Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners

Quotes of the Day:

"Writing is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as the headlights, but you make the whole trip that way."

- E.L. Doctorow

"You can't depend on your judgment when your imagination is out of focus."

- Mark Twain

“To be nobody-but-yourself – in a world, which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else – means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.”

- E.E. Cummings.

1. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, September 6, 2023

2. Special Operations General Officer Nominations | SOF News

3. Analysis | Famed hacker and Twitter whistleblower Peiter 'Mudge' Zatko is joining the Biden administration

4. Analysis | The G-20 summit is a huge global branding exercise for Modi’s India

5. Pentagon Plans Vast AI Fleet to Counter China Threat

6. New Pentagon Drone Program Needs to Avoid ‘Replicating’ Past Mistakes

7. Inside Ukraine’s assassination programme

8. China Slowdown Means It May Never Overtake US Economy, Forecast Shows

9. Analysis: Xi reprimanded by elders at Beidaihe over direction of nation

10. Was Xi Jinping actually reprimanded by retired Party leaders?

11. US Army scraps Abrams tank upgrade, unveils new modernization plan

12. Felony convictions vacated for 4 Navy officers in ‘Fat Leonard’ case

13. US to send depleted uranium rounds to Ukraine

14. Opinion | China’s Military Is Going Global

15. A Backdoor Call to Arms: Foreign Fighters in National Defense

16. In Southeast Asia, U.S.-China Competition Is More than a Two-Player Game

17. ‘A Desperate Move’ – Kremlin Under Fire Over Russia’s Ammo Situation

18. Xi’s Policies Have Shortened the Fuse on China’s Economic Time Bomb

19. U.S. Deterrence Against China Is Not Working

20. America’s Digital Achilles’ Heel

21. Putin Grows More Paranoid of Potential Threats to Power

22. With His Nuclear Threats, Putin Plays the West Like a Fiddle

23. Our Modern-Day Mackinder (Robert Kaplan)

24. Revisiting the Hedge Strategy with Renewed Urgency

25. Ukraine’s Strikes Behind Enemy Lines Are Paying Off

26. Cyberwar and Conventional Warfare in Ukraine

27. Japanese, U.S., the Philippines Drill in the South China Sea; China Contests U.S. Position on Territorial Disputes

28. Biden’s stance on Ukraine should be clear

29. Opinion | Inside the saga of the State Department’s missing Iran envoy

1. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, September 6, 2023

Maps/graphics/citations: https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-september-6-2023

Key Takeaways:

Ukrainian forces continued counteroffensive operations in the Bakhmut and western Zaporizhia Oblast directions and have made gains in western Zaporizhia Oblast as of September 6.
Ukrainian and Russian sources report the Russian defense industrial base (DIB) faces growing challenges replacing basic supplies in addition to known challenges rebuilding its stocks of precision weapons.
Russian forces conducted a large missile and drone strike against Ukraine overnight on September 5-6.
Russian sources continue to speculate on the current role and future of dismissed Wagner-affiliated Army General Sergei Surovikin, the former commander of Russia’s Aerospace Forces (VKS).
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced an additional $175 million military assistance package for Ukraine during an unannounced visit to Kyiv on September 6.
Russian forces conducted offensive operations along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line, near Bakhmut, along the Avdiivka-Donestk City line, and in western Zaporizhia Oblast and advanced in some areas on September 6.
Ukrainian forces conducted offensive operations in at least two sectors of the front and advanced near Bakhmut, along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line, and in western Zaporizhia Oblast on September 6.
Russian authorities continue crypto-mobilization efforts amid continued rumors of a new wave of general mobilization.
Ukrainian reports indicate that Russian and occupation authorities continue attempts to increase social control in occupied Ukraine by cracking down against pro-Ukrainian materials in occupied schools.

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, SEPTEMBER 6, 2023

Sep 6, 2023 - Press ISW

Download the PDF

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, September 6, 2023

Karolina Hird, Christina Harward, Nicole Wolkov, Grace Mappes, and Mason Clark

September 6, 2023, 5:05pm 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.

Note: The data cut-off for this product was 1pm ET on September 6. ISW will cover subsequent reports in the September 7 Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment.

Ukrainian forces continued counteroffensive operations in the Bakhmut and western Zaporizhia Oblast directions and have made gains in western Zaporizhia Oblast as of September 6. Geolocated footage shows that Ukrainian forces have advanced along the trench line west of Verbove (about 20km southeast of Orikhiv), and the Ukrainian General Staff stated that Ukrainian forces achieved unspecified successes in the Robotyne—Novoprokopivka direction south of Orikhiv.[1] The Ukrainian General Staff additionally reported that Ukrainian forces are continuing successful offensive operations south of Bakhmut.[2]

Ukrainian and Russian sources report the Russian defense industrial base (DIB) faces growing challenges in replacing basic supplies in addition to known challenges in rebuilding its stocks of precision weapons. Ukrainian Main Military Intelligence (GUR) Representative Andriy Yusov reported on September 6 that Russia can only produce “dozens” of Kalibr cruise missiles and smaller numbers of Iskander missiles per month, which will not enable Russia to the replenish its pre-2022 stocks.[3] Yusov reported that Russia struggles to obtain modern optical equipment, electronics, chips, and circuits and that “gray imports” and smuggling cannot completely cover the Russian DIB’s needs. Russian sources additionally noted that the Russian DIB cannot produce enough rubber to replace worn tires for military equipment vital to frontline operations, and noted that increasing wear on tires will make it difficult for wheeled vehicles to move in muddy, rainy, and icy conditions.[4] The Russian sources claimed that Russian authorities claimed at an unspecified time that they would find solutions to worn tires by mid-August, but the situation has not changed as of September 5.[5] Poor quality and insufficient tires will impose increasing constraints on Russian mobility in the muddy season and winter.

Russian forces conducted a large missile and drone strike against Ukraine overnight on September 5-6. Ukrainian officials reported that Russian forces launched seven Kh-101, Kh-555, and Kh-55 air-launched cruise missiles from aircraft operating out of Engels airbase in Saratov Oblast; one Iskander-M ballistic missile; and 25 Shahed 136/131 drones from the Primorsko-Akhtarsk direction.[6] Ukrainian air defenses shot down all eight missiles and 15 drones.[7] Ukrainian officials reported that the Russian strike damaged the port and agricultural infrastructure in Odesa Oblast.[8] Romanian Defense Minister Angel Tilvar stated on September 6 that several pieces of a Russian drone fell on Romanian territory near its border with Ukraine.[9] The Romanian Ministry of Defense previously denied the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry’s September 4 statement that a Russian drone fell on Romanian territory.[10]

