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Quotes of the Day:
“You sway a thousand men by appealing to their prejudices quicker than you can convince one many by logic.
- Robert A. Heinlein
"Chess has only two outcomes: draw and checkmate. The objective of the game . . . is total victory or defeat-and the battle is conducted head-on, in the center of the board. The aim of Go is relative advantage; the game is played all over the board, and the objective is to increase one's options and reduce those of the adversary. The goal is less victory than persistent strategic progress. "
- Dr. Henry Kissinger, On China
"What man does not understand he fears; and what he fears, he tends to destroy."
- William Butler Yeats
1. New Details on Intelligence Leak Show It Circulated for Weeks Before Raising Alarm
2. Xi Jinping's 48-hour plan to invade Taiwan | Defence in Depth
3. In a Civilian Hospital, Military Medicine Is Kept Alive
4. At Stanford Law School, the Dean Takes a Stand for Free Speech. Will It Work?
5. Friends of China have huge influence on Capitol Hill: Grant Newsham
6. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, April 8, 2023
7. China Gears Up for Cognitive Warfare
8. Analysis | China’s new world order is taking shape
9. India, US special forces carry out wargames, focus on fighter aircraft ops amid China standoff
10. Left of Boom: Leveraging Security Force Assistance to Deter War
11. China appears to simulate first aircraft carrier strike on Taiwan
12. China carries out 'simulated' precision attacks on Taiwan targets
13. AI’s Inhuman Advantage
14. Be Skeptical of Reagan’s “October Surprise”
15. Special Operations News Update - April 10, 2023 | SOF News
16. Miles Yu On Taiwan: Why is China so obsessed with Taiwan?
17. Ukraine Situation Report: Both Sides Rationing Shells Ahead Of Kyiv’s Counteroffensive
18. Taking Crimea From Putin Has Become ‘Operation Unthinkable’
19. Why progressive lawmakers are fighting against a TikTok ban
20. The Age of Energy Insecurity
21. Watch Jon Stewart blast a senior Pentagon leader over military food insecurity
22. DoD’s highest-ranking trans official: ‘Ostracizing anybody’ will hurt military readiness
23. U.S. Is Launching Massive Cyber Warfare
1. New Details on Intelligence Leak Show It Circulated for Weeks Before Raising Alarm
This is really turning into quite a story.
Excerpts:
In total, just over 50 documents with Secret and Top Secret classification markings have surfaced so far, and have been viewed by the Journal and a variety of independent intelligence analysts. A critical question is who had access, and when, to the hundreds of others that were posted in the original group between January and March, and how significant are the secrets that these files contain.
The U.S. intelligence community is expected to take measures to protect the sources and methods used in the collection of data in that material. “You have to assume it is compromised,” said Thomas Rid, professor of strategic studies at Johns Hopkins University. “But assuming that the adversary has it is one thing, knowing it is another.”
The probe into the leak will be among the FBI’s top priorities as investigators search for who had access to the information, and who would have motive to make it public, said Joshua Skule, a former FBI senior executive who is now the president of the government contracting firm Bow Wave.
“They are going to be looking to get to the bottom of who did it as expeditiously as possible, they are going to be sparing no resource,” Mr. Skule said. “The FBI is approaching this as if someone has committed a treasonous act.”
The leaked documents are photographs of presentations and files that had been printed out on A4 paper. They appear to have been folded twice, perhaps to be smuggled out of a secure facility. A variety of items can be seen in the margins of the photos, including Gorilla glue, shoes and instructions for a GlassHawk HD spotting scope, details that could facilitate the search for the leaker.
Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, said in a Telegram post that it was unlikely that Russia was behind the original intelligence breach.
“If you have an operating channel to obtain intelligence from the Pentagon, you don’t burn it for a one-day publicity drive,” he wrote. By publicizing the leak, he added, Russia aimed to distract attention from Ukraine’s preparations for the offensive, and to “sow certain doubts and mutual suspicions” between Kyiv and its partners.
New Details on Intelligence Leak Show It Circulated for Weeks Before Raising Alarm
The secret documents were first posted in January to a small group on a messaging channel that trafficked in memes, jokes and racist talk
https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-details-on-intelligence-leak-show-it-circulated-for-weeks-before-raising-alarm-7730a395
By Yaroslav TrofimovFollow, Sharon WeinbergerFollow and Robert McMillanFollow
April 9, 2023 7:16 pm ET
One of the most significant leaks of highly classified U.S. documents in recent history began among a small group of posters on a messaging channel that trafficked in memes, jokes and racist talk.
Sometime in January, seemingly unnoticed by the outside world, an anonymous member of a group numbering just over a dozen began to post files—many labeled as top secret—providing details about the war in Ukraine, intercepted communications about U.S. allies, such as Israel and South Korea, and details of American penetration of Russian military plans, among other topics.
The documents, which appear to have numbered in the hundreds, stayed among the members of the tiny group on the Discord messaging platform until early March, when another user reposted several dozen of them to another group with a larger audience. From there, at least 10 files migrated to a much bigger community focused on the Minecraft computer game.
On Wednesday, with the U.S. government apparently still unaware, a Russian propaganda account on Telegram posted a crudely doctored version of one of the documents, alongside a few unedited ones.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Justice Department are now on a sprawling hunt for answers on how the dozens of images that purport to show secret documents surfaced online. A government probe, launched Friday at the request of the Defense Department, is searching for the source of the leak.
A Pentagon spokeswoman said Sunday night the department was reviewing and assessing the validity of the photographed documents “that appear to contain sensitive and highly classified material.” She said the U.S. had discussed the matter with allies over the weekend and was weighing the potential national security impact of the breach.
The intelligence leak is shaping up to be one of the most damaging in decades, officials said. The disclosure complicates Ukraine’s spring offensive. It will likely inhibit the readiness of foreign allies to share sensitive information with the U.S. government. And it potentially exposes America’s intelligence sources within Russia and other hostile nations.
Ukrainian air defense servicemen at Hostomel Airfield near Kyiv last week, where the large cargo plane in the background was destroyed early in Russia’s invasion.
PHOTO: ROMAN PILIPEY/GETTY IMAGES
A decade after National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden leaked a giant cache of top-secret documents about surveillance and other intelligence activities, the U.S. government is still unable to protect against such breaches.
“How the heck are we back here again?” said Brett Bruen, president of Global Situation Room, a national security consulting firm, and a former White House official in the Obama administration. “These kinds of large scale security breaches were supposed to be a thing of the past. New controls and checks were put in place. Yet, clearly it wasn’t enough and we need a major rethink [and] revision to the classified protection process.”
Who had access
The Wall Street Journal wasn’t able to independently authenticate the documents, but they contain enough detail to give them credibility. Defense officials have said they believe some of the documents could be authentic.
A view of the Pentagon. The Department of Defense asked the FBI and the Justice Department to investigate the leak.
PHOTO: TOM BRENNER/REUTERS
In total, just over 50 documents with Secret and Top Secret classification markings have surfaced so far, and have been viewed by the Journal and a variety of independent intelligence analysts. A critical question is who had access, and when, to the hundreds of others that were posted in the original group between January and March, and how significant are the secrets that these files contain.
The U.S. intelligence community is expected to take measures to protect the sources and methods used in the collection of data in that material. “You have to assume it is compromised,” said Thomas Rid, professor of strategic studies at Johns Hopkins University. “But assuming that the adversary has it is one thing, knowing it is another.”
The probe into the leak will be among the FBI’s top priorities as investigators search for who had access to the information, and who would have motive to make it public, said Joshua Skule, a former FBI senior executive who is now the president of the government contracting firm Bow Wave.
“They are going to be looking to get to the bottom of who did it as expeditiously as possible, they are going to be sparing no resource,” Mr. Skule said. “The FBI is approaching this as if someone has committed a treasonous act.”
The leaked documents are photographs of presentations and files that had been printed out on A4 paper. They appear to have been folded twice, perhaps to be smuggled out of a secure facility. A variety of items can be seen in the margins of the photos, including Gorilla glue, shoes and instructions for a GlassHawk HD spotting scope, details that could facilitate the search for the leaker.
Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, said in a Telegram post that it was unlikely that Russia was behind the original intelligence breach.
Ukrainian servicemen operated an anti-aircraft gun near Bakhmut, Ukraine, on Friday.
PHOTO: OLEG PETRASYUK/EPA/SHUTTERSTOCK
“If you have an operating channel to obtain intelligence from the Pentagon, you don’t burn it for a one-day publicity drive,” he wrote. By publicizing the leak, he added, Russia aimed to distract attention from Ukraine’s preparations for the offensive, and to “sow certain doubts and mutual suspicions” between Kyiv and its partners.
Mr. Zelensky reacted to the leak by ordering new measures to clamp down on unauthorized disclosures of military information. The U.S. has also changed how military personnel access such documents, defense officials said last week.
The most damaging files, security analysts say, are the roundups of vetted intelligence material compiled in the Central Intelligence Agency’s operations center intelligence update. They include information on conversations that the U.S. had intercepted within allied governments, such as communications of the leaders of Israel’s Mossad intelligence service and discussions among members of South Korea’s national security council on whether to sell ammunition that could end up in Ukraine.
Even more sensitive is the information that appears derived from the U.S. penetration of the Russian government, such as details on how a Russian hacker shared screenshots with the FSB security service on accessing Canada’s natural-gas infrastructure, internal Russian ministry of defense deliberations on supplying ammunition to the Wagner paramilitary group, and plans by Russian military intelligence to foment an anti-Western and anti-Ukrainian campaign in Africa.
Aric Toler, head of research and training at the Bellingcat investigative consortium, which has carried out several probes of Russian intelligence operations, said that he has been in touch with three original members of the Discord group.
The group’s members saw hundreds of classified files before the channel was wiped clean, he said. Most members are based in the U.S. The identity of the original poster remains unknown.
Baffling pattern
Document leaks have emerged as a common tactic during the war in Ukraine, but the posting of the apparent U.S. intelligence files on Discord, an online chat service favored by videogame players, follows a different, somewhat baffling pattern, according to analysts.
Once global attention was drawn to the leak, members of the Discord groups scurried to delete their accounts and to purge their servers, fearing retribution by the U.S. government and unwelcome attention from foreign intelligence agencies.
“I left that server and I really hope that I am safe,” one of the users, who had uploaded some of the leaked files to the Minecraft community, posted on Friday, adding a crying emoji.
Founded eight years ago in San Francisco, Discord first gained popularity as software that gamers could use to talk to each other in a group. The majority of these chat servers are private—shared by friends—but they can be public, too. Discord also hosts communities supporting Ukraine’s cause.
Discord is cooperating with law enforcement on the leak investigation, a Discord spokesman said. “It is Discord’s highest priority to ensure a safe experience for our users,” he said. “As this remains an active investigation, we cannot provide further comment at this time.”
On Sunday, Discord’s website listed more than 20,000 public servers, the majority of them concerning gaming. “It’s a very reliable service when the games are acting glitchy,” said Levi Gundert, chief security officer with the intelligence firm Recorded Future.
The Discord website on a laptop computer in 2021.
PHOTO: TIFFANY HAGLER-GEARD/BLOOMBERG NEWS
Researchers at Mr. Gundert’s firm have also found unsavory content on the platform, such as terrorist propaganda and tools for hackers. “It really looks more like a kind of free-for-all in terms of the content that’s available,” he said.
Discord would likely have information about the users of the original group’s server that would be of use to law enforcement investigators, Mr. Gundert said.
The latest leak isn’t the first time sensitive documents have shown up on a gaming-related server. Last year, a player of the WarThunder military vehicle combat game posted real classified information on the British Challenger 2 tanks, while a year earlier another user posted a classified manual for the French Leclerc tanks.
The new disclosures are far more significant. They include information about the types of heavy weapons and equipment held by the nine Ukrainian brigades that the U.S. and allies are preparing for the coming spring offensive; precise details on the quickly dwindling ammunition of the Ukrainian air defense systems; the level of protection of critical infrastructure sites; and details on how many tanks, artillery pieces and military aircraft Ukraine operates.
The slide initially publicized on Wednesday and Thursday by Russian propaganda Telegram accounts had been doctored to inflate Ukrainian battlefield casualties and to minimize Russian ones. The crude nature of the alteration suggests this wasn’t a high-level intelligence operation, security analysts said.
Another purported Pentagon document that emerged on Friday contained the same estimate of Ukrainian and Russian battlefield fatalities as the unaltered slide: up to 43,000 Russian troops and up to 17,500 Ukrainian troops, in addition to as many as 41,000 Ukrainian civilians.
Smoke at an air defense base in Mariupol, Ukraine, after an apparent Russian strike last year.
PHOTO: EVGENIY MALOLETKA/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Separately from the war, one of the items in the CIA update said that Mossad leaders “advocated for Mossad officials and Israeli citizens to protest against the new Israeli government’s proposed judicial reform, including several explicit calls to action that decried the Israeli government.” The update cited signals intelligence, an indication that conversations among the Mossad leadership have been intercepted by the U.S. government.
Mossad Sunday took the rare step of publicly denying the report, calling these allegations “mendacious and without any foundation whatsoever.”
Changes in security
U.S. national security entities have taken steps to prevent a repeat of the 2013 breach, when Mr. Snowden, then a contractor to the National Security Agency, left the country with a large number of classified documents, and provided them to journalists.
Mr. Snowden, who became a Russian citizen, has said his leak was meant to shine light on what he described as abuses of U.S. surveillance, and chose to provide them to journalists so that they would vet the documents.
There has been no explanation so far of the motives behind the latest leak.
In the current case, the U.S. is considering a range of possibilities over how it occurred, including that someone with a top-secret security clearance leaked the information or that U.S. intelligence systems were hacked, U.S. officials said Saturday.
Leak probes usually begin by determining who had access to the documents, current and former officials said. Potentially hundreds of government employees have security clearances that would give them the ability to view the documents.
Marc Raimondi, a former Justice Department official, said that the pool of people who have access to some of the highest levels of classified information expanded in the years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. A congressional commission that investigated the attacks pointed to the lack of intelligence sharing as one of the reasons the U.S. government didn’t uncover the plot.
Since then, efforts have focused on sharing intelligence more widely, “but with having that wider pool of people having access, obviously, you run the risk that one of those people may not take their oath as seriously as they should, and you have an improper release of national defense information,” said Mr. Raimondi, chief of staff at the Silverado Policy Accelerator, a Washington, D.C., based think tank focused on security and trade issues.
Mr. Raimondi said sharing intelligence remains critical for protecting the U.S. and its allies, even if it comes with risks.
“An extraordinarily small number of clearance holders violate their obligation,” he said. “But when it does occur, it can be devastating.”
Vivian Salama, Sadie Gurman, Gordon Lubold and Dov Lieber contributed to this article.
Write to Yaroslav Trofimov at yaroslav.trofimov@wsj.com and Robert McMillan at Robert.Mcmillan@wsj.com
Appeared in the April 10, 2023, print edition as 'Leaked Security Documents Circulated Online for Weeks'.
2. Xi Jinping's 48-hour plan to invade Taiwan | Defence in Depth
Everyone starts their war with the intention of it being short.
Xi Jinping's 48-hour plan to invade Taiwan | Defence in Depth
As China learns from Russia’s failed invasion of Ukraine, it’s just a question of when, not if, Beijing moves on Taipei
7 April 2023 • 8:00am
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/04/07/china-taiwan-invasion-war-usa-russia-ukraine-xi-jinping/
The ripples from the war in Ukraine have spread far and wide; they’ve even reached the South China Sea - so it’s time to talk about Taiwan.
According to diplomatic sources in the UK, Beijing believes there is a 48-hour window in which it can attack Taiwan before any international consensus forms.
In that time Chinese forces would need to get across the Taiwan Strait, onto the land and cut off the political and military leadership in Taiwan.
That’s a tall order.
China wants Taiwan to be reunified with the mainland, and it is said that no Chinese premier would be able to stay in position if they renounced their claim to Taiwan.
So Xi Jinping is on a one-way journey - there’s no status quo here. He’s not going to allow Taiwan to exist as an independent sovereign state and doesn’t hide his view that Taipei will unify with the communist mainland.
It’s just a question of when, not if. So when can we expect a confrontation?
Well, President Xi has made no bones about saying that 2027 is the date that he wants the Chinese army to be ‘ready’ to take back Taiwan. Now, that doesn’t mean that they will invade in 2027, but certainly implies a significant milestone.
Ely Ratner, the senior Pentagon official in charge of the Indo-Pacific region, has said he doesn’t expect anything to happen before the end of the decade.
There is just too much diplomatic turbulence going on at the moment and something else on top of that would be a huge shock to the diplomatic system; and with China yet to see the full results of the war in Ukraine, their confidence in being able to act in the next few years remains unclear.
We do know that the Chinese military has been expanding at a rapid rate. The Chief of Britain’s Defence Staff says that their navy is increasing by the size of the entire Royal Navy every four years. The same thing is happening in areas of space, cyber, air and land.
The lynchpin here is that the Chinese military is untested. It hasn’t fought a war since 1979 when it invaded Vietnam. It is unknown how they will operate on day one of the shooting match - we don’t know if the organisation is very top-down or if the lower level commanders are able to make decisions for themselves when the shooting match starts.
To take the islands would be a tough military operation in and of itself - the island of Formosa, where the capital Taipei stands, lies 70 miles across the Taiwan Strait. China will have seen how Russia, which has a land border with Ukraine, got into all sorts of trouble on launching their invasion.
The most likely scenario for an attack would start with a massive cyber attack to paralyse Taiwan’s decision-making bodies - both military and political - and then a lightning strike to get across the strait and onto the island.
But an amphibious assault is a very tricky operation. First of all they’ve got to get there with US-supplied cruise missiles and anti-ship missiles coming at them; they’d have to sink the Taiwanese navy and submarines; and then you arrive on land where there will be thousands of people waiting for you - both in the military, and mobilised personnel.
Taiwan will make itself a porcupine. A small, really sharp, nasty little thing that is just indigestible to China.
There is also the international response to consider. With the West focused on Ukraine, is there enough capacity in the system to handle another crisis in southeast Asia?
If you were Xi Jinping, would you gamble that there is not?
3. In a Civilian Hospital, Military Medicine Is Kept Alive
I think this is probably one of the best and most productive military-civilian relationships. This is something where the military and. civilian medical personnel can grove equally to each other
In a Civilian Hospital, Military Medicine Is Kept Alive
Army doctors and medics practice skills and relay combat lessons to trauma units
By Ben KeslingFollow | Photographs by Hannah Yoon for The Wall Street Journal
April 9, 2023 9:00 am ET
https://www.wsj.com/articles/in-a-civilian-hospital-military-medicine-is-kept-alive-5fd99b7?page=1
CAMDEN, N.J.—Army Spc. Hannah Broman cut into the patient’s chest and put her finger in to feel his ribs and lung to check the pathway for a chest tube needed in hospital surgeries like this—or after a soldier is shot in combat.
Dr. Chris Derivaux, a thoracic surgeon at Cooper University Hospital and an Army reservist, watched closely to make sure Spc. Broman made the incision properly for a procedure she might someday have to do on a battlefield.
Spc. Broman, a licensed practical nurse assigned to Fort Belvoir in Virginia, was one of a handful of young soldiers on a two-week rotation recently at Cooper University Hospital in Camden, where she is spending the bulk of her time in the trauma center learning how to treat the worst injuries the hospital sees as well as assisting in surgeries. She is one of many troops across the country working at civilian hospitals in a partnership between the Defense Department and nonmilitary healthcare centers to make sure combat medics know their craft.
“This is invaluable training and experience that they can’t get anywhere else,” Dr. Derivaux said.
Cooper University Hospital is one of eight civilian hospitals that help Army doctors, nurses and medics keep up with medical skills needed in combat settings.
Even though U.S. troops face combat across the world in small conflicts, the volume is nowhere near what was seen in Iraq and Afghanistan. During those two decades of war, everyone from high-level military doctors and nurses to front-line medics with about four months of medical training were getting intense field experience, treating patients wounded in combat. In peacetime, uniformed personnel have to go into the civilian world to make sure the medical lessons of war aren’t lost. In turn, they can teach civilian doctors lessons learned in combat.
“Trauma centers come out of the concept of a surgical hospital that’s 24-7,” said Dr. John Chovanes, the chief military surgeon in Cooper’s trauma department and an Army Reserve colonel. “That concept comes out of Vietnam and Korea.”
Updates to civilian procedures also have been informed by what doctors and medics learn in war, where new techniques are tested in combat. Since Vietnam, civilians have adopted widespread use of tourniquets, compression bandages, wound care and transfusion procedures.
“These two systems are intimately related,” said Dr. Chovanes.
Dr. John Chovanes, chief military surgeon in Cooper’s trauma department, works to prepare medics to do everything they can for their patients.
Spc. Hannah Broman, center, in the hospital’s trauma center recently, learned about treating major injuries and assisted in surgeries.
The military operates hospitals on its bases, but few are set up for extensive trauma treatment, as most of those cases are flown or driven to civilian hospitals. The pre-eminent trauma center in the U.S. Army system, Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, can’t accommodate all the troops who need to learn trauma care, said Maj. Hillary Battles, an Army nurse and officer in charge of coordinating the Army’s exchange program.
“To spread out some of that learning, we’ve looked to our civilian partners,” she said. High-traffic civilian trauma centers are the closest thing to combat medical operations.
In 2016, the National Academy of Sciences released a report warning about losing hard-earned combat lessons, which prompted federal legislation. Congress first approved embedding military medical personnel in civilian hospitals in 2017. The Army has programs for military doctors and nurses to work full-time at civilian trauma centers for three-year stints, and another focused on two-week rotations for nurses and medics. The Army pays travel expenses and the Department of Health and Human Services provided $80,000 grants to the participating hospitals last year, according to Maj. Battles.
Cooper is among eight hospitals that partner with the Army, many of them with veterans on the hospital staff who championed the program and make sure the military personnel are incorporated fully.
Sgt. Robert Baker Jr., left, and Spc. Hannah Broman, right, help treat a patient at Cooper University Hospital.
Dr. Chovanes, a trauma surgeon with multiple deployments, worked as an EMT and registered nurse before becoming a physician. In 2001 he joined the Army Reserve and has since served six tours. His hands are steady when performing a procedure but otherwise in constant motion as they gesture and slice through the air to teach a new technique.
Sgt. Robert Baker Jr., an Army combat medic stationed at Fort Campbell in Kentucky, was at the very start of his two-week rotation when Dr. Chovanes quizzed him during the trauma team’s morning meeting, asking him how he would treat the patient there in the hospital, but also how he would treat the same case on the battlefield. Minutes later, he sent Sgt. Baker to help stitch a patient’s tracheostomy in place under the supervision of a resident.
“Everything I’m learning here, it’s knowledge that I wouldn’t have been able to gain at my unit,” Sgt. Baker said.
Dr. Chovanes said he pushes the medics because he can’t abide the thought that he didn’t prepare people to do all they can for a patient, especially when that patient doesn’t make it.
“When you hand that flag across the grave, and look that person, that widow or widower, in the eye and say, ‘We did everything we could,’ that’s a powerful thing,” Dr. Chovanes said.
Lt. Col. Kyle Stevens, second from right, helps supervise Staff Sgt. Shannon Martin as a patient is prepared for surgery.
Sgt. Robert Baker Jr. and Spc. Hannah Broman help transfer a patient to a medical flight on the hospital’s helipad.
Dr. Kirby Gross is an active-duty Army colonel and trauma surgeon with 10 deployments who has been assigned to Cooper as part of the three-year program. He walks the halls of the hospital in an olive-drab scrub hat and a nametag that shows he is a soldier. He is there both to shepherd young soldiers learning the ropes and to pass on his knowledge of combat medicine to young doctors who don’t intend to join the military.
On a recent day, he joined a team that was making rounds in the trauma intensive-care unit. One patient was a police officer who had been shot in the leg. Such wounds could become severely infected from the dirt and debris from a combat zone, Dr. Gross explained, and a specialized test had been developed to check for infection. Such infections could happen in similar conditions in the civilian world, and that test on the police officer showed he had avoided infection.
That afternoon, a call went over the hospital’s loudspeakers that a pediatric trauma case was en route. A boy had gone over the handlebars of his bike and opened a gash in his groin. As the team jumped into action, Spc. Broman and Sgt. Baker were there, keeping the boy calm.
Active-duty soldiers, part of a program helping Army doctors hang on to hard-earned lessons of combat medicine, walk through Cooper’s trauma center.
Write to Ben Kesling at ben.kesling@wsj.com
4. At Stanford Law School, the Dean Takes a Stand for Free Speech. Will It Work?
At Stanford Law School, the Dean Takes a Stand for Free Speech. Will It Work?
By Vimal Patel
April 9, 2023
Updated 3:29 p.m. ET
The New York Times · by Vimal Patel · April 9, 2023
After a student protest, Jenny S. Martinez wrote a much-praised memo defending academic freedom. But that protest shows how complicated protecting free speech can be.
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Tirien Steinbach, associate dean for diversity, equity and inclusion at Stanford Law School, was criticized for her actions during a student protest.Credit...Brian L. Frank for The New York Times
By
April 9, 2023, 3:00 a.m. ET
Stanford Law School was under extraordinary pressure.
For nearly two weeks, there had been mounting anger over the treatment of a conservative federal judge, whose talk had been disrupted by student hecklers. A video of the fiasco went viral.
An apology to the judge from university officials had not helped quell the anger.
Finally, on March 22, the dean, Jenny S. Martinez, released a lawyerly 10-page memo that rebuked the activists.
“Some students might feel that some points should not be up for argument and therefore that they should not bear the responsibility of arguing them,” she wrote. But, she continued, that “is incompatible with the training that must be delivered in a law school.”
She added, “I believe that the commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion actually means that we must protect free expression of all views.”
Free speech groups hailed Dean Martinez for what they said was a stirring defense of free expression.
“We need Dean Martinezes at every school where this is an issue right now,” Alex Morey, an official with the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a free-speech group, said in an email.
The Stanford memo echoed a similar declaration by the University of Chicago in 2014, saying that it was committed to free speech and that students may not obstruct or otherwise interfere with speakers because of their views.
Free speech groups hailed Jenny S. Martinez for what they said was her stirring defense of free expressionCredit...Ben Margot/Associated Press
Since then, dozens of universities have signed onto what is now known as the Chicago statement. And yet, every year seems to bring new free-speech clashes, on the left and the right.
Last year, law students at Yale and the University of California Hastings College of the Law disrupted conservative speakers. In 2021, M.I.T. invited the geophysicist Dorian Abbot to give a prestigious lecture and then disinvited him after some faculty members and students argued that he had created harm by speaking out against aspects of affirmative action.
That same year, members of Stanford’s chapter of the Federalist Society, the conservative legal organization, filed a complaint against a law student who had mocked the group with a satirical flier. The university briefly put the student’s graduation on hold but eventually said the flier was protected speech.
The question for Stanford and other institutions is whether the memo can ease tensions in this fraught and seemingly intractable political climate. In an era of high-pitched politics, living up to lofty free-speech principles can get messy on the ground.
Some free-speech advocates describe a delicate balancing act for any university, which must allow polarizing speakers a place at the podium while also allowing protesters to raise their voices in disagreement.
If things get out hand, it can be hard to figure out when to draw the line and whom to blame.
In the middle of a media firestorm, enforcement can become even trickier. As criticism mounts, the actual events can become distorted, leaving out important details about the people and the buildup to events.
All of these things came into play at Stanford.
‘Is the Juice Worth the Squeeze?’
Stuart Kyle Duncan, a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, was invited to speak by the Federalist Society.Credit...Samuel Corum for The New York Times
The furor started on March 9, when Stuart Kyle Duncan, a conservative judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, spoke to a roomful of students at the invitation of the student chapter of the Federalist Society.
Before becoming a judge, he had defended Louisiana’s gay-marriage ban in a Supreme Court hearing. And he had defended a North Carolina law restricting transgender people from using their preferred bathrooms.
More on America’s College Campuses
Students were particularly upset that, in 2020, as a judge, he had denied the request of a transgender woman who asked the court to refer to her with female pronouns. It was an especially sensitive subject, as many in the law school were still grieving the death of a transgender student last year.
At the event, Judge Duncan was relentlessly heckled and traded barbs with students. He tried to power through his prepared remarks but was unable to speak more than a few words without interruption. He called for the help of an administrator to restore order.
Tirien Steinbach, the associate dean for diversity, equity and inclusion, stepped to the podium and began six minutes of remarks that would be recorded on video.
She said that, to many people in the room, Judge Duncan’s work had “caused harm.” She asked him, “Is the juice worth the squeeze?” That is, was the decision by Judge Duncan to speak worth the division it was causing students?
Her remarks became a signature moment online, condemned for giving tacit approval to the “heckler’s veto.” The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression said that Ms. Steinbach had said the quiet part out loud, to chilling effect.
“Every day around the country, administrators are putting issues of ‘equity’ before students’ expressive rights,” Ms. Morey, of the foundation, said. “Those things do not have to be in tension.”
Ms. Steinbach’s remarks were condemned on Fox News and other conservative outlets. Tucker Carlson called her “barely literate.” Many called for her prompt firing.
Two days after the event, Dean Martinez and the president of the university apologized to Judge Duncan and, without naming Ms. Steinbach, said that “staff members who should have enforced university policies failed to do so, and instead intervened in inappropriate ways that are not aligned with the university’s commitment to free speech.”
Ms. Steinbach said she wanted to expand the role of D.E.I. to include groups like veterans, older students and conservatives. Credit...Brian L. Frank for The New York Times
In her memo, 11 days later, Dean Martinez again criticized Ms. Steinbach, stating that an administrator “should not insert themselves into the debate with their own criticism of the speaker’s views.” Asking speakers to reconsider the worth of what they plan to say, she wrote, constitutes an improper imposition of “institutional orthodoxy and coercion.”
