a barrack room could become
Although the three tunnel entrances were finished by the end of May, work on 'Harry' and 'Dick' stopped in June so that efforts could concentrate on 'Tom'. In September, 'Tom' was discovered by the Nazis.
The following year, in January 1944, work on 'Harry' resumed. By 25 March, the 335ft tunnel was ready.
As the Allied airmen tunnelled beyond the wire - the camp commandant met the British officers to warn them of the 'increased dangers facing any recaptured escapees'.
Nevertheless, on the night of March 24, 1944, 76 airmen broke out into the woods.
Himmler's hand was further strengthened when the prisoners dispersed far and wide, following a mysterious failure to send troops to the local railway station.
Only three made it home and of those recaptured, 50 were murdered on Hitler's orders, including escape mastermind Squadron Leader Roger Bushell, known as 'Big X'.
Pictured: the morning queue for hot water outside the cookhouse at the Stalag Luft III
POW expert Alan Bowgen said: 'While the 1963 John Sturges' film loosely portrays the story of the so-called Great Escape, the reality was less heroic and far more tragic.
'Indeed, it has been suggested that it was German High Command policy to encourage the escape and then take severe counter measures.'
He called muting the microphones 'a remarkable step in view of the known tunnelling activities and even more so because of the considerable time they were left unconnected'.
After the war, the camp commandant was himself captured and held for three years before being released by the British.
'A lot of the ex-prisoners there did speak up for him and I think the Luftwaffe were quite ashamed of what had happened,' the historian added.
Daily Mail · by Katie Feehan For Mailonline · July 25, 2021
4. U.S. Intensifies Airstrikes in Afghanistan as Taliban Offensive Nears Kandahar
Excerpts:
“Taliban leaders have denied responsibility for any abuses, but growing evidence of expulsions, arbitrary detentions and killings in areas under their control are raising fears among the population,” Patricia Grossman, associate Asia director for HRW, said in a statement. Top officials of Afghanistan’s interior ministry visited Kandahar during the past two weeks, as the government in Kabul tried to buttress the region’s defenses.
The Afghan government’s elite units have won praise for their effectiveness, but are considered too few in number to turn back Taliban advances around the country because the more numerous regular Afghan army and police units are poorly trained.
Haji Hakimullah, a resident of Kandahar who served in the police there, said that elite units have in the past few days managed to clear parts of the city of Taliban fighters. But the same districts have quickly fallen again when handed over to police.
“The Afghan special forces are doing a very good job and are capable of handling the situation,” said Mr. Hakimullah. “The local police are neither well trained or equipped and this is the main reason the Taliban retake these places easily.”
U.S. Intensifies Airstrikes in Afghanistan as Taliban Offensive Nears Kandahar
About a dozen strikes are aimed at slowing a Taliban surge, aiding a beleaguered Afghan military
WSJ · by Alan Cullison in Kabul and Gordon Lubold in Washington, D.C.
The Taliban have advanced dozens of miles toward Kandahar city in recent weeks, squeezing it from three directions, capturing swaths of territory in the Panjwai and Arghandab valleys, places where foreign troops fought for decades to keep the Taliban at bay.
Humvees belonging to Afghan special forces were destroyed during clashes with Taliban in July.
Photo: danish siddiqui/Reuters
From the west, Taliban fighters now are within 2 miles of a base once used by the Central Intelligence Agency to train Afghan special forces, who now occupy the facility, according to residents reached by telephone in Kandahar.
Residents said the Taliban push from the south threatens to cut off the main road between the city and Kandahar Air Field, a one-time bastion of U.S. air power during the 20-year war. The U.S. turned the base over to the Afghan National Army last month.
In an impromptu visit to Kabul, the top U.S. military commander in charge of the Middle East and Afghanistan, Gen. Frank McKenzie, met Sunday with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and his top security officials to discuss Afghanistan’s defense plans and to reassure them of U.S. support.
Gen. McKenzie told reporters after the meeting that the U.S. had increased the number of airstrikes against the Taliban in the past few days, and was prepared to continue if the Taliban offensive continues.
Gen. McKenzie called the battle for Kandahar “a tough fight” and said the city was critical for both sides. “I think the issue is still in doubt, but Kandahar has not fallen,” he said.
The U.S. military has sought to dial back on strikes against the Taliban before Aug. 31. After that, White House officials have said they would retain the right to strike al Qaeda or other groups only if they pose a threat to the U.S.
A flag of Afghan Taliban (in white) is raised at the Afghan side of the Pakistani-Afghan border at Chaman, Pakistan.
Photo: akhter gulfam/Shutterstock
But with a Taliban offensive throughout the country, U.S. officials said they expect to hit more targets in Afghanistan after the end of the nearly weeklong Muslim holiday of Eid.
As Eid ended last week, the Taliban intensified attacks on several cities around the country, but fighting has been most intense in Kandahar, where fighters broke through a defensive perimeter of the city.
U.S. officials have been mum on details of the airstrikes, only saying that the U.S. conducted more than a dozen strikes across Afghanistan, including about 10 in the past five days. The strikes occurred in Helmand, according to U.S. officials, and in the neighboring province of Kandahar, according to other officials. The targets have included Taliban artillery and vehicles stolen from Afghan forces, and in one case an AC-130 gunship was used to stop an attack on an Afghan army unit, officials said.
Fighting continued through most of the weekend in Kandahar city, residents said, with machine-gun fire and explosions echoing through the streets. Residents said there was one airstrike Sunday inside the city, but it wasn’t clear whether it came from U.S. or Afghan aircraft.
“If this continues with fighting in so many parts of the city, I am afraid the Taliban will take Kandahar,” said Syed Mohammad, a shopkeeper reached by phone in Kandahar, who said he tried to help evacuate relatives from a district hit by fighting, but was sent home by Taliban who had set up a roadblock.
Afghans fear that a capture of Kandahar will presage a wave of atrocities and revenge killings seen in the aftermath of other Taliban victories.
The Taliban offensive in southern Afghanistan got a boost earlier this month with their seizure of the Spin Boldak, a bustling trade city on the border with Pakistan. Since then, officials in Kabul say that thousands of Taliban have crossed the border from Pakistan to join in the attack. Grisly videos have surfaced on social media showing Taliban executing locals suspected of cooperating with the government.
The global human-rights group Human Rights Watch said Friday the Taliban had rounded up hundreds of residents of newly conquered areas of Kandahar province. Some of the detainees have been killed, according to Afghan media reports.
Members of the Afghan special forces searched a house during a combat mission against the Taliban in Kandahar in July.
Photo: danish siddiqui/Reuters
“Taliban leaders have denied responsibility for any abuses, but growing evidence of expulsions, arbitrary detentions and killings in areas under their control are raising fears among the population,” Patricia Grossman, associate Asia director for HRW, said in a statement. Top officials of Afghanistan’s interior ministry visited Kandahar during the past two weeks, as the government in Kabul tried to buttress the region’s defenses.
The Afghan government’s elite units have won praise for their effectiveness, but are considered too few in number to turn back Taliban advances around the country because the more numerous regular Afghan army and police units are poorly trained.
Haji Hakimullah, a resident of Kandahar who served in the police there, said that elite units have in the past few days managed to clear parts of the city of Taliban fighters. But the same districts have quickly fallen again when handed over to police.
“The Afghan special forces are doing a very good job and are capable of handling the situation,” said Mr. Hakimullah. “The local police are neither well trained or equipped and this is the main reason the Taliban retake these places easily.”
—Saeed Shah in Islamabad and Ehsanullah Amiri in Dubai contributed to this article.
WSJ · by Alan Cullison in Kabul and Gordon Lubold in Washington, D.C.
5. Leaders Discuss Reforms in the Special Operations Community
This is the paradox of SOF: increase dwell at home to ensure the health of SOF, yet longer deployment times make certain SOF elements (e.g., SF, CA, and PSYOP) more effective and better contribute to achieving national security objectives that require sustained relationship with friends, partners, and allies. And there is also a "risk" to reducing deployment times as these forces came into SOF to deploy and work with, through, and by indigenous forces in remote locations. Although it may seem counterintuitive to most (and especially to non-SOF personnel), morale could suffer if deployments are reduced too much.
SOF is not one size fits all and SOF units are not fungible. We need to use the right force for the right mission and this must include the right durations.
Excerpts:
In the past, SOF forces have been deployed frequently with very little home station dwell times. Clarke said there's a push to decrease deployment times by ensuring that missions are more balanced with non-SOF forces, meaning that if conventional forces are able to do certain missions, then that would free up SOF forces. Allies and partners also have capable SOF forces that could be assigned certain missions.
Leaders Discuss Reforms in the Special Operations Community
Leaders of special operations forces discussed reforms including diversity and inclusion efforts, programs for families, and efforts to reduce the high operational tempo caused by frequent deployments at a hearing on the fiscal year 2022 budget request.
Joint Training
U.S. and Moroccan special operations forces conduct Joint Combined Exchange Training in Morocco, July 9, 2021.
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Photo By: Army photo
VIRIN: 210709-A-AB123-001A
Joseph McMenamin, performing the duties of the assistant secretary of defense for special operations/low intensity conflict, and Army Gen. Richard D. Clarke, commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, testified yesterday before the House Subcommittee on Intelligence and Special Operations.
"Enhancing the readiness and resilience of our SOF personnel and their families remains a top priority," and programs related to that effort are reflected in the FY 22 budget request, McMenamin said.
The moral and ethical health of the SOF community is another concern, he said. Special operations/low intensity conflict is working closely with U.S. Socom on implementation of its comprehensive review of SOF culture and ethics.
Colombia Exercise
Air Force Tactical Air Control Party airmen assigned to the 14th Air Support Operations Squadron, train with Colombian Air Force Aerial Special Operations Group air and terminal attack controllers during the Relampago VI Exercise near Palenquero Air Base, Colombia, July 13, 2021.
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"We are also committed to enhancing diversity within the SOF community. As we compete against increasingly capable adversaries, a more diverse force empowers us to draw upon broader perspectives, different lived experiences, and new ideas," McMenamin said.
Clarke said diversity for the SOF community means ensuring personnel reflect the best talent and the best people of America.
"The people of this country have unique talents and skill sets, and we want to ensure that all of them are given the opportunity to serve when able to meet the standards that are required within our force," he said.
"We want to ensure that any barriers to come into Socom, whether they are actual or perceived, are put down to allow the best talent to come in," Clarke said.
Smoky Scene
Green Berets with 1st Battalion, 1st Special Forces Group (Airborne), and members of Thailand’s Counter-Terrorism Operations Center Assault Force, traverse a simulated urban environment at the Counter-Terrorism Operations Center Headquarters, near Bangkok, Thailand, July 12, 2021. (This photo has been altered for security purposes.)
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"Individuals who understand others' cultures and are problem solvers are exactly what we need in our force," he added.
Easing the high rates of overseas deployments is also a priority, Clarke mentioned.
In the past, SOF forces have been deployed frequently with very little home station dwell times. Clarke said there's a push to decrease deployment times by ensuring that missions are more balanced with non-SOF forces, meaning that if conventional forces are able to do certain missions, then that would free up SOF forces. Allies and partners also have capable SOF forces that could be assigned certain missions.
Colombia Exercise
Air Force Tactical Air Control Party airmen assigned to the 14th Air Support Operations Squadron, train with Colombian Air Force Aerial Special Operations Group air and terminal attack controllers during the Relampago VI Exercise near Palenquero Air Base, Colombia, July 13, 2021.
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McMenamin said SOF continues to invest in capabilities to meet the challenges of strategic competition with China and Russia while strengthening vital alliances and partnerships.
The SOF community has borne over half of all combat casualties of the total force over the last two years, he said.
Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, the SOF community has maintained a high level of operational readiness, McMenamin said.
6. Disinformation for Hire, a Shadow Industry, Is Quietly Booming
Why is it that private entities (and foriegn governments) can do so much better in the information and influence space than government US organizations?
Excerpts:
In recent months, however, the network has developed hundreds of accounts with elaborate personas. Each has its own profile and posting history that can seem authentic. They appeared to come from many different countries and walks of life.
Graphika traced the accounts back to a Bangladeshi content farm that created them in bulk and probably sold them to a third party.
The network pushes strident criticism of Hong Kong democracy activists and American foreign policy. By coordinating without seeming to, it created an appearance of organic shifts in public opinion — and often won attention.
The accounts were amplified by a major media network in Panama, prominent politicians in Pakistan and Chile, Chinese-language YouTube pages, the left-wing British commentator George Galloway and a number of Chinese diplomatic accounts.
A separate pro-Beijing network, uncovered by a Taiwanese investigative outlet called The Reporter, operated hundreds of Chinese-language websites and social media accounts.
Disguised as news sites and citizen groups, they promoted Taiwanese reunification with mainland China and denigrated Hong Kong’s protesters. The report found links between the pages and a Malaysia-based start-up that offered web users Singapore dollars to promote the content.
But governments may find that outsourcing such shadowy work also carries risks, Mr. Brookie said. For one, the firms are harder to control and might veer into undesired messages or tactics.
For another, firms organized around deceit may be just as likely to turn those energies toward their clients, bloating budgets and billing for work that never gets done.
“The bottom line is that grifters are going to grift online,” he said.
Disinformation for Hire, a Shadow Industry, Is Quietly Booming
The Interpreter
Back-alley firms meddle in elections and promote falsehoods on behalf of clients who can claim deniability, escalating our era of unreality.