Russian sources continue to speculate on the current role and future of dismissed Wagner-affiliated Army General Sergei Surovikin, the former commander of Russia’s Aerospace Forces (VKS). Several Russian insider sources and milbloggers remarked that the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) removed Surovikin’s profile from the official MoD website other than his video appeal released during the Wagner rebellion asking the group to stand down.[11] The removal of Surovikin’s profile is not remarkable in itself — Russian military leadership removed Surovikin as commander of the Aerospace Forces (VKS) in August, and the absence of his profile from the MoD website could be a simple reflection of this fact.[12] Some Russian insider sources additionally claimed that State Duma Deputy and retired Colonel General Viktor Zavarzin stated that Surovikin has taken a new position in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).[13] ISW has previously observed a pattern of Russian generals who underperform in command roles in Ukraine (such as former Eastern Military District (EMD) Commander Alexander Chaiko and former Airborne Forces (VDV) Commander Andrey Serdyukov) being reassigned to external theaters and peripheral locations such as Syria as a form of punishment, while not being entirely removed from the Russian military.[14] Appointing Surovikin to a role in the CIS, which does not appear to be a military or command role, suggests that Russian military leadership is likely continuing the practice of shifting disgraced or ineffective commanders to positions not involved in the war in Ukraine.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced an additional $175 million military assistance package for Ukraine during an unannounced visit to Kyiv on September 6. The package includes air defense equipment, artillery rounds, and anti-tank weapons.[15] Blinken stated that the United States aims to ensure that Ukraine “has what it needs” to both succeed in the current counteroffensive and to develop long term defensive capabilities.[16] Blinken called Ukrainian progress in the counteroffensive “very, very encouraging.”[17]

Key Takeaways:

Ukrainian forces continued counteroffensive operations in the Bakhmut and western Zaporizhia Oblast directions and have made gains in western Zaporizhia Oblast as of September 6.
Ukrainian and Russian sources report the Russian defense industrial base (DIB) faces growing challenges replacing basic supplies in addition to known challenges rebuilding its stocks of precision weapons.
Russian forces conducted a large missile and drone strike against Ukraine overnight on September 5-6.
Russian sources continue to speculate on the current role and future of dismissed Wagner-affiliated Army General Sergei Surovikin, the former commander of Russia’s Aerospace Forces (VKS).
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced an additional $175 million military assistance package for Ukraine during an unannounced visit to Kyiv on September 6.
Russian forces conducted offensive operations along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line, near Bakhmut, along the Avdiivka-Donestk City line, and in western Zaporizhia Oblast and advanced in some areas on September 6.
Ukrainian forces conducted offensive operations in at least two sectors of the front and advanced near Bakhmut, along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line, and in western Zaporizhia Oblast on September 6.
Russian authorities continue crypto-mobilization efforts amid continued rumors of a new wave of general mobilization.
Ukrainian reports indicate that Russian and occupation authorities continue attempts to increase social control in occupied Ukraine by cracking down against pro-Ukrainian materials in occupied schools.

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 conducted offensive operations along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line and reportedly advanced on September 6. The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) claimed that Russian forces improved their tactical positions near Novoyehorivka (15km southwest of Svatove).[18] A Russian news aggregator claimed that Russian forces made unspecified advances in an unspecified area near the Zherebets River.[19] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces unsuccessfully attacked near Novoselivske (14km northwest of Svatove) and Novoyehorivka.[20] Ukrainian Ground Forces Commander Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskyi stated that elements of the newly formed Russian 25th Combined Arms Army (reportedly formed under the Eastern Military District) continued replacing unspecified Russian units operating in the Lyman direction.[21] ISW previously assessed that the 25th Combined Arms Army (CAA) is likely replacing elements of the 41st CAA to enable that formation to redeploy to Zaporizhia Oblast but has not yet independently confirmed this report.[22]

Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces conducted offensive operations along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line but did not advance on September 6. The Russian MoD claimed that Ukrainian forces unsuccessfully attacked near Serhiivka (12km southwest of Svatove), Dibrova (7km southwest of Kreminna), and the Serebryanske forest area (10km southwest of Kreminna).[23] A Russian milblogger claimed on September 5 that Ukrainian forces continued unsuccessful offensive operations on the Svatove-Kreminna line.[24]

Russian Subordinate Main Effort #2 – Donetsk Oblast (Russian objective: Capture the entirety of Donetsk Oblast, the claimed territory of Russia’s proxies in Donbas)

Ukrainian forces conducted offensive operations near Bakhmut and reportedly advanced on September 6. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces achieved partial success in the Bakhmut direction and pushed Russian forces out of positions south of Bakhmut.[25] Ukrainian Gound Forces Commander Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskyi stated that Ukrainian forces are gradually retaking positions in this area.[26] A Russian milblogger claimed on September 5 and 6 that Ukrainian forces advanced in Klishchiivka (6km southwest of Bakhmut) in the past three days and that Ukrainian forces currently control half of the settlement.[27] Other Russian sources claimed on September 6 that meeting engagements and positional battles are ongoing near Klishchiivka.[28] Russian sources, including the Russian MoD, claimed that Ukrainian forces conducted offensive operations near Orikhovo-Vasylivka (11km northwest of Bakhmut), Yakovlivka (14km northeast of Bakhmut), Soledar (9km northeast of Bakhmut), Klishchiivka, Andriivka (10km southwest of Bakhmut), and Kurdyumivka (13km southwest of Bakhmut) and have disrupted a Russian ground lines of communications (GLOC) northwest of Klishchiivka.[29] A Russian milblogger claimed on September 5 that Ukrainian forces attacked in the direction of Soledar.[30]

Russian forces conducted offensive operations near Bakhmut and reportedly advanced on September 6. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces unsuccessfully attacked near Zaliznyanske (9km northwest of Bakhmut), Orikhovo-Vasylivka, Klishchiivka, and Bila Hora (14km southwest of Bakhmut).[31] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces regained control over some of the heights west of Klishchiivka over the past two weeks and still control eastern Klishchiivka.[32] The milblogger claimed that Russian units have partially pushed Ukrainian forces out of positions near Berkhivka (6km northwest of Bakhmut), where positional battles are ongoing.[33]

Ukrainian forces conducted offensive operations along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line and advanced on September 6. Geolocated footage published on September 6 indicates that Ukrainian forces marginally advanced east of Nevelske (14km southwest of Avdiivka).[34] The Russian MoD claimed that Ukrainian forces unsuccessfully attacked Nevelske and Marinka (on the western outskirts of Donetsk City).[35]

A Russian milblogger claimed on September 5 that Russian forces advanced east of Krasnohorivka (directly west of Donetsk City) along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line.[36]

Russian Supporting Effort – Southern Axis (Russian objective: Maintain frontline positions and secure rear areas against Ukrainian strikes)

Ukrainian forces continued counteroffensive operations in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area on September 6 and did not make any confirmed advances. Russian sources, including the Russian MoD, claimed that Ukrainian forces continued attacking the Novodonetske—Novomayorske line (about 12-18km southeast of Velyka Novosilka) overnight and into September 6.[37] Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces continue to suffer high losses due to reliable Russian defenses.[38]

Russian forces did not conduct any claimed or confirmed attacks in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area on September 6.