The memo also announced that Ms. Steinbach was on leave.
The Back Story
That bare-bones narrative missed a more complicated situation, illustrating the perils of rushing to judgment based on a viral video.
To begin with, Ms. Steinbach had a cordial, productive relationship with the leader of the student-run Federalist Society, Tim Rosenberger Jr.
Ms. Steinbach, who started at Stanford in 2021, said she wanted to expand the role of D.E.I. to include groups like veterans, older students and conservatives. She viewed herself as a bridge builder.
Mr. Rosenberger, for his part, said he wanted a Federalist Society chapter that was better integrated into the university and had found that she was willing to engage in ways that many students, professors and administrators, to Mr. Rosenberger’s disappointment, would not.
In January, when Mr. Rosenberger could not find a co-sponsor for an event with Nadine Strossen, a former head of the American Civil Liberties Union and a champion of free speech, he found a partner in Ms. Steinbach, who moderated the event.
“That took some courage,” he said.
Ms. Strossen said she had spoken to many Federalist Society chapters in recent years and had noticed that, especially since the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, the group had become effectively “blacklisted” at many law schools.
This backdrop, Ms. Strossen said, made Ms. Steinbach’s enthusiastic participation in the event “extraordinary.”
A Question of Responsibility
On the morning of Judge Duncan’s talk, Ms. Steinbach sent an email to the entire law school, approved by Dean Martinez. She summarized the concerns that students had with Judge Duncan but said that students who tried to stop speech “would only amplify it,” and she linked to the free-speech policy.
Ms. Steinbach’s connection to students might have made her confident that she could be the broker between the two sides. But during a free-speech conflagration, who should play the role of enforcer? And how should that message be delivered?
The university had made other preparations. Law school administrators had warned university officials that students could run afoul of the university’s speaker policy that day, according to an email obtained by The Times. The university sent an official to join others representing the law school.
But when the judge asked for an administrator, it was Ms. Steinbach who stepped up to the podium.
While the judge was insulted by some of her remarks, Ms. Steinbach also defended free speech. “We believe that the way to address speech that feels abhorrent — that feels harmful, that literally denies the humanity of people — that one way to do that is with more speech, and not less,” she said.
She invited students to leave if they felt uncomfortable but said that those who remained should listen to Judge Duncan. Many students left.
In an interview, Ms. Steinbach said she had not been there to enforce the university’s speech policy.
“My role was to de-escalate,” Ms. Steinbach said. She wanted to placate students who said they were upset with Judge Duncan — “and to, I hoped, give the judge space to speak his prepared remarks.”
In hindsight, she said, she did not get the balance right. She noted, however, that she had been speaking to students in the room, and did not realize that her words would be blasted out to the world.
Tim Rosenberger Jr., the president of Stanford’s Federalist Society, had a cordial relationship with Ms. Steinbach.Credit...Andrew Dolph for The New York Times
Mr. Rosenberger said that he had been upset by Ms. Steinbach’s remarks in the lecture hall but that she had been something of a “scapegoat” for the university’s broader failure to protect speech.
He said that he wished an official had stepped to the podium and warned students that further disruption would be in violation of the university’s free-speech policy — but that Ms. Steinbach, as D.E.I. dean, was not that messenger.
“If she was the administrator whose job was to enforce the no-disruption policy, then yeah, she totally failed, but that’s not her job description,” Mr. Rosenberger said. “People have called her stupid and incompetent. She’s a smart and good person who was just put in a really bad spot.”
Dean Martinez, in an email to The Times, said that one of the problems that day was a “lack of clear communication” among administrators in the room. But she laid at least part of the blame with Ms. Steinbach.
“Regardless of what should have happened up to that point,” she wrote, “when Judge Duncan asked for an administrator to help restore order, it was Ms. Steinbach who responded, introduced herself as an administrator, and then delivered remarks.”
A Balancing Act
To some students, the dean, by not presenting a fuller defense of Ms. Steinbach in her memo, capitulated to an intense right-wing attack.
“A leader takes responsibility for her actions as well as those of her subordinates,” Denni Arnold, a protest leader, wrote to Dean Martinez. “A leader presents a united front to the world, no matter what conversations need to happen behind closed doors.”
Julian Davis Mortenson, a professor of constitutional law at the University of Michigan and a Stanford alumnus, suggested that there had been a broader failure.
“Law schools need to have plans and protocols in place for controversies like this, which are going to happen with increasing frequency,” he said. “Stanford was not adequately prepared.”
Barring context he is unaware of, he said, he was disappointed that Ms. Steinbach had not received more support.
“An administrator on the ground, in a room literally full of shouting people, got them to stop shouting and also insisted that they should listen to the speech,” Professor Mortenson said.
Some of the confusion may lie in Stanford’s free-speech policy, which bars preventing or disrupting “the effective carrying out” of a university event, like a lecture. Precisely when that policy is violated is ambiguous — meaning that it can be hard to know when or how to intervene.
Nadine Strossen, a former head of the American Civil Liberties Union and a free-speech crusader.Credit...Joyce Dopkeen/The New York Times
Holding vulgar signs or asking pointed questions or even making gagging noises — as many students did when Judge Duncan was introduced — does not necessarily violate the university’s policy.
In her memo, Dean Martinez said she would not take action against individual students, citing the difficulty of distinguishing between protected speech and unprotected speech.
“Are 10 minutes of shouting out of an hour-and-a-half-long event too much?” said Ms. Strossen, the free-speech crusader. “That is a matter of judgment and degree.”
If you get the balance wrong, Ms. Strossen said, then you risk chilling speech on the other side.
The week after she spoke at Stanford, Ms. Strossen said, she appeared at Yale, on a panel with a conservative speaker whose visit last year was disrupted during another student firestorm.
Ms. Strossen said she was struck that this time, during her panel, there were no protesters of any kind.
“I worry that maybe the reason that there weren’t even nondisruptive protests,” she said, “is students were too afraid that they would be subject to discipline or doxxing.”
The New York Times · by Vimal Patel · April 9, 2023
5. Friends of China have huge influence on Capitol Hill: Grant Newsham
Excerpts:
Q: What’s the difference between the approaches of State, the White House and Congress to China?
A: Parts of Congress are waking up to the PRC threat and some parts of it have always been awake. They haven’t been able to shape US policy towards the PRC in any meaningful—or necessary—way just yet. The donor class still prevails.
Note the Select Committee on China that’s meeting now, and headed by Congressman Mike Gallagher. This is a serious effort to expose the Chinese communist threat and to do something about it. Both Republicans and Democrats are involved.
But it is late in the day, and there’s still a number of representatives who oppose pushing back against China. Former representatives and senators seem worst of all. And there’s a former US ambassador to China who is practically a mouthpiece for PRC interests.
State Department? By and large, too often over the several decades I’ve been following this subject, the default approach to anything involving China is: “We don’t want to make China angry.” Or, “We need China’s cooperation with (fill-in-the-blank) so we must overlook whatever harmful thing they’ve done.”
The White House? It depends. This administration probably doesn’t scare the Chinese communists very much, if at all. The Trump administration did scare them—and it was the first one—Republican or Democrat—that did. The Chinese despised Pompeo, Pottinger, Stilwell, Yu, Navarro, and some others, and wanted them off the field. They got their wish.
But when the Chinese communists complain about something you pretty much know you’re doing something good and should do more of it. Keep in mind, that Chinese political warfare and influence in America was so wide ranging and longstanding that even the Trump administration faced a fierce internal fight between officials who wanted to defend US interests and other officials (i.e., Secretary of Treasury among others) who wanted to placate the PRC.
Friends of China have huge influence on Capitol Hill: Grant Newsham - The Sunday Guardian Live
sundayguardianlive.com · by CLEO PASKAL · April 8, 2023
‘When Beijing throws in the allure of money, they make short work of Wall Street and America’s business class—and academia as well.’
The recently released US best seller When China Attacks: A Warning to America starts with a description of what a devastating near-future attack on Taiwan might look like. But, even more disturbing, is its description of current results of the decades long political warfare attack that China has already waged on its perceived enemies.
In this edition of Indo-Pacific: Behind the Headlines, we speak with the book’s author, Col Grant Newsham (Retd). He was the first US Marine Liaison Officer to the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force, was instrumental in developing Japan’s amphibious capability and was, for over a decade, an executive director at Morgan Stanley Japan. He also served as the reserve G2 (intelligence) and G5 (plans and policy) at Marine Forces Pacific and was a US Foreign Service Officer specializing in insurgency, counter-insurgency, and commercial matters.
Q: How is an attack from China different than what the United States might be expecting?
A: It’s almost unrecognizable—not least because America’s ruling class has steadfastly refused to recognize it. The Americans tend to think a “war” only happens when both sides kind of agree to it—and shooting starts. And until that happens, it’s all just a misunderstanding—and there’s a potential for working things out. This reflects the American trait—indeed, conceit—that any problem can be resolved by talking.
Q: How bad is it getting in the US?
A: It’s bad. Consider that Chinese origin fentanyl killed about 70,000 Americans last year. 70,000 for crying out loud. And the US administration and government pretends China just can’t do anything about it. This chemical (or drug) warfare that the PRC is waging on us has been incredibly successful. It’s weakening the United States and causing immense social harm and economic costs. Just like “war” is intended. And the elites in China’s “main enemy”—the United States—refuse to admit China has anything to do with it.
That’s just one example.
Chinese communist biological warfare—which is effectively what Covid-19 was, even if it was seeded opportunistically—this time, at least—dealt a body blow to America. Beijing’s penalty for doing this? Nothing. And then there’s ongoing cyber warfare, economic warfare, financial warfare, and thoroughgoing proxy warfare—that has recruited many in America’s elite classes and ensured they’ll use their influence to lessen any potential “pushback” against the PRC.
When your enemy’s most influential people have convinced themselves you are not a threat—as China has done via its American proxies—one has to stand back in awe at what is a successful Chinese psychological warfare offensive.
Chinese economic warfare deserves special attention. Starting 40 years ago, but really “super-charged” from the 1980s and kept going after the PRC was allowed into the World Trade Organization in the early 2000s, America’s business and financial classes moved huge chunks of American industry and business to the PRC—“decoupling” American workers from their livelihoods and lives.
These fools built up the PRC economy and military into a force that could beat us, and weakened their own country in the process. And once again, the Chinese communists did it (or had us do it to ourselves) without firing a shot.
If it’s not “kinetic” warfare—the modern hip word what used to be called “shooting”, too many Americans just won’t admit it’s warfare. Indeed, until 2017, even US service members couldn’t refer to the PRC as an adversary—much less an enemy. Beijing must love all this.
And when Beijing throws in the allure of money—actual or potential—they make short work of Wall Street and America’s business class—and academia as well. And don’t forget how these “friends of China”—many who are part of the “donor class” have huge influence on Capitol Hill.
Q: Your subtitle is “A Warning to America”. You spent over two decades in Japan, have you seen similar things there?
A: Of course. It’s just as bad in Japan—at least among Japan’s ruling political and business classes. Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs was long considered dominated by “pro-China” types. Even a number of Prime Ministers had far deeper ties with China than were healthy. Recall former Prime Minister’s Ryutaro Hashimoto’s Chinese girlfriend, and said to be an MSS agent too boot?
Some years back a prominent Japanese politician led a “study tour” to the PRC with dozens of Diet Members. You can imagine how they thought about China after they’d been shown a “good time”.
Japanese businesses also poured into China—without much concern for protecting technology. Indeed, Keidanren, the association of industry, has always been considered to be “pro-China” and a brake on any government efforts to recognize and deal with the PRC threat.
Japan’s military was also restrained from developing into a proper force that could actually defend the country. This was partly owing to Chinese influence and fears of “angering China”.
Unlike in the US, however, the Japanese public has always had a much better sense of the Chinese communists than has the “political class”. And the Japan Self-Defense Force at least recognized the PRC threat a good decade or two before American commanders finally woke up.
I once saw the commander of US Army Pacific belittle Japanese senior officers who tried to warn of the Chinese threat. This was a decade ago. It’s no surprise the US military is now fretting about how to handle the Chinese threat.
Q: Are other countries also being targeted in the same way?
A: Indeed. Just about every other country is the target of Chinese political warfare that includes the various types of “attack” that I’ve mentioned. The specifics may vary, but not the basics.
Of particular note is how Chinese commercial interests have made inroads into the Central and South Pacific. It’s a predictable pattern. Start with business and Chinese presence. This leads to political influence and a pro-China constituency in the local society. Eventually there will be a “security” component to this. As we’ve seen in the Solomon Islands recently, and to varying degrees in a number of other places: Djibouti, Cambodia, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, a number of Latin American countries and African countries as well.
China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is laying in the dual-use infrastructure that will allow the People’s Liberation Army to operate globally within a decade or so.
And the best part of the BRI from Beijing’s perspective? The Chinese currency is pretty much worthless overseas, but they’ve gotten the Americans to fund a good chunk of it. Thank you, Wall Street and US business.
Grant Newsham’s book
Q: What’s the difference between the approaches of State, the White House and Congress to China?
A: Parts of Congress are waking up to the PRC threat and some parts of it have always been awake. They haven’t been able to shape US policy towards the PRC in any meaningful—or necessary—way just yet. The donor class still prevails.
Note the Select Committee on China that’s meeting now, and headed by Congressman Mike Gallagher. This is a serious effort to expose the Chinese communist threat and to do something about it. Both Republicans and Democrats are involved.
But it is late in the day, and there’s still a number of representatives who oppose pushing back against China. Former representatives and senators seem worst of all. And there’s a former US ambassador to China who is practically a mouthpiece for PRC interests.
State Department? By and large, too often over the several decades I’ve been following this subject, the default approach to anything involving China is: “We don’t want to make China angry.” Or, “We need China’s cooperation with (fill-in-the-blank) so we must overlook whatever harmful thing they’ve done.”
The White House? It depends. This administration probably doesn’t scare the Chinese communists very much, if at all. The Trump administration did scare them—and it was the first one—Republican or Democrat—that did. The Chinese despised Pompeo, Pottinger, Stilwell, Yu, Navarro, and some others, and wanted them off the field. They got their wish.
But when the Chinese communists complain about something you pretty much know you’re doing something good and should do more of it. Keep in mind, that Chinese political warfare and influence in America was so wide ranging and longstanding that even the Trump administration faced a fierce internal fight between officials who wanted to defend US interests and other officials (i.e., Secretary of Treasury among others) who wanted to placate the PRC.
Q: Anything that we can learn from each other in how to fight back?
A: India knows all about this. Years ago, I remember retired Indian generals and admirals saying “We’ve been at war with China since 1962. Why don’t you Americans wake up?” They were right.
And they weren’t talking about only “kinetic” war. It’s unfortunate that America forgot about “political warfare”—and studiously refused to believe the Chinese communists meant us ill.
The US would do well to listen to the Indians—particularly the Indian military. One notes that Indian forces have been facing off against the enemy for decades. And if the Americans will learn no other lesson from the Indians than that “there is no deal to be cut with the Chinese” that would be progress.
Also, consider how the US is struggling to decide what to do about TikTok. It’s an obvious threat, but TikTok’s “white” lobbyists and lawyers (to include former prominent congressional staffers) are doing their best to ensure America cannot protect itself from pernicious Chinese influence. And this is just one dangerous Chinese “app”.
After the Indians and the Chinese came to blows on the border a few years ago, the Indian government immediately banned dozens of Chinese apps and took other measures against the PRC. Beijing screamed bloody murder—which is always a good sign it was effective.
Meanwhile, the US dithers. Indeed, the administration recently backed off on moves to delist Chinese companies from US exchanges on the grounds of inadequate corporate disclosure that every other company—US and foreign—must meet.
Putting it simply, the Indians seem serious. The Americans don’t.
Cleo Paskal is The Sunday Guardian Special Correspondent as well as Non-Resident Senior Fellow for the Indo-Pacific at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.
sundayguardianlive.com · by CLEO PASKAL · April 8, 2023
6. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, April 8, 2023
Maps/graphics: https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-april-8-2023
Key Takeaways
- Ukrainian and Russian sources discussed the decreased rate of Russian offensive operations along the entire frontline on April 8, supporting ISW’s assessment that the overall Russian offensive is approaching culmination.
- The dynamics of battlefield artillery usage in Ukraine reflect the fact that Russian forces are using artillery to offset their degraded offensive capabilities.
- Former Russian officer and ardent nationalist Igor Girkin launched a new effort likely aimed at protecting the influence the Russian pro-war faction within the Kremlin.
- The “Club of Angry Patriot’s” reveals several key implications about the Kremlin dynamics and the perceived danger to Putin’s regime.
- Girkin may be advancing the political goals of unnamed figures within Russian power structures possibly within the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB).
- Russian nationalists seized on assassinated Russian milblogger Maxim Fomin’s funeral to promote pro-war narratives.
- Russia’s missile campaign to degrade Ukraine’s unified energy infrastructure has failed definitively, and Russia appears to have abandoned the effort.
- The Kremlin is likely intensifying legal punishments for terrorism-related crimes as part of a larger effort to promote self-censorship and establish legal conditions for intensified domestic repressions.
- The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) may be setting conditions for a false flag attack in Sumy Oblast.
- Russian forces conducted limited ground attacks along the Svatove-Kreminna line.
- Russian forces have continued to make gains around Bakhmut, and tensions between the Wagner Group and conventional Russian forces over responsibility for tactical gains in Bakhmut appear to be intensifying.
- Russian sources continued to speculate about the planned Ukrainian counteroffensive in southern Ukraine, including hypothesizing about the possibility of a Ukrainian amphibious landing across the Kakhovka Reservoir.
- The Russian Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) on April 6 proposed a defense industrial base (DIB) deregulation reform that could expedite defense production but will more likely facilitate corruption and embezzlement.
- Ukrainian officials reported that 31 children returned to Ukraine after having been deported to Russia as Russian officials continue to discuss the adoption of Ukrainian children into Russian families.
RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, APRIL 8, 2023
Apr 8, 2023 - Press ISW
Download the PDF
Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, April 8, 2023
Karolina Hird, Kateryna Stepanenko, Riley Bailey, Angela Howard, Nicole Wolkov, and Frederick W. Kagan
April 8, 6pm ET
Click here to see ISW’s interactive map of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This map is updated daily alongside the static maps present in this report.
Click here to access ISW’s archive of interactive time-lapse maps of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. These maps complement the static control-of-terrain map that ISW produces daily by showing a dynamic frontline. ISW will update this time-lapse map archive monthly.
Ukrainian and Russian sources discussed the decreased rate of Russian offensive operations along the entire frontline on April 8, supporting ISW’s assessment that the overall Russian offensive is approaching culmination.[1] Council of Reservists of the Ukrainian Ground Forces Head Ivan Tymochko reported on April 8 that Russian forces are fighting along the entire frontline, but that Russian offensive potential continues to decline and that current Russian attacks are focused on distracting and dispersing Ukrainian troops in anticipation of counteroffensive operations.[2] Tymochko stated that Russian forces are not making serious advances anywhere on the frontline, noting that the pace of attacks in and around Bakhmut has slightly decreased in some areas and stagnated entirely in others.[3] Tymochko also assessed that the Russian offensive on Avdiivka has “choked” and reported that Russian forces still do not control Marinka despite having reduced the city to rubble.[4] A prominent Russian milblogger claimed that the pace of Russian offensive operations along the entire Avdiivka-Donetsk City frontline has decreased over the past day and emphasized that Russian forces are struggling to advance anywhere in Ukraine.[5] Several Russian commentators are emphasizing Russian preparations for an anticipated Ukrainian counteroffensive, suggesting that the overall focus of the Russian information space is shifting away from discussing Russian offensive capabilities and towards assessing Ukraine’s potential to regain significant ground.[6]
The dynamics of battlefield artillery usage in Ukraine reflect the fact that Russian forces are using artillery to offset their degraded offensive capabilities. Former Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) Security Minister and current Vostok Battalion commander Alexander Khodakovsky reported that the Russian command has decided to stop the daily issue of ammunition to areas of the front where there are no active offensive operations almost entirely.[7] Khodakovsky noted that the artillery shortage on the frontline results in part from preparations for a Ukrainian counteroffensive.[8] Khodakovsky’s statement indicates that the Russian command must prioritize artillery ammunition supplies rigorously due to shortages. High demand for shells indicates that Russian forces are still heavily relying on artillery to offset key shortcomings in combat capability, including poor Russian targeting skills, insufficient ground assault capabilities, and inadequate availability of airpower in Ukraine. Russian forces use heavy artillery barrages to flatten settlements before seizing them with ground attacks, offsetting the need to conduct effective infantry attacks or to conduct an airstrike using scarce precision munitions and putting airframes and pilots at risk of Ukrainian air defenses. Continuing Russian shortages in artillery ammunition will undermine the Russian military’s ability to continue offsetting its other weaknesses and limitations. The Washington Post reported on April 8 that by contrast, Ukrainian forces are using one-third as many shells as Russian forces and that Ukrainian forces are conserving shells by carefully prioritizing targets.[9] Ukrainian forces are more accurate in their targeting, but also likely benefit from being on the defensive in most areas--offensive operations normally generate increased artillery requirements.
Former Russian officer and ardent nationalist Igor Girkin launched a new effort likely aimed at protecting the influence of the Russian pro-war faction within the Kremlin. Girkin formed the “Club of Angry Patriots” social movement along with seven prominent proxy and ultranationalist figures on April 1 seeking to help Russia to win the war and avoid an internal conflict within Russia.[10] Members of the club stated that Russia will imminently face defeat in Ukraine and may experience a pro-Western coup or civil war if Moscow does not drastically improve the situation on the frontlines. The members claimed that Russian officials are unable to improve the war effort and its effects on Russian society because most Kremlin officials belong to an anti-war faction. The anti-war faction reportedly advocates for a peace settlement with the West to regain access to its oversees wealth and is not actively attempting to improve the war effort – not out of a fundamental disagreement with war aims or genuine desire for peace. The club claimed that it seeks to help Russian authorities – likely implying the pro-war grouping within the Kremlin – complete the “special military operation” in a timely manner, claiming that a protracted war in Ukraine could prompt the anti-war officials to revolt. The group also stated that it is attempting to build a defense network to resist a coup in Russia in such an event. The members declared that the group is functioning within the framework of Russian law and will not engage in armed conflict, but will instead focus on raising public awareness in Russia so that Russian executive officials realize the danger to the Russian regime. Members of this club had previously warned Russian President Vladimir Putin in May and September 2022 about the negative repercussions on the battlefield if Russia did not immediately declare mobilization.[11]
Girkin’s movement is already reportedly facing resistance from Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) Head Denis Pushilin. A Russian milblogger claimed Pushilin ordered DNR officials to spread rumors about the “Club of Angry Patriots,” claiming bizarrely that the movement is preparing a pro-Western coup.[12] A member of the movement also accused Pushilin’s administration of discrediting the movement.[13]
The “Club of Angry Patriot’s” creation may offer several important insights into Kremlin dynamics and the danger to Putin’s regime elements within his inner circle fear. ISW previously reported that successful Ukrainian counteroffensives in Kharkiv Oblast and Lyman in September-October 2022 exposed a rift between the Kremlin’s anti-war and pro-war factions.[14] Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin also made similar remarks about the schisms among Kremlin officials.[15] The club’s preoccupation with the anti-war faction may indicate that the rift within the Kremlin deepened during the failed Russian winter offensive campaign or ahead of the Ukrainian counteroffensive. The concern over the expansion of the anti-war faction may also indicate that there is concern that Putin may be driven to accept a peace settlement by the threat of replacement. The group may be attempting to preempt the anti-war faction’s efforts to reduce the urgency of full-scale war in Ukraine.
Girkin may be advancing political goals of unnamed figures within Russian power structures, possibly within the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB). Girkin has been ruthlessly criticizing Putin throughout the war, and it is likely that he is receiving some protection from a silovik. Russian independent outlet The Insider and Bellingcat have previously reported that Girkin had been consistently using passports under fictitious names that he received from the FSB.[16] While it is unclear which silovik is protecting Girkin and what his motivations might be, Girkin’s protector may be attempting to gain Putin’s attention and shape his decisions via public discourse. Prigozhin and Wagner had previously showed that the Kremlin monitors and reacts to the public’s attitudes, which prompted notable changes within the Russian military command in the fall of 2022.[17] Prigozhin similarly announced plans for a Wagner-affiliated social movement on April 4.[18]
Russian nationalists seized on assassinated Russian milblogger Maxim Fomin’s (also known as Vladlen Tatarsky) funeral to promote pro-war narratives. Footage from Fomin’s funeral at Troekurovsky Cemetery in Moscow shows hundreds to thousands of people in attendance including Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin and Russian Liberal Democratic Party Leader Leonid Slutsky.[19] Images showing the Order of Courage medal, Wagner awards, and an engraved sledgehammer at Fomin’s coffin circulated in Russian nationalist media.[20] Prigozhin commended the “difficult work” of war reporters and claimed that he would do everything to ensure that Fomin’s work continues to resonate.[21] Former Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) Spokesperson Eduard Basurin used Fomin’s funeral to reiterate the narrative that Russia must reject negotiations and pursue the unconditional surrender of Ukraine.[22] Footage from the funeral service and burial show Russian forces giving Fomin military honors.[23] Fomin’s funeral could be the first instance of a Wagner-affiliated funeral receiving official Russian military honors.
Russia’s missile campaign to degrade Ukraine’s unified energy infrastructure has failed definitively, and Russia appears to have abandoned the effort. Ukrainian Energy Minister Herman Halushchenko announced on April 8 that Ukraine is resuming energy exports for the first time since October 11, 2022.[24] Russian authorities began efforts in October to degrade Ukrainian energy infrastructure to a significant extent by the end of winter, which Russians consider March 1;[25] however, the series of large-scale Russian missile strikes on energy infrastructure failed to achieve the assessed Russian aims of causing a humanitarian disaster, weakening Ukrainian military capabilities, and forcing Ukraine to negotiate. State-run Russian media acknowledged this failure on March 1.[26] Russia likely abandoned the effort soon after. The United Kingdom Ministry of Defense (UK MoD) noted on April 8 that the frequency of Russian large-scale, long-range attacks on energy infrastructure has decreased since March 2023. The UK MoD assessed that Russia continues small-scale strikes (strikes using fewer than 25 munitions) with predictably less effect.[27] Russia maintains the capability to renew such strikes though, if it so desired. Halushchenko stated that Ukraine has the flexibility to adjust Ukrainian energy exports if the situation changes.[28]
The Kremlin is likely intensifying legal punishments for terrorism-related crimes as part of a larger effort to promote self-censorship and establish legal conditions for intensified domestic repressions. Duma Chairman of the Committee on Security and Anti-Corruption Vasily Piskarev stated on April 7 that the State Duma has introduced amendments to increase prison terms for committing acts of terrorism, assistance to terrorist activities or organizations or participation in a terrorist community, sabotage, and acts of international terrorism.[29] Russian President Vladimir Putin also recently signed two bills expanding legal punishment for the discreditation of all Russian personnel fighting in Ukraine and for the misappropriation of Russian military assets, likely to promote sell-censorship and facilitate crackdowns on anti-war dissent.[30] Russian sources have previously reported that the Federal Security Service (FSB) is increasingly detaining Russian civilians under suspicions of financially assisting Ukrainian forces and that Russian authorities appear to be cracking down against bars in urban areas that host Russian civil society groups.[31] The Kremlin has introduced indefinite terrorism warning regimes in occupied territories and maximum, medium, and elevated levels of martial law in many western Russian oblasts, and Russian authorities in these areas may more readily apply the expanded terrorism terms to further stifle resistance to occupation authorities as well as dissent in Russia itself.[32]
Russian authorities are likely planning to further expand what they deem to be terroristic and extremist affiliations to encourage self-censorship. Duma Deputy Head of the Committee on Information Policy Oleg Matveichev stated on April 4 that he has prepared a bill to recognize feminism as an extremist ideology and argued that feminists overwhelmingly oppose the “military operation” in Ukraine.[33] Matveichev argued that Ukrainian feminism consists of women serving together with men fighting against Russians and alleged that the woman accused of killing of Russian milblogger Maxim Fomin (Vladlen Tartarsky) was motivated by feminist ideology.[34] Matveichev has not specified how the bill would define feminism, and the bill may use a vague overarching definition in order to further promote widespread self-censorship. Russian authorities may increasingly portray other ideologies and groups not explicitly aligned with the Kremlin as being against the war in Ukraine in order to set conditions for increased crackdowns and self-censorship. Ukrainian “feminism” would appear to be giving Ukraine an advantage in this war since, as Matveichev notes, it has brought many talented and determined Ukrainian women into the fight.
The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) may be setting conditions for a false flag attack in Sumy Oblast. The Russian MoD claimed on April 8 that Ukrainian forces have been delivering dead bodies from morgues to Okhtyrka, Sumy Oblast and applying toxic chemicals to the remains and the area in order to allege that Russian forces used chemical weapons.[35] Russian forces may be attempting to set informational conditions for future chemical weapons attacks in Sumy Oblast or to justify previous chemical weapons use, although ISW has not observed Russian forces recently using chemical weapons in the area. It is unclear what overarching effect the Kremlin intends to achieve with increasingly outlandish and ineffective Russian information operations alleging Ukrainian false flag attacks.
Key Takeaways
- Ukrainian and Russian sources discussed the decreased rate of Russian offensive operations along the entire frontline on April 8, supporting ISW’s assessment that the overall Russian offensive is approaching culmination.