Empty vaccine vials at a vaccination site near Munich in May. Online disinformation campaigns targeting everything from vaccine manufacturers to elections have become a booming business.Credit...Matthias Schrader/Associated Press
By
July 25, 2021Updated 6:19 p.m. ET
In May, several French and German social media influencers received a strange proposal.
A London-based public relations agency wanted to pay them to promote messages on behalf of a client. A polished three-page document detailed what to say and on which platforms to say it.
Some recipients posted screenshots of the offer. Exposed, Fazze scrubbed its social media accounts. That same week, Brazilian and Indian influencers posted videos echoing Fazze’s script to hundreds of thousands of viewers.
The scheme appears to be part of a secretive industry that security analysts and American officials say is exploding in scale: disinformation for hire.
Private firms, straddling traditional marketing and the shadow world of geopolitical influence operations, are selling services once conducted principally by intelligence agencies.
They sow discord, meddle in elections, seed false narratives and push viral conspiracies, mostly on social media. And they offer clients something precious: deniability.
“Disinfo-for-hire actors being employed by government or government-adjacent actors is growing and serious,” said Graham Brookie, director of the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, calling it “a boom industry.”
Mr. Brookie’s organization tracked one operating amid a mayoral race in Serra, a small city in Brazil. An ideologically promiscuous Ukrainian firm boosted several competing political parties.
In the Central African Republic, two separate operations flooded social media with dueling pro-French and pro-Russian disinformation. Both powers are vying for influence in the country.
A wave of anti-American posts in Iraq, seemingly organic, were tracked to a public relations company that was separately accused of faking anti-government sentiment in Israel.
Most trace to back-alley firms whose legitimate services resemble those of a bottom-rate marketer or email spammer.
Job postings and employee LinkedIn profiles associated with Fazze describe it as a subsidiary of a Moscow-based company called Adnow. Some Fazze web domains are registered as owned by Adnow, as first reported by the German outlets Netzpolitik and ARD Kontraste. Third-party reviews portray Adnow as a struggling ad service provider.
European officials say they are investigating who hired Adnow. Sections of Fazze’s anti-Pfizer talking points resemble promotional materials for Russia’s Sputnik-V vaccine.
For-hire disinformation, though only sometimes effective, is growing more sophisticated as practitioners iterate and learn. Experts say it is becoming more common in every part of the world, outpacing operations conducted directly by governments.
The result is an accelerating rise in polarizing conspiracies, phony citizen groups and fabricated public sentiment, deteriorating our shared reality beyond even the depths of recent years.
An Open Frontier
Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, testifying on Capitol Hill in 2018, after it was reported that Cambridge Analytica had harvested data on millions of Facebook users.
The trend emerged after the Cambridge Analytica scandal in 2018, experts say. Cambridge, a political consulting firm linked to members of Donald J. Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, was found to have harvested data on millions of Facebook users.
The controversy drew attention to methods common among social media marketers. Cambridge used its data to target hyper-specific audiences with tailored messages. It tested what resonated by tracking likes and shares.
The episode taught a generation of consultants and opportunists that there was big money in social media marketing for political causes, all disguised as organic activity.
Some newcomers eventually reached the same conclusion as Russian operatives had in 2016: Disinformation performs especially well on social platforms.
At the same time, backlash to Russia’s influence-peddling appeared to have left governments wary of being caught — while also demonstrating the power of such operations.
“There is, unfortunately, a huge market demand for disinformation,” Mr. Brookie said, “and a lot of places across the ecosystem that are more than willing to fill that demand.”
Commercial firms conducted for-hire disinformation in at least 48 countries last year — nearly double from the year before, according to an Oxford University study. The researchers identified 65 companies offering such services.
Last summer, Facebook removed a network of Bolivian citizen groups and journalistic fact-checking organizations. It said the pages, which had promoted falsehoods supporting the country’s right-wing government, were fake.
Stanford University researchers traced the content to CLS Strategies, a Washington-based communications firm that had registered as a consultant with the Bolivian government. The firm had done similar work in Venezuela and Mexico.
A spokesman referred to the company’s statement last year saying its regional chief had been placed on leave but disputed Facebook’s accusation that the work qualified as foreign interference.
Eroding Reality
Family members performing last rites on a Covid victim at a crematorium in New Delhi in April. Social media manipulation has extended to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government and its handling of the pandemic.Credit...Atul Loke for The New York Times
New technology enables nearly anyone to get involved. Programs batch generate fake accounts with hard-to-trace profile photos. Instant metrics help to hone effective messaging. So does access to users’ personal data, which is easily purchased in bulk.
The campaigns are rarely as sophisticated as those by government hackers or specialized firms like the Kremlin-backed Internet Research Agency.
But they appear to be cheap. In countries that mandate campaign finance transparency, firms report billing tens of thousands of dollars for campaigns that also include traditional consulting services.
The layer of deniability frees governments to sow disinformation more aggressively, at home and abroad, than might otherwise be worth the risk. Some contractors, when caught, have claimed they acted without their client’s knowledge or only to win future business.
Platforms have stepped up efforts to root out coordinated disinformation. Analysts especially credit Facebook, which publishes detailed reports on campaigns it disrupts.
Still, some argue that social media companies also play a role in worsening the threat. Engagement-boosting algorithms and design elements, research finds, often privilege divisive and conspiratorial content.
Political norms have also shifted. A generation of populist leaders, like Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines, has risen in part through social media manipulation. Once in office, many institutionalize those methods as tools of governance and foreign relations.
In India, dozens of government-run Twitter accounts have shared posts from India Vs Disinformation, a website and set of social media feeds that purport to fact-check news stories on India.
India Vs Disinformation is, in reality, the product of a Canadian communications firm called Press Monitor.
Nearly all the posts seek to discredit or muddy reports unfavorable to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government, including on the country’s severe Covid-19 toll. An associated site promotes pro-Modi narratives under the guise of news articles.
A Digital Forensic Research Lab report investigating the network called it “an important case study” in the rise of “disinformation campaigns in democracies.”
A representative of Press Monitor, who would identify himself only as Abhay, called the report completely false.
He specified only that it incorrectly identified his firm as Canada-based. Asked why the company lists a Toronto address, a Canadian tax registration and identifies as “part of Toronto’s thriving tech ecosystem,” or why he had been reached on a Toronto phone number, he said that he had business in many countries. He did not respond to an email asking for clarification.
A LinkedIn profile for Abhay Aggarwal identifies him as the Toronto-based chief executive of Press Monitor and says that the company’s services are used by the Indian government.
‘Spamouflage’
Demonstrators clashing with riot police officers in Hong Kong in 2019. Networks disguised as news sites denigrated Hong Kong’s protesters.Credit...Lam Yik Fei for The New York Times
A set of pro-Beijing operations hint at the field’s capacity for rapid evolution.
Since 2019, Graphika, a digital research firm, has tracked a network it nicknamed “Spamouflage” for its early reliance on spamming social platforms with content echoing Beijing’s line on geopolitical issues. Most posts received little or no engagement.
In recent months, however, the network has developed hundreds of accounts with elaborate personas. Each has its own profile and posting history that can seem authentic. They appeared to come from many different countries and walks of life.
Graphika traced the accounts back to a Bangladeshi content farm that created them in bulk and probably sold them to a third party.
The network pushes strident criticism of Hong Kong democracy activists and American foreign policy. By coordinating without seeming to, it created an appearance of organic shifts in public opinion — and often won attention.
The accounts were amplified by a major media network in Panama, prominent politicians in Pakistan and Chile, Chinese-language YouTube pages, the left-wing British commentator George Galloway and a number of Chinese diplomatic accounts.
A separate pro-Beijing network, uncovered by a Taiwanese investigative outlet called The Reporter, operated hundreds of Chinese-language websites and social media accounts.
Disguised as news sites and citizen groups, they promoted Taiwanese reunification with mainland China and denigrated Hong Kong’s protesters. The report found links between the pages and a Malaysia-based start-up that offered web users Singapore dollars to promote the content.
But governments may find that outsourcing such shadowy work also carries risks, Mr. Brookie said. For one, the firms are harder to control and might veer into undesired messages or tactics.
For another, firms organized around deceit may be just as likely to turn those energies toward their clients, bloating budgets and billing for work that never gets done.
“The bottom line is that grifters are going to grift online,” he said.
7. Al Lord Profited When College Tuition Rose. He Is Paying For It.
Now isn't this rich.
Excerpts:
As student debt approaches $2 trillion and congressional Democrats call on President Biden to cancel a huge swath of it, he said he opposes proposals for free college and for forgiving student loans. “Are we trying to create deadbeats out of our young people at age 22?” he asked.
He does, however, admit he had a hand to play in the rising expense of higher education. At Sallie Mae, he said, he viewed his role as single-mindedly increasing the company’s stock value, which prevented him from publicly raising concerns about high tuition. His responsibility was solely to shareholders, not to society at large, he said, and that meant catering to colleges.
“Our customer was almost every bit as much the college as it was the student,” he said. “It didn’t behoove me to lose 100% of the business for something that might make an iota of a difference. No one was looking to me for that kind of information.”
Al Lord Profited When College Tuition Rose. He Is Paying For It.
As chief executive of student-lending giant Sallie Mae, Al Lord helped drive up the costs of college. Now that he is footing tuition checks for his grandchildren, he said he has new sympathy for ordinary families.
The sting of high tuition hit him several years back when a grandson enrolled at the University of Miami, which currently charges $75,230 a year for tuition and room and board. That is a far cry from the $175 a semester Mr. Lord recalls paying for his own education at Penn State University in the 1960s. He has also paid for the education of three other grandchildren, to attend Villanova University, University of Miami and Davidson College. The bills have approached $200,000 a head.
“It’s criminal,” he said of what schools are charging these days. He has gained sympathy for families of lesser means. “Boy, am I sure glad we saved for my grandkids. If the average income is $40,000 or $50,000 or $60,000, I just don’t know how you do it.”
Few people had as close a perspective on the cost of college as Mr. Lord, who is now 75 years old. He said he watched with bewilderment for decades as colleges persistently raised their prices faster than inflation. Parents complained; investors and analysts predicted that schools would eventually be forced to stop. They never did. “They raise them because they can, and the government facilitates it,” Mr. Lord said.
The irony is that for many years Sallie Mae was the government’s partner, and Mr. Lord’s business model—an unusual blend of capitalist finance and government subsidies—depended on those tuition increases. Mr. Lord acknowledges that many of the universities that charged high tuition were also effectively part of Sallie Mae’s sales force. And few profited so handsomely from the tuition increases Lord now resents. At Sallie Mae’s zenith, he said, his stock holdings were worth more than $300 million.
Mr. Lord retired as Sallie Mae’s chief executive for the second time in 2013. Eight years later, he admits he and the company profited from the tuition that some families can no longer afford.
“There was no question in my mind I knew what was going on,” Mr. Lord said on a recent evening, staring out the window of an office in his stone front house on a hill overlooking the Severn River in Annapolis, Md.
‘They’re going to take these profits from you’
Mr. Lord, who joined Sallie Mae as its accounting chief in 1981 after stints at a big accounting firm and a bank, was the eldest of three boys raised in a blue-collar family in Philadelphia. His father was a typesetter for the Philadelphia Inquirer. Raised for much of his childhood by a single mother, he and his two brothers shared a room in an apartment growing up.
As a teenager, he stocked shelves, bagged groceries and pushed shopping carts up a hill at the local grocery store to make money. He worked construction during summers. He also delivered newspapers. The money he earned—along with a few hundred dollars his father chipped in—was enough to cover tuition at Penn State, where he majored in accounting. He graduated in 1967.
With piercing blue eyes and a thin build, he said he exuded confidence and had no qualms about speaking his mind. To escape his modest upbringing, he wanted, above all, to make money.
Sallie Mae in the beginning used taxpayer money to ensure that banks made enough money on their student loans. Banks sold those loans to Sallie Mae for a profit.
Photo: Kristoffer Tripplaar/Sipa USA/Associated Press
The student-loan market was on the rise when he arrived at Sallie Mae. Formed by Congress in 1972 as the Student Loan Marketing Association, Sallie Mae used taxpayer money to ensure that banks earned enough on their student loans. Banks sold those loans to Sallie Mae for a profit and used the proceeds to lend even more. Schools were able to hike tuition since students now had expanded access to loans, and they benefited from a rise in Sallie Mae’s market value. The for-profit corporation was owned by universities and banks and governed by a board partly appointed by the U.S. president.
On Mr. Lord’s first day at Sallie Mae, he took home the company’s financial documents and read them that evening. “You’ve got to be shitting me. This place is a gold mine,” he said he recalls thinking.
With tuition rising, college enrollment increasing and the government essentially guaranteeing a 3.5% return on every student loan that Sallie Mae held—nearly double the average return that banks made on other products—he knew such a good deal likely wouldn’t last. Congress agreed to cover any losses that Sallie Mae had while also paying the company an interest rate equal to the 91-day Treasury plus an additional 3.5 percentage points on each loan.
“They’re going to take these profits from you,” he said he remembers telling Sallie Mae’s CEO, Ed Fox, at the time, referring to Congress. Mr. Fox said he also was of the same mind.
Mr. Lord, who became the company’s chief financial officer in 1983, said he pushed for the company to find a new source of money—from investors—so it would no longer be at the mercy of Congress. Other company executives agreed with him. In 1983, the company started selling stock to the public, and less than a year later it joined the New York Stock Exchange. Enjoying a so-called implicit guarantee—the assumption among investors that the government would bail out the company in a crisis—it could borrow in private markets at low interest rates. It instantly became a hot stock.