Ukrainian forces continued to make gains in western Zaporizhia Oblast on September 6. Geolocated footage shows that Ukrainian forces have advanced along the trench line west of Verbove (about 20km southeast of Orikhiv).[39] Russian milbloggers claimed that heavy fighting continues along the Robotyne—Verbove line and that Ukrainian forces are trying to break through in the direction of Novoprokopivka (2km south of Robotyne).[40] Zaporizhia Oblast occupation head Yevgeny Balitsky claimed that Russian forces withdrew from the contested “gray zone” of Robotyne in order to secure more tactically advantageous positions on the periphery of the settlement, and several milbloggers discussed Balitsky’s report as claims that Russian forces have entirely withdrawn from Robotyne.[41] Balitsky’s acknowledgment that Russian forces no longer hold positions in Robotyne is notable, as he is one of a group of Russian sources who have consistently claimed that Russian forces maintain control over southern Robotyne following the Ukrainian confirmation of liberating the settlement as of August 28.[42] Russian sources remarked that artillery fire has largely destroyed Robotyne, and much of what remains of the settlement is likely therefore contested.[43] UK Defense Minister Grant Shapps additionally confirmed that Russian forces destroyed a British Challenger tank near Robotyne, but noted that the Ukrainian crew survived the artillery strike.[44]

Russian forces conducted a limited and unsuccessful ground attack in western Zaporizhia Oblast on September 6. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian troops repelled a Russian attack near Robotyne.[45]

Russian forces continued routine air and artillery strikes in Kherson Oblast on September 6. Ukraine’s Southern Operational Command stated that Russian forces used four KAB-500 guided aerial bombs to strike Beryslav Raion.[46] A Russian milblogger posted footage reportedly of elements of the 205th Motorized Rifle Brigade (49th Combined Arms Army, Southern Military District) striking a Ukrainian command post in the Kherson direction.[47] Ukrainian Navy Spokesperson Captain Third Rank Dmytro Pletenchuk additionally noted that Russian forces in the Black Sea have had to change their behavior due to the increased threat of Ukrainian naval drone strikes and are increasingly hiding their vessels at ports in occupied Crimea and closer to Novorossiysk instead of the main base in Sevastopol.[48]

Russian Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts (Russian objective: Expand combat power without conducting general mobilization)

Russian authorities continue crypto-mobilization efforts amid continued rumors of an upcoming general mobilization wave. The Russian MoD submitted draft amendments to Russian draft regulations to the State Duma on September 6 that would allow Russian correctional institutions, penitentiary centers, and military registration and enlistment offices to register prisoners for military service without the need for prisoners to appear at military registration and enlistment offices in person.[49] Ukrainian Luhansk Oblast Head Artem Lysohor reported that Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR) banks are providing their customers’ personal information to Russian authorities in preparation for a new wave of mobilization.[50] Russian opposition outlet Mobilization News reported on September 6 that St. Petersburg residents received letters from military registration and enlistment offices claiming that the Russian government may increase the conscription term and threatening to register individuals for military service who do appear at military registration and enlistment offices.[51] Deputy Chairperson of the Russian State Duma Defense Committee Yuri Shvytkin emphasized that the State Duma is not considering increasing the conscription term from its current year, however.[52] Russian independent outlet Mozhem Obyasnit (We Can Explain) reported on September 6, however, that an unspecified source close to the Russian Presidential Administration claimed that the Russian government intends to conduct a second wave of mobilization in September after the Russian regional elections on September 10.[53] Mozhem Obyasnit also reported that the Sakha Republic, Buryatia Republic, Irkutsk Oblast, and the Jewish Autonomous Oblast governments are intensifying preparations for new mobilization by issuing more frequent calls to “clarify personal information“ at military registration and enlistment offices and updating data on citizens eligible for military summonses.[54] Russian authorities may be preparing to increase crypto-mobilization efforts after the regional elections but remain unlikely to formally announce a second wave of mobilization.

The Russian government likely intends to expand its production of Shahed drones outside of the Alabuga Special Economic Zone (SEZ) in the Tatarstan Republic. Bashkortostan Republic Head Radiy Khabirov signed a decree on September 6 on the creation of the Directorate for the Development of the Unmanned Aerial Systems Industry to develop a strategy for the production of drones in Bashkortostan until 2035.[55]

Activities in Russian-occupied areas (Russian objective: Consolidate administrative control of annexed areas; forcibly integrate Ukrainian citizens into Russian sociocultural, economic, military, and governance systems)

Ukrainian reports indicate that Russian and occupation authorities continue attempts to increase social control in occupied Ukraine by cracking down against pro-Ukrainian materials in schools. The Ukrainian Resistance Center reported on September 6 that law enforcement at educational institutions in occupied Kherson Oblast are checking students’ phones to allegedly prevent “extremism” and crack down on viewing pro-Ukrainian media.[56] The Ukrainian Resistance Center also reported that Russian authorities brought over 750,000 Russian history books for schools in occupied Luhansk Oblast and that Russian authorities are burning Ukrainian books.[57]

Significant activity in Belarus (Russian efforts to increase its military presence in Belarus and further integrate Belarus into Russian-favorable frameworks and Wagner Group activity in Belarus)

The Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) conducted its final day of the Combat Brotherhood-2023 exercise on September 6.[58] The Belarusian Ministry of Defense (MoD) claimed that over 2,500 personnel and 500 pieces of equipment participated in four exercises at training grounds in Brest, Grodno, and Minsk oblasts.[59] Russian, Belarusian, and CSTO military officials widely claimed that the exercise was successful.[60]

ISW will continue to report daily observed Russian and Belarusian military activity in Belarus as part of ongoing Kremlin efforts to increase their control over Belarus and other Russian actions in Belarus.

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.

2. Special Operations General Officer Nominations | SOF News

I will leave it to Air Force officers to assess, but I think it is a good sign for a helicopter pilot, a gunship pilot, and a special tactics officer to rise through the general officer ranks.

Special Operations General Officer Nominations | SOF News

sof.news · by SOF News · September 6, 2023

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin announced on Wednesday, September 6, 2023, the following nominations:

Air Force Lt. Gen. James C. Slife for appointment to the grade of general, with assignment as vice chief of staff, U.S. Air Force, Pentagon, Washington, D.C. Slife is currently serving as deputy chief of staff, Operations, Headquarters U.S. Air Force, Pentagon, Washington, D.C. He is a former commander of Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC). He began his career as a helicopter pilot flying MH-53s. Air Force biography of Lt. Gen. Slife

Air Force Maj. Gen. Sean M. Farrell for appointment to the grade of lieutenant general, with assignment as deputy commander, U.S. Special Operations Command, MacDill Air Force Base, Florida. Farrell is currently serving as deputy commanding general, Joint Special Operations Command, Fort Bragg, North Carolina. He began his career as a pilot of AC-130 gunships. Air Force biography of Maj. Gen. Farrell.

Air Force Col. Matthew S. Allen for appointment to the grade of brigadier general. Allen is currently serving as the director, Legislative Affairs, Headquarters U.S. Special Operations Command, Pentagon, Washington, D. C. Allen, a Special Tactics officer, is the former commander of the 24th Special Operations Wing at Hurlburt Field, Fla.

*********

View the DoD announcement (Sep 6, 2023).

sof.news · by SOF News · September 6, 2023

3. Analysis | Famed hacker and Twitter whistleblower Peiter 'Mudge' Zatko is joining the Biden administration

Analysis | Famed hacker and Twitter whistleblower Peiter 'Mudge' Zatko is joining the Biden administration

The Washington Post · by Tim Starks · September 5, 2023

Welcome to The Cybersecurity 202! What were you all up to over our break? I made it back to Indiana for a lovely wedding between two dear friends.

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Below: House GOP members sound off on a new cyber disclosure rule, and a U.S. official told China she did not appreciate being hacked. First:

First in The Cybersecurity 202: CISA snags ‘Mudge’ for ‘secure by design’ role

Famed hacker and Twitter whistleblower Peiter “Mudge” Zatko is joining the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency with an emphasis on helping its campaign to push software manufacturers to bake security into their products while they’re being developed, The Cybersecurity 202 is first reporting.