- The dynamics of battlefield artillery usage in Ukraine reflect the fact that Russian forces are using artillery to offset their degraded offensive capabilities.
- Former Russian officer and ardent nationalist Igor Girkin launched a new effort likely aimed at protecting the influence the Russian pro-war faction within the Kremlin.
- The “Club of Angry Patriot’s” reveals several key implications about the Kremlin dynamics and the perceived danger to Putin’s regime.
- Girkin may be advancing the political goals of unnamed figures within Russian power structures possibly within the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB).
- Russian nationalists seized on assassinated Russian milblogger Maxim Fomin’s funeral to promote pro-war narratives.
- Russia’s missile campaign to degrade Ukraine’s unified energy infrastructure has failed definitively, and Russia appears to have abandoned the effort.
- The Kremlin is likely intensifying legal punishments for terrorism-related crimes as part of a larger effort to promote self-censorship and establish legal conditions for intensified domestic repressions.
- The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) may be setting conditions for a false flag attack in Sumy Oblast.
- Russian forces conducted limited ground attacks along the Svatove-Kreminna line.
- Russian forces have continued to make gains around Bakhmut, and tensions between the Wagner Group and conventional Russian forces over responsibility for tactical gains in Bakhmut appear to be intensifying.
- Russian sources continued to speculate about the planned Ukrainian counteroffensive in southern Ukraine, including hypothesizing about the possibility of a Ukrainian amphibious landing across the Kakhovka Reservoir.
- The Russian Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) on April 6 proposed a defense industrial base (DIB) deregulation reform that could expedite defense production but will more likely facilitate corruption and embezzlement.
- Ukrainian officials reported that 31 children returned to Ukraine after having been deported to Russia as Russian officials continue to discuss the adoption of Ukrainian children into Russian families.
We do not report in detail on Russian war crimes because these activities are well-covered in Western media and do not directly affect the military operations we are assessing and forecasting. We will continue to evaluate and report on the effects of these criminal activities on the Ukrainian military and the Ukrainian population and specifically on combat in Ukrainian urban areas. We utterly condemn these Russian violations of the laws of armed conflict, Geneva Conventions, and humanity even though we do not describe them in these reports.
- Russian Main Effort – Eastern Ukraine (comprised of two subordinate main efforts)
- Russian Subordinate Main Effort #1 – Capture the remainder of Luhansk Oblast and push westward into eastern Kharkiv Oblast and encircle northern Donetsk Oblast
- Russian Subordinate Main Effort #2 – Capture the entirety of Donetsk Oblast
- Russian Supporting Effort – Southern Axis
- Russian Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts
- Activities in Russian-occupied areas
Russian Main Effort – Eastern Ukraine
Russian Subordinate Main Effort #1 – Luhansk Oblast (Russian objective: Capture the remainder of Luhansk Oblast and push westward into eastern Kharkiv Oblast and northern Donetsk Oblast)
Russian forces continue to fortify Russian border regions. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces continue to construct fortifications in areas of Kursk Oblast that border Ukraine and maintain a presence in border areas of Kursk and Belgorod oblasts.[36] ISW previously assessed that Russian forces may be constructing fortifications in Russian oblasts bordering Ukraine to support the information operation to frame the war as an existential threat to Russia, as well to disperse Ukrainian forces by pinning them to border areas away from the frontline.[37]
Russian forces conducted limited ground attacks along the Svatove-Kreminna line on April 8. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces conducted unsuccessful offensive operations near Kreminna itself, Kuzmyne (3km southwest of Kreminna), the Serebrianska forest area (10km south of Kreminna), and Verkhnokamianske (18km south of Kreminna).[38] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces conducted ground attacks near Terny (17km northwest of Kreminna) and Nevske (20km northwest of Kreminna).[39] Another Russian milblogger claimed that a newly-formed artillery battalion of the 2nd Luhansk People‘s Republic (LNR) Army Corps comprised of volunteers operate on the Kreminna-Bilohorivka line.[40]
Russian Subordinate Main Effort #2 – Donetsk Oblast (Russian Objective: Capture the entirety of Donetsk Oblast, the claimed territory of Russia’s proxies in Donbas)
Russian forces have continued to make gains in Bakhmut as of April 8. Geolocated footage published on April 7 indicates that Russian forces likely advanced close to the T0504 highway in southwestern Bakhmut.[41] Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian forces advanced in southern and central Bakhmut.[42] A Russian source claimed on the night of April 7 that Wagner forces had entirely captured Bakhmut and that Ukrainian forces were retreating to Chasiv Yar, but later retracted the claim on April 8 and stated that Ukrainian forces only retreated from the central part of Bakhmut to the western parts of the city.[43] ISW has not seen visual confirmation of Russian claims that Wagner forces control all of central Bakhmut, and the relatively decreased rate of Wagner’s advance in the center of the city indicates that Ukrainian forces are still actively defending their positions in that part of the city. Other Russian milbloggers claimed that Wagner fighters are attempting to advance from the south and east towards Bakhmut city center to pressure Ukrainian forces to withdraw from the area.[44]
Russian forces continued offensive operations around Bakhmut on April 8. A Russian milblogger claimed that Wagner fighters conducted assaults near Orikhovo-Vasylivka (11km northwest of Bakhmut), Bohdanivka (6km northwest of Bakhmut), and Bila Hora (14km southwest of Bakhmut).[45] Another Russian milblogger claimed on April 7 that Russian forces continued offensive operations west of Klishchiivka (6km southwest of Bakhmut) and Kurdyumivka (13km southwest of Bakhmut) and that Russian and Ukrainian forces are both unable to advance near Ivanivske (6km west of Bakhmut) and along sections of the T0504 highway southwest of Bakhmut.[46] Russian sources widely claimed that Wagner forces have started to heavily interdict or completely cut off all Ukrainian ground lines of communication (GLOCs) into Bakhmut.[47] A Russian milblogger added that muddy road conditions are constraining Ukrainian abilities to supply their grouping in Bakhmut.[48] Previous Russian claims about the ability of Russian forces to interdict Ukrainian GLOCs in the Bakhmut area have been exaggerated, and Ukrainian forces likely do not need to move heavy equipment into Bakhmut itself to conduct the current urban combat operations occurring in the city. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces conducted unsuccessful offensive operations near Bohdanivka and Ivanivske.[49]
Tensions between the Wagner Group and conventional Russian forces over responsibility for tactical gains in Bakhmut appear to be intensifying. Wagner financier Yevgeny Prigozhin responded to advisor to the head of Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) Yan Gain’s claims about that Russian forces captured the Bakhmut-1 railway station and stated that he is little aware of Russian forces’ actions in Bakhmut since he did not see conventional Russian forces there.[50] Prigozhin claimed on April 7 that Wagner fighters are still engaged in fierce fighting near the railway station, likely in an effort to portray himself as a reliable and pragmatic source for tactical information in Bakhmut in comparison to other overly optimistic Russian sources.[51] The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) previously faced intense backlash over claims that Russian forces captured Soledar (12km northeast of Bakhmut) after Wagner forces captured the settlement on January 11.[52] Tensions over responsibility for tactical success in Bakhmut will likely continue to feed into the conflict between Prigozhin and the Russian MoD.
The tempo of Russian offensive operations along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City frontline has reportedly decreased. The Ukrainian General Staff reported on April 8 that Russian forces conducted unsuccessful offensive operations near Novokalynove (13km north of Avdiivka) and within 32km southwest of Avdiivka near Sieverne, Pervomaiske, Marinka, and Pobieda.[53] The Ukrainian Head of the Council of Reservists of Ground Forces, Ivan Tymochko, reported that Russian advances on Avdiivka have stalled but that Russian forces are maintaining their operational tempo near Marinka (27km southwest of Avdiivka).[54] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces conducted roughly a quarter of all their assaults in Ukraine in the Marinka area on April 8.[55] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces attempted to advance through forest areas north and south of Marinka.[56] Another Russian milblogger claimed on April 8 that the tempo of Russian operations along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City frontline has noticeably decreased over the past day.[57]
Russian forces did not conduct any confirmed ground attacks in western Donetsk Oblast on April 8.
Russian Supporting Effort – Southern Axis (Russian objective: Maintain frontline positions and secure rear areas against Ukrainian strikes)
Ukrainian special forces, intelligence, and naval sources revealed that Ukrainian forces unsuccessfully attempted to stage an amphibious landing on the east (left) bank of the Dnipro River on October 19, 2022, to liberate the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP).[58] Ukrainian officials told The Times that about 600 Ukrainian servicemen on 30 armored boats attempted to land near the ZNPP, but that only one Ukrainian group was able to reach occupied territory due to the Russian artillery fire and Russian use of tanks to repel Ukrainian advances. The group retreated back to the west (right) bank of the Dnipro River after three hours of close combat on the outskirts of Enerhodar. Ukrainian sources stated that Ukrainian special forces anticipated that Russians would engage in infantry combat out of concern for the safety of the ZNPP and revealed that Russian forces set up dense defensive lines and mined the territory nearby. ISW reported on October 19 that Russian sources accused Ukrainians of attempting land near the ZNPP but failed to assess that a landing had taken place at that time.[59] Ukrainian state nuclear energy company Energoatom reported on April 8 that Russian forces are installing additional fences around the ZNPP and are restricting the movement of vehicles on the territory of the plant.
Russian sources continued to speculate about the planned Ukrainian counteroffensive in southern Ukraine, including hypothesizing about the possibility of a Ukrainian amphibious landing across the Kakhovka Reservoir. Prominent Russian milbloggers amplified The Times’ report, which further corroborates that Russian forces have heavy military equipment in the immediate vicinity of the ZNPP.[60] Another prominent milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces can reach occupied Zaporizhia Oblast via the Kakhovka Reservoir in one to three minutes in certain areas.[61] The milblogger stated that a Ukrainian landing is unlikely due to Russian fortifications and mining, and because a combined regiment of personnel from the Republic of Bashkortostan and elements of an unspecified Far Eastern airborne unit will repel Ukrainian attacks. The milblogger claimed, however, that such a landing could pose a threat to Russian grouping of forces in western Zaporizhia Oblast if Ukrainians attempt to simultaneously advance in another area. Zaporizhia Oblast occupation official Vladimir Rogov amplified Sentinel-2 imagery showing a Russian 70km-long anti-tank ditch about 50km east of Melitopol claiming that Russians are prepared to resist Ukrainian counteroffensives.[62] Another milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces are intensifying reconnaissance-in-force operations in Zaporizhia Oblast.[63]
Russian occupation officials and sources claimed that Russian air defenses shot down a Ukrainian missile over Feodosiya in southeastern Crimea on April 8.[64] Geolocated footage showed an explosion near the Russian anti-aircraft missile base in Feodosiya.[65] Russian milbloggers and news aggregators speculated that Ukrainian forces may have used the Ukrainian Hrim-2 short-range ballistic missile or US-provided ATACMS long-range missile systems, despite the fact that US has not sent such systems to Ukraine.[66]
Russian Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts (Russian objective: Expand combat power without conducting general mobilization)
The Russian Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) on April 6 proposed a defense industrial base (DIB) deregulation reform that could expedite defense production but will more likely facilitate corruption and embezzlement. The FAS proposed that the state release state defense order executors and customers from the requirement to notify the department of an increase in material and service prices, a requirement theoretically controlling the artificial inflation of prices.[67]
The Russian defense industry likely heavily relies on Chinese components to support domestic drone production. A major Russian news source cited on April 7 the anonymous head of an unspecified kamikaze drone assembly facility in Khanty-Mansiysk, Khanty-Mansy Autonomous Okrug stating that the organization orders its main components in China for assembly in Khanty-Mansiysk.[68] A Russian milblogger claimed on April 7 that he received information about a factory in China that received an order for 100,000 units of kamikaze drone batteries.[69] If this report is true, Russian actors likely ordered these batteries.
Russian prioritization of military needs at the expense of domestic needs appears to be causing limited domestic discontent. A regional opposition news source reported on April 7 that ambulance drivers in Cheboksary, Chuvashia recorded a video complaint that they must purchase spare parts at their own expense when the Chuvashia Ministry of Health provided four ambulances for service on the front lines.[70] Regional Russian governments and organizations continue to make routine “donations” to the war effort, likely at the request of higher authorities.[71]
Russian authorities continue to rhetorically distance the spring conscription effort from the ongoing war in Ukraine, supporting ISW’s previous assessment that Russian authorities are concerned about the potential domestic response to the deployment of conscripts and are unlikely to use conscripts to fill personnel needs at the front. A St. Petersburg news source reported on April 7 that Western Military District Organizational Mobilization Department Headquarters Acting Head Colonel Igor Golovach denied that the Western Military District has called up more conscripts than usual due to the war. Golovach claimed that the “slightly higher” number of conscripts is due to an overall increase in the size of Russia’s armed forces.[72] A regional news source reported that Krasnodar Krai Governor Veniamin Kondratyev met with the Kuba military commissar on April 7 and stressed that Russian authorities will not send any of the territory’s spring conscripts to war.[73]
Activities in Russian-occupied areas (Russian objective: Consolidate administrative control of annexed areas; forcibly integrate Ukrainian civilians into Russian sociocultural, economic, military, and governance systems)
Russian occupation officials continue efforts to coerce residents of occupied Ukraine to obtain Russian passports. The Kherson Oblast occupation multifunctional center (center for the provision of state and municipal services) outlined the requirements for application for the compulsory health insurance policy, which includes a Russian passport and Russian SNILS (individual insurance account number issued by the Russian Pension Fund).[74] Occupation authorities in Kherson Oblast are institutionalizing coercive passportization measures by forcing residents to obtain Russian passports and register for SNILS numbers in exchange for mandatory enrollment in health insurance plans. The Ukrainian Resistance Center similarly reported on April 8 that Russian occupation officials are issuing housing certificates in an amount of 2.9 million rubles ($35,713) that would hypothetically allow Ukrainians to live in Russia in order to encourage Ukrainians to receive Russian passports.[75] Russian occupation officials may be pushing passportization efforts in part in order to facilitate the depopulation of occupied areas and bring large populations of Ukrainians to Russian regions.
Ukrainian officials reported that 31 children returned to Ukraine after being deported to Russia as Russian officials continue to discuss the adoption of Ukrainian children into Russian families. The “Save Ukraine” foundation announced on April 8 that 31 children returned to Ukraine following a fifth rescue mission led by “Save Ukraine.”[76] Russian Commissioner for Children’s Rights Maria Lvova-Belova praised Moscow Oblast residents on April 7 for taking in the largest number of children from occupied Donetsk Oblast.[77] Moscow Oblast Commissioner for Children’s Rights Ksenia Mishonov noted that she has personally visited 114 Moscow Oblast families who have adopted Ukrainian children from Donetsk Oblast.[78] The adoption of Ukrainian children into Russian families is likely further complicating Ukrainian efforts to repatriate deported children as adoption legally and administratively integrates deported children into Russian families.
Significant activity in Belarus (ISW assesses that a Russian or Belarusian attack into northern Ukraine in early 2023 is extraordinarily unlikely and has thus restructured this section of the update. It will no longer include counter-indicators for such an offensive.)
ISW will continue to report daily observed Russian and Belarusian military activity in Belarus, but these are not indicators that Russian and Belarusian forces are preparing for an imminent attack on Ukraine from Belarus. ISW will revise this text and its assessment if it observes any unambiguous indicators that Russia or Belarus is preparing to attack northern Ukraine.
Nothing significant to report.
Note: ISW does not receive any classified material from any source, uses only publicly available information, and draws extensively on Russian, Ukrainian, and Western reporting and social media as well as commercially available satellite imagery and other geospatial data as the basis for these reports. References to all sources used are provided in the endnotes of each update.
[1] https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign...
[2] https://suspilne dot media/439395-ce-vze-ne-ataki-dla-prorivu-golova-radi-rezervistiv-rozpoviv-pro-dii-rf-na-fronti/
[3] https://suspilne dot media/439395-ce-vze-ne-ataki-dla-prorivu-golova-radi-rezervistiv-rozpoviv-pro-dii-rf-na-fronti/
[4] https://suspilne dot media/439395-ce-vze-ne-ataki-dla-prorivu-golova-radi-rezervistiv-rozpoviv-pro-dii-rf-na-fronti/
[5] https://t.me/wargonzo/11833
[6] https://t.me/dva_majors/12656; https://t.me/aleksandr_skif/2654; https://www.kp dot ru/daily/27488.5/4745350/; https://t.me/sashakots/39235; https://t.me/sashakots/39234; https://t.me/wargonzo/11847; https://t.me/wargonzo/11841
[7] https://t.me/aleksandr_skif/2654
[8] https://t.me/aleksandr_skif/2654
[9] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/04/08/ukraine-ammunition-short...
[10] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iUs1OIsBZc
[11] https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign...; https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign...
[12] https://t.me/soldiers_truth/8685; https://twitter.com/GirkinGirkin/status/1644633301083123713
[13] https://t.me/pgubarev/608; https://t.me/strelkovii/4458
[14] https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign...; https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign... https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign...
[15] https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign...
[16] https://theins dot ru/politika/253140
[17] https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign...; https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign...
[18] https://understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-ass...
[19] https://t.me/NeoficialniyBeZsonoV/24062 ; https://t.me/RtrDonetsk/16569 ; https://t.me/NeoficialniyBeZsonoV/24056 ; https://t.me/boris_rozhin/82529; https://t.me/readovkanews/56482; https://t.me/readovkanews/56483; https://t.me/readovkanews/56484; https://t.me/readovkanews/56481; https://t.me/readovkanews/56478; https://t.me/readovkanews/56477; https://t.me/basurin_e/629; https://meduza dot io/news/2023/04/08/v-moskve-prohodit-tseremoniya-proschaniya-s-voenkorom-vladlenom-tatarskim
[20] https://t.me/ok_spn/23873; https://t.me/rusvarg/1944; https://twitter.com/666_mancer/status/1644658412238565378?s=20; https://t.me/voenkorKotenok/46644 ; https://t.me/boris_rozhin/82527; https://t.me/cyber_frontZ/10746
[21] https://t.me/basurin_e/629
[22] https://t.me/basurin_e/628
[23] https://t.me/miroshnik_r/10986; https://t.me/cyber_frontZ/10763
[24] https://suspilne dot media/439248-ukraina-vidnovlue-eksport-elektroenergii-vitik-sekretnih-danih-sodo-ukrainskogo-kontrnastupu-409-den-vijni-onlajn/
[25] https://www.bbc.com/russian/news-65222115; https://twitter.com/DefenceHQ/status/1644578263853932546; https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1631259048384372739; https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign...
[26] https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1631259048384372739;
[27] https://twitter.com/DefenceHQ/status/1644578263853932546
[28] https://suspilne dot media/439248-ukraina-vidnovlue-eksport-elektroenergii-vitik-sekretnih-danih-sodo-ukrainskogo-kontrnastupu-409-den-vijni-onlajn/
[29] https://t.me/vasilii_piskarev/674;
[30] https://isw.pub/UkrWar0318723
[31] https://isw.pub/UkrWar040223 ; https://isw.pub/UkrWar032223
[32] https://isw.pub/UkrWar020323 ; https://isw.pub/RusCampaignOct19
[33] https://www.kommersant dot ru/doc/5914178
[34] https://www.kommersant dot ru/doc/5914178
[35] https://t.me/mod_russia/25472
[36] https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid0242JWNs2T7T9moW8p89...
[37] https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign...
[38] https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid02g34BLKj4wzggiVuJeK... https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid026X7dyboc8SrCdHkCeh...
[39] https://t.me/wargonzo/11833
[40] https://www.kp dot ru/daily/27488.5/4745350/; https://t.me/sashakots/39235; https://t.me/sashakots/39234
[41] https://twitter.com/War_cube_/status/1644394335452921861; https://twitter.com/War_cube_/status/1644394664194080802; https://twitter.com/Marek65234278/status/1644397229396959250; https://t.me/z_arhiv/20152?single; https://t.me/marksman_osman/1216
[42] https://t.me/rybar/45600 ; https://t.me/z_arhiv/20165; https://t.me/z_arhiv/20152; https://t.me/grey_zone/18087
[43] https://t.me/readovkanews/56462 ; https://t.me/readovkanews/56488 ;
[44] https://t.me/wargonzo/11833 ; https://t.me/rybar/45600
[45] https://t.me/wargonzo/11833
[46] https://t.me/voenkorKotenok/46633
[47] https://t.me/readovkanews/56488 ; https://t.me/milchronicles/1750 ; https://t.me/boris_rozhin/82526
[48] https://t.me/milchronicles/1750
[49] https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid026X7dyboc8SrCdHkCeh... ; https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid02g34BLKj4wzggiVuJeK...
[50] https://t.me/concordgroup_official/706
[51] https://t.me/concordgroup_official/706
[52] https://isw.pub/UkrWar011323
[53] https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid026X7dyboc8SrCdHkCeh... ; https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid02g34BLKj4wzggiVuJeK...
[54] . https://suspilne dot media/439395-ce-vze-ne-ataki-dla-prorivu-golova-radi-rezervistiv-rozpoviv-pro-dii-rf-na-fronti/
[55] https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid026X7dyboc8SrCdHkCeh... ; https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid02g34BLKj4wzggiVuJeK...
[56] https://t.me/rybar/45585
[57] https://t.me/wargonzo/11833
[58] https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/ukrainian-zaporizhzhia-nuclear-power-...
[59] https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign...
[60] https://t.me/sashakots/39233; https://t.me/epoddubny/15440
[61] https://t.me/Sladkov_plus/7503
[62] https://t.me/vrogov/8613;
[63] https://t.me/russkiy_opolchenec/36277
[64] https://t.me/Aksenov82/2325 ; https://t.me/voenkorKotenok/46640 ; https://t.me/voenkorKotenok/46641; https://t.me/russkiy_opolchenec/36278
[65] https://twitter.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1644623462852354050 ; https://twitter.com/GeoConfirmed/status/1644676957315932160 ; https://twitter.com/GeoConfirmed/status/1644676957315932160 ; https://twitter.com/Militarylandnet/status/1644622904519192576
[66] https://t.me/rybar/45593; https://t.me/rybar/45592; https://t.me/readovkanews/56487; https://t.me/readovkaru/2985
[67] https://t.me/sotaproject/56665; https://regulation dot gov.ru/projects#npa=137308; https://gkgz dot ru/fas-predlagaet-osvobodit-ispolnitelej-i-zakazchikov-gosoboronzakaza-ot-neobhodimosti-uvedomlyat-vedomstvo-o-povyshenii-tsen-na-materialy-i-uslugi/
[68] https://neft dot media/vse-regiony/news/v-stolice-hmao-nachali-delat-dronov-kamikadze-dlya-nuzhd-svo; https://notes.citeam.org/mobilization-apr-6-7
[69] https://twitter.com/GirkinGirkin/status/1644451615477231621; https://t.me/MishaDonbass/627
[70] https://t.me/ChuvashiaDream/6722; https://notes.citeam.org/mobilization-apr-6-7; https://t.me/ChuvashiaDream/6664; https://t.me/arh_29ru/6668
[71] https://twitter.com/GirkinGirkin/status/1644588605032001537; https://t.me/news_86ru/949; https://t.me/ChuvashiaDream/6722; https://notes.citeam.org/mobilization-apr-6-7; https://t.me/ChuvashiaDream/6664; https://t.me/arh_29ru/6668
[72] https://t.me/fontankaspb/37424; https://t.me/paperpaper_ru/35068
[73] https://93 dot ru/text/gorod/2023/04/07/72202346/
[74] https://t.me/mfc_kherson/259
[75] https://sprotyv.mod dot gov.ua/2023/04/08/okupaczijni-administracziyi-prodovzhuyut-zahody-spryamovani-na-masovu-pasportyzacziyu-meshkancziv-tot-hersonskoyi-oblasti/
[76] https://t.me/UkraineMediaCenterKyiv/5285 ; https://suspilne dot media/439248-ukraina-vidnovlue-eksport-elektroenergii-vitik-sekretnih-danih-sodo-ukrainskogo-kontrnastupu-409-den-vijni-onlajn/
[77] https://t.me/malvovabelova/1299
[78] https://t.me/ostorozhnodeti/3622;
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7. China Gears Up for Cognitive Warfare
China Gears Up for Cognitive Warfare
Like the U.S. military, the PLA is working on wearable sensors and other ways to hone and maintain troops' fighting spirit.
By JOSH BAUGHMAN and PETER W. SINGER
APRIL 7, 2023
defenseone.com · by Josh Baughman
China’s military is increasingly at work on wearable technology and a dedicated psychological support system to win at what it views as the crucial space of cognitive warfare—manipulating enemy troops’ state of mind to shape their behavior and hardening its own forces against such efforts.
“In future cognitive domain operations, the influence of rational factors such as science and logic on individual cognition is likely to be weakened, and cognitive confrontation may become a contest of emotions,” says one recent article in PLA Daily. “The rapid development of intelligent technology is changing the logic of information dissemination in an all-round way, making the impact of information on thinking and consciousness more profound and comprehensive, and human brain cognition has truly risen to an important field of military confrontation.”
Cognitive domain operations seek to capture the mind of one’s foes, changing the thoughts and perceptions of an adversary to shape their decisions and actions. As another People’s Liberation Army outlet describes, a cognitive attack aims to “use an “invisible hand” to control the opponent’s will, making the opponent feel “I can’t” and “I dare not,” and then achieve the effect of “I don't want to.”
Given such perceived stakes, PLA media is also more and more concerned with warding off such attacks and steeling their forces’ will in the mental aspects of war.. In “Cultivate a Good Combat Psychology,” the authors write, “War is not only a material contest, but also a spiritual contest. People are always the decisive factor in the outcome of a war, and the effective functioning of people depends on the support of a good psychological situation and stable psychological quality.”Training for mental resolve, they write, can help ward off sensory disorders and other problems that can hurt judgment and decision-making. Training environments must “improve the psychological adaptation, stability, and endurance of officers and soldiers on the battlefield.” In line with an ideological theme that cuts through much of PLA writing, they say such training can help troops cultivate “revolutionary heroism” that acts as a “spiritual sword” to overwhelm and defeat enemies.
Because the mental state has been elevated to high importance in the PLA, technical means are being turned to in growing effort to improve wartime psychological assessment, early warning, and intervention as needed. In a growing number of PLA units, each soldier is being given smart sensor bracelets, which PLA Daily reports can provide “physiological data in real time, and promptly dispatches a psychological counselor to carry out psychological counseling.” The bracelets are part of what the PLA has dubbed their Intelligent Psychological Monitoring System (智能心理监测系统), which reportedly allows each unit to “continuously record the facial information of officers and soldiers, judge the psychological state of officers and soldiers in real time through data feedback, and archive them.”
The PLA is also expanding use of high-stress virtual-reality simulations to make officers and soldiers feel like they are in actual combat. The value of VR also lies in how the data collected during such training sessions can then be used in the future, to better prepare other soldiers for combat.
On the lower-tech side, the PLA has built “anti-stress training halls, psychological behavior training fields, and group stress-training halls,” all designed to act as “a spiritual station for officers and soldiers to provide psychological consultation, emotional release, and physical and mental adjustment.”
Of course, the U.S. military is working on its own technology-fueled efforts to assess and shape American troops’ mental state. In 2020, the Defense Innovation Unit helped equip some 8,500 soldiers with a Garmin watch and Oura Ring to gather data from 165 biomarkers to monitor health and provide predictive analytics. More recently, U.S. Air Force researchers are asking industry to develop wearable computers and sensors to detect and counter fatigue and stress among warfighters, doctors, nurses, and first-responders. The initiative “seeks to develop wearable systems that continuously monitor biometrics of fatigue and stress using electrophysiological sensors and biomarkers of stress such as cortisol, DHEA-s, epinephrine, and NPY in interstitial fluid (ISF).”
The U.S. Army is similarly working on developing wearable biofeedback devices, announcing various pilot contracts to “leverage new and innovative wearable technologies and capabilities to enhance Soldier operational readiness and sustainability.” According to Michael Baum, Branch Chief of the Combat Capabilities Development Command Aviation and Missile Center, “The Army is hoping that some of the data taken from these biofeedback devices will help the service design more effective training scenarios as part of its synthetic training environment, an effort to create realistic training simulations using gaming technology.”
The stakes of this competition in the cognitive domain may be high indeed. As one researcher from China’s Academy of Military Sciences wrote last year: “Military confrontation, on the surface, is a confrontation between the hard powers of the two sides, but at a deeper level, no matter what the nature of the war and the purpose, it is ultimately a contest of human will.”
Josh Baughman is an Analyst at China Aerospace Studies Institute, Air University.
P.W. Singer is senior fellow and strategist at New America.
Opinions, conclusions, and recommendations expressed or implied within are solely those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of the Air University, the Department of the Air Force, the Department of Defense, or any other U.S. government agency. Cleared for public release: distribution unlimited.
defenseone.com · by Josh Baughman
8. Analysis | China’s new world order is taking shape
My view of China's intent for the "world order:" China seeks to export its authoritarian political system around the world in order to dominate regions, co-opt or coerce international organizations, create economic conditions favorable to China alone, and displace democratic institutions.
Excerpts:
A global order defined — or heavily sculpted — by Beijing’s one-party regime would not be an attractive prospect to most countries. China is, in the Economist’s gloomy analysis, a would-be “superpower that seeks influence without winning affection, power without trust and a global vision without universal human rights.”
But its greater clout on the world stage need not always ring alarm bells. “Not everything between the U.S. and China has to be a zero-sum game,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), who leads the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s Middle East panel, told Politico in the context of Beijing’s Middle East diplomacy. “I don’t know why we would perceive there to be a downside to de-escalation between Saudi Arabia and Iran.”