President Bill Clinton dampened that momentum. In 1993 he called for Congress to sever its ties to Sallie Mae and the private banking industry in a bid to save hundreds of million in profits the government guaranteed to the company and banks each year. Congressional Democrats, in a compromise with Sallie Mae’s defenders, authorized the Treasury Department to make student loans directly and gave schools the option to choose which loan program it would recommend to students. Sallie Mae’s stock plummeted.
The change created chaos in Sallie Mae’s executive suite. Mr. Lord, then Sallie Mae’s CFO, and CEO Larry Hough clashed over how the company should respond to Mr. Clinton’s challenge. Mr. Hough said he wanted to shift away from lending into other types of consumer products; Mr. Lord said he wanted the company to aggressively retake the student-loan market. Mr. Hough fired Mr. Lord in 1993.
In 1995, as Sallie Mae’s stock languished, Mr. Lord organized Sallie Mae’s biggest shareholders to attempt a takeover of the board. Mr. Lord said his pitch to the board was for Sallie Mae to lend directly to college students, and not simply buy loans from banks.
He said one of the main reasons he wanted to do that is because tuition was rising so quickly, and he had a sense the trend wouldn’t end soon. Starting in the 1980s, colleges raised tuition at more than double the rate of inflation, Labor Department data show.
In 1997, the dissident group succeeded, with the shareholders appointing new board members who installed Mr. Lord as CEO, replacing Mr. Hough.
Mr. Lord was a brash CEO. He obsessed over keeping costs to a minimum. He said he told department heads to cut their budget each year by becoming more efficient. He would walk in on meetings and demand that at least one of the employees leave to get back to work. He also rode around in a personal chauffeured bus emblazoned with Penn State colors, and once ended a conference call with analysts by uttering an expletive.
Shrinking giant
As CEO, Mr. Lord promoted student debt as an investment for households and said despite tuition growth, a college education led to high-paying careers. “There seems to be a lot of noise about whether a college education is worth it,” he told Fox Business Network in 2011. “I would say it’s very much worth it.”
To boost the company’s stock value and reduce shareholders’ risk of losses, he turned to securitization—or bundling loans into one package and then selling pieces to investors. Any potentially problematic debt immediately came off Sallie Mae’s books.
His challenge was to persuade schools to steer students to Sallie Mae or the banks—from which Sallie Mae still purchased student loans—instead of the Treasury Department. Sallie Mae promised schools that students would be able to borrow from an additional pot of money that came from private investors. That would allow students to borrow more—and thus schools to charge more.
The incentives worked. A year after Mr. Lord retired for the first time and became chairman, Sallie Mae stood as the single biggest student lender in 2006. It originated more than a quarter of all federally guaranteed loans; the next competitor originated 6%. Sallie Mae held $142 billion in student debt—roughly a third of all student debt. Its stock soared.
When a deal to sell Sallie Mae fell apart in 2007 and the value of the company plummeted, Mr. Lord said friends worried whether they should put him on suicide watch.
Photo: Stephen Voss for The Wall Street Journal
Sallie Mae’s dominance wouldn’t last. A 2007 deal to sell the company for $25 billion to an investor group fizzled when Congress cut the profits it guaranteed Sallie Mae and other banks under the federal program, slashing the company’s profitability. Sallie Mae’s value plummeted, as did Mr. Lord’s stock in the company. Friends worried whether they should put him on suicide watch, Mr. Lord said.
Mr. Lord returned as CEO late that same year, just as the subprime mortgage crisis roiled financial markets. Congress infused the company with billions to ensure it continued to lend to students under the federal program, but in 2010 it took away the government’s student-loan guarantee to banks. That left the Treasury Department as the biggest source of financing for college students. When Mr. Lord retired again three years later, Sallie Mae was a much smaller company making only private loans to students with no guarantee.
A spokesman for SLM Corp., Sallie Mae’s corporate owner, pointed out that Sallie Mae is no longer involved in the federal student loan program. “Sallie Mae offers private student loans to those who have shown an ability to repay, an approach that continues to work for students and families,” the spokesman said.
An epiphany
A year into retirement, Mr. Lord joined the board of his alma mater, Penn State. That is when, he said, he had an epiphany: Colleges were incredibly inefficient businesses, and the student-loan program enabled them.
He was stunned to learn how big Penn State’s budget was, about $5 billion, and how quickly it grew. (Penn State’s budget is currently $7.7 billion.) He recalled the athletic department requesting approval for a costly renovation of the football stadium to improve the experience for fans. Mr. Lord was aghast. “All they need to get fans is to win,” Mr. Lord said.
Mr. Lord said that after raising spending concerns at one board meeting, a fellow member— Kenneth Frazier, executive chairman of drugmaker Merck & Co.—took him aside in a hallway. “Al, this isn’t your company. They don’t think the way you’re thinking,” Mr. Frazier said, according to Mr. Lord. Mr. Lord said he replied: “That doesn’t make it right.” Mr. Frazier couldn’t be reached for comment.
Mr. Lord declined to run for a second term on the board in 2017 after a statement he made to the Chronicle of Higher Education—he said he had been losing sympathy for the sexual-assault victims of Jerry Sandusky, longtime assistant to Penn State head coach Joe Paterno—drew ire. Mr. Lord said he was pressured to resign, but he said he had been planning on leaving the board before the incident.
It was also around that time that his grandchildren started attending college, which he said triggered thoughts about how he was able to work his way through school. “A thousand dollars or a $1,500-a-year education was in bounds,” he said. “You could reach for it or pay for it, and I didn’t take on any debt.” In-state tuition and room and board at Penn State now costs as much as $36,278 a year.
As student debt approaches $2 trillion, congressional Democrats have called on President Biden to cancel a huge swath of it.
Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images
As student debt approaches $2 trillion and congressional Democrats call on President Biden to cancel a huge swath of it, he said he opposes proposals for free college and for forgiving student loans. “Are we trying to create deadbeats out of our young people at age 22?” he asked.
He does, however, admit he had a hand to play in the rising expense of higher education. At Sallie Mae, he said, he viewed his role as single-mindedly increasing the company’s stock value, which prevented him from publicly raising concerns about high tuition. His responsibility was solely to shareholders, not to society at large, he said, and that meant catering to colleges.
“Our customer was almost every bit as much the college as it was the student,” he said. “It didn’t behoove me to lose 100% of the business for something that might make an iota of a difference. No one was looking to me for that kind of information.”
—Adapted from “The Debt Trap” by Wall Street Journal reporter Josh Mitchell, to be published by Simon & Schuster Inc. on August 3.
8. Cold reception: US diplomat arrives in China for a ‘good tutorial’ in how to behave
Excerpts:
Wang Yi, on Saturday, gave the US his own dressing down.
“The United States always wants to exert pressure on other countries by virtue of its own strength, thinking that it is superior to others,” he said.
“However, I would like to tell the US side clearly that there has never been a country in this world superior to others, nor should there be, and China will not accept any country claiming to be superior to others.
“If the United States has not learned how to get along with other countries on an equal footing by now, then it is our responsibility, together with the international community, to give the US a good tutorial in this regard.“
...
Whether they ever have that conversation is an open question at this point, given prickly nature of the language directed at Sherman’s visit and the underlying reality that the co-mingling of trade, security and human rights issues that started under Trump and has continued under Biden couldn’t be easily untangled even if the US really did want them separated.
Cold reception: US diplomat arrives in China for a ‘good tutorial’ in how to behave
July 26, 2021 — 11.40am
The second-most senior diplomat in the US arrived in China on Sunday hoping to reset relations between the two countries. If the Chinese follow through on their promises, however, Wendy Sherman will instead be given a “tutorial” on how to treat other nations.
The trip by Sherman, the US deputy Secretary of State, is the first high-level diplomatic contact between the two countries since the acrimonious meeting between her boss, Antony Blinken and China’s most senior diplomat, Yang Jiechi, in Anchorage, Alaska, in March that disintegrated into a lengthy slanging match between the two.
US deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman will be treading a tricky path in China.Credit:Getty Images
Even before she landed for the meeting in Tianjin, Sherman was snubbed by the Chinese. She had hoped to hold talks with China’s Foreign Minister, Wang Yi, but was told the discussions would be with vice foreign minister Xie Feng and, rather pointedly, that Wang would only “meet” rather than hold formal talks with her.
It’s not surprising that Sherman’s visit received a cold reception.
Ahead of the meeting the US had sanctioned seven Chinese officials for their role in China’s crackdown on democracy in Hong Kong, drawing a tit-for-tat sanctioning of seven US officials, including former Commerce Secretary in the Trump administration, Wilbur Ross.
The US and its allies, including Australia, had also blamed China earlier this month of engaging in “malicious cyber activities” and being behind the global hack of Microsoft’s servers that was uncovered in January. China has denied responsibility, describing the charges as fabricated.
That’s hardly a backdrop conducive to an attempt to stabilise the deteriorating relationship between the two countries and, as the US State Department put it, to ensure there are “guard rails and parameters” in place to manage the relationship to ensure that “healthy and responsible” competition between the two didn’t spill over into conflict.
A State Department spokesman said the visit was intended to show China what healthy and responsible competition looked like and that the discussions were part of an ongoing effort to hold candid exchanges with Chinese officials to advance US interest and values and responsibly managed the relationship.
That didn’t go down well with China’s belligerent foreign ministry spokesman, Zhao Lijian, who said the US statement was arrogant and overbearing.
“We didn’t buy it in Anchorage and we surely won’t buy it in Tianjin,” he said.
With such tensions and such low expectations of the outcome of the meeting the best the Americans can hope for is that it inches the two sides towards a hoped-for meeting of Joe Biden and China’s Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the G20 meeting in Italy scheduled for this October.
Wang Yi, on Saturday, gave the US his own dressing down.
“The United States always wants to exert pressure on other countries by virtue of its own strength, thinking that it is superior to others,” he said.
“However, I would like to tell the US side clearly that there has never been a country in this world superior to others, nor should there be, and China will not accept any country claiming to be superior to others.
“If the United States has not learned how to get along with other countries on an equal footing by now, then it is our responsibility, together with the international community, to give the US a good tutorial in this regard.“
China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian had strong words for the US ahead of Sherman’s arrival. Credit:AP
With such tensions and such low expectations of the outcome of the meeting the best the Americans can hope for is that it inches the two sides towards a hoped-for meeting of Joe Biden and China’s Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the G20 meeting in Italy scheduled for this October.
There is, however, little likelihood of any thawing of the increasingly hostile relationship between the two major powers given the escalation of US combativeness that has occurred since Biden took office.
The early success of the administration’s efforts to re-establish the traditional alliances that were ravaged by the Trump administration and enlist them in its efforts to contain China and to condemn and sanction it for its claimed human rights abuses and its treatment of Hong Kong are also unsettling and agitating the Chinese.
It is, however, obviously better for both countries and the rest of the world that they talk through their issues and try to find ways to de-escalate the tensions and the prospect, however unlikely, of a miscalculation that leads to military conflict.
It is also possible that the US could offer to de-escalate a different conflict, the trade war initiated by Donald Trump that led to the US imposing $US360 billion ($490 billion) of tariffs on China’s exports to the US and China responding with tariffs of its own.
A truce was called in that conflict early last year, with China pledging to buy $US200 billion more goods from the US over the two years to the end of December this year (relative to 2017 levels). So far it has met less than 60 per cent of the targets its commitments established.
The Biden administration has left the tariffs in place but is reviewing them as part of a wider review of its relationship with China.
Even as two-way trade between the US and China has soared during the pandemic, the US trade deficit – the reason that Trump started the trade war – hasn’t shrunk.
Biden’s Treasury Secretary, Janet Yellen, has expressed reservations about the tariffs and the terms of the trade truce, arguing – as most trade economists do – that the tariffs have effectively been a tax on US companies and consumers that has hurt the US more than China while the truce hasn’t yet delivered what was promised.
It would appear that Biden’s economic and trade officials see the tariffs as a negotiating tool that can be used as leverage in a more sophisticated conversation with China about the terms of trade between the two economies – what the Americans would probably describe as a more level playing field.
Whether they ever have that conversation is an open question at this point, given prickly nature of the language directed at Sherman’s visit and the underlying reality that the co-mingling of trade, security and human rights issues that started under Trump and has continued under Biden couldn’t be easily untangled even if the US really did want them separated.
Stephen is one of Australia’s most respected business journalists. He was most recently co-founder and associate editor of the Business Spectator website and an associate editor and senior columnist at The Australian.
9. CORDS drastically reduces E. Visayas insurgency problem
No, CORDS in the Philippines is not Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development. But the headline caught my eye.
Excerpt:
“The government is fully committed to addressing the issues of insurgency in the region, particularly in the areas infiltrated by the CPP and its armed wing, the NPA,” he said.
CORDS drastically reduces E. Visayas insurgency problem
pna.gov.ph · by Lade Jean Kabagani July 24, 2021, 7:53 pm Share Share Twitter Twitter Twitter
(Contributed photo)
MANILA – President Rodrigo Duterte's designation of Cabinet secretaries as Cabinet Officer for Regional Development and Security (CORDS) is a huge step in ensuring the country's progressive development amid the threat of communist terrorist groups (CTGs).
Housing czar Secretary Eduardo del Rosario, also the CORDS for Region 8 (Eastern Visayas), said Duterte's strong political will and aggressive leadership to end insurgency "paved the way for development in previously conflict-hit areas in the region".
Del Rosario said the Regional Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (RTF-ELCAC) posted a 49-percent reduction on the insurgency problem in 310 communist-influenced villages since 2018.
