“As we see it, a single man-made stock-market crash, a single computer virus invasion, or a single rumor or scandal that results in a fluctuation in the enemy country’s exchange rates or exposes the leaders of an enemy country on the Internet, all can be included in the ranks of new-concept weapons.”

- Qiao Liang, Unrestricted Warfare

“When people begin to lean toward and rejoice in the reduced use of military force to resolve conflicts, war will be reborn in another form and in another arena, becoming an instrument of enormous power in the hands of all those who harbor intentions of controlling other countries or regions.”

- Qiao Liang, Unrestricted Warfare

“Faced with these prospects, even J. Saiteerdou [as printed], who is responsible for the investigation of computer crimes in the FBI of the United States, said with both self-confidence and worry: “Give me ten carefully chosen hackers, and within 90 days I would then be able to have this nation lay down its arms and surrender.”

- Qiao Liang, Unrestricted Warfare

The second driver deals with the combination of this instability with adaptive, thinking adversaries who are modernizing, and will continue to modernize their capabilities and adjust them to this changing OE. Throughout this continuum, these adversaries will present an array of threats that will be lethal and will be presented across multiple domains (land, sea, air, space, and cyber.) Our adversaries will operate in and among populations and in complex terrain, and endeavor to negate many of our own traditional technological advantages and force us to operate with degraded capabilities and take advantage of the infrastructure and other resources cities offer. They will adopt hybrid strategies that take advantage of a range of capabilities that deny us a conventional force-on-force fight unless the situation is advantageous to the adversary. They will use proxy forces that provide plausible deniability, yet directly allow them to not only shape the battlespace, but even achieve their objectives without risking a wider conflict. Similarly, they also may choose to work with, sponsor, or support terrorist or criminal entities to achieve a similar end. Irregular operations, often in concert with proxies, terrorist, or criminal activities, operating within a “Gray Zone” short of war, will challenge our ability to come to grips with the enemy and perhaps present an unfavorable cost benefit equation to our political leaders. Our adversaries will rely on strategic capabilities, such as weapons of mass destruction, information operations, and direct cyber-attacks designed to give us pause in responding to their actions and provide them the strategic space they need to operate. Space is becoming an increasingly congested, commercialized, democratized, and contested domain. State and non-state actors compete to enhance their ability to operate while working to deny what was once an area of superiority. Finally, they will develop conventional force structures capable of providing anti-access and area denial capabilities designed to keep us from entering forces into a battle space, or at a minimum, provide an operational barrier that we will have to spend time and resources to breach. 

• While the United States was engaged in counterinsurgency operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, our adversaries studied us and determined that the best way to defeat the United States is to
• In Conflict, our adversaries want to use stand-off capabilities to fracture the U.S. population internally, separate the elements of the Joint Force, and divide us from our allies and partners.
• China and Russia will contest us in every domain and across the diplomatic, information, military, and economic (DIME) spheres in Competition, Crisis, and Conflict.
• While the United States invested in equipment and capabilities for the counterinsurgency fight, our most formidable adversaries invested in capabilities that provide them with a degree of overmatch in a few key areas.
• China and Russia are global powers. China is our designated Pacing Threat and most technologically sophisticated adversary, while Russia remains a near-peer threat with global reach and a large, highly capable nuclear arsenal.
• Technology among peer and near-peer competitors will be roughly equivalent; the side with the best people and the best approach to Competition, Crisis, and Conflict will have the advantage.