Analysis | China’s new world order is taking shape
Analysis by
April 10, 2023 at 12:00 a.m. EDT
The Washington Post · by Ishaan Tharoor · April 10, 2023
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It was a bumper week for diplomacy in Beijing. Chinese President Xi Jinping accompanied his French counterpart, President Emmanuel Macron, on a three-day visit to the Chinese capital and the southern metropolis of Guangzhou. Escaping, if briefly, from the fiery protests taking place in his own country, Macron was received by adoring, excited crowds of students at Guangzhou’s Sun Yat-sen University. In between grand receptions and formal tea ceremonies, the two leaders saw a slate of French companies and Chinese state-run firms clinch some major business deals.
Macron gave Xi the optics he sought: A clear reminder to the United States — who Xi obliquely referred to as a domineering “third party” — of the gap between its hawkish stance on China and the more perhaps equivocating posture of many in Europe. It was less clear what Xi gave Macron politically: The French president urged Xi to bring Russia “to reason” over its invasion of Ukraine, but that was met by boilerplate rhetoric and little indication of the needle of the conflict being moved in any significant direction.
In what was framed as a joint call with France, Xi urged for peace talks to resume soon and called “for the protection of civilians,” while also reiterating that “nuclear weapons must not be used, and nuclear war must not be fought” over Ukraine. That latter point marked perhaps the biggest distance between Xi and Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has periodically rattled the nuclear saber as the war he unleashed in Ukraine lurches on. Despite European entreaties, Xi made no definitive commitment to speak with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Macron was joined in China by Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission. The two leaders sent somewhat divergent messages; von der Leyen bemoaned China’s “unfair practices,” particularly in trade, and arrived in the country after delivering a tough speech on the authoritarian challenge posed by Beijing. Macron, on the other hand, warned against the West plunging itself into an “inescapable spiral” of tensions with China.
Chinese commentators suggested that’s because the tables of history have turned and Macron recognizes the sheer weight and importance of China’s economy, not least at a moment when he’s trying to carve out a vision of a more robust, capable and independent Europe. “Although there are still concerns in France about our country’s increasing [global] role, China’s support is essential if France wants to exercise its soft power in global governance,” Shanghai-based scholars Zhang Ji and Xue Sheng wrote in a recent essay.
In the middle of Macron’s visit, another major summit took place in Beijing. The foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia and Iran — the Middle East’s feuding antagonists — conducted the highest-level meeting between their two countries in seven years in the Chinese capital. In Washington, a bemused clutch of regional experts looked on as China played the role of a stabilizing outside power in the Middle East.
The thaw between Riyadh and Tehran was long in the works and not exclusively because of Chinese efforts. “Analysts say the warming ties are due to a convergence of interests,” wrote my colleagues Kareem Fahim and Sarah Dadouch. “Iran, under Western sanctions and trying to suffocate a domestic protest movement, has looked to ease its global and regional isolation; Saudi Arabia, faced with security threats from Iran that threaten its plan to diversify the kingdom’s economy away from oil, is seeking to tamp down regional tensions — a strategy that has included pursuing partnerships with major world powers beyond the United States.”
But it does invariably show a waning of American influence, especially over the Saudis. “Many experts still assume that whoever is in the White House will guide Saudi policy on Iran, but that simply isn’t true today,” said Anna Jacobs, a senior Gulf analyst at the International Crisis Group, to the New York Times. “Saudi Arabia and Gulf Arab states are focusing on their economic, political and security interests and protecting themselves from regional threats.”
Enter Xi’s China, an economic juggernaut now flexing new geopolitical muscles. “China has in recent years declared that it needs to be a participant in the creation of the world order,” former U.S. secretary of state Henry Kissinger told Post columnist David Ignatius last month. “It has now made a significant move in that direction.”
The contours of this imagined Chinese world order are still difficult to sketch. We know about its vast economic ambitions, including the Belt and Road Initiative that has seen China finance and invest in major infrastructure projects around the world. But in recent weeks, Xi has touted a number of other new initiatives over “security” and “civilization” — still vague policy positions essentially challenging the architecture of the U.S.-led order, as well as the concept of universal values.
“It appears to be a counterargument to [President] Biden’s autocracy versus democracy narrative,” Moritz Rudolf, a research scholar at Yale Law School’s Paul Tsai China Center, told the Financial Times. “It’s an ideological battle that’s more attractive to developing countries than people in Washington might believe.”
China’s foray into Middle East great power politics, in particular, show a new capacity and willingness to act. “In the past we would declare some principles, make our position known but not get involved operationally. That is going to change,” said Wu Xinbo, dean of the Institute of International Studies at Fudan University in Shanghai, said in the same Financial Times story.
L'Europe est en train de bâtir une autonomie stratégique au service d'un projet commun, jumelle de l'indépendance française.
Avec la Chine, notre approche repose avant tout sur une plus grande réciprocité, en vue de parvenir à un nouvel équilibre. pic.twitter.com/RINzQB94Gd
— Emmanuel Macron (@EmmanuelMacron) April 6, 2023
For some analysts, Macron’s visit is a reminder of the tough questions facing Europe. While the war in Ukraine and antipathy toward Russia have galvanized the transatlantic alliance, the question of China is thornier, with Chinese investment and trade vital to Europe’s future prospects. What that means for the grim scenarios that obsess Washington policymakers — including a possible future Chinese invasion of Taiwan — is an open question, and one that may elicit unwelcome answers on both sides of the pond.
“The paradox would be that, overcome with panic, we believe we are just America’s followers,” Macron told reporters traveling with him, before gesturing to current tensions over Taiwan. “The question Europeans need to answer … is it in our interest to accelerate [a crisis] on Taiwan? No. The worse thing would be to think that we Europeans must become followers on this topic and take our cue from the U.S. agenda and a Chinese overreaction.”
“What happens in Europe now — not just in terms of the outcome of this war [in Ukraine], but how Europeans define their relations with China in the future — will shape transatlantic relations,” wrote Andrew Michta, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. “And Europe’s choices when it comes to its China policy will greatly influence the outcome of U.S. competition with China in other theaters too.”
A global order defined — or heavily sculpted — by Beijing’s one-party regime would not be an attractive prospect to most countries. China is, in the Economist’s gloomy analysis, a would-be “superpower that seeks influence without winning affection, power without trust and a global vision without universal human rights.”
But its greater clout on the world stage need not always ring alarm bells. “Not everything between the U.S. and China has to be a zero-sum game,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), who leads the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s Middle East panel, told Politico in the context of Beijing’s Middle East diplomacy. “I don’t know why we would perceive there to be a downside to de-escalation between Saudi Arabia and Iran.”
The Washington Post · by Ishaan Tharoor · April 10, 2023
9. India, US special forces carry out wargames, focus on fighter aircraft ops amid China standoff
India, US special forces carry out wargames, focus on fighter aircraft ops amid China standoff
hindustantimes.com · April 9, 2023
Amid an ongoing military standoff with China, the Special Forces of the US and India are carrying out wargames with a focus on supporting fighter aircraft operations in forward areas.
Indian and US Army personnel take part in the India-US joint military exercise Yudh Abhyas 2023.(File photo)
The wargames are being carried out at Special Forces training centres near here, defence sources told ANI here.
The operations are likely to have focused on supporting the fighter aircraft operations including designating targets in frontline areas by laser so that the precision-guided bombs can reach their designated target accurately, the sources said.
The troops of both countries are likely to join up with the larger contingent of both sides including their fighter and transport aircraft at Kalaikunda codenamed Ex CopeIndia, the sources said.
The US Air Force is scheduled to bring in F-15 Strike Eagle fighter jets but there may be some change in the schedule of the drill which was planned to begin on April 10.
The Indian Air Force is carrying out multiple wargames and working towards strengthening the Indian military image globally as it has recently held exercises in the UK and the UAE with global powers.
It is also going to go to France with its most potent Rafale fighter jets for multilateral exercise Orion while it will also be in Greece for another wargame with its fighter jets from a frontline command.
The IAF has been the country's strongest arm along with the ground troops in the conflict with China as on multiple occasions they have deployed in forward areas very close to the border.
The Indian Special Forces troops are also deployed in mountainous peaks along with the Eastern Ladakh sector for supporting fighter aircraft and combat helicopter ops.
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hindustantimes.com · April 9, 2023
10. Left of Boom: Leveraging Security Force Assistance to Deter War
There is more to deterrence than training forces (regular and indigenous paramilitary and civilian resistance). It is not a silver bullet. But the benefit of training foreign forces is that if deterrence fails they should have the capability to defend themselves.
Excerpts:
Strategic forecasts can presume that a future confrontation—one involving direct US engagement—will be even costlier than the proxy conflict in Ukraine. To avoid that confrontation, there are two options, the United States must shift away from the status quo of talking points about increased cooperation and actively deepen security integration by using security force assistance to demonstrate American commitment to collective security. In the short term, security force assistance at least alters our competitors’ strategic calculus when considering the plunge into conflict. The US military—still establishing a new, post-Afghanistan identity for an era of strategic competition—is uniquely capable of building those integrated capabilities and deterring costly confrontations. Whether in Europe in the face of Russian aggression, in African countries that are both vulnerable and strategically important, or in defiance of a threat to Taiwan, this is an approach that is both effective and cost-effective.
Security force assistance is a tool that remains underutilized. It is a tool that has proven to enable and facilitate strategic objectives so long as the will to sustain cooperation remains a pillar in American foreign policy. Such initiatives are perfectly suited to the objectives described in the key in the 2022 National Security Strategy: build partnerships, develop and sustain cooperative security, and share the collective security interests of those states opposed to authoritarian power brokers.
Strategic competitors have watched Moscow’s failure to seize control of Ukraine and are as considerate of the lessons from this conflict as we are in the West, if not more so—especially as the cost of the war continues to grow. Failure to preemptively deter aggression through increased security force assistance—a more cost-effective option than funding the defense of a partner after it has been invaded—risks the United States and allies having to foot another heavy bill, in an even more destabilized world, after the next act of aggression.
Left of Boom: Leveraging Security Force Assistance to Deter War - Modern War Institute
mwi.usma.edu · by Ethan Brown · April 7, 2023
The conflict in Ukraine, now thirteen months long and counting, has made clear the costs of failed deterrence. The first lesson to draw from this conflict is that Russia invaded because there was no credible deterrence in place. The second lesson is one measured in clear metrics: since February 2022, the United States has largely sponsored Ukraine’s defense, totaling more than $76.8 billion in aid.
This raises an important question: How much would American taxpayers be saving had the government invested in strong deterrence in Ukraine before February 2022? The cost would certainly have been less than $76.8 billion—a figure that doesn’t even account for the hundreds of thousands of lives that have been destroyed by the conflict, the devastation to Ukraine’s infrastructure, and the damage to the overall global economy.
As Ukraine has drawn deeply from both American coffers and munitions stockpiles, prudence requires policymakers to at least consider a more reasonably priced venture: Security force assistance offers deepened ties with partners against autocratic and authoritarian competitors, but a proactive one that comes at considerably less total cost than reactive force-shaping on the fly.
To be sure, the United States sent Ukrainian security forces piecemeal weapons and equipment before February 2022, but this was not enough to discourage a Russian invasion. Credible deterrence rests on security partners collaboratively achieving defensive, repellent capacity before conflict—which means more than simply having weapons and technology.
A robust security assistance relationship proved viable in Finland and Sweden, who, like Ukraine, were not NATO members before this war but whose security interests are closely aligned with those of the United States and who faced security concerns with Russian aggression. In both Nordic nations, the United States regularly conducts multilateral military exercises in addition to a prolific foreign military sales portfolio. The United States also has a trilateral agreement on expanding defense policy and interoperability with Finland and Sweden, who are both members of the Enhanced Partnership in Northern Europe (E-PINE) institution, a collective group aligned with NATO interests as “enhanced opportunities partners.”
Ukraine has benefited from foreign military sales and limited bilateral exercises. But the extent of security assistance there was limited to the Joint Multilateral Training Group–Ukraine program based in Grafenwoehr, Germany prior to February 2022 and readiness exercises like Rapid Trident and Sea Breeze—both of which were narrow in scope and cooperative security capabilities. Ukraine, unlike those Nordic counterparts, does not enjoy membership in a collective security institution like E-PINE, although it has been designated an enhanced opportunities partner, making it ideal for increased security force assistance programming.
Assisting vulnerable partners in reaching that deterrent capability can be achieved through “unified action to generate, employ, and sustain local, host nation or regional security forces in support of a legitimate authority,” which is security force assistance by definition. The United States and her allies cannot realistically afford to sponsor the next strategic crisis—in Taiwan, for example—when such actions cost $46.6 billion in a year’s worth of military aid alone.
How does security force assistance avoid the need for such expenditure? It takes military personnel, trained and certified as cross-cultural experts, and deploys them abroad to integrate with partners and potential allies, while training those partners on equipment delivered through US foreign military sales to interoperability standards and improving security integration. An example here is the increased security assistance provided to Moldova beginning in 2016—military exercises with American troops and $63 million in defense equipment—even amid that nation’s flagging support for deeper NATO cooperation while fears of Russian aggression rose. This process requires the assistance of US weapons, defense technology sales, and grants, conducted under Title 22 foreign military sales. But those weapons sales alone—known as “security cooperation” and distinct from security force assistance—are not enough; building capability and thereby achieving a deterrent effect requires the hands-on, integrative segment that necessarily comes after security cooperation. And of note, those weapons sales come with a major backlog.
Forward-staging personnel who understand the value and impact of joint and combined operations—the United States did just spend twenty years integrating closely with new and old partners alike—is easier than the complex negotiations in weapon sales. But in order to send those personnel, the Defense Department must prioritize tasking authorities and align people and resources by directive to enable deliberately delivered security assistance that reduces the prospect of future war—and its associated costs.
DoD emphasis on security force assistance capabilities has been uneven in recent years. The Army stood up security force assistance brigades that have been rotating abroad for years, but is struggling to find combatant command support authorities and funding for those operations. Meanwhile, the Air Force—which recently shut down its only advisor-capable operations units—is now at a deficit for security force assistance despite its success in training and enabling Afghan partners before the 2021 withdrawal. The need for security force assistance grows, and DoD must continue to define and source its security force assistance capabilities to respond to the demand.
Strategic forecasts can presume that a future confrontation—one involving direct US engagement—will be even costlier than the proxy conflict in Ukraine. To avoid that confrontation, there are two options, the United States must shift away from the status quo of talking points about increased cooperation and actively deepen security integration by using security force assistance to demonstrate American commitment to collective security. In the short term, security force assistance at least alters our competitors’ strategic calculus when considering the plunge into conflict. The US military—still establishing a new, post-Afghanistan identity for an era of strategic competition—is uniquely capable of building those integrated capabilities and deterring costly confrontations. Whether in Europe in the face of Russian aggression, in African countries that are both vulnerable and strategically important, or in defiance of a threat to Taiwan, this is an approach that is both effective and cost-effective.
Security force assistance is a tool that remains underutilized. It is a tool that has proven to enable and facilitate strategic objectives so long as the will to sustain cooperation remains a pillar in American foreign policy. Such initiatives are perfectly suited to the objectives described in the key in the 2022 National Security Strategy: build partnerships, develop and sustain cooperative security, and share the collective security interests of those states opposed to authoritarian power brokers.
Strategic competitors have watched Moscow’s failure to seize control of Ukraine and are as considerate of the lessons from this conflict as we are in the West, if not more so—especially as the cost of the war continues to grow. Failure to preemptively deter aggression through increased security force assistance—a more cost-effective option than funding the defense of a partner after it has been invaded—risks the United States and allies having to foot another heavy bill, in an even more destabilized world, after the next act of aggression.
Ethan Brown is a Senior Fellow at the Mike Rogers Center for Intelligence and Global Affairs at the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress. He is an eleven-year veteran of the US Air Force as a special operations joint terminal attack controller with six deployments to multiple combat zones. He can be followed on twitter @LibertyStoic.
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, or Department of Defense.
Image credit: Capt. Angelo Mejia, US Army
mwi.usma.edu · by Ethan Brown · April 7, 2023
11. China appears to simulate first aircraft carrier strike on Taiwan
China appears to simulate first aircraft carrier strike on Taiwan | CNN
CNN · by Brad Lendon · April 10, 2023
CNN —
For the first time, the Chinese navy appears to have simulated strikes by aircraft carrier-based warplanes on Taiwan, as military drills around the island entered their third day.
Beijing launched the drills on Saturday, a day after Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen returned from a 10-day visit to Central America and the United States where she met US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
Taiwan’s Ministry of Defense reported on Monday that during the past 24 hours four J-15 fighter jets had crossed into the southeastern portion of the island’s air defense identification zone – a self-declared buffer that extends beyond the island’s airspace.
The J-15 is the version of J-11 twin-jet fighter that was developed for use on Beijing’s growing fleet of aircraft carriers.
Photos released by the Japan Joint Chiefs appear to show fighter jets from the Chinese navy aircraft carrier Shandong flying over the Pacific Ocean east of Taiwan over the weekend.
From Japan Joint Chiefs
A CNN review of Taiwan Defense Ministry records shows it to be the first time the J-15s have crossed into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone.
Meanwhile, the Japan Joint Chiefs of Staff confirmed in a press release that Japanese forces had observed 80 fixed-wing aircraft take-offs and landings during the Chinese exercises from the Chinese aircraft carrier Shandong, which was in the Pacific Ocean east of Taiwan and about 230 kilometers (143 miles) south of the Japanese island of Miyako in Okinawa prefecture.
SPRATLY ISLANDS, South China Sea -- On April 10, the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Milius (DDG 69) asserted navigational rights and freedoms in the South China Sea near the Spratly Islands, consistent with international law.
U.S. 7th Fleet
US Navy sails near South China Sea island militarized by China
Japan scrambled Air Self-Defense Force fighter jets in response, the Joint Chiefs said.
The J-15 flights were among 35 People’s Liberation Army (PLA) aircraft that had either crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait or entered the islands air defense identification zon in the 24 hours ending at 6 a.m. Taiwan time on Monday, according to the island’s Defense Ministry.
It also said 11 PLA Navy vessels were in the waters around Taiwan, without specifying their distances from the island.
Chinese state broadcaster CCTV reported on Monday that the Eastern Theater Command of the PLA was continuing military drills around Taiwan as part of its Operation Joint Sword that began two days earlier.
Monday’s drills focused on practicing “maritime blockades” and “targeted ambush assaults on enemy mooring vessels” in the Taiwan Strait, as well as northwest, southwest and waters east of Taiwan, CCTV reported.
Over the weekend, multiple PLA services had carried out “simulated joint precision strikes on key targets on Taiwan Island” and in the surrounding waters, CCTV reported.
China’s ruling Communist Party claims the self-governing democracy of Taiwan as its territory despite never having ruled it, and has spent decades trying to isolate it diplomatically. It has not ruled out using force to take control of the island.
Analyst Carl Schuster, a former director of operations at the US Pacific Command’s Joint Intelligence Center, said the PLA was “practicing and probably refining the aerial coordination and joint operations required to initiate a blockade of Taiwan’s ports and air lanes.”
US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, a Republican from California, speaks during an event with Tsai Ing-wen, Taiwan's president, at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California, US, on Wednesday, April 5, 2023. Taiwan hailed President Tsai Ing-wen's unprecedented meeting with House Speaker McCarthy on US soil as a "rare opportunity," even as the move risks provoking renewed military tension around the island. Photographer: Eric Thayer/Bloomberg
Eric Thayer/Bloomberg/Getty Images
Analysis: Defying China, US House leader and Taiwan president present a united front
A Chinese blockade of Taiwan could choke off supplies coming into the island, including any military aid or other shipments from the United States or its partners.
The US, through the Taiwan Relations Act, is legally obligated to provide Taiwan with defensive weaponry, but it remains deliberately vague on whether it would defend Taiwan in the event of an attempted Chinese attack.
Beijing had repeatedly warned against Tsai’s meeting with McCarthy and threatened to take “strong and resolute measures” if it went ahead.
After the drills commenced, Beijing described them as “a serious warning against the Taiwan separatist forces’ collusion with external forces, and a necessary move to defend national sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
Taiwan Defense Ministry spokesperson Sun Li-fang said the PLA’s exercises had “destabilized” the region.
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Taiwan's president meets with U.S. lawmakers
04:15 - Source: CNN
“President Tsai’s visit became their excuse to conduct exercises and their actions have severely jeopardized the security of the surrounding region,” he said, adding that the island’s air defense units were on “high alert.”
Beijing conducted similar large-scale military exercises around Taiwan last August, after then US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited the island.
Those exercises included Chinese missile launches over the island, something that has not been seen so far in the current drills.
But Schuster said this weekend’s exercises “are simply extensions and expansions from the August exercise.”
“The tactical complexity is greater than last year’s, but operationally this exercise seems simpler,” he said.
And the Communist Party’s message remains constant, Schuster said.
“As is always the case with PLA exercises in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea areas, Beijing is telling the US, regional countries, Taiwan and its own people, that the PLA has the capability to conduct blockade and joint air and missile strikes on targets in and around Taiwan,” he said.
CNN’s Wayne Chang and Emiko Jozuka contributed to this report.
CNN · by Brad Lendon · April 10, 2023
12. China carries out 'simulated' precision attacks on Taiwan targets
China carries out 'simulated' precision attacks on Taiwan targets | CNN
CNN · by Eric Cheung,Larry Register · April 9, 2023
Taipei, Taiwan CNN —
China said Sunday it was simulating precision attacks on key targets in Taiwan as the military drills it launched in response to the island president’s meeting with the US House Speaker entered a second day.
The mock drills included “tactical maneuvers” by the Chinese navy, state media reported.
Multiple services had carried out “simulated joint precision strikes on key targets on Taiwan Island” and in the surrounding waters, CCTV reported.
It said the exercises, dubbed “United Sharp Sword,” were being carried out under the supervision of the Eastern Theater Command of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).
Chinese jets take part in exercises around Taiwan on Sunday, Aug. 7, 2022, following the visit to the island by Nancy Pelosi.
Li Bingyu/Xinhua/AP
China military rehearses 'encircling' Taiwan after US Speaker visit
Taiwan’s defense ministry reported that, as of noon local time, it had detected a total of 58 PLA warplanes over the Taiwan Strait on Sunday, of which 31 crossed the median line and entered Taiwan’s ADIZ, or air defense identification zone. It said it had also detected a total of nine PLA navy vessels.
China launched the exercises on Saturday, a day after Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen returned from a 10-day visit to Central America and the United States where she met US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
A Chinese military aircraft takes part in exercises around Taiwan, in this handout image released on April 8, 2023.
Eastern Theatre Command/Handout/Reuters
It described them as “a serious warning against the Taiwan separatist forces’ collusion with external forces, and a necessary move to defend national sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
Beijing had repeatedly warned against Tsai’s meeting with McCarthy and had previously threatened to take “strong and resolute measures” if it went ahead.
China’s ruling Communist Party claims the self-governing democracy of Taiwan as its territory despite never having ruled it, and has spent decades trying to isolate it diplomatically. It has not ruled out using force to take control of the island.
A Chinese naval ship takes part in exercises around Taiwan, in this handout image released on April 8, 2023.
Eastern Theatre Command/Handout/Reuters
China reacted in a similar fashion when then US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan in August, launching a series of military drills that surrounded the island and firing missiles over it.
Those drills were the first time China had fired missiles over the island, and many experts saw them as representing a major escalation of China’s military intimidation against Taiwan.
China says Operation Joint Sword military drills will continue through Monday.
CNN · by Eric Cheung,Larry Register · April 9, 2023
13. AI’s Inhuman Advantage
Excerpts:
In gaming environments, some advantages of AI agents are viewed differently than others. Superhuman precision and speed are often viewed as unfair advantages. The fact that Heron Systems’ AI dogfighting agent was able to take gunshots that are banned in training by human pilots could be seen as an unfair advantage. In computer games, programmers have frequently slowed down AI agents’ reaction times to match those of humans. AI agents’ superior strategic abilities, however, are often celebrated, such as their prowess at chess or go. In war, militaries may view these benefits differently. War isn’t fair, and superhuman speed and precision that enables better combat performance is likely to be welcomed. Conversely, AI decision-making that is somewhat mysterious, like the unconventional moves that AI agents sometimes make in poker, chess, and go, might be harder for militaries to embrace. It is easier for militaries to trust an AI agent whose advantage is clearly identifiable, such as quicker reflexes. Placing faith in an AI agent whose cognition is opaque and whose long-term plan is unknown may be a harder sell. Yet over time as AI systems take on more roles, including in tactical planning and decision-making, military leaders may face the decision on whether to trust an AI system’s recommendation that they don’t fully understand.
In settings where AI systems need to cooperate with humans, their alien cognition may be a disadvantage, and AI systems may need to be specifically trained to act like humans. In games such as Diplomacy that require cooperation with human players, AI agents must be specifically trained on human data. AI agents trained through self-play alone will play differently than humans.
Finding ways to optimally employ AI systems and combine them with humans in a joint human-machine cognitive system will be a difficult task. AI systems are sometimes characterized in defense projects as being teammates, as if they are another soldier in the squad or a copilot in the cockpit. But human-machine cognitive teams are fundamentally different from human-human teams. Militaries are adding into their warfighting functions an information processing system that can think in ways that are quite alien to human intelligence. Militaries that best learn how to marry human and machine cognition and take advantage of the unusual attributes of how AI systems think will have tremendous advantages. The U.S. military can best gain an edge in the disruptive changes ahead by investing in experimentation, prototyping, and wargaming to explore the unique opportunities and challenges in human-machine teaming.
AI’s Inhuman Advantage - War on the Rocks
warontherocks.com · by Paul Scharre · April 10, 2023
When an AI fighter pilot beat an experienced human pilot 15-0 in the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s AlphaDogfight competition, it didn’t just fly better than the human. It fought differently. Heron Systems’ AI agent used forward-quarter gunshots, when the two aircraft were racing toward each other head-to-head, a shot that’s banned in pilot training because of the risk of a collision. One fighter pilot characterized the AI’s abilities as a “superhuman capability” making high-precision, split-second shots that were “almost impossible” for humans. Even more impressive, the AI system wasn’t programmed to fight this way. It learned this tactic all on its own. AI systems’ ability to perform not just better than humans, but to fight differently, is a major potential advantage in warfare.
The militaries that will be most successful in harnessing AI’s advantages will be those that effectively understand and employ its unique and often alien forms of cognition. U.S. defense projects sometimes conceive of AI systems as operating like a teammate or copilot. Yet AI systems often think in a radically different way to humans. These differences can be an advantage, but only if warfighters understand AI’s unique inhuman strengths and weaknesses. The U.S. military should increase its investments in prototyping, experimentation, and wargaming with AI systems to better understand their potential in warfare and how to best employ them.
Different Is Better
AI performance in games provides lessons for its potential advantages in warfare and the radical changes that may lie ahead. During AlphaGo’s celebrated victory over Lee Sedol in the Chinese strategy game go, it made a move that so stunned Lee that he got up from the table and left the room. AlphaGo calculated the odds that a human would have made that move (based on its database of 30 million expert human moves) as 1 in 10,000. AlphaGo’s move wasn’t just better. It was inhuman.
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AlphaGo’s unusual move wasn’t a fluke. AlphaGo plays differently than humans in several ways. It will carry out multiple simultaneous attacks on different parts of the board, whereas human players tend to focus on one region. And AlphaGo has developed novel opening moves, including some that humans simply do not understand. Experts who study AlphaGo’s playing style describe it as “alien,” and “from an alternate dimension.”
Similar inhuman playing styles have been seen in AI agents across a range of games. The AI system Libratus, which achieved superhuman performance in poker, plays differently than expert human players. It changes betting tactics more effectively than human players and makes bets that are unusually small or unusually large, sometimes twenty times the size of the pot. “It splits its bets into three, four, five different sizes,” Daniel McAulay (who lost to Libratus) told Wired magazine. “No human has the ability to do that.”
Chess grandmasters have pored over the moves of the chess-playing AI agent AlphaZero to analyze its unique playing style. AlphaZero learned to play chess entirely through self-play without any data from human games. It engages in “ferocious, unexpected attacks” on the opponent’s king, according to chess experts. It strongly favors moves that give it more options in the future. It will sacrifice chess pieces early for long-term advantage, including sacrifices that have no immediate gain but open positions to attack the opponent’s king. It particularly excels at mobility and combining attacks, using both in ways that are difficult for humans to replicate.
AI agents’ advantages in games point to some of their potential in warfare. AI agents in games demonstrate superior precision, speed, coordination, situational awareness, resource management, aggressiveness, and risk-taking when compared to human players. The cumulative effect of these advantages in games is devastating to human opponents. These attributes are also valuable in warfare. AI agents have weaknesses, though. Their performance is often very brittle, and AI agents can struggle to adapt to small rule changes in games. These weaknesses could prove fatal in combat — where there are no rules — and militaries should be mindful of AI systems’ flaws.
Thinking Differently About Strategy
Computer games, such as StarCraft II and Dota 2, are a valuable testing ground for AI performance. These games pit opposing sides in a battle to control territory and resources, with each player moving units around a digital battlefield to perform reconnaissance, resource collection, and combat. While vastly simpler than the real world, these games are highly complex relative to other games. At any given point in StarCraft II there are approximately 1026 actions a player can take. Because some information is hidden, players interact in a dynamic and constantly changing environment with limited knowledge. Computer strategy games also require agents to balance short-term tactics with long-term planning. Dota 2 has approximately 20,000 time steps in which a player can make a move, much longer than the roughly 80 moves per game in chess or 150 moves per game in go.