Zatko begins in a part-time role this week as a “senior technical advisor.” It’s a high-profile hire for the Biden administration’s focus on products that are “secure by design,” a key component of this year’s National Cybersecurity Strategy as well as CISA’s strategic plan.

“Mudge joins us in a part-time capacity to help us collaboratively shape a culture of security by design that is foundational to every security team, every C-suite, and every board room in the country,” CISA Director Jen Easterly said in a written statement. “The National Cybersecurity Strategy and CISA’s Strategic Plan call for a fundamental cultural shift in which cybersecurity accountability is principally borne by technology vendors rather than customers and by business leaders rather than security professionals.”

“To enable this shift, we need team members with extraordinary expertise to help us identify the right levers and lead the hard conversations,” Easterly continued. “That’s why we’re so excited to welcome Mudge to the CISA team — a legendary security researcher, CISO, and visionary.”

On Mudge

Zatko was a prominent member of the groundbreaking L0pht hacking collective. In 1998, seven of its members testified before a Senate committee in one of the first-ever congressional cybersecurity hearings, where they delivered urgent — and prophetic — warnings about security vulnerabilities.

It’s his second go-round in the federal government, following a stint at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency from 2010 to 2013.

“I am honored to formally return to public service and work with CISA on the critical cybersecurity issues we face, including enabling secure-by-design principles to be accessible, measurable, and adopted by government and industry alike,” Zatko said in a written statement.

“Cybersecurity has been the mechanism through which I have had impact,” he said. “Through this I have devoted my life to moving the field forward by way of transparency, education, and innovation. I have endeavored to do this irrespective of being in the public sector, private sector, nonprofit, through technical contributions, or in executive and leadership positions. I look forward to continuing my mission to serve everyone the best I can.”

His wide-ranging career recently took another turn when, a little more than a year ago, he filed a whistleblower complaint against Twitter with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission. He alleged that executives at Twitter — where he had served as security chief for less than two years — deceived federal regulators about “extreme, egregious deficiencies” at the social media platform and violated the terms of a security agreement with the FTC, as my colleagues Joseph Menn, Elizabeth Dwoskin and Cat Zakrzewski reported.

The allegations saw him return to testify before the Senate.

“It doesn’t matter who has keys if you don’t have any locks on the doors,” he told lawmakers on the Senate Judiciary Committee last September. “It’s not far-fetched to say an employee inside the company could take over the accounts of all the senators in this room.”

Most recently, he has been serving as “executive in residence” with the cybersecurity company Rapid7.

On secure by design

Zatko’s experience dovetails with the Biden administration’s crusade (with CISA playing a key role) for manufacturers to develop products that are secure by design and secure by default — the latter meaning that they are secure “out of the box” and requiring no additional cost.

“Too many vendors ignore best practices for secure development, ship products with insecure default configurations or known vulnerabilities, and integrate third-party software of unvetted or unknown provenance,” the National Cybersecurity Strategy reads.

CISA’s strategic plan, meanwhile, says, “We recognize that technology products must be designed and developed in a manner that prioritizes security, ensures strong controls by default, and reduces the prevalence of exploitable vulnerabilities.”

Since the administration released its overall strategy, CISA and two other federal agencies joined forces with several allied foreign governments to release a voluntary “principles and approaches” document on how to implement secure by default and secure by design.

CISA recently teamed up with Microsoft to announce that the tech giant would expand free logging services following a hacking campaign that breached the company’s cloud-based email system to claim victims at the State and Commerce departments, among others.

Easterly said earlier this year that Congress should pass legislation to hold software manufacturers legally liable for the insecurity of their products. It’s an issue lawmakers have barely scratched the surface on, despite security professionals making decades of calls to act. It might take another year or more for legislation to even emerge, according to Biden administration officials.

The keys

House GOP members sound off on new SEC cyber disclosure rule

A trio of House Republicans alleges that a recently approved cyber incident disclosure rule from the Securities and Exchange Commission is duplicative and confusing and compromises the confidentiality of firms’ cybersecurity programs. The lawmakers are urging the agency to delay the rule, which is set to take effect this week, according to a letter sent Friday.

The missive addressed to SEC Chair Gary Gensler, from House Homeland Security Committee members Andrew R. Garbarino (N.Y.) and Mark Green (Tenn.), as well as Rep. Zachary Nunn (Iowa), a member of the House Financial Services Committee, argues that the rule goes against efforts to standardize cyber incident disclosure reporting for critical infrastructure entities.

The SEC in July voted to approve a rule that would require publicly traded companies to report major cyber incidents within four days once it is determined that the hack is significant enough to affect investors’ decisions.
The triad argues that the disclosures “are in direct conflict” with provisions in the 2022 Cyber Incident Reporting for Critical Infrastructure Act, which requires the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency to craft rules requiring entities to report certain cyber incidents within 72 hours from the time the entity believes the hack occurred.

“It is unfathomable that the SEC is moving forward with its public disclosure requirements, which will only increase cybersecurity risk, without a congressional mandate and in direct contradiction to public law that is intended to secure the homeland,” the letter says.

While Republicans and some industry representatives argue the rule means requiring disclosure of too much highly sensitive information (a thematic concern among opponents of Biden-era cyber regulations), supporters view the measure as a way for investors to gain more transparency into firms’ cybersecurity practices and incentivize organizations to protect themselves further while alerting others of potential large-scale cyberthreats.

The SEC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Raimondo complained to Chinese officials about being hacked

Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, on a trip to China this past week, complained to officials in Beijing about a recent hack that breached her Microsoft email account, Politico ’s Katherine Long reports.

“They did hack me, which was unappreciated, to say the least. I brought it up, clearly. Put it right on the table,” she told host Chuck Todd on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” She “did not pull any punches” on other national security concerns, she added.

She said that hacking her account “erodes trust” between China and the United States. The hack also compromised the accounts of U.S. Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns and Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia Daniel Kritenbrink.
The hack came at a crucial moment in U.S.-China relations, as Raimondo and other Cabinet members make trips to Beijing in an attempt to stabilize trade, business and security relations with the nation.
In a related development, China’s Huawei announced the rollout of a new smartphone that was timed to Raimondo’s visit. The move has signaled to some that U.S. restrictions that aim to stifle Beijing’s access to AI chips and other cutting-edge hardware are being circumvented.

China-linked hackers since May have leveraged a digital key and a now-resolved code flaw to break into the emails of U.S. government agencies and other clients. The incident has put Microsoft in hot water and has led some officials and policymakers to question whether the United States is over-reliant on the tech giant’s services.

Northern Ireland police chief resigns following major data incident

Northern Ireland’s police chief, Simon Byrne, resigned after weeks of pressure following an incident in which the personal data of all of the police force’s officers was accidentally released, Olivia Fletcher reports for Bloomberg News.

Fletcher writes: “Byrne stepped down after an emergency meeting of the Northern Ireland Policing Board on Monday, having previously refused to do so in the face of a no-confidence motion submitted by the Democratic Unionist Party following the mistaken release of officers’ personal information.”

The Police Service of Northern Ireland was responding to a Freedom of Information request last month when a staffer gave the surnames, initials, ranks or grade, and work locations of all 10,000 of its police officers and civilian employees. The data was publicly available for several hours, and PSNI officials urged anyone with the information to delete it immediately.