• The Status Quo Reprieve world represents a continuation of the pre-COVID-19 OE with little real change resulting from the pandemic. This means China and Russia will continue to develop their capabilities along a steady track toward contested equality around 2030.
• The Relative Advantage world postulates a future in which the impacts of the pandemic on the United States, China, and Russia are relatively equal, but the centralized authorities and economies of China and Russia allow them to focus more on defense than a general recovery, as in the United States. In this case, the OE speeds up, and China and Russia pose a significant challenge by 2025-2028. We view this as the most likely outcome.
• The most dangerous outcome is the Mind the Gap world, in which our adversaries recover quickly, while the United States craters. Under these conditions, our adversaries’ modernization programs rocket forward, posing a direct challenge to the United States in the next few years.
• Finally, the best case (but least likely) outcome is the New Renaissance world, in which the United States’ ability to innovate allows it to recover more quickly, while our adversaries struggle. This allows the United States to outpace its rivals across the DIME spheres.

• Our dominance rested on three assumptions:
• We are the best equipped Army in the world;
• We have the best trained Soldiers and the most dynamic leaders; and
• Our ability to conduct maneuver warfare is unmatched.

• This dominance was the result of efforts the Army made across doctrine, organization, training, materiel, leadership and education, personnel, facilities, and policy (DOTMLPF-P).
• While there is much focus on the materiel aspects of our adversaries’ modernization efforts, materiel advantage may be fleeting.
• Our adversaries understand this and are contesting us across the other factors that deal with human capital; these advances may be more long-lasting.
• Our adversaries have conceived of new approaches to warfare, namely China’s “intelligentized warfare” and Russia’s “New Generation Warfare” concepts. Both adversaries hold large-scale exercises designed to practice these approaches and to improve their forces. They have emulated the U.S. military in developing new combat training centers and are designing new professional military education systems that aim to create a culture of learning.

While primarily operating in Sudan, Wagner Group has been active throughout Africa[9]. Wagner Group uses both gray zone tactics described above, normalizing transgressions and fait accompli. As such, America and their allies and partners allied state actors have two options available to them that would allow them to combat or minimise the impact that Wagner Group are having in the African theatre[10].

The problem has been compounded by Haitians streaming into the U.S. to escape poverty, political turmoil, and a major earthquake. What would Trump do? He mocked Haiti and in 2018 sought to end the Temporary Protective Status for Haitian refugees who had come to the U.S. after the 2010 earthquake. It was not a Boy Scout’s moment, but Biden has outdone him: expelling migrants as they arrive. Speak like a Squad member, act like a Proud Boy​.​

The desire for swift, unified, and determined policy to fight COVID-19—and for an end to endless health restrictions—is understandable. But before we embrace authoritarianism in the name of expediency, we should remember that Mussolini did not actually get the trains running on time. The supposed improvements were partially mythical, partially attributable to pre-Fascism initiatives, and limited to only some aspects of the railway system. In addition to being murderous, fascist Italy and Nazi Germany were deeply corrupt, even kleptocratic. Democracies face criticism of their vaccination campaigns precisely because they are democracies: They have cultures of open discussion and free media. But when it comes to developing and administering the lifesaving vaccines that can stop the virus, democratic governance is working.

• Treasury has reportedly considered and rejected the platinum-coin idea — but then again, Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin said in 1995 that using the Exchange Stabilization Fund to bail out Mexico would be impossible. (He ended up doing exactly that just a few weeks later.)

• The scheme looks legally feasible, although it would surely be challenged in the courts. Politically, however, it looks like a non-starter. The Democratic Party is capable of raising the debt ceiling through the reconciliation process, but refuses to do so for political reasons: They want Republicans to grapple with the fiscal reality of the bills they have already passed.
• Democrats control the White House and Treasury, neither of which seem to have any more appetite than their Congressional counterparts to let the country off the hook without Republicans being somehow involved.

• They all agree that the debt ceiling serves no useful fiscal purpose: It's a dumb political cudgel that risks triggering an unconstitutional and catastrophic default.
• The trillion-dollar coin would effectively take that cudgel out of the hands of the politicians, rendering them slightly less capable of causing a calamity through inaction alone.

• Even if it's legally sound, no one knows whether it's physically possible to mint a platinum coin between now and Oct. 18, when the U.S. risks going into default. Maybe we'll find out at some point in the next few weeks.