AI agents have excelled in computer strategy games through superior command and control. AI players have access to the same information, resources, and units as human players. Their individual units have the same speed and abilities. Any advantage is due to AI agents’ ability to process information, make decisions, and take actions. AI agents’ victories demonstrate that machines can dramatically outperform humans in command and control, a potential major advantage in war.
It’s not just that AI agents are faster — although they are capable of being much faster than even the top professional human gamers. Left unconstrained, AI agents are effectively invincible in small-unit tactics, able to dodge enemy fire in computer games. Even when limited to human speed, AI agents are better at unit tactics. They can also absorb more information simultaneously, rather than having to divide their attention over multiple tasks. They are more precise and avoid wasting valuable actions, time, or resources. AI agents can also attack with greater coordination among multiple units or co-operative agents.
OpenAI’s Dota 2 agents, OpenAI Five, demonstrated many of these attributes. They were able to identify human player attacks and swiftly counter them faster than human players could react, even while operating with a 200-millisecond delay intended to match human reaction times. OpenAI’s agents, which are separate team members controlled by different AI players, were also able to precisely coordinate their attacks, hitting enemy units at the exact right moment and with the exact right amount of damage without wasting resources. Their speed, precision, and coordination led them to particularly excel in team fights, where multiple agents cooperatively fight against several opponents. The bots also played with unusual aggressiveness relative to human players, constantly attacking. One human player said, “It felt like I was pressured at all times in the game.”
While the specific algorithms and tactics used for chess, go, poker, StarCraft II, or Dota 2 wouldn’t translate to real-world combat, AI’s superhuman speed, awareness, precision, coordination, calculated risk-taking, and aggression could be extremely valuable in combat. Militaries that trained algorithms to take on command-and-control functions could potentially render their competitors demoralized and helpless, just as AI agents have done in computer games.
Increased Speed and Forcing Errors
Across multiple types of games, some common patterns emerge about AI’s potential advantages over humans. The first is perhaps the most obvious: increased speed and scale of information processing. In chess, human grandmasters can look only 15 to 20 moves ahead compared to AlphaZero’s 60,000 positions per second. In dogfighting, where split-second timing matters, the AI agent isn’t burdened with the slowness of human cognition or reflexes. In capture-the-flag computer games, AI agents can tag opponents faster and more accurately than humans. In real-time computer strategy games, AI agents can execute tasks faster than humans, including multiple simultaneous actions.
AI agents can also look more holistically at the entire state of a game. In StarCraft II or Dota 2, an AI agent doesn’t need to focus its attention on a single part of the map where combat is unfolding, as a human does. It can take in information about the whole map simultaneously. This gives the AI agents greater orientation and awareness of the whole of the action and the ability to optimally prioritize resources. AI agents also demonstrate attentiveness to parts of the game that are not directly engaged in competition at a particular moment. Both AlphaZero, the chess-playing agent, and AlphaStar, the StarCraft II–playing agent, have demonstrated the behavior of redeploying pieces that are no longer needed after an attack, rather than waiting for them to be attacked first.
The superhuman attentiveness of AI agents also plays out in their ability to not make the sort of careless blunders that characterize even expert human play. The ability to play nearly flawlessly, even if in some circumstances unimaginatively, can be a tremendous advantage in many games, especially since games are designed to be roughly evenly balanced between opposing sides. After playing against AlphaStar, professional StarCraft II player Grzegorz “MaNa” Komincz noted, “I’ve realized how much my gameplay relies on forcing mistakes and being able to exploit human reactions.” Simply avoiding careless mistakes can be a major advantage for AI agents.
Another advantage is superhuman precision, which opens up novel strategies unavailable to humans — such as forward-quarter gunshots in dogfighting or perfectly calibrated team attacks in Dota 2. AI agents’ superhuman precision also enables them to operate extremely efficiently, conserving and allocating resources to optimal efficiency. In strategy games that involve building up resources over time, this can lead to significant cumulative advantages.
AI agents also appear to have major advantages over humans in coordination and long-term planning. In chess, AlphaZero excels at combining multiple attacks. In Dota 2, AI agents demonstrate superhuman coordination in tactical actions, such as multi-character attacks, but also in strategic actions. When playing Dota 2, human players tend to divide up the map among teammates, with players only switching locations occasionally. OpenAI Five’s five AI agents switched their characters’ locations on the map more frequently than human players, flexibly adjusting as a team as the game progressed. In poker, go, and chess, AI agents make moves that appear weak at first, but gain them a long-term positional advantage. This advantage is not always present, however, and human observers have at times criticized AI agents for their apparent lack of long-term planning.
Novel Strategies
Across many games, AI agents have widened the space of available tactics and strategies, exhibiting greater range in behaviors than human players. While the novel strategies of chess- and go-playing agents have often received attention, the same behaviors have been observed in other games including poker and computer games. Professional StarCraft II player Dario “TLO” Wünsch remarked of AlphaStar, “The agent demonstrated strategies I hadn’t thought of before, which means there may still be new ways of playing the game that we haven’t fully explored yet.” In some cases, this increased variability directly leads to benefit, as in poker where unpredictability is a key advantage. In other cases, it has expanded how humans think about the game — such as in chess, where AlphaZero has led human grandmasters to explore new openings.
AI agents appear to have the ability to engage in dramatic shifts in strategies and risk-taking in ways that are different from human players and, in some cases, impossible for human players to match. In poker, Libratus can make wild shifts in bet sizes. In go, once AlphaGo has a secure advantage it plays conservatively, since it is designed to maximize its chances of winning rather than its margin of victory over the other player. If AlphaGo is ahead, it will play conservatively to lock in what may be a narrow margin, rather than press to widen the gap. Yet AI agents don’t always play cautiously. In chess, AlphaZero will sacrifice pieces early on in a game, taking risk for a longer-term advantage. In Dota 2, the OpenAI Five agents play aggressively, putting constant pressure on human players and never letting up for an instant. These agents have also demonstrated the ability to engage in more finely calibrated risk-taking than human players. OpenAI researchers noted:
Human players are often cautious when their hero has low health; OpenAI Five seemed to have a very finely-tuned understanding of when an aggressive attack with a low-health hero was worth a risk.
AI agents do not, in general, appear to play more aggressively or conservatively than humans. Rather, they appear to play in a manner that is more strategic and rational (one might say cold-blooded), regulating their degree of aggressiveness or caution to what is called for in the moment. While a human player might have a tendency toward conservative or aggressive play, AI agents seem capable of executing both extremes and pivoting quickly between them based on what is optimal for achieving their goal.
AI agents are not flawless. There are common themes in their weaknesses too. While their performance is simply superior to humans in some games such as chess and go, for real-time computer strategy games, the open-ended environment brings some of their limitations to light. One consistent weakness is that AI agents playing StarCraft II and Dota 2 appear to lean heavily on their advantages in small-unit tactics, perhaps to the detriment of long-term planning. AI systems in a diverse array of situations frequently fall victim to settling for suboptimal strategies if those strategies are easier to discover. Winning in simpler ways is easier, and the AI agents are playing to win.
AI’s general characteristic of brittleness also was on display in some games. In poker, human players occasionally found parts of the game tree that Libratus had not mapped and did not perform well at. (The researchers behind Libratus quickly improved its performance by running calculations in those parts of the game tree at night while the human players were sleeping.) In one Dota 2 match, OpenAI allowed the audience to pick the AI team’s characters. The audience chose a poor lineup of characters (a bad team). The AI agents performed poorly and inflexibly, using the same familiar tactics that were ill-suited for the new characters. The OpenAI Five also played in a restricted game space, with certain characters and types of actions off-limits to reduce the complexity of the game. The final version of OpenAI Five played over 7,000 games on the internet, racking up an impressive 99.4 percent win average against 15,000 human players. But the model was not as robust as these numbers might suggest. Every time that the Dota 2 game was updated by its developer, such as adding new characters, items, or maps, OpenAI researchers had to perform what they termed “surgery” on the AI model to adapt it to the new environment. The researchers similarly had to perform surgery if they made available to the model a new action or item, as they matured the model’s capabilities and introduced it to more complex environments. The alternative to this relatively manual engineering process was to retrain a new model entirely from scratch on the new game environment, which would have been both time- and cost-prohibitive. Without significant engineering work or retraining, the model would frequently struggle to adapt to even modest changes. This brittleness is likely to be a major detriment in real-world settings where the space of possible enemy actions is open-ended and the environment is not highly constrained and repeatable as it is in games.
Conclusion
In gaming environments, some advantages of AI agents are viewed differently than others. Superhuman precision and speed are often viewed as unfair advantages. The fact that Heron Systems’ AI dogfighting agent was able to take gunshots that are banned in training by human pilots could be seen as an unfair advantage. In computer games, programmers have frequently slowed down AI agents’ reaction times to match those of humans. AI agents’ superior strategic abilities, however, are often celebrated, such as their prowess at chess or go. In war, militaries may view these benefits differently. War isn’t fair, and superhuman speed and precision that enables better combat performance is likely to be welcomed. Conversely, AI decision-making that is somewhat mysterious, like the unconventional moves that AI agents sometimes make in poker, chess, and go, might be harder for militaries to embrace. It is easier for militaries to trust an AI agent whose advantage is clearly identifiable, such as quicker reflexes. Placing faith in an AI agent whose cognition is opaque and whose long-term plan is unknown may be a harder sell. Yet over time as AI systems take on more roles, including in tactical planning and decision-making, military leaders may face the decision on whether to trust an AI system’s recommendation that they don’t fully understand.
In settings where AI systems need to cooperate with humans, their alien cognition may be a disadvantage, and AI systems may need to be specifically trained to act like humans. In games such as Diplomacy that require cooperation with human players, AI agents must be specifically trained on human data. AI agents trained through self-play alone will play differently than humans.
Finding ways to optimally employ AI systems and combine them with humans in a joint human-machine cognitive system will be a difficult task. AI systems are sometimes characterized in defense projects as being teammates, as if they are another soldier in the squad or a copilot in the cockpit. But human-machine cognitive teams are fundamentally different from human-human teams. Militaries are adding into their warfighting functions an information processing system that can think in ways that are quite alien to human intelligence. Militaries that best learn how to marry human and machine cognition and take advantage of the unusual attributes of how AI systems think will have tremendous advantages. The U.S. military can best gain an edge in the disruptive changes ahead by investing in experimentation, prototyping, and wargaming to explore the unique opportunities and challenges in human-machine teaming.
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Paul Scharre is vice president and director of studies at the Center for a New American Security. This article is adapted from his new book, Four Battlegrounds: Power in the Age of Artificial Intelligence. Copyright (c) 2023 by Paul Scharre. Used with permission of the publisher, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. All rights reserved.
Commentary
warontherocks.com · by Paul Scharre · April 10, 2023
14. Be Skeptical of Reagan’s “October Surprise”
Spoiler alert:
The Iran hostage crisis was a terrible episode in American history. It was a punishing trial for Carter, and a severe trauma for the hostages themselves. But it was not a treasonous betrayal by Connally or the Reagan campaign.
Be Skeptical of Reagan’s “October Surprise” - War on the Rocks
warontherocks.com · by William Inboden · April 10, 2023
Conspiracy theories, by their very nature, are not easily debunked. It is hard to prove definitively that something did not happen. Conspiracies involving politics can be especially murky. Rough-and-tumble presidential campaigns often do feature dirty tricks for electoral advantage, but false accusations of such skullduggery are arguably even more routine.
Which, then, is the case with the hoary “October Surprise”? This conspiracy theory alleges that in the 1980 presidential campaign, Ronald Reagan’s camp surreptitiously urged revolutionary Iran to delay releasing American diplomats, intelligence officers, and marines taken hostage the year before until after the November election. This would deprive President Jimmy Carter of the political boost that the freed captives would provide. Their detention for 444 days transfixed the world, empowered Iran, and humiliated the United States.
The term “October Surprise” first originated with the Reagan campaign’s worry that Carter would wait until October, mere weeks before the election, to announce the release of the hostages and thus secure his re-election. The later emergence of the conspiracy theory flipped this term, where in former Carter staff member Gary Sick’s book of the same name it became the alleged effort by the Reagan camp to persuade Iran to delay the hostage release until after the election, purportedly in exchange for a U.S. promise to sell arms to Iran once Reagan became president.
Despite extensive multi-year investigations by Congress, an independent counsel, and countless journalists and scholars, there has yet to emerge a single piece of concrete evidence supporting the allegation. It has nonetheless persisted in the precincts of political gossips, Middle East conspiracism, social media, and even the occasional serious book, such as Kai Bird’s recent biography of Carter.
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And last month the conspiracy theory resurfaced on the front page of the New York Times in an article by veteran journalist Peter Baker.
Now, the aged but still energetic Texas political icon and Democratic lobbyist Ben Barnes claims to the nation’s most prestigious newspaper that his fellow Texas political icon John Connally intrigued to boost the Reagan presidential campaign in 1980 by trying to entice Iran to hold the American hostages until after the November election. In Barnes’ telling, he accompanied Connally on a surreptitious trip that summer to six Middle Eastern countries, making the same appeal in each capital, excluding Israel: that their leaders send a message to Tehran appealing that the release of the hostages be delayed until after the election.
If true, this is not just another campaign dirty trick. Rather, it is a treasonous betrayal of 52 imperiled Americans. It is the gravest of charges to level. And it is also almost certainly false.
Barnes claims that, in each of five Arab nations (Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia), Connally delivered the same message to the top leadership. In Barnes’ words it was:
Look, Ronald Reagan’s going to be elected president and you need to get the word to Iran that they’re going to make a better deal with Reagan than they are Carter… It would be very smart for you to pass the word to the Iranians to wait until after this general election is over.
The New York Times has now published at least two additional stories further airing Barnes’ claims, and many other media outlets have similarly parroted the story.
Barnes’ story has a seductive appeal. In Barnes and Connally, the Texas-sized tale features two charismatic Texan politicians, both with colorful pasts and outsized personalities. Their narrative also offers a political balm to Carter as he faces his twilight days. It traffics in the intrigue and messiness of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. It feeds human nature’s appetite for conspiracies and supplies easy-to-digest explanations for complex historical events.
Yet here are many good reasons to doubt Barnes’ account. It remains a theory in search of facts.
In Lewis Carroll’s classic book Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the queen tells Alice that “sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” Accepting Barnes’ account requires a similar set of almost impossible steps into the surreal. Specifically, in trusting Barnes’ story, one would have to believe the following six impossible things:
- At least five Arab governments knew about Connally’s scheme for over four decades but none of their officials has ever breathed a word of it.
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Although those five Middle Eastern governments knew about Connally’s entreaty, the entire U.S. diplomatic and intelligence apparatus in the Middle East did not know about it, even though Connally interacted with embassy staff in multiple countries and the Carter administration followed his whereabouts.
- Connally, a Republican, knowingly made these entreaties in the presence of Barnes, a lifelong Democrat with close friends serving on the Carter campaign and within the senior ranks of the Carter administration, and yet trusted that Barnes would not breathe a word of it to his Democratic colleagues.
- While Connally’s trip was supposedly of the utmost importance to the Reagan campaign and of intense personal interest to campaign manager Bill Casey, somehow Connally and Barnes waited an entire month after their return from the region to brief Casey on their trip.
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The Islamic Republic of Iran, a sworn enemy of the United States, refused to leak, reveal, or otherwise disclose these entreaties from Connally, despite both the power of such revelations to humiliate and possibly destroy the Reagan presidency, and the willingness of Iranian leaders to divulge Reagan’s arms-for-hostages gambit in the Iran-Contra scandal six years later.
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In addition to investigating Iran-Contra, the House and Senate spent thousands of hours reviewing millions of pages of documents, subpoenaing and interviewing hundreds of witnesses with even the remotest possible connection to the allegations, and somehow had never encountered information about a two-week trip by the former Texas governor, secretary of the Treasury, and presidential candidate, as the supposed real architect of the plot.
As with all conspiracy theories, this one starts with bits of truth. It is true that the Reagan campaign obsessed that Carter might pull an “October Surprise” by engineering the release of the hostages just weeks before the election. Paranoid though Reagan and his team (especially Casey) were, their fears were not entirely groundless. A few months earlier, Carter had faced a spirited challenge for the Democratic nomination from Sen. Ted Kennedy. On the morning of the pivotal state of Wisconsin’s primary election day of April 1, just before the polls opened, Carter appeared on national television to announce a “positive development” in negotiations with Iran and hinted that the hostages might soon be released. In the coming days it became clear that no such breakthrough had taken place, but Carter won the Wisconsin primary, and his campaign leadership believed that the Iran announcement boosted their votes.
It is also true that the release of the hostages before the election would have provided Carter with a substantial political benefit — just as the captivity of the hostages had damaged Carter politically, and just as any positive policy developments benefit incumbent presidents. For anyone in the Reagan or Carter campaign teams to state these facts out loud may have been impolitic, but not untrue.
It would have been another matter altogether of treachery and betrayal for the Reagan campaign to try to delay the release of the hostages, as Barnes and other conspiracists allege. Beginning with the participants themselves, Barnes’ account does not hold up under closer scrutiny. Connally was ambitious and ruthless. He was, however, neither treasonous nor stupid — and he would have had to be both to engage in the absurd plot that Barnes now claims.
As for Casey, the former CIA director was capable of chicanery and guilty of many other political transgressions. For example, he almost certainly stole Carter’s campaign debate briefing book, not to mention that he was investigated for financial misdealing in his private-sector business, and played a key role in the Iran-Contra scandal. However, there is no hard evidence of his guilt on the 1980 Iran hostage case.
Any clandestine endeavors to pass along a deal to Iran in 1980 would have been difficult to keep secret. If a prominent American like Connally were to visit the region and make such demands, the American diplomats, military attaches, and intelligence officers stationed in each country would have immediately heard about it from their local counterparts. They would have, in turn, promptly disclosed the information to their respective headquarters in Washington, not to mention later to congressional investigators. If Connally presented “a better deal with Reagan” to Tehran through Middle Eastern leaders, it strains credulity to believe that U.S. intelligence collection assets would not pick up indications of his scheme, nor would Middle Eastern officials eventually disclose his offer — especially Syrian and Jordanian leaders who detested the Reagan administration.
Take Beirut, for example. A declassified State Department cable located in the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library documents Connally’s trip. On July 30, 1980, Secretary of State Edmund Muskie received an update from John Gunther Dean, the U.S. ambassador to Lebanon, in which Dean described contacts between Connally and the U.S. embassy. In the cable, Dean reports to Muskie on the exchange between embassy staff and Connally, whose aide invited U.S. officials to the airport for a meeting. There, Deputy Chief of Mission Robert South Barrett obtained a personal briefing from Connally about his interactions with the leadership of Lebanon before the former Texas governor departed for Saudi Arabia. Connally informed Barrett that he held a meeting with Foreign Minister Fouad Boutros, outgoing Prime Minister Selim Hoss, and President Elias Sarkis, during which they discussed the dire political situation in Lebanon and the pressing need for further U.S. engagement in the fragile country.
If Connally made overtures to Iran, his visit to Lebanon offered ample opportunity. Iran’s relationship with Lebanon during this period made the country’s leaders the most likely conduits if Connally were seeking to pass a message along to Tehran. Dean’s closeness to the Lebanese leadership indicates that, had Connally presented a secret deal from the Reagan camp, Dean would have heard about it.
As an experienced diplomat, Dean had forged a close relationship with Sarkis, visiting Baabda Palace several times a week to play bridge with the Lebanese president. Dean also spoke privately with Hoss at length on a routine basis, including in the days after Connally’s visit. And, in the course of his duties, the U.S. ambassador maintained close relations with Johnny Abdo, Lebanon’s intelligence chief. Years later, Dean revealed that he even held the countersignature required for releasing the reserves of the National Bank of Lebanon. In short, as a Beirut insider, Dean would assuredly have detected any secret overtures from Connally and Barnes.
The Carter administration was not only following Connally’s movements, but also focused substantial intelligence resources on anything related to the hostage crisis. The National Security Agency and CIA devoted an array of collection assets to the Middle East during the hostage crisis. And, because of Operation Rubicon, as the Washington Post has reported, Iran unwittingly used Crypto AG, a CIA-owned company, to encrypt its communications. As a result, the Carter administration closely followed the deliberations of Iranian leadership and its web of contacts in the Middle East and Europe throughout the hostage crisis. Iran harbored few secrets from its American enemy.
Accepting Barnes’ account requires believing that Connally presented a deal to Iran through Middle Eastern leaders and yet somehow the U.S. intelligence community picked up no signs of their interactions, even though the Carter administration managed to capture nearly every other secret communication in the region.
Adm. Bobby Ray Inman, then director of the National Security Agency, served as one of Carter’s leads on monitoring the hostage crisis, including Iranian communications as well as signals and message traffic throughout the Middle East. Inman aided Carter in his negotiations with Iran using the intelligence collected through Crypto AG and from other sources and methods. Indeed, Inman was so central to the crisis that it fell to him to inform Carter on Reagan’s inauguration day that, while Tehran had agreed to release the hostages, they would not be allowed to depart Iran until moments after Reagan took the presidential oath. As historian H. W. Brands and some former hostages themselves have pointed out, such was the animus of the Iranian revolutionaries toward Carter that Tehran did not intend to release the hostages until Carter had left office. Which is precisely what happened in a final act of humiliation delivered by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
As Inman previously testified to Congress, and this month reconfirmed to us personally, he “judges with the highest level of confidence” that no one associated with the Reagan campaign ever attempted to persuade the Iranians to delay the release of the hostages.
Nor does Inman have any motive to exonerate Casey. While Inman later served under Casey as CIA deputy director, the two had a famously difficult relationship, such that Casey’s other ethical lapses influenced Inman’s decision to resign from CIA in 1982.
But one does not have to take Inman’s word alone. After the Senate Special Counsel for the October Surprise finished its investigation and found no evidence, the House of Representatives October Surprise Task Force conducted an even more thorough examination of the most sensitive records of the U.S. government. The task force reviewed more than 100,000 files from the State Department, over 5,000 pages of documents from the CIA, and several thousand pages of unredacted signals intelligence from the National Security Agency. Connally’s treasonous deal of the century is nowhere to be found in this highly classified material.
Barnes’ other claims similarly wilt under closer scrutiny. He told the New York Times that Connally “wasn’t freelancing because Casey was so interested in hearing as soon as we got back to the United States.” Yet, by Barnes’ own account and travel records, he and Connally returned to the United States on Aug. 11, and did not meet with Casey in Dallas to debrief on their trip until Sept. 10, a full month later. In the crucible of a presidential campaign, when every day counts and every decision matters, on a matter of such intense interest as the hostage crisis, it again tortures credulity to believe that Casey waited an entire month to obtain a report on a vitally important mission that he had allegedly commissioned. (And while there is solid evidence that Barnes and Connally visited Dallas on Sept. 10, there is no independent confirmation that Casey was also in Dallas that day).
Nor has any evidence for the Texan’s alleged gambit emerged in the historical record since the congressional investigation. In more recent years, multiple U.S. government official historians have looked extensively through State Department and intelligence community records, including many still classified, for any evidence of the October Surprise allegations. No such documents have been found. (This includes the long-rumored cable from the U.S. embassy in Madrid in July 1980 noting that Casey had visited the city. The cable most likely does not exist.) Moreover, as we can attest firsthand, one will not find any hard evidence to buttress Barnes’ story in the 1980 Reagan campaign papers housed in the Hoover Institution Archives at Stanford University.
Instead, some facts in the tale can be easily explained as more benign than sinister. What of Baker’s mention of Nancy Reagan’s phone message from the Reagan ranch to Connally on July 21 saying that her husband “wants to talk to you about being in on strategy meetings”? It was almost certainly just that. The presidential convention in Detroit had ended four days earlier. Connally, who had also run for the Republican nomination, was disappointed that Reagan had picked George H. W. Bush as his running mate. As the new nominee, Reagan wanted to unite the party and ensure that all of his former primary rivals, including Connally, backed his campaign. Reagan had just hired some of Connally’s campaign staff, including press secretary James Brady. Reagan also genuinely valued Connally’s advice and hoped that the Texan, who wielded a formidable fundraising network, would share his support base and political insights with the campaign — especially because Reagan’s campaign strategy against Carter focused on winning Connally’s home state of Texas, a then-key swing state which had narrowly voted for Carter in 1976. It made eminent sense for Reagan to call Connally and invite him to participate in campaign strategy meetings.
For that matter, why did Connally take the trip to the Middle East in the first place? It was almost certainly for this reason: Having endorsed Reagan’s candidacy, he was trying to burnish his foreign policy credibility in hopes of landing a senior cabinet position, such as secretary of state or secretary of defense, in a Reagan administration. And Connally chose the Middle East for his travel (instead of another region like Europe or Asia) in part to remedy the self-inflicted damage from a major speech that he had given several months earlier on Middle East policy in which he seemed to downplay Israel’s security while also upsetting some Arab states by calling for a bigger American military presence in the region. The speech had resulted in weeks of criticism and national ridicule. Visiting the Middle East gave Connally the opportunity to repair his image and audition for a national security job.
Indeed, Connally’s desire to demonstrate his Middle East policy expertise also casts further doubt on Barnes’ claims that Connally asked leaders in Sunni countries, such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia, to serve as intermediaries with Iran. Iran’s revolutionary leaders detested Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, especially for his decision to host the exiled Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi of Iran, who coincidentally died of cancer in Cairo on July 27, amid Connally’s trip. The shah received a state funeral three days later in Egypt, much to Khomeini’s ire. Tehran also viewed the Saudis as distrusted enemies. Connally knew this. It would have been far-fetched for him to make himself look like a foreign policy amateur with such ham-handed requests to Iran’s Sunni foes.
Just as there is no evidence from 1980 records for Barnes’ allegations, subsequent events make the charges appear even more outlandish. Take, for example, the Iran-Contra affair, the Reagan presidency’s biggest scandal that captured the world’s attention six years later in 1986. In Iran-Contra, the Reagan administration secretly sold arms to Iran in exchange for Tehran’s agreement to release American hostages held in Lebanon by Iranian-sponsored terrorist groups (the “Contra” part of the scandal entailed diverting funds from the arms sale sales to support the Contras fighting against Nicaragua’s Soviet-sponsored Sandinista government — in violation of the Boland Amendment). Iran-Contra, on the surface, could make the October Surprise scenario appear plausible, only because Iran-Contra included the same basic formula of the Reagan team offering to trade arms to Iran as part of a deal for releasing American hostages. The October Surprise conspiracy tale has the same principal figures and countries operating under a similar agreement and framework.
Yet instead, the historical record of Iran-Contra only further undermines any case for the October Surprise.
To begin, no participant in Iran-Contra — either in the United States, Iran, or Israel — ever muttered a word about Connally’s alleged 1980 deal transpiring. From Casey to Iranian senior official Hashemi Rafsanjani, those involved in the scandal had many reasons and auspicious occasions to reference the alleged precursor to the arms-for-hostages deals undertaken in the Reagan administration. Casey and Reagan, for their part, agonized over Hizballah’s kidnapping of CIA Station Chief William Buckley in 1984, whom Casey had personally dispatched to Lebanon. Both the president and the CIA director were traumatized by firsthand accounts of Buckley’s torture. Reagan himself worried about the other hostages daily, fixated on their plight. Yet, instead of drawing on any aspect of the alleged arrangement of 1980 to free Buckley and other U.S. hostages, the ill-conceived Iran-Contra scheme used shady middlemen motivated by profit, such as Adnan Khashoggi, a Saudi businessman, and Manucher Ghorbanifar, an Iranian arms dealer. The arms-for-hostages deals proceeded comically and disastrously, and soon became public. If the Reagan campaign had cut a secret deal with Iran in 1980, the vast historical record of Iran-Contra doesn’t contain any evidence of past cooperation between adversaries. Rather, it demonstrates operational difficulties and deep distrust between bitter enemies — in part because neither side had ever before attempted such a clumsy gambit.
Even if Iranian leaders did not reference the October Surprise in the wake of Iran-Contra, they would have had every incentive to do so in its aftermath. In the last two years of the Reagan administration, the relationship between the United States and Iran devolved into open conflict during the “tanker wars.” In 1988, Reagan launched Operation Praying Mantis against Iran, destroying most of the tiny Iranian navy. Hostilities reached the point of tragedy, leading to the USS Vincennes mistakenly shooting down the civilian Iran Air Flight 655 in July 1988. During this conflict Iranian leaders had strong incentives to disclose evidence of any secret overtures from the 1980 campaign. Yet, despite a prime opportunity to humiliate Reagan, they never did so.
The Iran hostage crisis was a terrible episode in American history. It was a punishing trial for Carter, and a severe trauma for the hostages themselves. But it was not a treasonous betrayal by Connally or the Reagan campaign.
Become a Member
William Inboden is Executive Director of the Clements Center for National Security and Associate Professor at the LBJ School of Public Affairs, both at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of The Peacemaker: Ronald Reagan, the Cold War, and the World on the Brink.
Joseph Ledford is an America in the World Consortium Postdoctoral Fellow at the Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. He is currently completing a new history of the Iran-Contra affair.
Image: National Archives
Commentary
warontherocks.com · by William Inboden · April 10, 2023
15. Special Operations News Update - April 10, 2023 | SOF News
Special Operations News Update - April 10, 2023 | SOF News
sof.news · by SOF News · April 10, 2023
Curated news, analysis, and commentary about special operations, national security, and conflicts around the world.