Since the incident, the PSNI has been aggressively searching for those who have held onto the leaked data. One man was arrested and charged last month with two terrorism offenses connected to possessing documents from the breach.
Byrne confirmed that dissidents have access to the information, and he said he fears it will be used to intimidate and target police, Sky News reported at the time. Sectarian violence in the region decreased heavily following a 1998 treaty, though dissident groups still target police officers.

Daybook

Jen Easterly, Anne Neuberger, Kemba Walden and other U.S. cyber officials speak at the Billington Cybersecurity Summit in D.C. throughout this week.
DHS Undersecretary for Intelligence and Analysis Kenneth Wainstein speaks with the Atlantic Council tomorrow at 11:30 a.m.
The Institute of World Politics convenes a cyber intelligence seminar tomorrow at 6 p.m.

Secure log off

Hot days like this are perfect for a refreshing Italian boba tea pic.twitter.com/9SOpOrGUaj

— Bruenig Man (@PersonalBeavis) September 3, 2023

Thanks for reading. See you tomorrow.

The Washington Post · by Tim Starks · September 5, 2023

4. Analysis | The G-20 summit is a huge global branding exercise for Modi’s India

Changing India's name?

Excerpts:

If India’s name were to formally change to Bharat, as some local outlets have speculated, it could alienate not only India’s sizable Muslim minority, but also non-Hindi speakers. On Tuesday, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee openly criticized the use of the name in official Indian documents, calling it a “blatant attempt to distort the history of the country.”

Analysts have long argued that Modi has sought to tie himself personally to the fate of India. In doing so, he has proved adept at forcing other nations to move past his own controversies: Almost 20 years ago, he was effectively denied entry to the United States due to allegations related to religious mob violence in the Indian state of Gujarat while he was chief minister in 2005. Changing the name of the country to one that aligns with his vision of the country may just be the latest step in that mission.

But while Modi may be surging in popularity at home — some signs in New Delhi point to polls that suggest the Indian prime minister is among the world’s most popular leaders when it comes to domestic support — he may have far further to go internationally. Recent polling by the Pew Research Center found that a median of 40 percent of those polled across 12 countries had no confidence he’d do the right thing in global affairs, compared with 37 percent who said they had confidence.

Perhaps more worrying for Modi? At least one out of 10 in each of these countries could not offer an opinion about the Indian leader.

Analysis | The G-20 summit is a huge global branding exercise for Modi’s India

The Washington Post · by Adam Taylor · September 7, 2023

You’re reading an excerpt from the Today’s WorldView newsletter. Sign up to get the rest free, including news from around the globe and interesting ideas and opinions to know, sent to your inbox every weekday.

For New Delhi, this week’s upcoming Group of 20 summit offers a chance for a global rebrand. The government may be planning to do so literally: Some G-20 invitations sent out by the host were signed not by the “President of India,” but rather the “President of Bharat” — a Sanskrit and Hindi word favored by the ruling nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

But more broadly, under Indian leader Narendra Modi, the typically staid diplomatic summit — a long-running meeting of the leaders of the top 19 world economies, plus the European Union — is likely to be a full pomp affair.

Ahead of the event, the prime minister’s face has been plastered on billboards around the country. The message is simple: By hosting the world’s top leaders, India has arrived as a world power, with Modi as the person who took the country there. (The truth is a tad less impressive: The G-20 has a year-long rotating presidency; Indonesia was last year’s host.)

Certainly, India is hosting the event at a fortuitous time. Last year, it overtook its neighboring giant, China, to become the world’s most populous nation, according to estimates from the United Nations. Its future looks comparatively brighter, too: India’s population is far younger than China’s, and the government expects its economy to grow by 7 percent this year — besting China. Under Modi, the country’s ambitions are becoming loftier: India last month succeeded in becoming the first nation to land a spacecraft on the moon’s south pole.

This all is coupled with a growing geopolitical divide between the United States and China that is seeing Washington pull New Delhi closer — despite its concerns about Modi’s nationalist bent. In June, Modi was greeted by President Biden for an official state dinner during a trip to Washington, where he addressed Congress for the second time, joining an elite group of world leaders such as Winston Churchill, Nelson Mandela and Benjamin Netanyahu.

More notable than who will be in New Delhi for the event is who will not be there: Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping. Putin has not specified specifically why he will not attend the G-20 summit. Though he faces an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court due to the invasion of Ukraine, India is not a signatory to the Rome Statute and would not be required to arrest the world leader.

Relations between India and Russia are clearly not the problem, however. Modi spoke with Putin on the phone just last week, with a warm-sounding statement from the Indian government saying that the prime minister thanked his Russian counterpart for “Russia’s consistent support to all initiatives under India’s G-20 Presidency,” and that the two leaders “reviewed progress on [a] number of issues of bilateral cooperation.”

The Biden administration has hoped to push India to help isolate Russia, but Moscow’s cheap oil and gas remains a powerful draw for India, as do Russian arms exports: Roughly 85 percent of Indian weaponry is supplied by Russia, according to the U.S. Institute of Peace. A looming question is whether any joint statement made by the world leaders gathered in New Delhi will condemn Russia’s war in Ukraine.

So far, this year’s G-20 has not produced any joint statement. If the disagreements continue, it could mark the first time since 1999 that the G-20 has failed to produce a joint statement. On Wednesday, a European Union official — who was not named in coverage — offered a pessimistic view of its chances in briefings with Indian reporters. “The text, as it is presented by India, is not enough,” the unnamed official said.

The non-presence of the Chinese leader is a wildly different situation. While Xi is facing considerable economic problems at home that could reasonably draw his attention, Indian officials are portraying it as a sign of their rise. “As far as China is concerned, they often show a degree of petulance,” said BJP’s vice president, Baijayant Jay Panda, according to Reuters. “It may be hard for them to swallow that for four decades they were the fastest growing economy and now it is India.”

Tensions between New Delhi and Beijing have resurfaced over recent weeks: China’s Ministry of Natural Resources published a map that appeared to claim areas of northeastern India as part of China. These long-disputed areas led to bloody clashes three years ago that killed 20 Indian and four Chinese soldiers — and the border area remains tense.

With Xi not in attendance at the G-20, any hopes of détente may have to wait. “Both the act and the timing underline the harsh reality that China is inflexible about its revisionist claims and that it is unlikely to stop,” Happymon Jacob, a professor at the School of International Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University, told my colleague Gerry Shih last week after the map was first published.

Indian officials have openly suggested that their aim is not to join the Western bloc of countries led by the United States, but to take a more opportunistic approach to global problems that will see them aligning when it suits them. For Modi, who faces a presidential election next year, taking a stance against China may be more about appeasing his domestic supporters than joining a U.S.-backed Western alliance of democracies.

Then there’s that name: Bharat. While Bharat has long been used interchangeably with India, its use ahead of the G-20 may be another sign of Modi’s vision. Modi’s supporters, including officials in the BJP, point out that the name India has links to the country’s colonial history. Modi’s government has pushed to purge not only these relics of when Britain ruled the land, but also the influence of the various Muslim dynasties that controlled the land over these periods.

If India’s name were to formally change to Bharat, as some local outlets have speculated, it could alienate not only India’s sizable Muslim minority, but also non-Hindi speakers. On Tuesday, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee openly criticized the use of the name in official Indian documents, calling it a “blatant attempt to distort the history of the country.”