Through the whole-of-government and whole-of-society approaches, del Rosario said security forces dismantled communist guerilla fronts.
"The remaining CPP-NPA-NDF (Communist Party of the Philippines-New People's Army-National Democratic Front) capability in Region 8 is continuously declining, hence we are declaring today that our timeline to neutralize and diminish the influence and fighting capability of the communist terrorists is achievable and doable within the President’s term," del Rosario said in an interview on Friday.
To date, del Rosario reported that 3,395 out of 4,390 barangays, or 77 percent of village officials in the entire region, declared persona non grata the members of CTGs.
All mayors and governors of the provinces of Leyte, Southern Leyte, Biliran, Samar, Eastern Samar, and Northern Samar did the same.
The government's Enhanced Comprehensive Local Integration Program (E-CLIP) and the Barangay Development Program under the flagship framework of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) are currently enforced in Eastern Visayas.
For the E-CLIP alone, the RTF-ELCAC-8 in 2020 distributed about PHP13.85 million worth of assistance to 296 former rebels, comprised of members of the NPA and Militia ng Bayan.
The assistance was meant to establish communal gardens, house farm breeders, poultry houses, and slaughterhouses, as well as education facilities for the former combatants.
A total of PHP1.85 million cash aid was distributed to rebel returnees in Samar under the Peace towards Prosperity Initiative.
Del Rosario earlier announced the construction of housing projects worth PHP75 million for communist rebels who returned to the fold of the law.
“The government is fully committed to addressing the issues of insurgency in the region, particularly in the areas infiltrated by the CPP and its armed wing, the NPA,” he said.
The RTF-ELCAC-8 was created by the Regional Development Council 8 and Regional Peace and Order Council Eastern Visayas under the provisions of EO 70.
The CPP-NPA is listed as a terrorist organization by the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the Philippines. (PNA)
pna.gov.ph · by Lade Jean Kabagani July 24, 2021, 7:53 pm Share Share Twitter Twitter Twitter
10. Senate authorizers want to fund the Army’s entire wish list
Senate authorizers want to fund the Army’s entire wish list
The Army’s wish list asked for $5.5 billion in additional money that would help reduce risk to operational readiness and protect critical modernization efforts.
At the bottom of a list of authorizations for the Army, the committee in its summary of the markup stated: “Authorizes all other unfunded requirements as requested by the Chief of Staff of the Army.”
The unfunded requirements list is a document the military services send to Congress each year following the release of the defense budget request to tell lawmakers about where they could use more funding in a perfect world. The lists are usually provided at the request of congressional defense committees.
The service needs additional funding beyond its $173 billion budget request for FY22 in order to hold on to momentum gained in recent years, Army Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville said in a letter accompanying the wish list sent to Congress at the beginning of June. The FY22 budget is a $3.6 billion reduction from what was approved by Congress for FY21.
The Army protected its modernization priorities in the FY22 budget, but at the expense of legacy fleets. Some vehicles and aircraft will be procured or upgraded at a slower rate than planned. The service would like an additional $1.1 billion for tactical training, soldier quality of life and strategic power projection capabilities, as well as $1.9 billion for modernization and equipping that restores reductions in aviation, wheeled and tracked combat vehicles and cybersecurity upgrades, according to the list.
And the Army chief would like a $1 billion “placeholder” for “unforecasted” direct and enduring war costs (the new Overseas Contingency Operations funding) and homeland contingency operations. The next fiscal year marks the first year wartime funding is included in the base budget and not separated out since its inception.
The Army needs an additional $470.4 million to cover potential enduring and direct war costs, according to the list, and the service would like an additional $570 million to support homeland contingency operations.
While the Army was able to preserve its top modernization priorities and critical enablers it would like an additional $1.87 billion to move forward on a variety of efforts, according to the wish list.
Several analysts and lawmakers have deemed the Army’s FY22 research, development, test and evaluation funding request as inadequate.
Senate authorizers, in their markup of the FY22 defense policy bill, plan to “increase research, development, test and evaluation funding for Army modernization priorities and enduring capabilities that enable multi-domain operations against nearpeer competitors,” the summary of the bill stated.
But lawmakers would also increase the Army’s procurement of enduring fleets of aircraft, armored fighting vehicles and munitions “at or above the chief of staff unfunded requirements list level,” according to the summary.
House appropriators' funding of the CH-47F Block II Chinook cargo helicopter in its FY22 spending bill sets up another year of support for a procurement program for which the Army has little appetite.
By: Jen Judson
Additionally, the lawmakers would increase funding for aircraft improvements like $15 million for the AH-64E Apache attack helicopter’s non-line-of-site munitions integration and improved tail rotor and $21 million for Chinook advanced development to include a vibration control system and integrated cargo handling and ballistic protection, the summary notes.
And another $746 million to procure enduring combat vehicles, which took cuts in the Army’s request, would be authorized to include Abrams tanks, Bradley Fighting Vehicles, Paladin self-propelled howitzers and Joint Light Tactical Vehicles. Another plus-up of $64 million would go toward Abrams tank technology development. The Stryker and Bradley active protection systems programs, which have been in limbo, would get $21 million.
The Army’s wish list also included funding for the currently unfunded Electric Light Reconnaissance Vehicle program, which could be the Army’s earliest foray into a vehicle fleet that uses alternative fuel. The Senate lawmakers would provide funding for the ELRV program to kick off.
The service also wanted extra funding to replace its Shadow unmanned aircraft systems with Future Tactical Unmanned Aircraft Systems in eight Brigade Combat Teams, and the Senate authorizers are poised to provide that additional money.
11. What China’s Vast New Cybersecurity Center Tells Us About Beijing’s Ambitions
I guess it is appropriate that the cyber center is in Wuhan. After all, it is the virus capital of the world. It can add cyber viruses to its bat and human viruses.
What China’s Vast New Cybersecurity Center Tells Us About Beijing’s Ambitions
The 15-square-mile campus in Wuhan will serve as school, research lab, incubator, and talent cultivator.
China—the country that has stolen billions of dollars in intellectual property and pilfered millions of records from U.S. government agencies, insurance companies, and credit-reporting giants’ records—is just getting started on its plans to become a “cyber powerhouse” (网络强国). Since 2017, it has been building a National Cybersecurity Center (国家网安基地, NCC) as big as its ambitions: a 15-square-mile campus in Wuhan that will serve as school, research lab, incubator, and talent cultivator.
A new report by Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET), together with an interactive map of satellite photos, examines the NCC — formally, the National Cybersecurity Talent and Innovation Base (国家网络安全人才与创新基地). The site includes seven centers for research, talent cultivation, and entrepreneurship; two government-focused laboratories; and a National Cybersecurity School.
First, China’s military faces a shortage of cyber operators. The country’s deficit of 1.4 million cybersecurity professionals weighs on the military’s ability to recruit qualified candidates. Two of the NCC’s 10 components will help address the shortage by cultivating talent. The center’s “leading mission” is the National Cybersecurity School, whose first class of 1,300 students will graduate in 2022. Ultimately, Party policymakers hope to see 2,500 graduates each year, though by when remains unclear. The center also hosts the Talent Cultivation and Testing Center, which is being built to offer courses and certifications for some 6,000 early- and mid-career cybersecurity professionals per month, or more than 70,000 per year. Combined, both components of the NCC could train more than a half-million professionals in a decade. Even half that number would still help overcome the talent gap.
Second, China’s current system for innovation in the cyber domain will not meet its strategic goals. Chinese military strategists view cyber operations as a possible “Assassin’s Mace” (杀手链): a tool for asymmetric advantage over a superior force in military confrontation. Advanced militaries rely on interconnected networks to operate as a unified system, or “system of systems.” Chinese strategists argue that disrupting communications within these systems is key to deterring military engagement. No single tool will establish an asymmetric advantage. Instead, China must reliably produce attack types for each system targeted. There are no silver bullets, but a workforce capable of significant innovation is critical to implementing the strategy.
Three of the NCC’s 10 components directly support innovation. Students and startups can solicit business guidance and investment funds at the NCC’s Incubator. Besides supporting private-sector innovation, two other components of the NCC support government-focused research. The NCC hosts two non-private laboratories, the Combined Cybersecurity Research Institute and the Offense-Defense Lab. Both institutions likely conduct cybersecurity research for government use. Other components indirectly support innovation. The NCC’s Exhibition Center, for example, hosts events that attract inventive talent from across the country. China’s Military-Civil Fusion strategy ensures that the People's Liberation Army can acquire new tools that come from the NCC, regardless of who develops the tools, which may help China develop asymmetric advantage.
Third, China aims to reduce its reliance on foreign cyber technology. The Snowden revelations reinforced PLA concerns that foreign technology facilitates espionage. Leaked documents revealed occasional close cooperation between the U.S. government and technology companies. The CCP wants indigenous replacements for foreign software to protect its military and critical infrastructure from foreign interference. To this end, a local government report shows that policymakers intend to harvest indigenous innovation from the NCC. Citing important Party organs, the report states that “leaders have repeatedly made it clear that the National Cybersecurity Base must closely monitor independent innovation (自主创新) of core cybersecurity technologies, promote Chinese-made independently controllable (自主可控) replacement plans, and build a secure and controllable information technology system....” Local officials serve as a pipeline between the NCC’s ecosystem and the needs of the Party by targeting nascent technologies. If the NCC is successful at spurring innovation, the pipeline may ease adoption of indigenous products and facilitate the replacement of foreign technology.
Over the long run, the NCC’s talent cultivation efforts will likely impact the dynamics of nation-state cyber competition. The tools these operators use may well be designed by NCC graduates, too. China’s competitors should be prepared to respond to — but not to mimic—these developments. The National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence’s recommendation to build a Digital Services Academy may seem like an appropriate response, but building it would bypass the solid foundation for cybersecurity education that the United States already enjoys. Instead, U.S. policymakers could turn toward machine-learning automation to identify intrusions and defend networks and increase spending on network defenses. But it must determine a course of action quickly. The National Cybersecurity School’s first class of graduates will cross the stage next June.
Dakota Cary is a Research Analyst at Georgetown’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET), where he works on the CyberAI Project.
12. Opinion | Afghan resistance to the Taliban needs U.S. support — and a big morale boost
Opinion | Afghan resistance to the Taliban needs U.S. support — and a big morale boost
The Washington Post · by Opinion by Ronald E. Neumann Yesterday at 8:00 a.m. EDT · July 25, 2021
Ronald E. Neumann was the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan from 2005 to 2007.
Reeling from Taliban victories and the United States’ withdrawal, Afghanistan is in danger of losing the gains in women’s rights, a free press and democratic norms it has achieved over the past 20 years. But on a recent trip to the country, in meetings with government, opposition and military figures, I found a more complex picture — and some positive signals.
First, the bad: The Taliban has overrun many districts, cutting roads and isolating garrisons and checkpoints. Taliban forces have surprised foreign and Afghan militaries by shifting from the south and east — historically the areas of heaviest fighting — and attacking one of the weaker Afghan army corps in the north. Many smaller posts, which U.S. commanders warned for years were unsustainable, surrendered or overrun.
Extensive recent Afghan command changes may have contributed to the problems — as, no doubt, did some measure of corruption and padding of enlistment rolls. But the United States holds some responsibility for the larger problem, as well.
Afghan garrisons are isolated, yet the United States has withdrawn aerial resupply resources. It also withdrew the foreign contractors on whom the Afghans depended to run its supply system, and those who maintained Afghan fighters and helicopters. Given Afghans’ limited airlift capabilities, soldiers now wonder, if they fight, whether they’ll be resupplied or evacuated. As one senior Afghan official told me, “We can defend many places which we cannot sustain.”
Yet there is reason to hope. The popular impression — that only Afghan commandos are fighting, while the Afghan army is passive — is exaggerated. The regular army in Helmand province is fighting hard and remains intact around the provincial capital despite being hard-pressed. One Afghan friend told me of his cousin’s fighting in the army in distant Nimruz province. After three days of combat, a Taliban attack was repulsed, and the army, aided by local fighters, has now taken back one district.
Such stories don’t prove the army is solid. But they do show that the assumption everything has already failed is exaggerated.
Perhaps the most positive sign is the popular resistance against the Taliban. In some areas, the opposition is led by old warlords. But in many places, the uprising is organized by local communities. I heard detailed accounts of strong fighting in many locations — serious enough that the Taliban is already threatening dire punishment for resistance fighters.
That said, while there are some instances of the resistance working with local military and police leaders, the popular uprising generally lacks central leadership or organization. It is lightly armed and, unless supported, could be overwhelmed by concentrated Taliban attacks.
As President Biden has asserted, the Afghan government bears the major responsibility. It must support and lead the resistance, set a clearer strategy and explain that strategy to its people. President Ashraf Ghani told me he has such a strategy. He must now make its major elements public.
But it is also critical for the United States to realize how its actions have hurt morale, and to do its part to shore it up again. Historically, Afghan wars ended when people decided one side was going to win and stopped fighting. It happened in 2001, when Taliban morale collapsed after a few battles. If morale gives this time and the army starts losing in cities, there could be a rapid fragmentation, and the United States might suddenly find itself in a nasty evacuation situation in Kabul.
Our decision to withdraw, without explanation, much earlier than Biden’s Sept. 11 deadline came as a shock. The necessary but noisy focus on visas for Afghan interpreters and others who worked for the U.S. government leads Afghans to wonder if we’ve given up on their country’s ability to resist the Taliban. And the repeated idea that the outcome is wholly up to Afghans makes them wonder if we’re already washing our hands of responsibility.