Photo / Image: Two U.S. Air Force CV-22B Ospreys with the 352d Special Operations Wing, take off during a bilateral training exercise at Utti Air Base, Finland, March 30, 2023. (U.S. Air Force photo by Tech. Sgt. Izabella Workman)
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SOF News
Oops. Wrong Hotel Room. Apparently Boston-area FBI agents were taking part in a military exercise in downtown Boston on Tuesday night, April 4th. They were directed to apprehend and question a suspect in a hotel room. The suspect was woken from his sleep, handcuffed, placed in the room’s shower, and interrogated for 45 minutes before FBI agents realized he was not part of an exercise . . . just a Delta Airlines pilot getting some sleep. “Defense Department detains guest in hotel training mix-up”, Air Force Time, April 5, 2023. See also an article by The Drive entitled “Botched FBI, Army Special Ops Training Raid Captures Unsuspecting Hotel Guest”, April 6, 2023.
“The training was meant to enhance soldier’s skills to operate in realistic and unfamiliar environments. The training team, unfortunately, entered the wrong room and detained an individual unaffiliated with the exercise.”
Lt. Col. Mike Burns, Army Special Operations Command
RIP – Billy Waugh. A Green Beret legend has passed away. Billy Waugh was a U.S. Army Special Forces veteran who served in Korea and Vietnam before going on to a career with the Central Intelligence Agency as a paramilitary officer. He served in conflicts spanning from Korea to Afghanistan; and many in between. “Special Forces legend Billy Waugh passes away at 93”, Task & Purpose, April 4, 2023.
3rd SFG(A) and UAS Course. Members of the 3rd Special Forces Group took part in a 4-week long course in unmanned aerial systems where they learned to build and operate small aerial systems. (DVIDS, Apr 5, 2023).
Female Graduate of Ranger School. Lisa Jaster writes about her experience of being one of the earliest female students attending and graduating from the U.S. Army Ranger School. “The Power of Going All-In”, Men’s Journal, April 2, 2023.
New Cdr for 150 SOW. An ANG unit at Kirtland Air Force Base, New Mexico has a new commander. Col. Robert “Mike” Rogers has assumed command of the 150th Special Operations Wing. “Rogers takes command of ANG Wing”, 150th SOW, April 7, 2023.
Navy SEALs and Toxic Culture. Roger Thompson, a research fellow and book author, argues that the members of Naval Special Warfare SEAL units have a “professional competency” issue. “The Navy SEALs Killed bin Laden, But They Aren’t Supermen”, CounterPunch, March 31, 2023.
AFSOC and HADR Missions. A recent article highlights the support that USAF special operations wings can provide to Humanitarian and Disaster Relief missions around the world. “USAF unit leverages special ops skills for humanitarian missions”, FlightGlobal, April 5, 2023.
Best Ranger Competition. Teams from across the Army are preparing to take part in some intense competition at Fort Benning, Georgia in April. One team hails from the U.S. Army Chemical Corps; read about how they are preparing for the competition. “Fort Leonard Wood Soldiers prepare for Best Ranger Competition”, U.S. Army, April 5, 2023.
The USMC’s MSPF. The Maritime Special Purpose Force is a specialized unit of the United States Marine Corps that is designed to perform a variety of tasks in a maritime environment. It is organized into six distinct elements, each with its own specific function. Learn about its organization, training, and mission. “A Closer look at the Marine Expeditionary Unit’s MSPF”, Spec Ops Magazine, March 31, 2023.
Bull Frog. A little known aspect of Naval Special Warfare culture is explained in “Dissecting the Bull Frog – Exploring an NSW Tradition”, DVIDS, April 6, 2023.
Army Dive Training. Much of the selection of Army divers – whether at Key West or Panama City – takes place before ever getting to either location. Read more in “How to Prepare Your Body for All Phases of Army Dive Training”, Military.com, March 2023.
AFSOC and Thai Language Training. Eight Airmen participated in a Thai language LEAP-CACE class at Hurlburt Field, Florida in March. The new course includes study in Thai language, cross-cultural communications, and negotiation strategies. “USAFSOS Partners to Forge Multi-Capable Airmen for ACE”, 492d Special Operations Wing, April 4, 2023.
Retired GB Sentenced to 7 Years. Jeremy Brown was arrested in Tampa and found guilty of having illegal weapons and possessing classified documents. The charges were related to a federal investigation into his alleged involvement in the January 6 riot in the U.S. capitol. He was active in a political group called the Oath Keepers. (Department of Justice, Apr 7, 2023).
International SOF
Senior SOF Leaders Meet in Europe. NATO Allied and partner special operations senior leaders met in Samorin, Slovakia for a NATO Special Operations Commander’s Conference from April 4-6, 2023. The newest NATO ally, Finland, had a seat at the table. The event was co-hosted by Slovak Special Operations Command and NATO Special Operations Headquarters (NSHQ). (NATO Special Operations, Apr 6, 2023).
ESTSOF and Scout Battalion Heading to Iraq. The Estonian Defense Forces will be sending members of their Scout Battalion and the Estonian Special Operations Forces to Iraq to take part in the US-led Operation Inherent Resolve. Over 100 Estonian personnel will deploy there for about six months. They will be based in the Erbil region of northern Iraq with the mission to advise and support local Iraqi security forces in the fight against the terrorist group Daesh (ISIS). “Estonian Defense Forces company to be deployed to Iraq”, ERR News, April 5, 2023.
Mexican Navy’s SMU. Learn about the history, organization, mission, training, and equipment of a unit in Mexico’s Naval Special Warfare Command. “Fuerzas Especiales (FES): Mexican Navy’s Special Mission Unit”, Grey Dynamics, April 8, 2023.
UK and Bulgarian SF Team Up. The Royal Marines of 45 Commando spent some time on an exercise in Bulgaria . . . and this was followed by a trip of Bulgarian troops to Scotland. “Bulgarian special forces team up with Royal Marines on biggest UK deployment in a decade”, Forces.net, April 6, 2023.
SOF History
WWI. April 6, 1917. The U.S. Congress votes to declare war against Germany during World War I.
1st Special Service Force – Last Parade in Helena. It was 80 years ago that the 1st Special Service Force paraded down the streets of Helena, Montana before the unit left for additional training and eventual deployment in World War II. The force was a joint Canadian-American unit organized at Fort William Henry Harrison located just west of Helena. (Independent Record, April 6, 2023).
FBNC and a History Lost. Fort Bragg is being redesignated as Fort Liberty in June. In addition, some of the forts streets will lose their identity as well. Maps of FBNC will see some major changes in the future. Reilly Road, Randolph Street, Bragg Boulevard, Armistead Street, Alexander Street, Pelham Street, Jackson Street, Donelson Street, and Mosby Street are going into the history books . . . or perhaps, being erased from the history books. “These 9 Fort Bragg roads will be renamed”, The Fayetteville Observer, April 5, 2023.
Ukraine Conflict
‘Gun Trucks’ for Ukraine. In an effort to counter the wide-spread use of drones by the Russians the U.S. will soon be providing an inexpensive counter-air solution to Ukraine. 30mm guns that can be mounted on the back of trucks will be sent to the country in the coming months. Kind of like the technicals found in smaller countries – big guns on pickup trucks; but better. “US providing Ukraine with 30mm gun trucks to blast Iranian drones out of the sky”, Task & Purpose, April 5, 2023.
TS Docs on Social Media. It appears that Top Secret Pentagon documents with details about the war in Ukraine have been published on some social media sites (Telegram and Twitter). The Pentagon is reviewing the matter but has not provided many details. The Department of Justice has opened an investigation into the leaks. The documents include maps of Ukraine, where troops are concentrated, and the kinds of weapons available to the Ukrainian forces. Defense analysts are picking apart the posted documents determining what is real and what is fiction. “Top-secret Pentagon documents on Ukraine war appear on social media”, NPR, April 7, 2023. See also “Pentagon probing leaked docs purporting to preview Ukraine offensive”, New York Post, April 7, 2023. And this article as well . . . “Russians Accused of Doctoring Leaked Western Documents on Ukraine War”, Voice of America, April 7, 2023.
Guardsmen to Train with Ukrainian Troops. Members of the Arkansas National Guard are heading to Germany for a year-long mission. They will assume command of the Joint Multinational Training Group – Ukraine (JMTG-U) at Grafenwoehr where they will mentor and advise Ukrainians. “39th Infantry Brigade Combat Team to Work With Ukrainian Forces”, National Guard, April 6, 2023.
Europe
Putin Saves NATO. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has done more to strengthen NATO than any other evet in the past 30 years. NATO has been revived as a defense institution that can oppose Russian aggression in Europe. Learn more in “How Putin saved NATO”, The Strategist, Australian Strategic Policy Institute, April 6, 2023.
Finland Joins NATO. Finland ended 75 years of neutrality and has been accepted into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. This is not good news for Russia; there is now another border region that Russia must defend against a NATO country. If Turkey removes its objections, then Sweden may soon join as well.
Baltic Sea Region and the Russian Threat. The invasion of Ukraine by Russia has galvanized western Europe into rethinking their strategy for countering any future Russian aggression in Europe. The nations in the Baltic Sea region area especially concerned for their security. Read a detailed analysis by G. Alexander Crowther in “The Baltic Sea Region At An Inflection Point – Analysis”, NDU Press, April 8, 2023.
National Security
The Threat from Al-Qaeda. Sara Harmouch, a researcher of terrorism, argues that the United States needs a new approach to ensure that terrorists do not attack our country. She argues that our over-the-horizon CT strategy may not apply anymore and we need to update our estimate of the capabilities and intent of today’s terrorist organizations. “Al-Qaeda’s Looming Threat: Are We Looking Over the Wrong Horizon?”, Lawfare Blog, April 4, 2023.
Army’s ISV Program. The U.S. Army’s Infantry Squad Vehicle program is now going to transition to full-rate production. This Army will be acquiring 2,593 ISVs for use in in Infantry Brigade Combat Teams, Security Force Assistance Brigades, and Army Ranger units. Read more in “Infantry Squad Vehicle program approved for Full-Rate Production”, U.S. Army, April 4, 2023.
Asia
SFAB in Mongolia. Advisor teams from the 5th Security Force Assistance Brigade have been getting some traveling done. Two of the SFAB teams spent some time in Mongolia on a training mission. Both CAT 5220 and MAT 5223 have been employed in Mongolia before; so it isn’t new territory for them. They have been providing daily advising at the tactical level in small unit leadership, interoperability, and NCO development. Prior to their deployment to Mongolia the teams received training in cold weather operations, cultural aspects of advising, and in other topics to prepare for the advisory mission. “U.S. Army Advisors Strengthen Partnership in Mongolia”, U.S. Army, April 5, 2023.
Free Burma Rangers. A relief group funded by US Christian donors provides assistance and hope to displaced populations in Myanmar’s war-torn Kayah state. “On the front lines with the Free Burma Rangers”, Asia Times, April 3, 2023.
Afghanistan
Ignoring Reality. The Biden administration is taking a lot of heat from veterans and others about its 12-page report about the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in the summer of 2021. Many have picked apart the document and noted many misrepresentations of the events that took place during that timeframe. Most observers, many who do not appear to be towing the Democratic or Republican line, have concluded the report is merely a political statement provided in advance of House of Representative hearings about the Afghan withdrawal that will soon take place in D.C. Commentators are having a field day detailing the many ‘faults’ of the report. One obvious failure of the report is the repeated assertion that the Afghan government had a fully manned army and police force; in the face of overwhelming evidence that it did not. Most national security observers say that 180,000 was a more accurate number. Some prominent Afghans say that between 50,000 to 100,000 was a more realistic number. Read more in “Biden administration still insists Afghanistan had 300,000 security forces before Kabul fell”, Task & Purpose, April 7, 2023.
“Baghdad Bob” and “Kabul Kirby”. A former spokesman for the Department of Defense and current coordinator for strategic communications for the National Security Council, John Kirby, has squandered his credibility. He says he didn’t notice the mayhem involved in the withdrawal from Afghanistan. However, many with a ‘lower perch’ than him certainly did. Some are comparing him with a former spokesman for Saddam Hussein. He is quoted, when referring to the Kabul non-combatant evacuation operation (NEO) of August 2021, with:
“For all this talk of chaos, I just didn’t see it!”
John Kirby on the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, April 6, 2023.
Upcoming Events
April 14-16, 2023. Fort Benning, Georgia
Best Ranger Competition
May 8-11, 2023. Tampa, Florida
SOF Week
USSOCOM
May 16-18, 2023. Fort Bragg, NC and via Zoom
Geostrategic Symposium 2023
USASOC
May 22-26, 2023. Indianapolis, Indiana
Special Forces Association Convention
May 31, 2023. Ijamsville, MD
6th Annual Golf Tournament
Three Rangers Foundation
SOF News welcomes the submission of articles for publication. If it is related to special operations, current conflicts, national security, or defense then we are interested.
Podcasts
Podcast – A Visit From the Pacific Northwest. The founder and CEO of Intrepid Tactics, Brice Colbert, is interviewed in this episode of The Pinelander, April 7, 2023, one hour.
Podcast Channels
SOFCAST. United States Special Operations Command
https://linktr.ee/sofcast
The Pinelander. Blacksmith Publishing
https://www.thepinelander.com/
The Indigenous Approach. 1st Special Forces Command
https://open.spotify.com/show/3n3I7g9LSmd143GYCy7pPA
Irregular Warfare Podcast. Modern War Institute at West Point
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/irregular-warfare-podcast/id1514636385
sof.news · by SOF News · April 10, 2023
16. Miles Yu On Taiwan: Why is China so obsessed with Taiwan?
If I were advising on an influence campaign, I would be taking these "obsessions" et al. into account.
Excerpts:
First, the Chinese Communist Party sees subsuming Taiwan as central to its Liberation Ideology, a primary source of the CCP’s political legitimacy.
...
Second, the CCP under Xi is animated by a delusion that China is stronger than the United States and its allies.
...
Third, the CCP remains deeply paranoid that Taiwan’s success in democratizing will have a destabilizing effect on the mainland Chinese populace.
...
Fourth, the CCP’s obsession with Taiwan motivates its military and enables its diplomats.
...
Understanding the four sources of China’s obsession with Taiwan is essential for the US and its allies. For not only does the small island nation serve as a beacon of freedom and democracy; it also straddles a strategic chokepoint in the chain of islands that is vital for a free and open Indo-Pacific region. A free and sovereign Taiwan may be the final obstacle to the establishment of an alternative global order run on Xi Jinping’s terms. Only by thwarting Beijing’s ambitions can the West assure that this new and terrifying alternative never comes to pass.
Mon, Apr 10, 2023 page8
Miles Yu On Taiwan: Why is China so obsessed with Taiwan?
https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2023/04/10/2003797620
As Russia’s war on Ukraine grinds on into its second year, it continues to generate headlines as the largest land war in Europe since 1945. Yet 5,000 miles away, at the opposite end of the Eurasian land mass, a different conflict lies poised to ignite, kindled by another large country’s distortion of a shared cultural and ethnolinguistic heritage to threaten a smaller neighbor’s sovereignty.
Many headlines have also been written on the Chinese Communist Party’s efforts to isolate and strangle the small but defiant democracy on the island of Taiwan. Yet many of these analyses fail to locate the sources of China’s obsession with its neighbor to the southeast. Any effort to neutralize Chinese aggression must begin with one question: why is China so obsessed with subduing a tiny nation of only 23 million people? Examining this question reveals four key motivators animating Beijing’s mania.
First, the Chinese Communist Party sees subsuming Taiwan as central to its Liberation Ideology, a primary source of the CCP’s political legitimacy. The blunt instrument of this evangelization is the CCP’s People’s Liberation Army, today the world’s largest armed force. Animated by the proletarian millennialist zealotry of Marxism-Leninism, the CCP fancies itself the vanguard of a mission to liberate all mankind from the evils of capitalism.
The CCP believes that its liberation mission was upended in 1949 by its failure to wipe out the Chinese Nationalists who fled to Taiwan. Ever since, the CCP’s supreme leader — from Mao (毛澤東) to Deng (鄧小平) to Xi (習近平) — has vowed to finish the job. Beijing brands this takeover as “upholding territorial integrity of the motherland,” yet the CCP regime has since its founding willingly ceded territories dozens of times larger than Taiwan to communist neighbors such as the Soviet Union and Mongolia, and friendly countries such as Burma. The truth lies in the words of Mao, who famously urged that “we must carry on the revolution to its very end.” The CCP sees Taiwan’s existence as a flourishing democracy as a major stain upon its domestic reputation, and views capturing Taiwan as the ultimate fulfillment of a decades-long ideological commitment.
Second, the CCP under Xi is animated by a delusion that China is stronger than the United States and its allies. This braggadocio is not new; indeed, Xi’s recent words expressing the sentiment — “the East’s risen, the West’s declined” — echo those of Mao Zedong more than 6 decades prior, when he said “the east wind is now prevailing over the west wind.” China’s revanchist ambitions therefore stem from a deeply rooted desire to prove itself as a global superpower. Taking over Taiwan, whose security is ostensibly guaranteed by the US and its allies, would prove to the world that Xi is correct in his analysis of the global balance of power.
Third, the CCP remains deeply paranoid that Taiwan’s success in democratizing will have a destabilizing effect on the mainland Chinese populace. Taipei’s advocacy for artistic freedom, its environmental activism, and its spirit of innovation exert an enormous pull on the millions of ordinary Chinese living under Beijing’s stultifying rule. A Taiwan subdued by unrelenting bullying and pressure would prove much less attractive worldwide than a thriving, vibrant democracy among the Chinese diaspora. A Hong Kong-style takeover would eliminate Taiwan’s inspirational power — and its potential to undermine the appeal of Beijing’s hard sell.
Fourth, the CCP’s obsession with Taiwan motivates its military and enables its diplomats. The People’s Liberation Army has built military capabilities that would far exceed its needs in any potential Taiwan campaign, but would serve it well in a larger conflict with the United States. The PLA has made key advances in critical modern warfare capabilities, including in domains such as cyber, space, the deep seas, and supersonic and electromagnetic weapons. The Taiwan obsession also allows Beijing to evade its international responsibilities: when Chinese diplomats become uncomfortable in global forums, they often change the subject by launching into indignant soliloquies on the One China principle. Thus, problems that could benefit from Beijing’s constructive engagement, from North Korean weapons proliferation to Russian aggression in Ukraine, remain festering sores on the liberal international order.
Understanding the four sources of China’s obsession with Taiwan is essential for the US and its allies. For not only does the small island nation serve as a beacon of freedom and democracy; it also straddles a strategic chokepoint in the chain of islands that is vital for a free and open Indo-Pacific region. A free and sovereign Taiwan may be the final obstacle to the establishment of an alternative global order run on Xi Jinping’s terms. Only by thwarting Beijing’s ambitions can the West assure that this new and terrifying alternative never comes to pass.
Miles Yu served as the senior China policy and planning advisor to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo during the Trump Administration.
17. Ukraine Situation Report: Both Sides Rationing Shells Ahead Of Kyiv’s Counteroffensive
At least casualties might be reduced in the near term.
Ukraine Situation Report: Both Sides Rationing Shells Ahead Of Kyiv’s Counteroffensive
Although shelling continues, artillery units are saving rounds they expect to desperately need sooner rather than later.
BY
STETSON PAYNE
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PUBLISHED APR 8, 2023 5:57 PM EDT
THE WAR ZONE
thedrive.com · by Stetson Payne · April 8, 2023
Artillery units on both sides of the line, despite the continued duels, are reportedly dialing back fire missions to save up ammunition for the long-awaited Ukrainian counteroffensive.
Russian milblogger Alexander Khodakovsky claims that those Russian units not involved in ongoing offensives have had ammunition supplies seriously curtailed. Khodakovsky attributed the rationing to concerns about the potential offensive.
At the same time, a frontline account from the Washington Post highlighted Ukrainian artillery crews similarly conserving shells. While embedded with an artillery platoon in Ukraine’s 56th Motorized Brigade, Isabelle Khurshudyan and Kamila Hrabchuk reported the unit’s 152mm howitzers used to fire more than 20-30 shells a day. That number has dwindled to fewer than three.
The nearby units equipped with NATO 155mm caliber guns are reportedly facing less of a shortage than the Warsaw Pact-era guns. Citing an anonymous Ukrainian military official, the report claimed Ukraine is still firing 7,700 shells a day. Russian shelling reportedly dwarfs even that figure. Ukraine’s incredible artillery consumption remains a concern for NATO as Western production lines struggle to keep supplies moving.
The Institute for the Study of War (@TheStudyOfWar) noted concern from Russian milbloggers has only grown in the days since a number of classified intelligence reports on Ukraine’s war efforts leaked.
You can read more about the ongoing fallout from those documents’ leak in our story here. Each day that the Ukrainian ground firms after the muddy thaw draws the counteroffensive nearer. These are the latest signs that even as the battle for Bakhmut grinds on, Ukraine and Russia are looking ahead to the next major engagement. And as Rob Lee (@RALee85), Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, notes, it further indicates Moscow wants to be more prepared than it was in its rout outside Kharkiv in September.
Before we get into today’s latest news from Ukraine, The War Zone readers can get caught up with our previous rolling coverage here.
THE LATEST
Saturday’s intelligence update from the British Ministry of Defense has assessed Russia’s winter campaign against Ukraine’s energy infrastructure as having “highly likely failed.” Waves of strikes using missiles and Iranian-made kamikaze drones began targeting the power grid in October. But those large-scale raids have been rare since early March.
Ukraine continues sourcing replacement components for damaged infrastructure, creating a significant logistical headache in moving 100-ton transformers across the country. However, warming temperatures will help lighten the load on the Ukrainian power grid.
Part of the classified document leak from last week reportedly feature particular concern with declining stocks of Ukraine's Soviet-era medium and long-range surface-to-air missiles that could run dry in the coming months. They also supposedly point to concerns about the inventories of IRIS-T missiles and those used by NASAMS, and that such exhausted defenses would not be able to prevent continued Russian attacks on infrastructure, population centers, and frontline forces.
However, as noted above, the pace of Russian air raids has slowed from its winter siege. It’s unclear not only whether those documents and the assessments therein are genuine, but also whether the lessened attacks have changed the SAM stocks’ outlook. Also, the NASAMS claim is curious if not dubious as that system primarily uses AIM-120 AMRAAMs, of which there are many thousands in stock within NATO alone. AIM-120s continue to be supplied by the U.S. in recent military aid transfers from the U.S., too.
Fighting in Bakhmut has approached the city’s train station, further indicating that the situation has deteriorated for Ukrainian forces. Imagery shows months of brutal fighting have left streets and buildings in ruin as muddy trench warfare continues outside urban areas.
The Ukrainian supply route connecting the besieged city to nearby Chasiv Yar is increasingly threatened, as evidenced by the charred remnants of trucks, Humvees, and an M113.
Ukrainian artillery gunners continue hunting Russian forces spotted by forward observers and drone, such as in this strike on a BMP-1 infantry fighting vehicle outside Bakhmut. There are also clips of a Czech-supplied vz.77 “DANA” 152mm self-propelled howitzer, and an L119 105mm towed howitzer in Ukrainian service.
On the other side, Russian ZALA Lancet loitering munitions remain a threat even to some of the most modern and mobile Ukrainian artillery systems. Video shows a Lancet strike on a Ukrainian M109 self-propelled howitzer followed by a fire and subsequent cookoff.
Lancet strikes on Ukrainian vehicles are included in this compilation of attacks from Russian SSO (Special Operations Forces), as well as a purported diver team sabotaging a Ukrainian ship.
Russian forces have captured a downed Ukrainian drone armed with three PTAB-2.5M submunitions. Soviet RBK cluster bombs dispense these munitions several dozen at a time, each carrying a shaped high-explosive anti-tank (HEAT) charge to penetrate armored vehicles. Interestingly, Ukraine has been asking the U.S. to give it Rockeye cluster bombs, not to use in combat but to harvest its submunitions for similar drone dropping operations.
Also on the topic of drones, there is a Ukrainian competition to develop and deploy a drone to land in Moscow’s Red Square during Russian Victory Day celebrations on May 9. Winning the contest will net developers 20 million Ukrainian hryvnya, or a little more than half a million U.S. dollars.
Although this contest factors in the high profile of Russia’s Victory Day celebrations and beefed-up air defenses in the Moscow skies, it wouldn’t be the first time an uninvited airborne guest made a visit to Red Square. The contest evokes memories of then 19-year-old German pilot Mathias Rust’s incredible flight from Helsinki, Finland, to Red Square in a Cessna 172P in May 1987.
Rust evaded Soviet Voyska PVO air defense force SAM batteries and MiG interceptors, before landing on Bolshoy Moskvoretsky Bridge near St. Basil’s Cathedral and taxiing right into Red Square.
A picture shows a rather kitted-out Lithuanian EDM4S counter-UAS system in service with the Ukrainian 36th Brigade. The system not only has a matching camouflage paint job, but a black holographic sight. There’s also a suppressed Desert Tech SRS-A1 sniper rifle.
The Times has a remarkable report on a failed Ukrainian special forces operation to retake the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in October. The reportedly 600-strong force launched the unsuccessful attack from boats crossing the Dnipro River.
Snowy video shows a Ukrainian T-64BM2 Bulat tank engaging Russian forces in Donetsk Oblast. As Ukraine thaws out from winter, it’s unclear when this video dates to.
There are further reports that a Polish firm will help refurbish and further modernize Ukrainian T-64s, with plans for potential support for Leopard 2 operations alongside them.
An engineering variant of the U.S.-supplied Stryker armored vehicles appeared in Ukrainian service equipped with a mine roller. The M1132 Engineer Squad Vehicle (ESV) and a following M1126 Infantry Carrier Vehicle (ICV) roll by with their machine guns covered. There are also pictures of an Australian Bushmaster MRAP sporting a Mk 19 grenade launcher in Ukrainian service.
Lastly, there’s a real Frankenstein of a vehicle in Ukrainian service. What appears to be a captured Russian Tigr-M with the turret from a BRDM-2/BTR-60PB.
That's it for now. We'll update this story when there's more news to report about Ukraine.
Contact the author: stetson.payne@thewarzone.com
thedrive.com · by Stetson Payne · April 8, 2023
18. Taking Crimea From Putin Has Become ‘Operation Unthinkable’
Conclusion:
All geopolitics demands calculations in which justice, fairness and freedom play only a limited role. A host of people today say: “If the Russians are allowed to keep one hectare of Ukrainian soil, democracy and Western security will be shockingly compromised.” This is true. But just as most of the peoples of the democracies were unwilling to fight a new war for Poland in 1945, so it seems unlikely that they will support a fight to the finish today, to free Crimea. That is ugly, but it is a reality that cannot be reversed.
Taking Crimea From Putin Has Become ‘Operation Unthinkable’
Winston Churchill learned the hard way that dealing militarily with Russians requires some unpalatable trade-offs.
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-04-09/taking-crimea-from-putin-has-become-unthinkable-max-hastings?srnd=premium&sref=hhjZtX76
ByMax Hastings
April 9, 2023 at 12:00 AM EDT
It is hard to alter facts, reverse realities. This is almost as true in geopolitics as in science. I passionately support Ukraine’s battle for survival against Russian aggression. For almost a year, however, I have been arguing that heedless of where justice lies, and no matter how long the war continues, it remains militarily unlikely that Russian President Vladimir Putin can be dispossessed of Crimea, nor probably of the eastern Donbas region.
Russia can boast centuries of history, and considerable success, as an armed robber — sometimes on a continental scale. The most conspicuous example dates from 1945. By the end of World War II, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill was in no doubt that Soviet leader Josef Stalin was a monster, morally indistinguishable from Adolf Hitler.
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Most British people, however, together with many Americans, felt a huge gratitude to “Uncle Joe” and the Russian nation for having borne the lion’s share of the human sacrifice needed to destroy Nazism. They lacked sympathy with Churchill’s fury toward Stalin, who was tyrannizing his new empire in Eastern Europe. Britons had grown weary of their elderly prime minister, and especially of his seeming eagerness to seek out new enemies for them to fight now that Hitler was gone.
Churchill had exceptional sentiment, a special anger, about the Poles. In September 1939, Britain and France had declared war on Germany explicitly in response to Hitler’s unprovoked assault on Poland. Yet those allies’ armed forces were pathetically weak. Some prominent British people — not all of them paid-up appeasers — declared that it was grotesque to try to fight Hitler to succor a faraway East European nation that Britain’s army, navy and air force could do nothing immediately to assist.
A clever young Grenadier Guards officer named David Fraser, who later became a general, wrote:
The mental approach of the British to hostilities was distinguished by their prime faults — slackness of mind and wishful thinking … The people of the democracies need to believe that good is opposed to evil — hence the spirit of crusade. All this, with its attempted arousal of moral and ideological passions, tends to work against that cool concept of war as an extension of policy defined by Clausewitz, an exercise with finite, attainable objectives.
In Warsaw, naïve Poles cheered and sang outside the British Embassy, where the ambassador shouted from the balcony: “We shall fight side by side against aggression and injustice!” In truth, the British did nothing of the sort. They reneged on a prewar pledge to launch an immediate bomber offensive against Germany because they were fearful of Nazi retaliation.
The French had likewise promised the Poles that, in the event of war, their army would attack Germany from the west within 13 days of mobilization. In reality, on Sept. 7, 10 French divisions merely advanced five miles into the German Saarland. Then they stopped, and stayed stopped. Was this not rather like Western European nations today, in their less-than-wholehearted support for Ukraine?
By Oct. 5, 1939, the campaign was over. The Germans occupied Poland, which became the only nation in their empire where, in the ensuing five years, there was virtually no collaboration between the conquerors and their subjects. The dirtiest aspect of Hitler’s shameless act of aggression was that the Germans retired into western Poland, relinquishing control of its east to Stalin, in accordance with the secret terms of the August 1939 Nazi-Soviet Pact.
Russia ruled the Poles with even more brutality than did the Germans. The fate of the Jews is well known to posterity, but the Nazis and Russians also accounted for the deaths of something approaching a million non-Jewish Poles before “peace” came in 1945.