Analysts have long argued that Modi has sought to tie himself personally to the fate of India. In doing so, he has proved adept at forcing other nations to move past his own controversies: Almost 20 years ago, he was effectively denied entry to the United States due to allegations related to religious mob violence in the Indian state of Gujarat while he was chief minister in 2005. Changing the name of the country to one that aligns with his vision of the country may just be the latest step in that mission.

But while Modi may be surging in popularity at home — some signs in New Delhi point to polls that suggest the Indian prime minister is among the world’s most popular leaders when it comes to domestic support — he may have far further to go internationally. Recent polling by the Pew Research Center found that a median of 40 percent of those polled across 12 countries had no confidence he’d do the right thing in global affairs, compared with 37 percent who said they had confidence.

Perhaps more worrying for Modi? At least one out of 10 in each of these countries could not offer an opinion about the Indian leader.

The Washington Post · by Adam Taylor · September 7, 2023

5. Pentagon Plans Vast AI Fleet to Counter China Threat

Pentagon Plans Vast AI Fleet to Counter China Threat

Defense Department seeks an array of air-, land- and sea-based autonomous systems to keep pace with adversaries

https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/pentagon-plans-vast-ai-fleet-to-counter-china-threat-4186a186

By Nancy A. Youssef

and Michael R. Gordon

Updated Sept. 6, 2023 3:43 pm ET

There are concerns that the Pentagon bureaucracy takes too long to develop and deploy cutting-edge systems. PHOTO: ERIC LEE FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

WASHINGTON—The Pentagon intends to field a vast network of AI-powered technology, drones and autonomous systems within the next two years to counter threats from China and other adversaries.

Kathleen Hicks, the deputy secretary of defense, provided new details in a speech Wednesday about the department’s plans to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to produce an array of thousands of air-, land- and sea-based artificial-intelligence systems that are intended to be “small, smart, cheap.”

The U.S. is seeking to keep pace with China’s rapidly expanding military amid concerns that the Pentagon bureaucracy takes too long to develop and deploy cutting-edge systems.

“We’re not at war. We are not seeking to be at war, but we have to be able to get this department to move with that same kind of urgency because the PRC isn’t waiting,” Hicks said during an interview Tuesday, referring to the People’s Republic of China.

One approach could be to build on the capabilities demonstrated by Task Force 59, the U.S. Navy’s network of drones and sensors designed to monitor Iran’s military activities in the Middle East.

“Imagine distributed pods of self-propelled [autonomous] systems afloat, powered by the sun and other virtually limitless resources, packed with sensors aplenty, enough to give us new, reliable sources of information in near-real-time,” Hicks said during the speech before a conference hosted by Defense News in Arlington, Va.

Other capabilities that are being considered are autonomous ground-based systems to provide logistics, space-based autonomous systems that would be so numerous they would be difficult for an adversary to destroy and autonomous systems that could defend against incoming missiles.

Autonomous systems use artificial intelligence to detect and engage enemy targets, and can include self-piloting air- and sea-based drones. The Defense Department has long invested in such systems—including self-piloting ships and no-crew aircraft.

Hicks’s speech included important new details about the “Replicator” initiative the Pentagon announced last week to offset the growing Chinese military. At that time, the Defense Department said it hoped to deploy thousands of the systems but said little about how they might be used.

New Pentagon Drone Program Needs to Avoid ‘Replicating’ Past Mistakes

Published 09/06/23 09:00 AM ET

Bryan Clark and Dan Patt

themessenger.com · September 6, 2023

The Pentagon’s announcement of its new “Replicator” initiative is a welcome, albeit belated, recognition that uncrewed vehicles are playing an outsized role in military operations. But to succeed, Replicator will need to avoid the ambitious goals and lack of integration that led previous U.S. uncrewed systems to be shrunk or scrapped.

Our new study, Unalone and Unafraid, analyzes the reasons that uncrewed systems have not become integral to the U.S. military and proposes a new approach to fielding them focused on existing technology and today’s operational problems. Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks highlighted these characteristics in announcing Replicator, but achieving them will require a sustainable process that breaks with the Pentagon’s inclination to build everything from scratch.

There is general agreement that Replicator’s goal of building thousands of drones makes sense. Numerous studies have highlighted the U.S. military’s growing shortfalls against China and the imperative for new strategic and operational concepts. As we have argued, Secretary Hicks said the Department of Defense (DOD) needs to use operational innovation, supported by a more adaptable force, to regain an advantage against China.

Unlocking the creativity of warfighters will require rebalancing the U.S. military from a shrinking collection of expensive, self-contained aircraft, ships and armored vehicles to one that incorporates a large and growing number of simpler and less-expensive uncrewed vehicles. Like mosaic tiles, the more diverse force that would result could be mixed and matched in a greater variety of packages to support a wider range of operational concepts.

Achieving the adaptability Secretary Hicks wants will demand discipline in adopting uncrewed technology and combining it with today’s force — two areas where the DOD has a poor track record.

Build Teammates, Not Replacements

Defense technologists never met a research program they didn’t like and uncrewed systems are no exception. For example, the U.S. Navy’s Large Unmanned Surface Vessel program has languished through half a decade of congressional marks and skepticism because its goal of acting as an auxiliary missile magazine on months-long deployments was beyond what today’s technology can deliver. Moreover, at nearly $300 million per ship, an LUSV costs a third as much as the Navy’s new multimission frigate.

The Navy’s trials with LUSV echo the experience of commercial robot users. One approach to automate a facility like an Amazon warehouse is to build robots that mimic humans, unloading trucks, stocking shelves, boxing items, and loading delivery vehicles. But robots with the intelligence and flexibility to step into any worker’s role are expensive and difficult to achieve with today’s technology. Instead, many companies are buying robots off the shelf and adapting their workflows to use either robots or people where they work best.

The DOD is now defaulting to this model with some of its highest-profile uncrewed systems. The LUSV is being characterized as “semi-autonomous” and will have operators on board most of the time. After finding its goal of multi-month patrols was infeasible without extensive human support, the Navy adjusted the mission of its Orca extra-large uncrewed undersea vehicle to shorter out-and-back mine delivery. And the Army revised its Bradley Fighting Vehicle replacement from being optionally-manned to essentially be optionally unmanned.

Like its counterparts in the commercial world, the DOD should field uncrewed systems under the assumption operators will make up for limitations in autonomy, rather than incorporating humans only after a program falls short of overly-optimistic ambitions. That means the Pentagon will need to pivot from its traditional approach of developing new systems to perpetuate its current tactics and instead adapt its workflows to use the uncrewed vehicles available today.

DJI Matrice 300 reconnaissance drones are seen during test flights in the Kyiv region prior to being sent to Ukraine's front line.Sergei Supinsky/AFP via Getty Images

Embrace Integration as Innovation

The need for humans and machines to work together is more than a necessity borne from technical limitations — it is a source of advantage for U.S. forces. As Secretary Hicks noted in her announcement, uncrewed systems can help unlock the creativity of operators, whose improvisations have often proven decisive in battle.

The lack of heterogeneity and quantity in today’s U.S. military constrain operational innovation. The shrinking and increasingly expensive crewed force needs to be protected and sustained in battle, limiting the variety of compositions and tactics it can pursue. Uncrewed systems could enable greater adaptability and resilience because they can be more numerous, expendable, and modular than crewed platforms.