We say we’ll continue to support Afghan security forces. Afghans doubt we mean it.
In addition, the supportive actions we are taking, such as providing additional aircraft, have been drowned out by mixed messaging, our words devalued.
The Taliban has held off on assaulting major cities. But observers expect these attacks to start soon. We urgently need to find symbolic actions that cut through the mixed messaging and make clear that our support remains real.
One possible action would be rapid resupply of food and ammunition by air to major cities at the end of difficult resupply lines. We could identify equipment and funding needs for the resistance forces and make emergency transfers. We can do some airstrikes from aircraft based outside Afghanistan. And there may be better ideas.
The point is that action needs to be big, visible and meaningful. Afghans must stem the slide or lose the war. And the United States must do all it can to dispel the doubts that could lead to collapse. The window for action is closing rapidly. We need to move now.
Read more:
The Washington Post · by Opinion by Ronald E. Neumann Yesterday at 8:00 a.m. EDT · July 25, 2021
13. The US Army’s new iron triangle: The coming budget crunch and its implications for modernization
Excerpts:
The Army created Futures Command in part to enable better development and procurement of the next generation of capabilities. But after three years of trimming the fat out of the Army modernization portfolio, improved speed and efficiency alone will likely not be enough to offset the expected top-line cuts. As such, the Army will be forced to make hard choices.
It would be prudent for Futures Command and the Army to make those choices based on a rigorous prioritization between competing challenges. The resulting trade-offs among modernization efforts will certainly incur risk somewhere, but the far riskier path is not prioritizing in the face of significant cuts because failing to do so could result in a force that is unprepared to meet any challenges.
Moreover, the Army should open the aperture beyond just modernization and use this prioritization to drive all its choices — on doctrine, readiness, posture and especially end strength. In short, the Army must think hard about exactly what kind of Army it needs to be in a more budget-constrained world. The answer to this question will do much to guide how it addresses this new iron triangle when the budget ax comes.
The US Army’s new iron triangle: The coming budget crunch and its implications for modernization
It has come to be seen as virtually axiomatic in defense circles that the U.S. Army will serve as a bill payer for air and naval modernization, with even the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff predicting a “bloodletting.” At the same time, the Army believes it must prepare for three challenges, each with distinct implications for the future force: blunting Russian aggression along NATO’s eastern frontier, defeating China in a war in the western Pacific and hedging against everything else. As a result, budget cuts will likely present the Army with something of an iron triangle among these challenges — at best only able to afford a future force prepared for two, but not all three.
As Futures Command and the Army grapple with the implications of the looming budget crunch, it is imperative that they first answer two more fundamental questions: How should the Army prioritize these challenges, and where — and how much — can it afford to take risk?
The answers to these questions will do much to provide direction for the difficult trades the Army will face in a world of shrinking budgets.
Each side of the iron triangle comes with its own implications for doctrine, force structure, readiness, posture and modernization. And while there is certainly some commonality and fungibility across them, the optimal force for each differs considerably. Blunting Russian aggression entails conducting large-scale maneuver warfare on highly contested continental battlefields. This means a future force centered on heavy armor — backed by artillery, mobile air defenses and other enablers — that is sufficiently forward-postured to be able to overcome the tyranny of time and counter a short-warning attack.
Defeating China, in the Army’s view at least, entails contributing kinetic and non-kinetic fires, air defense, and other enablers to support the joint force in a primarily air and maritime fight. This means a fires- and enabler-centric future force that can operate in a highly geographically dispersed fashion across the vast expanses of the Pacific theater. Although the strategic deployment problem is somewhat less acute as compared to Europe, the distances involved coupled with Chinese counter-intervention capabilities still calls for a force posture oriented on forward presence and rapid reinforcement.
China's guided-missile destroyer Harbin takes part in a weeklong joint exercise with Russia in the East China Sea off Shanghai in May 2014. (Zhang Lei/Color China Photo via AP)
Hedging for everything else includes day-to-day competition, war on the Korean Peninsula and other contingency responses; prolonged low-intensity operations; and a variety of other missions. This means a jack-of-all-trades force that is globally responsive and possesses a deep bench in terms of capacity.
Moreover, while capability gaps exist, such as countering small tactical drones, modernization overall is less critical here as the Army and the joint force still retain significant overmatch over non-peer adversaries.
It is in the Army’s capability modernization efforts where the potential impact of budget cuts is most acute. With 35 signature efforts spread across six modernization priorities and eight cross-functional teams, the Army’s modernization plan is ambitious. But given the Army’s reluctance to reduce its active-duty end strength any further or to deprioritize near-term readiness, decreases in the top line will almost certainly fall hardest on modernization.
Moreover, the Army’s three-year effort to cull nonpriority programs, while laudable, means that there are few nonpriority efforts left to cut. Furthermore, even if the Army budget were to remain relatively flat, the continued upward trend in the cost of personnel as well as operations and maintenance will still squeeze funding for modernization.
Although some of the Army’s modernization efforts — such as those related to the network and synthetic training environments — are broadly applicable across all three challenges, others are not.
To cite just a handful of examples, the pursuit and rollout of next-generation combat vehicles within Futures Command will help the Army go head-to-head with Russian motorized rifle and tank forces in close combat. But more modern combat vehicles have little utility in an air- and naval-centric conflict with China.
Extended Range Cannon Artillery and the Precision Strike Missile, or PrSM, are critical capabilities for offsetting Russia’s advantage in tactical and operational fires, particularly early in a conflict before the full weight of U.S. air power can be brought to bear. Given the vast distances of the Pacific theater, however, these systems lack sufficient range to be of much relevance in most plausible scenarios for a conflict with China — although this could potentially change in the case of PrSM.
Lockheed Martin's PrSM missile was tested for a third time at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico on April 30, 2020. (Lockheed Martin)
Conversely, the midrange capability effort is largely an additive capability to an already robust joint long-range strike capability in a Russia fight. But this system could help fill a gap in the Pacific by providing long-range fires from within the teeth of Chinese counter-intervention capabilities, where it will be highly dangerous for air and surface naval forces to operate.
The Army created Futures Command in part to enable better development and procurement of the next generation of capabilities. But after three years of trimming the fat out of the Army modernization portfolio, improved speed and efficiency alone will likely not be enough to offset the expected top-line cuts. As such, the Army will be forced to make hard choices.
It would be prudent for Futures Command and the Army to make those choices based on a rigorous prioritization between competing challenges. The resulting trade-offs among modernization efforts will certainly incur risk somewhere, but the far riskier path is not prioritizing in the face of significant cuts because failing to do so could result in a force that is unprepared to meet any challenges.
Moreover, the Army should open the aperture beyond just modernization and use this prioritization to drive all its choices — on doctrine, readiness, posture and especially end strength. In short, the Army must think hard about exactly what kind of Army it needs to be in a more budget-constrained world. The answer to this question will do much to guide how it addresses this new iron triangle when the budget ax comes.
Billy Fabian is a senior analyst at Govini and an adjunct senior fellow in the defense program at the Center for a New American Security.
14. Confronting Cyber Threats: Challenges and Opportunities
Conclusion:
As noted at the outset, the challenges identified above are a fraction of those confronting the United States. Others include whether the scale and scope of intrusions like SolarWinds render them distinct from traditional espionage, how to grapple with the fact that many of our rivals do not draw the same lines between national security espionage and economic espionage as we do, and how the pervasive secrecy that characterizes much of what goes on in cyberspace impacts the ability to develop norms and robust public-private partnerships. Nevertheless, awareness of America’s unique vulnerabilities and being clear-eyed about the pros and cons of greater coordination versus greater latitude—the two issues dealt with here—would put the United States in a better position in the coming years.
Confronting Cyber Threats: Challenges and Opportunities - Modern War Institute
Editor’s note: This article is the final piece in a series, “Full-Spectrum: Capabilities and Authorities in Cyber and the Information Environment.” The series endeavors to present expert commentary on diverse issues surrounding US competition with peer and near-peer competitors in the cyber and information spaces. Read all articles in the series here.
Special thanks to series editors Capt. Maggie Smith, PhD of the Army Cyber Institute and MWI fellow Dr. Barnett S. Koven.
A flurry of recent high-profile cyber operations targeting the United States, including the SolarWinds hack by Russia, the Microsoft Exchange hack by China, and the ransomware attack on Colonial Pipeline, among others, has led to spirited debate about how the United States can best defend itself and advance its interests in cyberspace. In May 2021, President Joe Biden released a detailed executive order to “improv[e] the nation’s cybersecurity.” The first head of the recently created Office of the National Cyber Director, Chris Inglis, was just sworn in. There are clearly more changes on the horizon to the institutional architecture, strategy documents, and policies in this domain.
With that in mind, this essay explores two of a much larger set of challenges facing the United States in cyberspace in the coming years. First is the perennial tension between the desire for more coordination and oversight on the one hand and flexibility, agility, and responsiveness on the other. The second turns on a particular kind of asymmetry in which the United States has certain vulnerabilities that its chief rivals do not, and the effect this has on interactions in cyberspace.
Balancing Agility and Coordination
One of the most pressing issues to grapple with in the coming years is how to strike the right balance between responding expeditiously to malicious activity in cyberspace and simultaneously ensuring proper coordination across the federal government. Former President Donald Trump’s widely reported decision in 2018 to give certain entities—most notably US Cyber Command (USCYBERCOM)—more authority to carry out offensive cyber operations tipped the scales in favor of speed and efficiency. According to news outlets, by rescinding PPD-20, an Obama-era policy that required interagency coordination of offensive cyber operations, the Trump administration sought to give USCYBERCOM the ability to swiftly take the fight to the adversary without getting bogged down in bureaucratic red tape. Reports also suggest that the CIA has similarly been given more freedom of action in cyberspace.
The benefits of such a strategy are straightforward. Unlike more conventional domains, cyberspace is characterized by constant contact. As such, the United States must be in a position where it is operating continuously rather than reactively. Continuous competition is the logic behind strategic concepts such as persistent engagement and defend forward. Rescinding PPD-20 was likely part and parcel of such a strategy. The fact that the Biden administration has reportedly kept this decision in place—at least for operations of a certain size—suggests that it may be with us for the foreseeable future. But what are the broader implications of this approach?
One commonly discussed risk of granting USCYBERCOM broader authority to act first and unilaterally in cyberspace is that it could inadvertently jeopardize ongoing intelligence operations. In this view, the military may choose to conduct an offensive cyber operation against a given target without regard for, or possibly even awareness of, whether US intelligence agencies are currently collecting against that same target. The fact that the commander of USCYBERCOM also serves as the head of the National Security Agency (what is known as a dual-hat role) may mitigate this problem somewhat, but not entirely.
Prioritizing speed and efficiency over coordination has several other potential implications. First, it could impact the dynamics of escalation in cyberspace. It may be true, as some argue, that the risks are actually negligible given the “self-dampening mechanisms” of cyber operations (e.g., attribution is not instantaneous, it takes time for victims to mount an appropriate counter-response, and there are limits on “the scale and magnitude of the costs that can be imposed solely through cyber campaigns.”)
While these arguments may apply in the short term, they could be less relevant for escalation risks in the long term. If adversaries do not have the capacity to immediately respond to an increase in the amount and kind of offensive cyber operations aimed at them, they may still seek to invest in new capabilities that could harm the United States in the future. Moreover, even the short-term risks of escalation may be greater than they seem at first. Targets may have prepositioned cyber assets that are capable of hitting back but which are unknown to the United States. And the states most likely to be potential targets of an increasingly empowered USCYBERCOM—Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea—may be precisely those who have offensive capabilities they can leverage.
This leads naturally to another point, namely that the empowerment of USCYBERCOM and the potential disconnect from other arms of the US government may impede the ability to gain an accurate understanding of who is doing what to whom and why. This is especially important for those tasked with defending the nation. If the Department of Homeland Security, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, or even the National Cyber Director—whose job is to “lead the implementation of national cyber policy and strategy”—are not fully aware of what is happening on the offensive side, they may be caught off guard and less prepared to optimize America’s defenses.
This issue is related, but slightly distinct from, Jason Healey and Robert Jervis’s point in this series about the challenges of overclassification. For them, the layers of secrecy in cyberspace make it difficult to figure out cause and effect. My claim is slightly different but complementary. In short, it is the fact that one arm of the US government may be conducting operations against rivals that lead to a counter-response without the other arms of government being aware of this, and therefore drawing incorrect inferences and failing to anticipate potential retaliation from a defensive standpoint. In this scenario, it is not classification per se that is the problem but rather a lack of coordination.
Moreover, given the breadth of vulnerabilities in cyberspace that US adversaries can exploit, there is a necessary and symbiotic relationship between offensive and defensive operations. Offensive tactics inform defensive tactics and vice versa. Reduced visibility among those charged with defending the nation and those carrying out offensive operations against adversaries, while perhaps appealing from the standpoint of maximum efficiency, could inadvertently make the United States less effective at both.
Beyond escalation and coordination, the decision to remove certain constraints on USCYBERCOM could also affect US diplomacy, both the standard kind and the coercive variant. With respect to traditional diplomacy, it is useful for US diplomats and negotiators to understand any potential ongoing operations against the country they are dealing with. As Healey has noted, “If you’re meeting President Xi or Chancellor Merkel, it is not unfair for your NSC to know what US Cyber Command is up to and develop options to slow down (or speed up) such operations to send diplomatic signals or reducing the chances of a mistake which weakens your negotiating position.”