All these memories were in Churchill’s mind as he raged at the condition of post-Hitler Poland, its people bound with new Russian chains even as Western Europe celebrated its freedom from Nazism. Impulsively, the prime minister seized on the notion that if Stalin continued flagrantly to breach the terms of February 1945’s Yalta Agreement on Poland’s free governance, the West must enforce them at gunpoint. General Sir Alan Brooke, chairman of Britain’s chiefs of staff, was astounded when Churchill demanded to know the prospects of the Anglo-American armies successfully liberating the Poles.
“Winston delighted,” Brooke wrote in his diary on May 13. “He gives me the feeling of already longing for another war! Even if it entailed fighting the Russians!” Ten days later, after further bitter brooding, the prime minister formalized his request. With the “Russian bear sprawled over Europe,” he instructed the chiefs of staff to explore the prospects of challenging the Red Army’s occupation before the British and US armies were demobilized.
He requested the planners to consider means “to impose upon Russia the will of the United States and the British Empire” to secure “a square deal for Poland.” They were told to assume the support of American and British public opinion (which in truth would never have been forthcoming). Even more implausibly, military leaders were invited to expect that they could “count on the use of German manpower and what remains of German industrial capacity.” The target date for launching such an offensive would be July 1, 1945.
The Foreign Office recoiled in horror from Churchill’s proposal. Marshal Georgy Zhukov, commander of the Soviet occupation zone, wrote later in his memoirs that he had been informed by secret sources that Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery, British commander-in-chief in Germany, had been instructed by London to stockpile captured Nazi weapons for prospective use against the Russians.
The Soviets delivered an outraged protest to a subsequent meeting of the Allied Control Commission in Germany. Zhukov wrote: “We stressed that history knew few examples of such perfidy and betrayal of allies’ obligations and duty.” Here was an example, familiar once more in 2022-23, of the Russians’ turning truth on its head, mobilizing their infinite appetite for grievance, even as Soviet firing squads were executing anticommunist Poles by the score.
The British war cabinet’s Joint Planning Staff proceeded to draft a detailed proposal for what was codenamed Operation Unthinkable — a Western Allied offensive against the Russians. I have spent many hours poring over this fascinating 100-page document in our National Archives.
The planners in their preamble were at pains to state that even if the British and Americans advanced east with the sole objective of securing “a square deal for Poland … That does not limit the military commitment. A quick success might induce the Russians to submit to our will … but it might not. That is for the Russians to decide. If they want total war, they are in a position to have it … There is virtually no limit to the distance to which it would be necessary for the Allies to penetrate into Russia in order to render further resistance impossible.
“To achieve the decisive defeat of Russia would require a) the deployment in Europe of a large proportion of the vast resources of the United States b) the re-equipment and re-organization of German manpower and of all the Western European allies.”
The planners conceded that Western air power could be used effectively against Soviet communications, but “Russian industry is so dispersed that it is unlikely to be a profitable air target.”
They proposed that 47 American and British divisions should be committed, 14 of these armored. More than 40 other formations would be retained in reserve, to meet a likely Soviet counteroffensive. The Russians could deploy in response 170 divisions, 30 of them armored: “It is difficult to know to what extent our tactical air superiority and the superior handling of our forces will redress the balance, but the above odds would clearly render the launching of an offensive a hazardous undertaking.”
The word “hazardous” is used eight times to characterize the proposed operation. The war planners warned that communists in Western Europe would seek to sabotage the offensive. While it might be true that the German General Staff would collaborate with the Allies, German soldiers would be unlikely to enthuse about resuming conflict with the Russians.
The British chiefs of staff were never in doubt that the Unthinkable plan was, indeed, unthinkable by anyone save the prime minister. Brooke wrote on May 24: “The idea is of course quite fantastic and the chances of success quite impossible.” In short, Stalin’s Red Army could see off the much smaller US and British forces, even if GIs and Tommies could be persuaded to take up arms against their erstwhile ally.
General Hastings Ismay, the prime minister’s personal chief of staff, told Churchill that the armed forces chiefs would be happy to explain to him why they regarded Unthinkable as impracticable, “but the less put on paper about this the better.” The chiefs did record, however, in a commentary on the draft plan: “Once hostilities began, it would be beyond our power to win a quick but limited success, and we should be committed to a protracted war against heavy odds. These odds, moreover, would become fanciful if the Americans grew weary and indifferent and began to be drawn away by the magnet of the Pacific war.”
It should not be forgotten that this debate in London took place even while the allied struggle against the Japanese continued, notably on Okinawa. Churchill responded to the chiefs of staff on June 10 by admitting that the Russian armies might be capable, if Stalin so decreed, of smashing forward to the Channel coast of Europe. As for Unthinkable, “the Staffs will realize that this remains a precautionary study of what, I hope, is still a purely hypothetical contingency.”
A month later, the Unthinkable file was closed, when the Americans dismissed out of hand the idea of fighting the Russians for Poland or indeed any other Soviet-imprisoned nation in Eastern Europe. President Harry S. Truman cabled from Washington that he saw no grounds for delaying the scheduled Anglo-American withdrawal westward to the occupation zones agreed at Yalta in February.
Stalin got his new empire, and Russia kept this until the collapse of the Soviet Union in the last decade of the 20th century — because the Red Army had got there first. If Churchill or the Western allies had wanted to preserve Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania or the Baltic States from Stalin’s maw, it would have been necessary to stage D-Day in 1943 rather than 1944, and fight a massively costly campaign in northwest Europe a year earlier.
As it was, the Russians had created facts which nobody save Churchill and US General George Patton was willing to dispute at gunpoint. I suggest, with absolute lack of pleasure, that much the same is true today of Putin’s grasp upon Crimea. The only moment at which this could credibly have been challenged was in 2014, when the Russians seized the peninsula and the West largely acquiesced.
All geopolitics demands calculations in which justice, fairness and freedom play only a limited role. A host of people today say: “If the Russians are allowed to keep one hectare of Ukrainian soil, democracy and Western security will be shockingly compromised.” This is true. But just as most of the peoples of the democracies were unwilling to fight a new war for Poland in 1945, so it seems unlikely that they will support a fight to the finish today, to free Crimea. That is ugly, but it is a reality that cannot be reversed.
More From Bloomberg Opinion:
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Putin Ups the Ante With Nukes in Belarus: Andreas Kluth
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The West Can't Afford Hubris About Russia's War in Ukraine: Max Hastings
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Britain Is Rapidly Becoming a Sick Society: Adrian Wooldridge
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19. Why progressive lawmakers are fighting against a TikTok ban
Why progressive lawmakers are fighting against a TikTok ban
The Hill · · April 10, 2023
Progressive lawmakers are emerging as the fiercest defenders of TikTok on Capitol Hill as the push to ban the popular video sharing app heats up in Washington.
A handful of left-leaning lawmakers — including members of the so-called “Squad” — have voiced support for TikTok and opposition to banning the platform, taking on a vocal coalition of bipartisan members who believe the app should be prohibited in the U.S.
The anti-TikTok ban crowd — while recognizing that the app poses concerns — has advocated for a broader conversation about data privacy and social media, arguing that zeroing in on TikTok would not alleviate the issues at hand. Members have also pointed to free speech concerns and the practical and political positives that come with the platform.
“I think what you’re seeing is [the] progressive caucus coming out, you know, one, on behalf of the First Amendment, two, more importantly, that we want to do something across all social media platforms around privacy of data,” Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), a former chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, told The Hill in the Capitol last week.
He said, however, that the group has not formally discussed the matter and support “just happens” to be within the caucus.
The congressional campaign to ban TikTok hit a fever pitch last month when the CEO of the app, Shou Zi Chew, testified before a House committee for five hours. Lawmakers from both parties grilled him on concerns regarding national security, data privacy, the dissemination of misinformation and safety for children.
TikTok is owned by Chinese-based company ByteDance, which has led to fears among some lawmakers that the app could be subject to Chinese laws when it comes to how U.S. data is handled.
Members in both chambers have sponsored legislation that would either ban the app or give the Biden administration the ability to do so if deemed necessary. But a small, yet growing, group of Democrats and at least one Republican — Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.) — is pushing back against a prohibition, setting the scene for a high-stakes and high-profile clash over social media in the U.S.
Calls for a ‘comprehensive conversation’ about social media
Some of TikTok’s progressive defenders argue the concerns posed by the app are no different than those of other social media companies, calling for a “comprehensive conversation” about all internet platforms.
“We have seen numerous examples of harmful data privacy and misinformation tactics by large social media companies, and at no point has an outright ban on their platforms been considered until now,” Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) said in a statement. “I have concerns about the potential privacy and misinformation risks posed by TikTok, but I also have similar concerns about Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and other for-profit social media companies.”
Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.), the first high-profile lawmaker to back the app amid the campaign to ban it, expressed the same concerns at a press conference last month alongside TikTok creators.
“Let’s have a comprehensive conversation about legislation that we need, federal legislation, to make sure people who use social media platforms are safe and their information is secure and their information is not being shared or sold to third parties,” Bowman, a TikTok user himself said.
That argument, however, has come under some scrutiny. Darrell West, a senior fellow at the Brookings Center for Technology Innovation, told The Hill that while other social media companies do “collect an extraordinary amount of data on customers,” concerns regarding TikTok are on a higher level because it is owned by a Chinese-based company.
“They collect a lot of information about consumers,” West said of platforms like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter, “but of course the concern about TikTok is it’s owned by a Chinese company and so therefore, you know, is there a risk of the information being shared with Chinese authorities?”
“Facebook does not operate in China so, you know, there’s little risk of that,” he added.
Some say a TikTok ban would not address concerns at hand
Lawmakers have argued that banning TikTok would not help address the concerns at hand, namely how much data social media companies are allowed to collect.
“To me, the solution here is not to ban an individual company, but to actually protect Americans from this kind of egregious data harvesting that companies can do without your significant ability to say no,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) said.
The congresswoman posted her first video on TikTok last month to stake her opposition to a ban.
During a press conference with TikTok creators last month, Pocan said “there is a real problem and we should be addressing it and it includes TikTok and Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and other platforms, about our data and our privacy of our data and selling our data and allowing misinformation — but that is not what’s being addressed when people say they want to ban TikTok.”
West, the Brookings fellow, agreed with that sentiment, saying that “banning one app is not going to deal with the wide range of privacy and security concerns that are out there.”
The practical — and political — benefits of TikTok
Progressives have also cited the practical and political benefits of TikTok when pushing against a ban.
Bowman, Pocan and Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) held a press conference last month with TikTok creators, who outlined how the app helped turbocharge small businesses and create communities.
“TikTok is a lot of things to a lot of different people,” Garcia, who called himself a “TikTok superconsumer,” said. “First and foremost, it is entertainment, it is fun.”
“But also, the thing to think about is what it’s done for small businesses, the amount of revenue it’s actually beginning back into the system for all of these content creators, for brands, for businesses across the country, and for the profiles it’s raising of folks who would not have the same voice on any other platform,” he added.
Lawmakers have also recognized the power TikTok holds in speaking with voters. Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.), who is against a TikTok ban, called the app “an incredible organizing tactic,” and Bush said it “served as a platform for organizing.”
Some have speculated that Democrats may be opposed to a TikTok ban out of fear of losing support among Generation Z voters, who helped the party perform better-than-expected in last year’s midterms.
Asked about that idea last week, Rep. Maxwell Alejandro Frost (D-Fla.) — who made history last year as the first Generation Z individual to be elected to Congress — told reporters “it’s something to think about but it’s not the driving factor.”
“There’s real concerns about data and privacy, but those same concerns exist for all big tech, for all social media, and I think it’s important that we look at it,” he added.
Lawmakers seek more information
Lawmakers who are against banning TikTok also said they want more information. They noted that despite hearing about national security concerns with the app, Congress has not yet received a briefing.
“Usually when the United States is proposing a very major move that has something to do with significant risk to national security, one of the first things that happens is that Congress receives a classified briefing,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “And I can tell you that Congress has not received a classified briefing around the allegations of national security risks regarding TikTok.”
“So why would we be proposing a ban regarding such a significant issue without being clued in on this at all? It just doesn’t feel right to me,” she added.
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FBI Director Christopher Wray testified last month that TikTok “screams” of national security concerns, and Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he believed the platform was a national security threat and “should be ended one way or another.”
Bush, however, said she has not seen any evidence to back up such claims.
“As Congressmembers, we have not received a single briefing–classified or otherwise–on national security risks posed by TikTok, and at this time, I have not seen sufficient evidence to justify a nationwide ban,” she said in a statement.
The Hill · by Rebecca Klar · April 10, 2023
20. The Age of Energy Insecurity
Excerpts:
The importance of energy security never diminished; it had simply been taken for granted in a world of abundance and integrated, well-functioning global energy markets. Policymakers now have the opportunity to look at energy security and climate security afresh, to accord appropriate weight to both, and to appreciate that neither can be achieved in the absence of the other.
This effort requires recognizing that energy security is not a static concept but one that has evolved a great deal since the crises of the 1970s. Policymakers must grasp the new risks to energy security and modernize their toolkits to combat them. Doing so is not a distraction from addressing climate change but central to it; without this shift, energy crises might derail the drive to net-zero emissions. In the not-so-distant past, officials and experts thought that excessive fears about energy security might hinder the fight for the climate. Today, the opposite is true: as the transition to a net-zero world proceeds, the bigger danger to the climate will be insufficient attention to energy security.
The Age of Energy Insecurity
How the Fight for Resources Is Upending Geopolitics
April 10, 2023
Foreign Affairs · by Jason Bordoff and Meghan L. O’Sullivan · April 10, 2023
As recently as 18 months ago, many policymakers, academics, and pundits in the United States and Europe were waxing lyrical about the geopolitical benefits of the coming transition to cleaner, greener energy. They understood that the move away from a carbon-intensive energy system that relied on fossil fuels was going to be difficult for some countries. But on the whole, the conventional wisdom held that the shift to new sources of energy would not only aid the fight against climate change but also put an end to the troublesome geopolitics of the old energy order.
Such hopes, however, were based on an illusion. The transition to clean energy was bound to be chaotic in practice, producing new conflicts and risks in the short term. By the fall of 2021, amid an energy crisis in Europe, skyrocketing natural gas prices, and rising oil prices, even the most optimistic evangelist of the new energy order had realized that the transition would be rocky at best. Any remaining romanticism evaporated when Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. The war revealed not only the brutal character of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime and the dangers of an excessive energy dependence on aggressive autocracies but also the risks posed by a jagged, largely uncoordinated scramble to develop new energy sources and to wean the world off old, entrenched ones.
One result of this turmoil has been the revival of a term that had come to seem anachronistic during the past two decades of booming energy supplies and utopian visions of a green future: energy security. To many Americans, that phrase is redolent of the 1970s, conjuring images of boxy sedans and wood-paneled station wagons lined up for miles, waiting to fill their tanks with gasoline at sky-high prices thanks to the Arab oil embargo of 1973 and the Iranian Revolution of 1979. But energy security is hardly a thing of the past: it will be crucial to the future.
Energy security has historically been defined as the availability of sufficient supplies at affordable prices. But that simple definition no longer captures reality; the risks the world now faces are both more numerous and more complicated than in earlier eras. To handle these new challenges, policymakers must redefine the concept of energy security and develop new means of ensuring it. Four broad principles should guide this process: diversification, resilience, integration, and transparency. Although these principles are familiar, the traditional methods of applying them will prove insufficient in this new era; policymakers will need new tools.
There is no reason to despair just yet. After all, the oil crisis of the 1970s sparked a great deal of innovation, including the development of today’s wind and solar technologies, greater efficiency in vehicles, and new government and multilateral institutions to make and coordinate energy policy. The policies and technologies that now seem old and outdated were once shiny and new. Today’s crisis may likewise lead to novel ideas and techniques, as long as policymakers fully grasp the new realities they face.
THE FUTURE ARRIVED EARLY
The events of the past year and a half have dramatically revealed the many ways in which the energy transition and geopolitics are entangled. Dynamics that were once seen as theoretical or hypothetical are now concrete and evident to even the casual observer.
First, the past 18 months have highlighted the “feast before famine” dynamic facing traditional producers of oil and gas, whose power and influence will increase before it wanes. In 2021, for example, Russia and other oil and gas producers had a banner year in terms of revenue as extreme weather and the world’s emergence from pandemic slowdowns boosted demand for natural gas. Such shocks had outsize impacts in a market with a meager cushion. In previous years, poor returns, uncertainty about future demand for energy, and pressure to divest from fossil fuels all contributed to diminished investment in oil and gas, resulting in inadequate supplies. Russia took advantage of these tight energy markets by draining its European gas storage sites and slashing spot gas sales even as it met long-term contractual commitments. Average natural gas prices tripled from the first half to the second half of 2021. Combined with rising oil prices, these developments granted Russia a feast of annual revenues that were 50 percent higher for oil and gas than the Kremlin had expected.
The past year and a half also demonstrated that some oil and gas producers were still prepared to use their energy prowess to ruthlessly advance their political and geostrategic objectives; hopes that the world had moved beyond such behavior were dashed with the brutal Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. In the months that followed, Russia gradually cut its pipeline gas deliveries to Europe by more than three-quarters, triggering a crisis that led European governments to spend a staggering 800 billion euros shielding companies and households from higher energy costs. The world’s dependence on Russia for energy initially weakened the global response to the invasion: for many months, Russian oil flows were exempt from European sanctions. To this day, the EU has not sanctioned Russian gas sales; indeed, its members continue to import significant volumes of Russian liquefied natural gas. Tight energy markets allowed Russian oil and gas revenues to soar and gave Moscow a potential means of dividing a newly united Europe.
By last year, the mismatch between declining supplies and rising demand had already tightened the oil market. Prices leaped even further, to a 14-year-high, on market fears that the delivery of millions of barrels per day of Russian oil would be disrupted even as demand surged. At the beginning of the war in Ukraine, the International Energy Agency (IEA) predicted that Russian production would decline by three million barrels per day. Fears of supply shocks drove up oil prices and boosted both the income and the geopolitical heft of major oil producers, particularly Saudi Arabia. The United States had thought its days of begging Saudi Arabia to increase oil output had passed. But in the face of high prices, old patterns reasserted themselves, as Washington pleaded—mostly in vain—for more output from Saudi Arabia, the only country with any meaningful spare oil production capacity.
A fire at an energy facility in Kyiv, November 2022
State Emergency Service of Ukraine / Reuters
The tremors of the last 18 months also illustrate how the geopolitical environment can affect the pace and scope of the transition to clean energy. Before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, European countries and the United States were committed to transforming their economies to achieve net-zero carbon emissions in the coming decades. The brutality of Russia’s actions and the knowledge that those actions were funded by fossil fuel receipts reinforced the determination among many in Europe and the United States to move away from oil, gas, and coal. In Washington, one result was landmark climate legislation in the form of the Inflation Reduction Act. Europe also expedited its green plans, notwithstanding some small near-term increases in coal use.
Many American officials worry, however, that a more accelerated energy transition will necessarily involve greater dependence on China, given its dominance of clean energy supply chains. U.S. Senator Joe Manchin, a Democrat from West Virginia, warned that he did not want to have to wait in line to buy car batteries from China the way he waited in line in the 1970s to buy gasoline made with oil from the Middle East. Such fears led Congress to create incentives for the domestic production, refining, and processing of critical minerals now centralized in China. Rather than praising Washington for finally passing meaningful climate change legislation, however, much of the world resented these moves as acts of U.S. protectionism, stirring talk of climate-provoked trade wars.
Finally, the energy crisis of the last 18 months has widened the rift between rich and poor countries. Many countries in the developing world became more strident in objecting to pressure to diversify away from fossil fuels, noting the rise in food and energy costs emanating from a European war. Developing countries have also denounced what they perceived as the hypocrisy inherent in how the developed world has responded to the crisis: after years of citing climate change as a reason to avoid funding natural gas infrastructure in lower-income countries, for example, European countries were suddenly racing to secure new supplies for themselves and building new infrastructure to accept them. Making matters worse, as Europe bid up the price of gas, demand for coal spiked in Asia and drove prices to record levels, leaving developing and emerging-market countries, such as Pakistan and Bangladesh, struggling to afford energy in any form. These tensions were on full display at the UN climate conference in Egypt in November 2022. Biden arrived to take a victory lap over the passage of a historic domestic climate law but found that poorer countries were unimpressed. Instead, they asked why the United States was not doing more to finance climate-change adaptation and clean energy outside its borders and demanded that their richer counterparts compensate them for the damage that climate change has already caused to their cities, agriculture, and ecosystems.
The energy crisis may have eased in recent months, but it is still far too early for complacency. The vast majority of Europe’s reduction in gas demand last year arose from unusually warm weather and the idling of industrial production, as opposed to intentional conservation that can be sustained. Moreover, Europe may not be able to rely on much, if any, Russian gas to refill its storage facilities over the coming year. The flow of piped Russian gas into Europe throughout 2022, albeit in shrinking volumes, has now halted and seems unlikely to resume; the Russian liquefied natural gas still flowing to Europe could come under pressure and be curtailed in the months ahead.
Meanwhile, with growing risks to Russian oil output, global demand is expected to rise nearly twice as much as supply in 2023, according to the IEA. Washington’s primary tool for cushioning supply disruptions, the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve, is vastly diminished. If prices begin to soar again, Western countries will have few options but to turn once more to Saudi Arabia and to the United Arab Emirates, which also has some spare capacity. Ironically, by the time the UAE hosts the next major UN climate conference, at the end of 2023, the world may well also be turning to Abu Dhabi not just for climate leadership but for more oil.
SOURCES OF STRESS
Driving the new energy insecurity are three main factors: the return of great-power rivalry in an increasingly multipolar and fragmented international system, the efforts of many countries to diversify their supply chains, and the realities of climate change.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and its broader confrontation with the West offer a striking example of how the ambitions of a single leader can create energy insecurity for broad swaths of the world’s population, and the war serves as a reminder that great-power politics never really went away. The U.S.-Chinese contest, however, may ultimately prove more consequential. The intensifying desire of the United States and China to not rely too much on each other is remaking supply chains and reinvigorating industrial policy to a degree not seen in decades. Even with redoubled efforts to produce more clean energy at home, the United States and others will still depend on China for critical minerals and other clean energy components and technologies for years to come, creating vulnerabilities to Chinese-induced shocks. For instance, in recent months, China has suggested that it may restrict the export of solar energy technologies, materials, and know-how as a response to restrictions that Washington imposed last year on the export of high-end semiconductors and machinery to China. If Beijing were to follow through on this threat or curtail the export of critical minerals or advanced batteries to major economies (just as it cut off rare earth supplies to Japan in the early 2010s), large segments of the clean energy economy could suffer setbacks.
Traditional energy heavyweights are also recalibrating their positions in response to the changing geopolitical landscape in ways that increase energy security risks. Saudi Arabia, for instance, now sees its global stance differently than it did in the decades that followed the famous “oil for security” bargain struck by U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt and Saudi King Abdulaziz ibn Saud on Valentine’s Day in 1945. Riyadh is now far less concerned with accommodating Washington’s requests, overt or implied, to supply oil markets in ways consistent with U.S. interests. In the face of a perceived or real decrease in U.S. strategic commitment to the Middle East, Riyadh has concluded it must tend to other relationships—especially its links to China, the single largest customer for its oil. The kingdom’s acceptance of China as a guarantor of the recent Iranian-Saudi rapprochement bolsters Beijing’s role in the region and its global status. Relations with Moscow have also become particularly important to Saudi Arabia. Regardless of the invasion of Ukraine, the Saudi government believes that Russia remains an essential economic partner and collaborator in managing oil-market volatility. It will therefore be extremely reluctant to take positions that pit the Saudi leadership against Putin.
The United States thought its days of begging Saudi Arabia to increase oil output had passed.
The new energy insecurity is also shaped by forceful moves many countries have made to domesticate and diversify their supply chains since the invasion of Ukraine and the global pandemic. Such moves are understandable, and even wise, given the now evident risks of excessive dependence on certain countries, notably China, in this new geopolitical era. Yet an interconnected global energy system remains the cornerstone of energy security; markets are still the most efficient way to allocate supplies. Increased self-sufficiency may give countries an increased sense of resilience but could also make them vulnerable; an interconnected global market can ease disruptions caused by extreme weather or political instability. More segmented energy markets will inevitably have fewer options to tap in such circumstances. The U.S. Inflation Reduction Act and Europe’s Green Deal industrial plan are intended to accelerate the drive to net-zero emissions, and they reduce energy insecurity in some ways by curbing dependence on globally traded hydrocarbons exposed to geopolitical risks. Yet they also increase insecurity, since promoting domestic industries runs the risk of stoking protectionism and fragmentation, both of which can make economies less energy secure.
Finally, climate change will be a major threat to energy security in the coming decades, posing risks to infrastructure old and new. Warmer waters and more severe droughts will make it harder to cool power plants, transport fuels, and rely on hydropower. In 2022, California lost half its hydroelectric output because of drought, and Brazil was nearly forced to ration electricity after losing much of its hydropower. These kinds of events will become more common as the world decarbonizes because an energy system less reliant on hydrocarbons will depend more heavily on electricity; the cheapest way to decarbonize sectors such as transportation and heating will be to use electricity instead of gasoline engines or natural gas boilers. The IEA estimates that if the world is to reach the goal of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, 50 percent of global energy consumption will need to be met by electricity, up from only 20 percent today. And nearly all that electricity will need to be produced from zero-carbon sources, up from only 38 percent today.
Climate change will place much of the infrastructure for this electricity generation, transmission, and distribution at greater risk, since fragile grids and overhead wires are often more vulnerable to extreme weather, wildfires, and other climate-related risks. Climate change can also have a negative impact on renewable sources of electricity, with the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projecting that by 2100, average global wind speeds could fall by 10 percent as climate change reduces the differences in atmospheric temperatures that generate wind.
DIVERSIFICATION DILEMMAS
One solution to these problems is to diversify supply. Diversification remains as central to energy security as it was in 1913, when Winston Churchill, then the first lord of the Admiralty, declared that “in variety, and in variety alone” would the United Kingdom find a solution to vulnerabilities created by his decision to shift the British navy from a reliance on Newcastle coal to less secure sources of oil from Persia.
In the long run, the clean energy transition will lead to improved energy security in many cases by diversifying fuel sources and suppliers. For example, transportation, most of which currently runs on oil, will be less vulnerable to fuel supply disruptions in a world where roughly two-thirds of vehicles are electrified, since electricity can be generated from multiple energy sources. And because most electricity is produced close to where it is consumed, a more electrified world will also be less subject to import disruptions caused by disputes among countries.
Yet as the transition progresses and consumers diversify away from fossil fuels, new vulnerabilities and threats to energy security will arise. Even as oil use wanes, geopolitical risks may increase as global production becomes further concentrated in countries that can produce at low cost and with low emissions, many of which are in the Persian Gulf. In the IEA scenario in which the world reaches net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, the share of global oil supply from OPEC producers rises from around one-third today to roughly one-half. The oil giant BP anticipates an even greater global dependence on these producers, estimating that by 2050, they will account for close to two-thirds of global oil supply. In the long run, that will be a large share of a tiny pie, but for decades, oil demand will remain very high and consequential even if annual demand is falling.
U.S. policymakers may well ask themselves how comfortable they would feel if global oil production were to be even more heavily concentrated in OPEC countries than it is today. Faced with that outcome, they might consider a number of options, such as extending the increasingly popular concept of “friend shoring” to oil by more actively supporting production at home and in countries such as Norway and Canada, which are perceived as less risky than, say, Iran, Libya, and Venezuela. Some officials might even advocate penalizing less friendly oil sources through import taxes or even sanctions.
A facility that processes methane into natural gas in Pixley, California, October 2019
Mike Blake / Reuters
Taking such measures to subvert the market and bolster oil production in preferred locations would carry significant risks, however. It would undermine the benefits that come from the ability to reroute oil supplies in case of disruption. It would also risk backlash and retaliation from major global oil producers in OPEC, which can send prices higher by restricting output. Subsidizing domestic supply would also run counter to efforts to encourage consumers to move away from fossil fuels. A better approach would be to embrace global markets but boost defenses against inevitable shocks and volatility with larger, not smaller, strategic oil reserves.
Meanwhile, diversifying the inputs of clean energy will be even more difficult than doing so for fossil fuels. The sources of the requisite technology and components, notably the critical minerals needed for batteries and solar panels, are even more heavily concentrated than oil. The world’s largest supplier of lithium (Australia) accounts for around 50 percent of global supply, and the leading suppliers of cobalt (the Democratic Republic of the Congo) and rare earths (China) each account for around 70 percent of those resources. In contrast, the world’s largest producers of crude oil—the United States, Saudi Arabia, and Russia—each account for just 10 to 15 percent of global supply. The processing and refining of these minerals are even more concentrated, with China currently performing around 60 to 90 percent of it. Meanwhile, Chinese companies manufacture more than three-quarters of electric vehicle batteries and a similar proportion of the so-called wafers and cells used in solar energy technology.
U.S. policymakers have recently awakened to these vulnerabilities and the fact that they will become more acute as the transition progresses. The Inflation Reduction Act encourages the production of critical minerals in the United States and elsewhere by providing tax credits and loan guarantees for domestic producers, among other measures. The Biden administration recently signed agreements with Congo and Zambia that are intended to increase U.S. imports of their clean-energy minerals. And the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) has pursued debt transactions to support the development of solar cell manufacturing outside China. But to get more of the minerals it needs from more of the countries it prefers, Washington will need to strike many more bilateral and multilateral trade agreements and sharpen instruments such as the U.S. Export-Import Bank, which can fund overseas mining operations in friendly countries such as Indonesia. For its part, the U.S. Congress should increase the DFC’s authority and expand its ability to make investments.