But obtaining those qualities in uncrewed systems means using an entirely different approach to field them compared to crewed ships, aircraft, or armored vehicles. Crewed platforms are built to be used over decades for a wide and open-ended set of missions, integrating with the rest of the force primarily via their human operators. To be inexpensive and achieve scale, uncrewed vehicles can only perform a few functions and will depend more than their crewed counterparts on machine-to-machine communication with other systems for direction, situational awareness, and sustainment.

Like the commercial warehouse robots, military uncrewed vehicles should be fielded as part of a team of crewed and uncrewed systems — as is being done by U.S. Central Command’s uncrewed task forces. And rather than addressing predicted future gaps like the traditional Pentagon acquisition process, the availability of sophisticated uncrewed vehicles suggests their workflows should address the operational problems faced by combatant commanders today.

The technical challenge for the DOD, therefore, will shift from vehicle development to integrating adaptable systems of systems. The Rapid Development and Experimentation Reserve, or RDER, and related mission-integration efforts by the Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering offer one path to rapidly field prototype systems that introduce uncrewed vehicles as part of a useful workflow.

Replicator presents the Pentagon with an opportunity to reframe its process for developing uncrewed vehicles from the industrial model of the 20th century to the customer-focused model of the 21st. But if the initiative fails to integrate existing uncrewed systems in ways that solve today’s operational problems, it could end up as another failed Pentagon science project.

Bryan Clark is a senior fellow at Hudson Institute and director of the Hudson Center for Defense Concepts and Technology.

Dan Patt is a senior fellow at Hudson Institute.

themessenger.com · September 6, 2023

7. Inside Ukraine’s assassination programme

Excerpts:

In modern Ukraine, assassinations date back to at least 2015, when its domestic security service (SBU) created a new body after Russia had seized Crimea and the eastern Donbas region. The elite fifth counter-intelligence directorate started life as a saboteur force in response to the invasion. It later came to focus on what is euphemistically called “wet work”.

...

Ukraine’s president is understood to authorise the most controversial operations, though other decisions are delegated. A high-level government source with knowledge of the work declines to discuss the details: “It’s important not to comment or even think about such operations.” But he says that Volodymyr Zelensky has issued a clear order to avoid collateral damage among civilians. “The president communicates this instruction to people formally, and, on occasion, by shouting at them.” Ukraine had to choose its targets carefully, the source adds; it might “not always” have done so.

...

The former spy says he is concerned that Ukraine’s assassination campaign is driven by impulse rather than logic. Some of the killings have a useful psychological role, he says: to raise the cost of war crimes and the spirits of ordinary Ukrainians. This was “certainly” the case with Stanislav Rzhitsky, a former submarine commander believed to have fired the missiles that killed 38 Ukrainians in Vinnytsia in July 2022. He was shot dead a year later while jogging in a park in Krasnodar, in Russia. But other operations suggested an absence of strategy. They risked exposing sources, methods and the extent of Ukrainian infiltration into Russia: “Our security services shouldn’t do things just because they can.”

Inside Ukraine’s assassination programme

Its agents have become expert in dark revenge. But some worry a clear strategy is absent

Sep 5th 2023 | KYIV

The Economist

Read more of our recent coverage of the Ukraine war

THE OPERATION was a month in the making. Yevhen Yunakov, the mayor of Velykyi Burluk, in the Kharkiv region, had been identified as a collaborator with the Russians. “Caucasus”, a special-forces commander, and a group of local officers were given the job. His men watched their target meticulously for days: when he shopped; when and where he moved; the extent of his security. Once they detonated their bomb, from a distance, they disappeared to safe-houses inside occupied territory. The group would return to Ukrainian-controlled territory only weeks later, after the town had been liberated. Yunakov’s body has never been found.

Over 18 months of war, dozens of people like Yunakov have been targeted in clinical operations across occupied Ukraine and inside Russia itself. They have been shot, blown up, hanged and even, on occasion, poisoned with doctored brandy. Ukraine is tight-lipped about its involvement in assassinations. But few doubt the increasingly competent signature of its security services. The agencies themselves drop heavy hints. “Any person who betrays Ukraine, shoots at Ukrainians or fires missiles on Ukrainians should understand that they are being watched and will be brought to justice,” says Andriy Cherniak, an officer of HUR, Ukraine’s military-intelligence agency. In an interview in July his boss, General Kyrylo Budanov, went further: “If you are asking about [creating a version of] Mossad…We don’t need to. It already exists.”

image: The Economist

Mention of the Israeli spy agency animates Ukrainians, desperate for justice. In fact, the origins of political assassination are a little closer to home. Mossad learned much of its craft from the Soviet-era secret police and its founding practitioner, Pavel Sudoplatov, who was born in Melitopol in now-occupied southern Ukraine. In a quirk of history, Sudoplatov spent the 1930s infiltrating Ukrainian nationalist groups, and personally blew up one of their leaders with a chocolate-box bomb. (He also masterminded the assassination of Leon Trotsky in 1940.)

In modern Ukraine, assassinations date back to at least 2015, when its domestic security service (SBU) created a new body after Russia had seized Crimea and the eastern Donbas region. The elite fifth counter-intelligence directorate started life as a saboteur force in response to the invasion. It later came to focus on what is euphemistically called “wet work”.

Valentin Nalivaychenko, who headed the SBU at the time, says the switch came about when Ukraine’s then leaders decided that a policy of imprisoning collaborators was not enough. Prisons were overflowing, but few were deterred. “We reluctantly came to the conclusion that we needed to eliminate people,” he says. A former officer of the directorate describes it in similar terms. “We needed to bring war to them.” In 2015 and 2016 the directorate was linked to the assassinations of key Russian-backed commanders in the Donbas; Mikhail Tolstykh, aka “Givi”, killed in a rocket attack; Arsen Pavlov, aka “Motorola”, blown up in a lift; Alexander Zakharchenko, blown up in a restaurant (pictured).

Intelligence insiders say the SBU’s fifth directorate is playing a central role in counter-Russia operations. The SBU’s relative size and budget—five times bigger than HUR’s—mean it has been most able to pull off the most sophisticated jobs, for example bombing the Kerch bridge, linking Russia to Crimea, in October 2022. Others, though, emphasise the role of HUR, with its underground networks and increased wartime prominence. “We are mostly the white-collar guys,” insists an SBU source. Another increasingly important player in occupied Ukraine is the Special Operations Forces (SSO). This is a relatively new group that co-ordinates Rukh Opory (Resistance Movement), Ukraine’s partisans. The operation in Kharkiv, for example, was the SSO’s. Denys Yaroslavsky, an officer in the SSO, says the service is now pushing for more powers to сonduct operations within Russia itself. That is not universally welcomed elsewhere in Ukraine’s intelligence community.

Ukraine’s president is understood to authorise the most controversial operations, though other decisions are delegated. A high-level government source with knowledge of the work declines to discuss the details: “It’s important not to comment or even think about such operations.” But he says that Volodymyr Zelensky has issued a clear order to avoid collateral damage among civilians. “The president communicates this instruction to people formally, and, on occasion, by shouting at them.” Ukraine had to choose its targets carefully, the source adds; it might “not always” have done so.

Ukraine’s leadership came under particular scrutiny in October, when the New York Times reported that the American government was blaming it for a car-bomb that killed Darya Dugina, daughter of Alexander Dugin, a nationalistic philosopher. That sharpened an already-lively internal debate within Ukrainian intelligence. It was unclear if Ms Dugina was meant to die; some reports suggest she had switched cars with her father.