Regarding coercive diplomacy, prioritizing speed and efficiency when it comes to carrying out offensive cyber operations could have mixed effects. On the one hand, giving entities like USCYBERCOM more leeway may make it easier to credibly impose costs on rivals, thereby contributing to deterrence; indeed, this is part of the argument by proponents of this strategy. But if offensive cyber operations are too disconnected from other tools of US statecraft, it may impede the ability of decision makers to bring to bear all relevant pressure points for a more holistic coercive strategy (e.g., the imposition of sanctions, and so forth). Additionally, successful coercion in many cases could benefit from a degree of reassurance. That is, targets should believe that if they comply with demands they may not only avoid punishment but reap rewards. But if targets come to expect that USCYBERCOM is acting independently of entities that provide these benefits, reassurance is harder.
Another potential implication of enabling USCYBERCOM to carry out offensive cyber operations without broader input if it wishes to do so is that the United States could end up in a situation where tactics are driving strategy rather than the reverse. It may well be that in cyberspace, this is inevitable. The fast-moving nature of the domain combined with the reality of constant contact might mean that the best we can ever do is disrupt and degrade the ability of adversaries to do us harm.
But cyber activity does not occur in a vacuum. It is, or at least should be, tied to a state’s broader geopolitical objectives. Without conscious deliberation about how any given operation serves the United States’ broader foreign policy goals, there is a chance of conducting operations in adversary networks simply because the United States can, without asking whether and under what conditions it should. Indeed, many of the current debates about how we ought to conceive of cyberspace (e.g., as an intelligence contest or a variant of counterinsurgency as Emma Schroeder, Simon Handler, and Trey Herr argue in this series) entail different solutions that may or may not be well served by persistent engagement.
To be sure, it may well be that the Biden administration’s decision as reported in the New York Times to continue providing USCYBERCOM a longer leash to carry out “day-to-day, short-of-war skirmishes in cyberspace” while requiring greater coordination with the National Security Council on larger operations can mitigate many of these challenges. But mounting pressure to respond more quickly and forcefully to the spate of recent attacks could conceivably change things. Moreover, one can easily imagine semantic battles over what constitutes a “significant” attack such that it would require deliberation, or not.
Asymmetric Vulnerabilities
Another issue scholars and practitioners working on cyber issues will have to wrestle with in the coming years turns on asymmetries of various kinds. Oftentimes when the word “asymmetry” is used in the context of cyberspace operations, it is referring to instances in which actors engage in activities below the level of armed conflict to achieve some political objective (also known as hybrid warfare, gray-zone conflict, etc.). When I use the term asymmetries, I am referring to the unique set of vulnerabilities the United States has that rivals may not have and its effect on strategic dynamics in cyberspace.
The issue of election meddling specifically, and disinformation more broadly, is emblematic of this problem. Figuring out how to guard against malign foreign activity on these fronts is not simply a matter of cracking the code on how to credibly threaten punishment using cyber tools or any other means for that matter. The problem facing the United States is more complicated. One of the core challenges is that the actors most responsible for these activities are not vulnerable in the same way.
Consider that the two main perpetrators of meddling in the 2020 presidential election according to a recently declassified report—Russia and Iran—do not hold competitive, free and fair elections themselves. Moreover, these states, as well as China, tightly control the internet. While they are not immune from disinformation, they are likely less vulnerable. Hence the asymmetries.
America’s rivals are aware of this situation and act accordingly. As Sandor Fabian and Janis Berzins write in this series, Russia subscribes to “the idea that democratic societies are vulnerable to political manipulation.” Thomas Rid similarly argues that “disinformation operations, in essence, erode the very foundation of open societies.” Foreign actors are thus eager to continue meddling in US elections and propagating disinformation despite attempts to expose and disrupt their ability to do so.
This asymmetry also makes it more difficult to figure out what a proper response should be (bracketing the obvious, bolstering defenses, which we should try to do regardless). The astute reader may wonder why the United States cannot simply do to rivals what they are doing to the United States. As Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates recently put it, the United States “also needs to take the offensive from time to time, especially against its primary adversaries. Authoritarian governments must get a taste of their own medicine.” This could include carrying out cyber intrusions aimed at delegitimizing and undermining those responsible for malign activity or “interfering in the systems that authoritarian countries use to surveil their own populations.”
US policymakers can obviously try to do these things, but the dynamics may not be the same. Research in political science about the different modes of exit—how leaders leave office—in democratic versus authoritarian regimes is potentially relevant here. In the former, the losers of elections can usually carry on doing whatever it is they wish to do. In authoritarian systems, leaders who lose power face the prospect of exile, punishment, or even death. To put it more concretely, when an adversary interferes in US elections to hurt a candidate and that candidate loses, the consequences are not as dire relative to the costs Putin, Xi, or the Ayatollahs in Iran would face were the United States to stir up the opposition by spreading propaganda and disinformation to undermine their regimes.
This does not mean we should simply accept interference in our elections; we should not. But it does unfortunately make the problem of how to respond more complex. Were the United States to adopt an eye-for-an-eye approach, it may be inherently more escalatory owing to the nature of the target, to say nothing of whether it would be in the United States’ interest to go down this road. The broader point is that the difficulty of threatening retaliation of a similar nature means that policymakers are often left with the choice of imposing costs that are disproportionate—in the direction of either too much, relative to the offense, or too little. This is not necessarily a problem, but it raises the question of what ought to be done when doing too little is unlikely to have a discernible impact on rival behavior and doing too much can heighten tensions.
The Road Ahead
As noted at the outset, the challenges identified above are a fraction of those confronting the United States. Others include whether the scale and scope of intrusions like SolarWinds render them distinct from traditional espionage, how to grapple with the fact that many of our rivals do not draw the same lines between national security espionage and economic espionage as we do, and how the pervasive secrecy that characterizes much of what goes on in cyberspace impacts the ability to develop norms and robust public-private partnerships. Nevertheless, awareness of America’s unique vulnerabilities and being clear-eyed about the pros and cons of greater coordination versus greater latitude—the two issues dealt with here—would put the United States in a better position in the coming years.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, Department of Defense, US government, or any organization with which the author is affiliated, including the US Naval War College and the Department of the Navy.
Image credit: J.M. Eddins Jr., US Air Force
15. Climate Scientists Meet As Floods, Fires, Droughts And Heat Waves Batter Countries
Excerpts:
A critical goal of the forthcoming report is to help governments make decisions about how to address climate change. The report won't tell governments what to do, but it is meant to help leaders understand the effects of different policies.
...
The forthcoming IPCC report includes a chapter on regional climate change. The IPCC is also releasing an interactive, online regional dashboard that allows policymakers to choose their region and see current and future climate conditions.
The U.S. government will not rely on the new regional data from the IPCC. The U.S. already has access to localized data through the National Climate Assessment, which is produced by the federal government every few years. The next edition is scheduled to be published in 2023.
Climate Scientists Meet As Floods, Fires, Droughts And Heat Waves Batter Countries
NPR · by Rebecca Hersher · July 26, 2021
Volunteers fight a wildfire in northeastern Siberia on July 17th. Heat waves in the Russian Arctic and boreal forests have fueled intense, widespread blazes that can damage trees and release enormous amounts of stored carbon dioxide from forests and permafrost. Ivan Nikiforov/AP
More than 200 of the world's leading climate scientists will begin meeting today to finalize a landmark report summarizing how Earth's climate has already changed, and what humans can expect for the rest of the century.
The report is the sixth edition of an assessment of the latest climate science from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a United Nations body that coordinates research about global warming. The last edition of this report came out in 2013 — an eternity in the world of climate science, where the pace of both warming and research are steadily accelerating.
The urgency of addressing global warming has never been more clear. The two-week virtual meeting of IPCC scientists coincides with a raft of deadly climate-driven disasters unfolding around the world, from flash floods in Europe, North America and Asia, to intense wildfires in Siberia, to widespread persistent heat waves and droughts that threaten to upend food supplies in the U.S., Middle East and much of Africa.
The new report will be a crucial document for world leaders. It represents the international scientific consensus about human-caused climate change. Governments rely on its predictions as they develop policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, manage forests and fisheries and decide how to protect their citizens from extreme weather. In November, world leaders will meet for the first time since 2019 to discuss promises to cut greenhouse gas emissions — promises that are still insufficient to prevent catastrophic warming this century.
It takes years to put together the IPCC report. It has 12 chapters, covering everything from the heat-trapping properties of individual greenhouse gases to extreme weather events to the regional impacts of global warming. Over the next two weeks, the authors of the report will hash out the final draft.
Here are three things to watch for.
Climate science has come a long way in the last decade
The new report will be the most comprehensive, detailed and accurate picture of the global climate ever released. The computer models that scientists use to predict how the climate will change in the future are a lot more advanced than they were a decade ago, when the last edition was published. And the data that feeds those models is also more robust, thanks to satellites, buoys and information about the historical climate gathered from rock, ice and mud.
Together, those advances allow scientists to say with more certainty how quickly the Earth is heating up, and how the extra heat being trapped by greenhouse gases will affect everything from sea levels and hurricanes to droughts and heat waves.
For this report, scientists considered all the climate research published before February 2021. That's thousands of studies about the Earth's atmosphere, oceans, forests and weather patterns. The meeting that kicks off today will focus on how to phrase key takeaways, such as how quickly the Earth is barreling toward the 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) warming threshold set by the Paris climate agreement in order to avoid the most catastrophic effects of global warming.
There are five future scenarios that scientists are imagining
A critical goal of the forthcoming report is to help governments make decisions about how to address climate change. The report won't tell governments what to do, but it is meant to help leaders understand the effects of different policies.
For example, if humans stop burning coal immediately, it will dramatically reduce the rate of global warming. But what if humans stop burning coal in the next five years? Or ten years? Or what if solar panels get really cheap and population growth slows down? How does that affect climate change? The new IPCC report is meant to help answer such questions using a set of 5 hypothetical policy scenarios.
This is the first time the IPCC has used these scenarios, which are essentially a collection of imaginary worlds in which countries pursue different sets of climate policies.
For example, in one world countries work together to develop low-cost, low-carbon technologies and put them into use quickly for everyone. In another, some countries or groups of people transition very quickly to wind, solar and other clean energy sources while others move much more slowly. In a third imaginary world, nationalism surges around the world and governments focus on local energy and food security rather than global economic changes to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Each of the five scenarios takes into account population growth, GDP and a host of other demographic, economic and technological possibilities.
Under most of the scenarios, it's still possible to keep global warming below the 2 degree Celsius threshold set by the Paris agreement, says Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist at the University of California, Berkeley. In other words, there are many ways to address climate change, and the new report will help describe those options.
The Biden administration has promised to cut U.S. emissions in half by 2030, but has not released a specific plan for how to achieve that goal. A major infrastructure package that would invest in cleaner transportation and electricity is facing an uncertain future in Congress.
The report will include regional information for the first time
This is the first time the IPCC will break down its global climate science findings by region. That's a big deal because the climate is changing in different ways depending on where you live. For example, the Arctic is warming about twice as fast as the rest of the Earth, and sea levels are rising much more quickly in some areas than in others.
But many countries don't have the resources to systematically study how the climate is changing in their region, or what to expect in the future. That leaves governments in the dark about the rate of local sea level rise, for example, or the likelihood of regional drought or extreme rain. Without localized information, it's impossible to prioritize infrastructure and housing that's built for the climate of the future.
The forthcoming IPCC report includes a chapter on regional climate change. The IPCC is also releasing an interactive, online regional dashboard that allows policymakers to choose their region and see current and future climate conditions.
The U.S. government will not rely on the new regional data from the IPCC. The U.S. already has access to localized data through the National Climate Assessment, which is produced by the federal government every few years. The next edition is scheduled to be published in 2023.
NPR · by Rebecca Hersher · July 26, 2021
16. Foreign Policy Should Be Evidence-Based
Excerpts:
Wielding robust evidence to address complex policy challenges is not simple. It will require a cultural shift within U.S. foreign policy institutions. Nevertheless, the groundwork laid by the 2018 Evidence Act and the Biden administration’s commitment to making evidence-based policy offers an opportunity to make serious progress.
The ultimate goal is that future policy debates be won not merely by the force of one’s conviction or one’s position in the hierarchy, but by the strength of one’s evidence. We commend the progress that has been made toward this vision. We hope that Congress, the State Department, and the White House will work together to mainstream evidence-based policymaking.
Foreign Policy Should Be Evidence-Based - War on the Rocks
DAN SPOKOJNY AND THOMAS SCHERER
Faced with this perilous strategic landscape, some are calling for a reexamination of the way in which U.S. foreign policy is conducted. Career Foreign Service officer, and now CIA director, William Burns suggests “recovering the lost art of American diplomacy,” a sentiment echoed by President Joe Biden. Three highly experienced U.S. diplomats have warned of a “crisis” inside the State Department, characterized by “a reluctance to speak truth to power, a lack of individual accountability … [and] an aversion to professional education and training.” Similarly, Uzra Zeya and Jon Finer — both now senior officials in the Biden administration — argued in late 2020 that a “decades-long failure to implement essential reforms” has produced a “policy environment that has, in some priority areas, evolved beyond the core competencies of most Foreign and Civil Service officers.”
These analyses from some of the nation’s most capable diplomats are valuable. But their recommendations do not go far enough. Revitalizing U.S. foreign policy will require more than a renewed commitment to diplomacy. Instead, policymakers should embrace the evidence-based policy movement. Its methods would enhance American leaders’ ability to achieve national security objectives by reducing costly inefficiencies, reducing misperceptions, and transforming U.S. institutions into organizations that can continually learn. Simply put, yesterday’s tools may not be up to the task of solving today’s problems.