Another area that badly needs more diversification is enriched uranium, which will become more important as the use of nuclear power increases globally to meet low-carbon electricity needs. Russia’s role as a dominant supplier of nuclear fuel services to many countries, including the United States, is a source of great discomfort and vulnerability, given the current geopolitical realities. Boosting uranium production, conversion, and enrichment in the United States and among its Western allies and substantially ramping up their fabrication of the fuel assemblies for Russian-made reactors will be critical to maintaining the existing nuclear fleet and keeping decarbonization goals within reach.
BUILDING RESILIENCE
A secure energy system must be able to withstand and bounce back quickly from unexpected shocks and disruptions. At the most fundamental level, reliable energy infrastructure is the key to that sort of resilience. Governments and private companies have long worked to protect energy infrastructure from dangers of all kinds, from terrorist attacks to hurricanes. As the transition proceeds, they will need to step up such efforts. Moreover, as the clean energy economy becomes more digitized and electrified, it will be exposed to a growing threat of cyberattacks. Private companies and governments will need to coordinate and cooperate to deter and respond to threats such as the 2015 cyberattack that took out large swaths of the grid in western Ukraine.
Resilience also requires flexibility, which in the energy sector is measured by the ability of every part of a system to cope with losses in other parts. Because renewable sources such as solar power and wind are highly variable, the energy they generate needs to be either stored or backed up by other sources, with delivery systems making minute-by-minute adjustments. That is already a difficult task, and it will become even harder in a grid with more intermittent sources of energy and more variable electricity demand. According to the IEA, the global power system’s need for flexibility—measured as the amount the rest of the system needs to adjust to handle changes in demand and in solar and wind output—will more than quadruple by 2050 if all countries fulfill their climate pledges. Today, plants that run on coal or gas perform most of these adjustments. But as the transition progresses, the number of such plants—and thus their ability to serve as backstops—will progressively diminish.
To counteract that dynamic, U.S. policymakers should take steps to make sure that the increasing share of renewable energy on the grid is matched by adequate balancing resources and storage capacity. Doing so will require structures such as so-called capacity markets, which pay generators to be available to meet peak demand even if they are idle much of the time. Such mechanisms can help ensure that companies whose resources are needed only infrequently nevertheless stay in business and support a reliable electricity supply even as their utilization rate falls as the grid decarbonizes.
Energy security will be advanced not through more autonomy but through more integration.
Officials can also make use of new tools to manage demand for energy without massively inconveniencing consumers or creating political headaches. For instance, digital technology can help consumers shift energy-intensive activities to low-demand times of the day (such as running dishwashers and clothes dryers overnight) or prompt them to save energy by lowering thermostats in unoccupied rooms. Artificial intelligence will also play a growing role—for example, by reducing the amount of time that energy systems are down for maintenance, by forecasting demand, and by improving storage. Such tools would have come in handy in December 2022, when grid operators in Texas badly underestimated how much electricity customers would need and the state barely avoided widespread blackouts. Finally, officials should avoid the early retirement of fossil-fired electricity sources that can balance the grid and ensure reliability before alternatives are fully capable of providing the necessary level of service.
A resilient system must also be able to weather unexpected shocks and supply disruptions. For decades, policymakers have relied heavily on two types of buffers: the spare capacity of oil-producing countries (especially Saudi Arabia) and strategic stockpiles, which members of the IEA are required to hold as part of an agreement forged after the Arab oil embargo in the 1970s. These historical buffers will still matter as the transition unfolds—even more so if, as seems likely today, declines in energy supply and investment are not synchronized with declines in demand, leading to less slack in the system to handle unexpected shocks and more volatility. Moreover, it is clear that Riyadh has become far less willing to dip into its spare capacity whenever Washington demands it. As coal generation declines in a decarbonizing economy, there will be less opportunity for power generators to toggle between natural gas and coal, as many do now. This new reality could result in more volatility in natural gas prices. And recent turmoil in the refining sector that contributed to skyrocketing gasoline and diesel prices in the United States was a reminder that limited refining investment can bite consumers before vehicle electrification causes fuel use to drop sharply. For those reasons, other strategic stocks of all kinds will become more important—not just those that hold oil but also ones that hold natural gas and oil products such as diesel fuel and gasoline.
The United States will also need strategic stockpiles of the building blocks of clean energy, working with its allies to amass critical minerals such as lithium, graphite, rare earths, and nickel. Such coordination would be enhanced if the IEA had a hand in negotiating agreements, assessing which countries are best positioned to contribute to which stockpiles, and regularly monitoring whether the composition of stockpiles fits current needs. The IEA has played this role admirably for oil and oil products and could do so again with critical minerals if its members chose to expand its mandate.
INTEGRATION AS INSURANCE
A desire for greater security has spurred the decades-long quest for “energy independence” in the United States and elsewhere. And because of the shale revolution, the United States has become energy self-sufficient in net terms. Nevertheless, the country continues to be vulnerable to geopolitical risks because in a global market, supply shocks anywhere affect prices everywhere. Proponents of the transition to a net-zero carbon system have long heralded the greater insulation from geopolitics that would likely result from the end of the fossil-fuel era. But at least for the next few decades, energy security will be advanced not through more autonomy but through more integration—just as it always has been.
Interconnected and well-functioning energy markets increase energy security by allowing supply and demand to respond to price signals so the entire system can better handle unexpected shocks. In 2005, when Hurricanes Katrina and Rita disrupted much of the U.S. Gulf Coast’s vast production and refining operations, energy companies were able to avert fuel shortages by quickly importing supplies from the global market. Similarly, after the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011, Japan was able to temporarily shut down its nuclear power sector because it could import other sources of fuel from the global market.
Meeting at a nuclear power plant near Yuzhnoukrainsk, Ukraine, January 2023
Nacho Doce / Reuters
But maintaining and cultivating interdependence in today’s environment is more difficult than at any time in recent memory, as countries around the world are embracing industrial policies that involve increased state intervention in markets. Although those efforts can deliver benefits, such as minimizing markets’ vulnerability to the whims of geopolitical adversaries, many policymakers want to go further, promoting such policies as a means to boost domestic jobs and build political coalitions in support of stronger action on the environment. Indeed, although climate diplomacy has been premised for years on the assumption that progress depends on transnational cooperation, some efforts to advance climate action paradoxically risk undermining cooperation by fueling the forces of fragmentation and protectionism.
The case for energy integration has suffered as a result of Europe’s urgent need to decouple from Russian energy during the war in Ukraine. Nevertheless, although shocks may be felt more broadly in an integrated system, they are also felt less intensely. Integration is a form of insurance that spreads the risk of energy supply disruptions among many parties. And even if more autonomy were preferable to more integration, it would not be possible to expand clean energy at the scale and speed needed if each country sought to produce and consume only within its own borders. According to the IEA, the value of global trade in critical minerals will need to triple to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. Global trade in low-carbon fuels such as hydrogen and ammonia will also need to grow exponentially. For the United States, energy security will require fewer trade barriers and more trade agreements with allies, as well as with other countries that meet certain environmental standards. Washington should also eliminate tariffs on goods and technologies related to clean energy and help finalize the Environmental Goods Agreement, which would reduce tariffs on goods that benefit the environment to lower their costs and increase their trade.
WHAT YOU DON’T KNOW CAN HURT YOU
One of the reasons that the United States, Canada, Japan, and several European countries created the IEA in 1974 was that a lack of accurate, reliable data on prices and supplies had made it hard for governments to craft policies and respond to crises. The lesson was clear: good data allows markets to function, prevents panic, and deters the speculation that exacerbates price spikes, volatility, and shortages. Over the decades, IEA data, along with data assembled by the International Energy Forum, has underpinned decision-making about production levels and guided actions such as coordinated releases of stockpiled oil.
A clean energy economy will need the same kind of transparency. Inadequate data in nascent markets, such as those for green ammonia and hydrogen, can cause supply disruptions, a lack of liquidity, and poor availability of spot price assessments, all leading to pronounced price fluctuations. The energy transition will also depend heavily on the market for critical minerals, such as nickel. But investors were reminded of how market opacity can trigger extreme volatility when the price of nickel on the London Metal Exchange almost quadrupled over just two days in early 2022, owing to massive short-selling caused in part by a lack of price transparency.
Currently, some private companies have good information on prices, but no single entity gathers broad industrywide data and makes it publicly available. The IEA is the clear candidate to fill that role. Ideally, the agency would ask governments to share consumption and production data on minerals and make informed inferences about inventory levels. Such data sharing would be especially important to ensure compliance if governments agreed to create strategic stockpiles, as they do with oil. For such a system to work, however, the IEA would have to bring in countries that are not members of the organization but produce or consume significant amounts of those minerals, which in turn would require a new legal framework for the agency. Meanwhile, to help prevent market manipulation and speculation, national regulators such as the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission should require greater transparency in the pricing and trading of commodities.
SECURITY AND THE CLIMATE
The importance of energy security never diminished; it had simply been taken for granted in a world of abundance and integrated, well-functioning global energy markets. Policymakers now have the opportunity to look at energy security and climate security afresh, to accord appropriate weight to both, and to appreciate that neither can be achieved in the absence of the other.
This effort requires recognizing that energy security is not a static concept but one that has evolved a great deal since the crises of the 1970s. Policymakers must grasp the new risks to energy security and modernize their toolkits to combat them. Doing so is not a distraction from addressing climate change but central to it; without this shift, energy crises might derail the drive to net-zero emissions. In the not-so-distant past, officials and experts thought that excessive fears about energy security might hinder the fight for the climate. Today, the opposite is true: as the transition to a net-zero world proceeds, the bigger danger to the climate will be insufficient attention to energy security.
- JASON BORDOFF is Founding Director of the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs and Co-Founding Dean of the Columbia Climate School. During the Obama administration, he served as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Energy and Climate Change on the staff of the National Security Council.
- MEGHAN L. O’SULLIVAN is Director-Designate of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and the Jeane Kirkpatrick Professor of the Practice of International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School. During the George W. Bush administration, she served as Special Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Adviser for Iraq and Afghanistan.
Foreign Affairs · by Jason Bordoff and Meghan L. O’Sullivan · April 10, 2023
21. Watch Jon Stewart blast a senior Pentagon leader over military food insecurity
Video at the lnk: https://taskandpurpose.com/culture/jon-stewart-kathleen-hicks-food-insecurity-pentagon/
The "audit" question and response floored me.
Watch Jon Stewart blast a senior Pentagon leader over military food insecurity
taskandpurpose.com · by Nicholas Slayton · April 8, 2023
Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks got defensive over the Pentagon’s budget this week, after comedian Jon Stewart pressed her on spending priorities in the military. The conversation turned argumentative as the two debated what counts as abuse and corruption in the Department of Defense and how that hurts active-duty service members.
The former The Daily Show host spoke to Hicks at a symposium put on by the War Horse at the University of Chicago on Thursday, April 6. The conversation spanned just over an hour, discussing “The Human Impact of Military Service,” but the most rancorous moment came when Stewart brought up the Department of Defense’s trouble keeping track of its funds and equipment.
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In the most recent Pentagon audit, the chief comptroller found that the military could not account for more than 60 percent of its assets. That is where Stewart, a long-time advocate for veterans, said that results like that reflect “waste, fraud and abuse.”
The two exchanged tense remarks over the framing, with Hicks arguing that the results of the audit do not show corruption. She called his assertion completely false, while Stewart countered, noting that even though so much is unaccounted for, “we got out of 20 years of war and the Pentagon got a $50 billion raise.”
\The 2022 audit, released in November, marked the fifth year the Pentagon had failed its audit (the process started in 2017). Stewart was almost correct in his critique — this year’s proposed budget increases the Pentagon’s funding by $26 billion.
Hicks asked Stewart to explain what he saw was the issue with the Pentagon’s budget. Stewart hammered in on his point, talking about conditions service members are dealing with. He pointed to the issue of food insecurity with many service members and their families struggling.
“Now, I may not understand exactly the ins and outs, and the incredible magic of an audit. But I’m a human being who lives on the Earth and can’t figure out how $850 billion to a department means that the rank and file still have to be on food stamps,” Stewart said. “To me, that’s fucking corruption. And I’m sorry. And, if like, that blows your mind and you think that’s like a crazy agenda for me to have, I really think that that’s institutional thinking, and that it’s not looking at the day-to-day reality of the people that you call the greatest fighting force in the world.”
At that comment the audience applauded.
Stewart added that he was “surprised that the reaction to these questions are ‘you don’t know what an audit is, bucko.’ Like that’s just weird to me.”
Stewart has been a vocal supporter of veterans fighting for expanded benefits and healthcare. He has regularly been in Washington, D.C. pushing for the Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics, or PACT Act. And he’s not wrong about hunger in the ranks. In November, the Associated Press reported as many as 160,000 active-duty service members were experiencing food insecurity, as inflation rose. In August, the U.S. Army said that soldiers struggling with costs could try different financial assistance programs, including the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as food stamps.
Hicks called food insecurity a “major priority” for the department. The military is aiming to boost pay by 5.2 percent this year (following a 4.6 percent increase last year), but Hicks said that the bigger issue isn’t hunger exactly, but more availability when service members come off shifts, and what type of food is on and around military sites. She said the Department of Defense is also boosting basic allowances.
Currently the Biden administration has proposed an $842 billion budget for the Department of Defense for the 2024 fiscal year, which would be a 3.2 percent or $26 billion increase over the 2023 budget. That includes the pay increase Hicks mentioned.
The latest on Task & Purpose
taskandpurpose.com · by Nicholas Slayton · April 8, 2023
22. DoD’s highest-ranking trans official: ‘Ostracizing anybody’ will hurt military readiness
Excerpts:
And Skelly has a message for Republicans accusing the Department of Defense of promoting diversity and inclusion in the armed forces at the expense of military readiness: their campaign is what’s hurting the military’s warfighting capabilities.
“If you want to be ready, then you have to ensure that everybody that is in your force can be their best selves and contribute as a member of a team and be seen as valuable,” said Skelly, speaking at the Pentagon in her first in-depth interview since taking the job in 2021.
She is the DoD’s highest-ranking openly transgender official, and the second to hold an office that requires Senate confirmation. The first was Rachel Levine, who serves as assistant secretary of health.
...
“When I talk to people and say, ‘Well, why aren’t you looking to join the military?’ A lot of them say, ‘Well, the military has been over-politicized. Well, the military has gone woke,’ said Rep. Cory Mills (R-Fla.) during a March 9 hearing with the military’s senior enlisted leadership. “We’re saying that this new focus, this new shift, this new kind of woke ideology is not impacting recruitment and not impacting our readiness and lethality? I have a hard time believing that.”
Skelly — who attended the 1991 Tailhook convention, the annual gathering of naval aviators at which dozens of officers were alleged to have assaulted 83 women and seven men — argues that rolling back these programs will hurt not only Americans who identify as LGBTQ, but the military’s ability to do its job.
DoD’s highest-ranking trans official: ‘Ostracizing anybody’ will hurt military readiness
By LARA SELIGMAN
04/09/2023 07:00 AM EDT
Politico
Shawn Skelly left the military in 2008, thinking she’d never return; now she’s in charge of getting U.S. forces ready for battle.
Assistant Secretary of Defense for Readiness Shawn Skelly sits for an interview in her office at the Pentagon on April 3. | Francis Chung/POLITICO
04/09/2023 07:00 AM EDT
Shawn Skelly was a Navy commander working to help fend off roadside bomb attacks when she came to a realization about herself — one that meant her career in the military was over.
It was 2006, and “don’t ask, don’t tell,” which permitted gay and lesbian Americans to serve in the military as long as they kept their sexual identity under wraps, was still in effect. Skelly had identified as a man up until that point and — now that she felt she could no longer do so — decided to retire from military service as soon as possible.
Skelly, then stationed at a Marine Corps base in Virginia, told her commanding general she was out.
“I had fear at that time,” Skelly said in an interview. “I determined quickly that I needed to get out, get out safely, because I understood what I needed to do to be the best, healthiest version of myself.” It took two years for her to make the leap, and she left in 2008.
Now she’s back at the Pentagon, this time as a civilian. As assistant secretary of defense for readiness, Skelly oversees military preparedness for warfighting, including training programs, equipment safety and munitions supplies.
And Skelly has a message for Republicans accusing the Department of Defense of promoting diversity and inclusion in the armed forces at the expense of military readiness: their campaign is what’s hurting the military’s warfighting capabilities.
“If you want to be ready, then you have to ensure that everybody that is in your force can be their best selves and contribute as a member of a team and be seen as valuable,” said Skelly, speaking at the Pentagon in her first in-depth interview since taking the job in 2021.
She is the DoD’s highest-ranking openly transgender official, and the second to hold an office that requires Senate confirmation. The first was Rachel Levine, who serves as assistant secretary of health.
Skelly’s appointment was welcomed as a powerful signal of support by transgender troops now serving openly since President Joe Biden overturned a Trump-era ban on trans service members.
But Republicans in Congress are looking to roll back those changes through proposed legislation to ban transgender people from serving in the military.
It’s part of a larger push by some Republican lawmakers who argue that personnel policies like diversity trainings, racial justice education and events like a recent drag show on a military base alienate some potential recruits and distract from the forces’ main mission: fighting wars and protecting the homefront.
“When I talk to people and say, ‘Well, why aren’t you looking to join the military?’ A lot of them say, ‘Well, the military has been over-politicized. Well, the military has gone woke,’ said Rep. Cory Mills (R-Fla.) during a March 9 hearing with the military’s senior enlisted leadership. “We’re saying that this new focus, this new shift, this new kind of woke ideology is not impacting recruitment and not impacting our readiness and lethality? I have a hard time believing that.”
Skelly — who attended the 1991 Tailhook convention, the annual gathering of naval aviators at which dozens of officers were alleged to have assaulted 83 women and seven men — argues that rolling back these programs will hurt not only Americans who identify as LGBTQ, but the military’s ability to do its job.
Republican lawmakers who say DoD’s diversity push is hurting readiness have got it backward, Skelly said. When a team is in crisis, the trust between team members is what makes or breaks the mission.
“It’s all about small unit cohesion,” she said, arguing that “ostracizing anybody” makes that more difficult.
Leaving the military behind
Skelly says her realization about her gender identity came “out of nowhere” in 2006 — when she was 40 years old. By that point, she said she had struggled for years with depression and feelings of anger and confusion about her identity. She had experimented with cross-dressing, but never put the pieces together until that point.
It was like “a blinding flash,” she said. “I’ve never felt such a moment of clarity before.”
Skelly’s commanding general asked her to delay for six months so she could fill in as his director of operations. At the time, hundreds of U.S. troops were dying in Iraq from roadside bomb attacks and Skelly, a former naval aviator whose dad served as a Marine, felt she couldn’t say no.
“I thought OK, that’s six more months of what I thought was jeopardy, being very alone, very afraid,’” she said. But, “It’s country and service before self, even under those circumstances.”
Skelly sought help, hiring a counselor who helped her get through those months and a number more before she felt she could finally leave.
The night before her final day in the military, she came out to her spouse. She said she will never forget the first thing her spouse said: “I’m so proud of you.” The two are still together and have a 20-year-old son.
After working through thoughts of self harm with her counselor, Skelly transitioned in 2010.
Transgender individuals in the military today can serve openly. Since DoD does not officially track the number of transgender troops, it’s unclear how large of a group they are. However, SPARTA, a nonprofit group of transgender service members and veterans, estimates the population at several thousand.
In overturning the Trump-era ban, the Biden administration cited a 2016 DoD study that found that enabling transgender Americans to serve openly would have a minimal impact on readiness and healthcare costs. Further, “open transgender service has had no significant impact on operational effectiveness or unit cohesion in foreign militaries,” according to the study. Advocates also argue that, with the military facing its worst recruiting crisis in decades, it shouldn’t exclude a growing population of potential recruits.
But opponents say continuing the policy puts a group of people with elevated risk for mental health problems in a stressful environment, and signals to America’s adversaries that it is “more concerned with political correctness” than warfighting, according to Thomas Spoehr, director of the Center for National Defense at the conservative Heritage Foundation.
And those against transgender troops say Skelly is part of the problem.
“I am not aware of any issues with ASD Skelly’s performance,” Spoehr said in an email, adding that her civilian status puts her in a different category than the troops with which he’s most concerned. But, he added, “it is ironic ASD Skelly is responsible for readiness for the entire DoD.”
Some opponents say the acceptance of transgender troops also risks alienating people from more conservative areas such as the South. Even so, a recent Army survey found only 5 percent of young people listed “wokeness” as an issue they’d consider when deciding whether to join.
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.), who are part of the small but vocal contingent of conservatives who believe DoD’s diversity initiatives are hurting the military, introduced the legislation to ban transgender Americans from serving.
And if President Donald Trump is reelected in 2024, he’s widely expected to reinstate his 2017 ban. He has already promised to roll out policies that would cut federal funding for any school pushing what he called “transgender insanity” and put limits on the type of medical care transgender youth can receive.
Skelly called the Trump administration a dark time in her life. She was trying to find a new full-time job outside of the administration when Trump announced his ban. Skelly said that’s the moment she saw herself, for the first time, as part of a targeted segment of the American population.
“That we, the royal we, the United States, would make a determination for a specific, very discrete slice of America, one of the smallest breakdowns of America you can make, and say ‘you are unworthy and incapable of serving your country,’ made me more emotional than any public policy initiative ever had,” she said. “I’ve never felt something so personally in American history.”
More to be done
After Skelly left the military, she began working for defense contractor ITT Exelis, which she said was supportive when she transitioned. She joined the Obama administration in 2013, serving in multiple roles, including as special assistant to the under secretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics. After Biden won the 2020 election, Skelly joined the DoD transition team.
On occasion, she would run into former colleagues from her Navy days. During one meeting at the Pentagon, an old squadron-mate, then a one-star admiral, walked into the room.
“It wasn’t until mid-meeting that he did the math,” she said. “He saw my name on something, went ‘oh,’ and he quickly dropped his poker face right back down to the topic at hand.” A few days later, in a different meeting, the person made a point of walking over and asking how she was doing.
While “99.9 percent” of such interactions have been positive, Skelly said, there’ve been awkward moments. After she first transitioned, former colleagues would sometimes stare at her at events.
But once they finally came over and spoke to her, “all their tension would drop,” she said.
“As a human being, I was still the same person. ‘Yes, we did almost get ourselves killed that night, right?’” she said. “I am still that person. I’m just a little bit better. In some cases, a lot better.”
Skelly’s appointment demonstrates that “even as DoD moves towards fully integrated transgender military service, that the community has representation and equity within DoD,” said Luke Schleusener, CEO of Out in National Security, which describes itself as a non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to “empowering queer national security professionals.”
Skelly applauded Biden for scrapping Trump’s restrictions in 2021, as well as Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s efforts to increase diversity in the force. But there is much more to be done, she said. Diversity training didn’t start in the Biden administration, she argued; the military began addressing the issue when racial tension was high in the 1960s and early 1970s, a period that coincided with the rise of the all-volunteer force.
Skelly said she regularly speaks with members of “Gen Z” who express reservations about serving in the military because they fear they or their friends won’t be treated with respect.
“I don’t know what ‘wokeism’ is, it’s not a defined term,” she said. But “If people understand that they’re not going to get a fair shake, because they come from a specific ethnic origin, or based on their identity, or based on who they love, we are going to be worse off because not enough Americans are going to want to be a part of the U.S. military.”
POLITICO
Politico
23. U.S. Is Launching Massive Cyber Warfare
I have not come across this website oreintalreview.org before. (The "about" statement is here: https://orientalreview.org/about/ ) I am not sure of its credibility given this sensational article and its apparent siding with China and Russia as evidenced by this excerpt:
It is worth mentioning that Russia’s and China’s initiatives to establish clear and understandable rules for managing global cyberspace have been consistently ignored by Washington and its satellites.
U.S. Is Launching Massive Cyber Warfare
orientalreview.org · by Leonid SAVIN · April 7, 2023
In March 2023, the Biden Administration released a new U.S. cyber security strategy.
Page three already makes it clear who the strategy is aimed against: “The governments of China, Russia, Iran, North Korea and other autocratic states with revisionist intent are aggressively using advanced cyber capabilities to pursue objectives that run counter to our interests and broadly accepted international norms. Their reckless disregard for the rule of law and human rights in cyberspace threatens U.S. national security and economic prosperity”.
It goes on to say that “this Strategy seeks to build and enhance collaboration around five pillars: 1) Defend critical Infrastructure, 2) Disrupt and dismantle threat actors, 3) Shape market forces to drive security and resilience, 4) Invest in a resilient future, and 5) Forge international partnerships to pursue shared goals”.
If four states (and other unspecified autocratic governments) are designated as threats, then logically, point two speaks to the need to destroy these states or, at a minimum, disrupt their functioning.
In general, it is openly stated that subversive activities will be performed against them, and in order not to suffer themselves, the US will build a “network of networks” to gain situational awareness and create conditions for synchronized actions, including increasing the speed of intelligence extraction and exchange.
It is worth mentioning that Russia’s and China’s initiatives to establish clear and understandable rules for managing global cyberspace have been consistently ignored by Washington and its satellites.
The U.S. has embraced the new strategy with enthusiasm. Emily Harding of the Center for Strategic and International Studies noted that “the government aims to put its own house in order with significant upgrades and budget proposals that align with creating real security for government systems… the Office of the National Cyber Director and its partners will need to accelerate the good work they have already done collaborating with industry leaders”.
Of course, the imperatives of the new strategy are built on certain data. And the release of this strategy was preceded by the annual report of the U.S. Intelligence Community published in February 2023.
It also talks about threats from Russia, that “China probably currently represents the broadest, most active, and persistent cyber espionage threat to U.S. government and private-sector networks”… “Iran’s growing expertise and willingness to conduct aggressive cyber operations make it a major threat to the security of U.S. and allied networks and data”… “North Korea’s cyber program poses a sophisticated and agile espionage, cybercrime, and attack threat…
Pyongyang probably possesses the expertise to cause temporary, limited disruptions of some critical infrastructure networks and disrupt business networks in the United States. North Korea’s cyber program continues to adapt to global trends in cybercrime by conducting cryptocurrency heists, diversifying its range of financially motivated cyber operations, and continuing to leverage advanced social engineering techniques”.
It is also said that “globally, the malicious use of digital information and communication technologies by foreign governments will become more pervasive, automated, targeted and sophisticated over the next few years, further threatening to distort publicly available information and likely outpacing efforts to protect digital freedoms. The exploitation of U.S. citizens’ sensitive data and the illegal use of technology, including commercial spyware and surveillance technology, will likely continue to threaten U.S. interests”.
The release of a number of publications and reports in February 2023 on the year of the war in Ukraine, among which many focus on cyber attacks, should not be overlooked.
A number of IT companies are also releasing their reports and “predictions” by this time.
Google writes about hackers with ties to the Russian government. Grafika company reports about manipulations on the social networks Facebook and Instagram by Russian media affiliated with the state.
We can find something similar in an entity called the Alliance for securing democracy, among whose leadership there is neoconservative William Kristol and former U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff. However, the report also mentions China’s role in spreading “pro-Kremlin narratives”.
The Atlantic Council, a NATO think tank, also released a similar report during the same time period, which the Western media, controlled by the neoliberal oligarchy, amicably began referring to.
Of course, it is no coincidence. The publication of the “studies” was synchronized to achieve a more influential synergy in the media space. The chain reaction of articles and references to each other as authoritative sources created a cascading effect aimed at discrediting Russia once again. This is a rather old trick, but using the advantage in the global information environment due to the control of a number of “international” news agencies and the social networks themselves, the collective West, or rather, the financial and political groups in the U.S. are trying to impose false and fabricated information on the world.
Although some companies have prepared public opinion well in advance. For example, Microsoft released a similar work back in December 2022.
In this context of information dumping, the Intelligence Community report and the new White House strategy, we should pay attention to the U.S. Department of Defense budget for 2024.
It includes, for the first time, a U.S. Cyber Command request that assumes all budget authority and resources for those entities that conduct cyberspace operations.
It requests $332.6 million for headquarters operations and maintenance, $129 million for procurement, and $1.1 billion for research, development, testing and evaluation.
Overall, the Pentagon is allocating $13.5 billion for cyberspace activities in 2024 fiscal year. This will include many different activities, including encryption and support for the defense-industrial base.
And previously, Cyber Command had a budget of about $600 million a year, which went mostly to maintaining its headquarters.
It turns out that now all the funds are centralized, and they are more than twenty times more than in previous years.
Although the Army, Air Force, Navy and Marines have their own structural units for cyber operations (and there will be their own part of the budget as well), the current figures indicate that cyber operations will receive the highest attention in the near future as there one can avoid direct confrontation with potential adversaries, but undermine the economies of other countries and their defense capabilities through hacking, espionage and remote sabotage. Incidentally, the number of specialist teams will be increased by five, from 142 to 147. Last year, the goal was to increase the number of teams by 14 by 2024. Then it affected the Army, although the newly created U.S. Space Forces also received teams of cyberspace specialists.
Comparing these data, it is logical to conclude that a surge of cyber attacks against Iran, China, North Korea and Russia should be expected in the very near future. At the same time, there will be another propaganda campaign, as if these states, not the U.S., are committing acts of sabotage through the Internet space.
Reposts are welcomed with the reference to ORIENTAL REVIEW.
orientalreview.org · by Leonid SAVIN · April 7, 2023
De Oppresso Liber,
David Maxwell
Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy
Senior Fellow, Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation
Editor, Small Wars Journal
Twitter: @davidmaxwell161
Phone: 202-573-8647
email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com
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