Everyone seems to agree that foreign policy should be based on the best available evidence. Yet, during our work in government and with our think tank fp21, we have seen how the lip-service paid to evidence-based policymaking is not supported by the organizational and cultural changes that would actually enable the effective use of evidence. Such evolution can be achieved if foreign policy professionals begin to think differently about the conduct of policymaking.
American officials should follow a more scientific approach to decision-making, grounded in more transparent standards of evidence. The nation’s ability to persevere through today’s international problems may depend on it.
What’s Wrong with the Current Process?
The State Department houses extraordinary public servants whose hard-earned expertise derives from years of experience, study, and training. Such leaders know a great deal about the world. But, in recent decades, their ability to make effective use of information has not kept up with the vast increase in the volume of that information. The intelligence community has adopted clear standards of analysis, but no analogous standards exist in the policymaking process. Instead, the U.S. system asks officials to rely on their own judgement, and virtually no training or guidance is provided regarding best practices in decision-making.
All foreign policy professionals will agree that evidence is vital to our work. Yet, the policy process incentivizes us to think about evidence like courtroom lawyers. In order to win a case, each side marshals facts to defend their position to the jury. Facts contrary to that position are disparaged or ignored. Adversarial legalism may be a reasonable approach for criminal justice. It does less well in advancing American strategic interests abroad.
There are real consequences when policymakers ignore readily available evidence. Take the State Department’s failed attempts to contain the civil war in Yemen, for instance. Amid some of the deadliest fighting of the war in October 2016, then-Secretary of State John Kerry announced, “This is the time to implement a ceasefire unconditionally and then move to the negotiating table.” By pushing an agreement with which neither side was willing to comply, and in the absence of any mechanisms to guarantee the ceasefire, this announcement did not comply with best practices related to the timing for a diplomatic intervention. Nor was the peace strategy informed by research on durable peace agreements.
Instead, America’s diplomatic machinery applied the same failed approach repeatedly. Five earlier ceasefires had failed to contain the violence. The sixth ceasefire agreement, signed shortly after Kerry’s statement, was marked by repeated violations by both sides, and expired after only three days. A seventh ceasefire agreement, agreed to a month later, collapsed within 48 hours. Evidence suggests that the approach caused more harm than good — both sides used the pauses in fighting to prepare new attacks, while trust in the political process plummeted. One survey of Yemenis affected by the conflict found, “Every time they announce a ceasefire fighting intensifies.”
Our goal is not to second guess the good-faith attempts of former policymakers. Instead, we hope that the State Department can seize the opportunity for growth. As the scholar Dan Reiter noted, “Like good carpenters, foreign policymakers need to know their tools.”
What Is Evidence-Based Policymaking?
From Silicon Valley to financial services, political campaigns to baseball, today’s most successful enterprises build their cultures around harnessing the best available information and insights. Organizations that adopt modern techniques thrive. Those that don’t, fail.
A 2012 study by Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson showed that organizations can radically improve their performance if they seize the opportunities associated with quantitative data (of course, this is only one type of evidence among many). According to their research on 330 publicly traded companies, this requires a serious commitment to building an organization that prioritizes data, rather than simply an organization that subordinates data to traditional decision-making approaches. The authors distinguished between businesses “pretending to be more data-driven than they actually are” and organizations that had built quantitative analytics into the DNA of the company. The results were conclusive: “The more companies characterized themselves as data-driven, the better they performed on objective measures of financial and operational results.”
When we advocate for evidence-based policymaking, we are not talking about changes to individual policies but rather changes to the policy process itself. Features of an evidence-based policymaking process include: an emphasis on fact-finding; citations of the available evidence for various options; metrics of success in all policy memos; an emphasis on transparency of decision-making; and an emphasis on learning from successes and failures.
But we should be clear: Not all evidence is created equal. Arguments based on anecdotes, analogies, and simple descriptive statistics can be highly misleading or flat-out wrong. Too often, policymakers rush from the discovery of a few facts to forming a confidently held conclusion, or, worse yet, start with a conclusion and then go hunting for supporting evidence.
Evidence-based policymaking demands a high standard. It directs our attention to the quality of the evidence used in the policy process. Evidence-based policymaking uses the scientific method to subject its evidence and claims to constant scrutiny. The scientific method is straightforward. It asks us to think of all claims as hypotheses that require testing rather than as conclusions that need defending. This subtle shift of mindset is the core of evidence-based policymaking.
The first step of the scientific method is something policymakers are already good at — generating hypotheses. This is the stage that policymakers call the “art” of diplomacy. A great way to do this in foreign policy is to read a lot, immerse oneself in a foreign culture, and stay curious about the future. More systematic approaches can challenge policymakers to be even sharper.
The next step is to test the hypotheses by evaluating evidence on all sides of the argument. This is where the existing policymaking process so often falls short. Overconfidence blinds decision-makers to alternative approaches, contrary evidence, and misplaced assumptions. Deep biases in their evidence and analysis lead them away from the truth. When policymakers fail to test their claims, they make mistakes that could have been avoided.
Evidence can vary greatly in type and quality in ways that are not readily apparent. Evidence can be qualitative, data-driven, comparative, historical, or the result of a randomized control trial, but the principles of the scientific method remain unchanged. This is where training as a scientist — and that includes in social science — really pays off. But debates about the specific methods or tools used to conduct evidence-based policymaking are often used as an excuse to ignore evidence entirely. That is dangerous.
One of the biggest misconceptions about evidence-based foreign policy is that science should provide the “right” answers to the problems we face. It will not. It cannot. Anyone who tells you otherwise is trying to sell you something.
Instead, the goal of evidence-based foreign policy is to continually strive for better-informed answers. When policymakers demand transparency about the set of facts used to support recommendations and invite scrutiny about potential sources of bias, they make better policy in the present. When decision-makers subject policy recommendations to evaluation and have the courage to change their minds in the face of new evidence, they will make better policy in the future.
There are many valid concerns about the shortcomings of evidence-based approaches. When we speak with policymakers, most of them lament the lack of demand for evidence in the current policy process. However, some express concern that existing evidence does not apply to their unique policy challenges, or fails to offer actionable recommendations. Others see evidence-based processes as too slow for the real world, or believe that the real world is too complex to apply “lessons from a lab.”
But skeptics miss the point. The question is not whether evidence should be used in the policy process — all policymakers use evidence — but rather how to continue to raise the bar on the quality of the American foreign policy process.
Evidence of Progress, with More Work to be Done
Documenting progress on the use of evidence today in the bureaucracy is difficult, but the State Department’s FY 2020 Annual Performance Report offered some clues about where things stand. In 2018, the department committed to “increase the use of evidence to inform budget, program planning and design, and management decisions.” By December 2020, well past the deadlines set, only 63 percent of the department’s bureaus had documented how their major programs are expected to lead to desired outcomes and only 55 percent had identified relevant indicators and opportunities for evaluation. “Programs” refer to foreign assistance projects with explicit budgets — statistics do not exist for strategy and policy because little effort is made to track and evaluate high-level policymaking.
Wielding robust evidence to address complex policy challenges is not simple. It will require a cultural shift within U.S. foreign policy institutions. Nevertheless, the groundwork laid by the 2018 Evidence Act and the Biden administration’s commitment to making evidence-based policy offers an opportunity to make serious progress.
The ultimate goal is that future policy debates be won not merely by the force of one’s conviction or one’s position in the hierarchy, but by the strength of one’s evidence. We commend the progress that has been made toward this vision. We hope that Congress, the State Department, and the White House will work together to mainstream evidence-based policymaking.
Dan Spokojny is the founder of fp21, a think tank dedicated to transforming the processes and institutions of foreign policy. He has served in government for over a decade as a U.S. Foreign Service officer and as a foreign policy legislative staffer in Congress. Dan is a Ph.D. candidate in political science at the University of California, Berkeley, focusing on the role of expertise in foreign policy.
Thomas Scherer is an academic-practitioner working on international crisis and intervention. He volunteers on fp21’s research committee. He currently applies innovative research technologies to peace and conflict issues as the deputy director of the Center for Peace and Security Studies, University of California San Diego. Previously, Thomas worked at the U.S. Institute of Peace. He holds a Ph.D. in politics from Princeton University.
17. China Urges Washington To Stop ''Demonising'' It During US Official Visit
Then don't be a demon or do demonic things.
China Urges Washington To Stop ''Demonising'' It During US Official Visit
Barron's · by AFP - Agence France Presse
Text size
Beijing urged the US to stop "demonising" China during Monday talks with Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, the highest-level official to visit under President Joe Biden's administration.
Sherman arrived in the city of Tianjin on Sunday, aiming to seek "guardrails" as ties between the world's top two economies continue to deteriorate on a range of issues from cybersecurity to human rights.
"The hope may be that by demonising China, the US could somehow... blame China for its own structural problems," China's foreign ministry wrote in a readout of the talks between Sherman and Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Xie Feng.
"We urge the United States to change its highly misguided mindset and dangerous policy," the statement said, adding that the US views China as an "imagined enemy".
The ministry described relations as at a "stalemate" and facing "serious difficulties."
Sherman will also meet with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi.
The US said last week it was hoping to use the talks as an opportunity to show Beijing "what responsible and healthy competition looks like" but wanted to avoid "conflict".
The July 25-26 trip is shorn of the trappings of a full-fledged official visit. Sherman will not go to Beijing, but instead spend two days starting Sunday in Tianjin, a northeastern port city.
John Kerry, the former secretary of state turned US climate envoy, is the only other senior official from the Biden administration to have visited China.
Last week, the United States rallied allies including NATO for a rare joint condemnation of the alleged large-scale cyber attacks coming from China.
lxc/apj/rbu
Barron's · by AFP - Agence France Presse
18. America’s real plan for Afghanistan
A view from India.
Interesting assessment. I wonder what our Afghan experts think of this.
Excerpts:
US President Joe Biden’s administration has a compass to navigate the Afghan situation, with a default position buttressing a “forward policy.” The withdrawal of troops means that the danger of US fatalities is minimal in the period ahead.
This enables the US to go full throttle to try to prevent a Taliban takeover that would tarnish Biden’s reputation globally. Thus Washington is finessing a new working relationship with Ghani.
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani gestures as he speaks during the first day of the Loya Jirga, a grand assembly, at the Loya Jirga Hall in Kabul, August 7, 2020. Photo: Press Office of the President of Afghanistan / AFP
The US doubts the Taliban’s capability to overpower Afghan armed forces in the near term. This gives respite to recalibrate the US response. A ceasefire is not particularly necessary for the US at this point, as it may only work to the Taliban’s advantage in the prevailing circumstances. In fact, the US has resumed airstrikes against the Taliban.
America’s real plan for Afghanistan
US may not have boots on the ground but is quickly rebuilding the politico-military capacity to chart the peace process in its interests
The recent ministerial meeting in Dushanbe of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the SCO contact group with Afghanistan left a trail of disappointment. The SCO statement on Afghanistan was a baby step – significant, nonetheless, considering the group’s growing inner contradictions.
There is no progress at the Doha talks, either. Meanwhile, the Pentagon has quietly resumed air attacks on the Taliban. The US may not have boots on the ground but is rebuilding the politico-military capacity to chart the peace process in directions that suit its geopolitical interests.
The apparent US retrenchment hoodwinked the regional states. On its part, Russia even reached out to the US to form a collegium under the canopy of its Troika mechanism.
Formats other than the Doha process are also being discussed. Everyone seems to want to boost the political process. Tehran recently hosted a conference for the representatives of the Afghan government and the Taliban.
China made an offer to be a facilitator for intra-Afghan dialogue “at any time.” But Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov quickly stepped in to advise, “We think there’s no need to come up with any new agreements to do this. We just need to implement what has already been approved by, above all, the Afghan government and the Taliban” at Doha.
Russia seems to prefer the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) to the SCO as the security vehicle to handle the developing Afghan situation. Lavrov also disclosed that the Troika has “discussed, in particular, the candidacies of India and Iran. I believe this would boost this format’s capabilities. We’ll see how it goes from here.”
Kazakhstan’s Foreign Minister Mukhtar Tileuberdi, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Tajik Foreign Minister Sirojiddin Muhriddin and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi pose for a family photo before a meeting of Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Contact Group on Afghanistan, in Dushanbe, Tajikistan. Photo: Russian Foreign Ministry / Sputnik via AFP
Of course, Iran is credited with influence over both the Taliban and the Afghan government as well as among the Shiite communities in Afghanistan, especially the Hazaras. But Iran will not share a table with the US, as a long-term US involvement in Afghanistan impacts Iran’s national security.
As for India, it has been a fellow traveler of the US bandwagon in Afghanistan all along and had a closed mind as regards the Taliban’s credentials as an autonomous Afghan entity. India enjoys excellent relations with the Afghan government headed by President Ashraf Ghani. (The Afghan army chief is expected in Delhi soon.)
Unsurprisingly, short of putting boots on the ground, India has taken a firm stand about the “legitimacy aspect” of the Taliban, which more or less corresponds to what Ghani has been saying, namely that the Taliban’s mainstreaming ought to be through a constitutional, democratic process.
Evidently, any expansion of the Troika to induct Iran and India would be a non-starter. Basically, the US is determined to be involved in Afghanistan, and the troop withdrawal will only mean rebooting of policies with greater emphasis on strengthening the ties with the Ghani government. Period. The regional states are yet to wake up fully to this reality.
US President Joe Biden’s administration has a compass to navigate the Afghan situation, with a default position buttressing a “forward policy.” The withdrawal of troops means that the danger of US fatalities is minimal in the period ahead.
This enables the US to go full throttle to try to prevent a Taliban takeover that would tarnish Biden’s reputation globally. Thus Washington is finessing a new working relationship with Ghani.
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani gestures as he speaks during the first day of the Loya Jirga, a grand assembly, at the Loya Jirga Hall in Kabul, August 7, 2020. Photo: Press Office of the President of Afghanistan / AFP
The US doubts the Taliban’s capability to overpower Afghan armed forces in the near term. This gives respite to recalibrate the US response. A ceasefire is not particularly necessary for the US at this point, as it may only work to the Taliban’s advantage in the prevailing circumstances. In fact, the US has resumed airstrikes against the Taliban.
Russia, China and Iran are in the US crosshairs and Washington’s future agenda is principally oriented to blocking Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), promoting regime change in Central Asia, using militant Islam as a geopolitical tool and consolidating a long-term presence in Afghanistan as a template of its Indo-Pacific strategy.
But the compass also has a default position. The newly created regional quadrilateral diplomatic platform of the US, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan, or Quad-2 (pairing with the US-led Quad in the Indo-Pacific) provides a framework to recalibrate policies in the event of a Taliban takeover, which the Pentagon still doesn’t rule out entirely.
A window of opportunity is opening for Washington to leverage the traditionally Western-oriented Pakistani elites and wean Islamabad away from Beijing’s embrace. Conceivably, the Quad-2 meshes with the new Global Infrastructure Initiative that the Group of Seven leaders meeting in Cornwall, England, on June 11-13 agreed on.
At any rate, the Quad-2 representatives issued a joint statement on July 16 predicated on their mutual consensus that “peace and connectivity are mutually reinforcing.” The leitmotif is China’s BRI, which the US perceives as potentially a hugely consequential geopolitical tool for Beijing in Afghanistan and Central Asia.
The US is reasonably certain that the Taliban will find the Quad-2 attractive as a platform to legitimize its regime and to source Western aid.
Taliban negotiators Abdul Latif Mansoor (right), Shahabuddin Delawar (center) and Suhail Shaheen (left) walk to attend a press conference in Moscow on July 9, 2021. Photo: AFP / Dimitar Dilkoff
Washington apparently kept Russia and China guessing and sprang a nasty surprise. Moscow is furious and has switched back to its own default position to accuse Washington of strategizing the use of militant Islamic groups as geopolitical tools. But that won’t embarrass Washington, as the Deep State is behind the Quad-2 strategy.
The US strategy stems out of the late British political geographer Halford Mackinder’s famous Heartland theory. And the role of Britain, which has excellent relations with both Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and Pakistani army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa, is almost certainly there. As often in modern history, Britain provides the plot for Washington to act.
A report in The Daily Telegraph on July 13 quoted British Defense Minister Ben Wallace in an exclusive interview as saying, “Whatever the government of the day is, provided it adheres to certain international norms, the UK government will engage with it.”
Wallace recognized that the prospect of the UK working with the Taliban would be controversial, so he added the caveat: “What [the Taliban] desperately want is international recognition. They need to unlock financing and support [for] nation-building, and you don’t do that with a terrorist balaclava on. You have to be a partner for peace, otherwise you risk isolation. Isolation led them to where they were last time.”
Clearly, the Anglo-American compass has a default position to adjust to the Taliban takeover, which cannot be ruled out by any reckoning as things stand. The US, UK and the other Western powers hope to leverage the Taliban to work with them rather than against them in the Taliban’s own self-interest.
From all appearances, Russia is furious and has scrambled to circle its wagons on the diplomatic plane (here, here and here) as well as by way of countermeasures in military terms. Too little, too late? But then, Russia has a record of getting its act together only after the floodgates have opened.
M K Bhadrakumar is a former Indian diplomat.
19. ‘Buffs’ could rain death on the Taiwan Strait
‘Buffs’ could rain death on the Taiwan Strait
A 1960s-vintage B-52 bomber can launch a whopping 15 Quickstrike air-dropped sea mines at Chinese targets
Formations of B-52 bombers. Dropping mines. Lots of them.
Not just hundreds … but, perhaps thousands.
Overnight, it would make the Taiwan Strait, the most treacherous waterway, in the world.
Scary version of this scenario?
A Chinese invasion fleet would face not only Taiwanese forces, but a deadly ocean of death and despair — not to mention, an unending wave of seaborn missiles and hell hath no fury after that.
It ain’t a pretty picture.
But then, the B-52 — known as the “Buff” for Big Ugly Fat F—-r — was never invited to any tea parties, was it.
And the United States is obligated by law to assist in Taiwan’s defense.
A 1960s-vintage B-52 can carry a whopping 15 Quickstrike air-dropped sea mines. Six externally and nine internally, writes David Axe of National Interest.
Quickstrike mines are not new.
“The Quickstrike family includes 500-, 1,000-, and 2,000-pound class types, known as the Mk. 62, Mk. 63 and Mk. 64, respectively,” reporter Joseph Trevithick explained at The War Zone in late 2018.
“These [are] converted from Mk. 80-series high-explosive bombs and feature a fuzing system that detonates the weapon when it detects an appropriate acoustic, seismic or pressure signatures from a passing vessel.
“A fourth type, Mk. 65, is another 2,000-pound-class Quickstrike mine, but is based on an actual, purpose-built mine casing rather than an existing bomb.”
An Air Force B-52H Stratofortress from Minot Air Force Base, N.D., arrives at Andersen Air Force Base, Guam, Thursday, July 15, 2021. (Richard Ebensberger/U.S. Air Force)
Long story short — the Navy has been pursuing two related upgrade programs, known as Quickstrike-J and Quickstrike-ER, Axe writes.
The first of these simply combines the mine with a GPS-guided Joint Direct Attack Munition guidance package, while the latter adds a pop-out wing kit.
These are game-changing upgrades that allow aircraft to precisely employ the mines from any altitude and, in the case of the -ER types, loft them at targets up to 40 miles away.
This is bad news, for the People’s Liberation Army, and their amphibious capabilities.
Why?
Because this speeds up the process of laying the minefields overall and dramatically reduces the vulnerability to the aircraft, which would otherwise have to fly low-and-slow.
Which brings us back to that aging, eight-engine B-52 bomber, which just won’t go away.
It was America’s lynchpin bomber in Vietnam, and it still presents a potent force. Only a complete fool, would dismiss its lethal sting.
The Air Force operates more than 70 B-52s and, in the event of war, and could deploy dozens of the huge planes to the Asia-Pacific region or fly them from the US for missions over the Pacific war zone, Axe writes.
Of course, the bombers, if forward-deployed, themselves would be targets.
China could target America’s main Pacific outposts — in particular, the bomber base at Guam — with ballistic and cruise missiles.
But that means, they would have to strike first — a very, very bad choice. Because every US submarine would retaliate, and leave China a burning cinder.
One US nuclear sub, alone, could devastate China … let alone, 50 US attack submarines.
Meanwhile, a group of B-52 bombers arrived on Guam from Minot Air Force Base, N.D., to support Pacific Air Force’s Bomber Task Force, Stars & Stripes.com reported.
The bombers will also take part in the Talisman Saber exercise, which runs through the end of the month, with the Australian Defense Force.
The Air Force did not disclose the number of B-52s sent to Guam.
According to reports, I Corps, based at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state, is leading the Army’s Pacific Forager 21 exercise from Guam.
The exercise, which runs through Aug. 6, is designed “to test and refine the Theater Army and the Corps’ ability to deploy landpower forces to the Pacific, execute command and control, and effectively conduct multi-domain operations throughout Oceania,” according to an Army news release.
Training scenarios include an 82nd Airborne operation; a bilateral airborne operation with the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force and 1st Special Forces Group; a live-fire exercise with Apache attack helicopters; multi-domain operations involving land, air and sea of Strykers, Avenger surface-to-air missile systems and High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems.
“Forager 21 allows us to dynamically employ forces to the Pacific to practice our response to a full range of security concerns in support of our regional alliances and international agreements across all domains, land, air, sea, space and cyber,” Maj. Gen. Xavier Brunson, commander of I Corps, said in a news release.
Since its combat debut in Vietnam, the B-52 Stratofortress has unleashed more destruction than any other aircraft. Credit: USAF photo.
“Man, they were built solid,” said Gen. Charles Q. Brown, Air Force chief of staff, in an interview with Business Insider.
The B-52 bombers “sat alert for a good portion of the Cold War” and accumulated fewer flight hours, Brown added, and the Air Force closely tracks the flying they have done.
While surpassing half a century of service, the Air Force says it can carry the widest array of weapons in the US inventory, ranging from sea mines to air-launched cruise missiles.
“The bones of the B-52 are so good and so strong that as you continue to modernize and strap things in, it actually works pretty well,” said Air Force Lt. Col. Michael Middents, who led six B-52s on a five-week Bomber Task Force mission to the UK last August.
“As far as putting stuff into the aircraft, I’ve been at it for about 15 years now, and I’ve seen several different revolutionary upgrades, and I’m actually pretty impressed with the way that it gets better and better every time.”
Sources: The National Interest, Business Insider, Stars & Stripes, Yahoo! Money
20. Huawei hiring former Democratic super lobbyist Tony Podesta
Everyone is available to the highest bidder.
Excerpt:
In addition to Podesta, Huawei recently hired several other representatives: the consulting firm of Lee Terry, a former Republican congressman from Nebraska; lawyer Stephen Binhak; Glenn LeMunyon, who was an aide to former House GOP Whip Tom DeLay; and the consulting firm J.S. Held. The company also retains white-shoe law firm Steptoe and Johnson, paying them $60,000 in the second quarter, according to a disclosure. And the firm has connections to power brokers throughout the nation’s capital. Christopher Fonzone, the general counsel for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, advised the company when he was a lawyer at the firm Sidley Austin. Fonzone told senators he did fewer than 10 hours of work for Huawei. The connection created challenges for his Senate confirmation, but he was still confirmed.
Huawei hiring former Democratic super lobbyist Tony Podesta
07/23/2021 11:28 AM EDT
The longtime K St. fixture is back in business after a Mueller-induced hiatus.
Tony Podesta — a colorful K St. personality known for his loud ties and elaborate art and wine collection — previously helmed the Podesta Group, his eponymous lobbying shop. | Jacqueline Larma/AP Photo
07/23/2021 11:28 AM EDT
Huawei is hiring Democratic lobbyist Tony Podesta as a consultant, according to two people familiar with the matter. Podesta will aim to help the controversial Chinese telecom giant warm relations with the Biden administration.
Podesta will work to advance a variety of the company’s goals in Washington, according to one of the people. He declined to comment. A spokesperson for Huawei also declined to comment.
Huawei faces a host of challenges in Washington. In February 2020, the Justice Department charged the company with violating the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO — a key DOJ tool for going after organized crime. DOJ alleged that Huawei helped Iran’s authoritarian government build out its domestic surveillance capabilities and tried to secretly do business in North Korea. The Justice Department has also brought charges against the company’s chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou. She was arrested in Canada, where she is fighting extradition to the U.S. Huawei and Meng maintain their innocence. Huawei has said the accusations are an effort to “irrevocably damage” its reputation and business, as CNBC has reported.
Huawei is not Podesta’s first major China client. Disclosure forms show that his former company also represented the China-United States Exchange Foundation (CUSEF), which funds a host of activities in the U.S. The University of Texas at Austin in 2018 rejected a funding offer from the foundation because of concerns about its links to the Chinese Communist Party, as Inside Higher Ed has reported.
Podesta — a colorful K St. personality known for his loud ties and elaborate art and wine collection — previously helmed the Podesta Group, his eponymous lobbying shop. But in 2017, special counsel Robert Mueller scrutinized the firm for its work with Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign chief Paul Manafort. Manafort’s team enlisted Podesta Group in its efforts to sanitize the reputation of Ukraine’s Russia-friendly president Viktor Yanukovych.
Podesta was not charged with wrongdoing, but shut down his firm and stepped back from lobbying after Manafort’s indictment. He spent several years in the political wilderness, focused on selling art. In early July, he caught the attention of Washington with a splashy New York Times story revealing he wanted to re-enter the fray.
“I don’t want to recreate what I had, but I sort of miss working, and art alone doesn’t sustain me, because I love politics,” he told the Times.
Manafort has also tiptoed back into Washington. Earlier this week, a Daily Caller reporter tweeted a picture of Trump’s ex-campaign head — his signature pompadour faded to gray — dining at a downtown D.C. seafood restaurant. Manafort spent time in prison before Trump pardoned him.
Podesta is expected to soon pick up more clients. He has known President Joe Biden for decades and is friendly with a number of his advisers. Podesta also lives down the street from former President Barack Obama in the glitzy D.C. neighborhood of Kalorama. His brother John was a counselor for Obama as well as chief of staff to President Bill Clinton.
In addition to Podesta, Huawei recently hired several other representatives: the consulting firm of Lee Terry, a former Republican congressman from Nebraska; lawyer Stephen Binhak; Glenn LeMunyon, who was an aide to former House GOP Whip Tom DeLay; and the consulting firm J.S. Held. The company also retains white-shoe law firm Steptoe and Johnson, paying them $60,000 in the second quarter, according to a disclosure. And the firm has connections to power brokers throughout the nation’s capital. Christopher Fonzone, the general counsel for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, advised the company when he was a lawyer at the firm Sidley Austin. Fonzone told senators he did fewer than 10 hours of work for Huawei. The connection created challenges for his Senate confirmation, but he was still confirmed.
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.