But a subsequent string of operations targeting mid-level propagandists showed a trend that few of the insiders interviewed for this article were happy with. “These are marginal figures,” says one source in SBU counter-intelligence. “It makes me uncomfortable.” The former SBU fifth-directorate officer suggests the operations were designed to impress the president rather than bring victory any closer. “Clowns, prostitutes and jokers are a constant around the Russian government,” he says. “Kill one of them, and another will appear in their place.”

The former spy says he is concerned that Ukraine’s assassination campaign is driven by impulse rather than logic. Some of the killings have a useful psychological role, he says: to raise the cost of war crimes and the spirits of ordinary Ukrainians. This was “certainly” the case with Stanislav Rzhitsky, a former submarine commander believed to have fired the missiles that killed 38 Ukrainians in Vinnytsia in July 2022. He was shot dead a year later while jogging in a park in Krasnodar, in Russia. But other operations suggested an absence of strategy. They risked exposing sources, methods and the extent of Ukrainian infiltration into Russia: “Our security services shouldn’t do things just because they can.”

Andriy Yusov, a military-intelligence spokesman, insists Ukraine is avoiding what he called “blind terror”. The aim is “not to frighten the enemy,” he says, but “to force it from occupied Ukrainian lands.” But Ukrainian spies would continue to “identify and take advantage of Russian psychology and vulnerabilities” wherever they found them.

Of course, the converse is also true. The infiltration of Ukraine’s security services by Russian agents remains a big issue. In the estimation of some insiders, it is the largest single barrier to any attempts to create a Ukrainian Mossad. The former head of SBU’s internal security has fled Ukraine under a cloud of suspicion, and is being investigated for treason in absentia. Trust remains an issue in the service, with all but the least sensitive operations conducted in small groups. “People are always our weakest link,” says the SBU counter-intelligence source. “They are by far the most slippery part of our calculations.” ■

The Economist

8. China Slowdown Means It May Never Overtake US Economy, Forecast Shows

China Slowdown Means It May Never Overtake US Economy, Forecast Shows

Bloomberg Economics projects growth slowing to near 1% by 2050
Property slump and battered confidence are proving hard to fix
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-09-05/china-slowdown-means-it-may-never-overtake-us-economy-be-says?srnd=undefined&sref=hhjZtX76

By Jasmine Ng

September 4, 2023 at 8:10 PM EDT

Updated on September 5, 2023 at 2:57 AM EDT

China is no longer set to eclipse the US as the world’s biggest economy soon, and it may never consistently pull ahead to claim the top spot as the nation’s confidence slump becomes more entrenched.

That’s according to Bloomberg Economics, which now forecasts it will take until the mid-2040s for China’s gross domestic product to exceed that of the US — and even then, it will happen by “only a small margin” before “falling back behind.” Before the pandemic, they expected China to take and hold pole position as early as the start of next decade.

“China is down-shifting onto a slower growth path sooner than we expected,” the Bloomberg Economists wrote in a Tuesday research note. “The post-Covid rebound has run out of steam, reflecting a deepening property slump and fading confidence in Beijing’s management of the economy. Weak confidence risks becoming entrenched — resulting in an enduring drag on growth potential.”

China's Long-term Economic Outlook Weakens

Bloomberg Economics sees GDP growth slowing more than previously thought

Source: Bloomberg Economics

The economists now see growth in China’s economy — the world’s second largest — slowing to 3.5% in 2030 and to near 1% by 2050. That’s lower than prior projections of 4.3% and 1.6%, respectively.

China’s economy expanded 3% last year, one of its slowest rates of growth in decades as pandemic controls and a property crisis battered the country. Its eventual reopening provided hope the economy would bounce back this year.

But the recovery has lost steam as exports tumble and the real estate slump deepens. A private gauge of the services sector showed activity easing last month as people held back from spending. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg have also been downgrading their growth forecasts for 2024 further below 5%.

The revised outlook comes as the world reconsiders how to work with a China that may be approaching a peak in power, even if it’s not in decline.

The US and Group of Seven nations are increasingly looking at evidence of deep-seated structural problems in China, seeing opportunities that ultimately will strengthen the West’s hand against a weakening geopolitical competitor while also considering ripple effects from the slowdown. This year’s snags already are roiling commodities and stocks.

Chinese Trade Is Critically Important For The World

It's the top export destination for almost 40 economies

Source: International Monetary Fund

Note Mapped data show top export destination for distinct economies.

The country is also contending with deeper, longer-term challenges. China clocked its first population drop last year since the 1960s, raising concerns about weakening productivity. Regulatory crackdowns have also hit confidence, as have geopolitical tensions with the US and other Western governments.

By contrast, the US appears to be in better shape than what many economists predicted just a few months ago. A strong labor market, sturdy consumer spending and moderating inflation have fueled confidence in the economy’s ability to avoid a recession for now. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. now sees a 15% chance the US will slide into recession, down from 20% previously.

Bloomberg Economics estimates potential US growth at 1.7% in 2022-2023, with long-term forecasts showing a gradual drifting down to 1.5% by 2050.

Bloomberg’s economists said optimism for China’s growth in the medium-term remains grounded in the “enormous size of the economy, significant space to catch up to global technology leaders and the development focus of the government.” But they noted those drivers are “operating with diminished force.”

— With assistance by Jenni Marsh

(Updates with Goldman’s forecast in 10th paragraph)

9. Analysis: Xi reprimanded by elders at Beidaihe over direction of nation

This is generating some discussion. Did it happen?

This is from one of my colleagues who is from China: It’s true that Xi faces a lot of problems now; however, very unlikely the elders were brave enough to gather and directly challenge Xi though.

Analysis: Xi reprimanded by elders at Beidaihe over direction of nation

G20 absence hints at turmoil in Chinese domestic politics

KATSUJI NAKAZAWA, Nikkei senior staff writer

SEPTEMBER 5, 2023 20:42 JST

https://asia.nikkei.com/Editor-s-Picks/China-up-close/Analysis-Xi-reprimanded-by-elders-at-Beidaihe-over-direction-of-nation

Katsuji Nakazawa is a Tokyo-based senior staff and editorial writer at Nikkei. He spent seven years in China as a correspondent and later as China bureau chief. He was the 2014 recipient of the Vaughn-Ueda International Journalist prize.

There are signs of turmoil in Chinese domestic politics.

On Monday, it was announced that President Xi Jinping will not attend an upcoming summit of the Group of 20 major economies in India. Premier Li Qiang will take his place.

This will be the first time that Xi has skipped a G20 summit, to which he has consistently attached importance as China's top leader.

A precursor seems to have been this summer's Beidaihe meeting, the annual get-together of incumbent and retired leaders of the Chinese Communist Party at the seaside resort of Beidaihe, Hebei Province.

The informal discussions are never officially disclosed, but details of this year's closed-door talks have begun to emerge. In short, the conclave had a significantly different feel from the previous 10 Beidaihe meetings that have taken place since Xi became general secretary of the party in 2012.

Sources said that at this year's gathering, a group of retired party elders reprimanded the top leader in ways they had not until now. Xi later expressed his frustration to his closest aides, according to the information gathered.

Xi Jinping appears to be avoiding international conferences where China's slowing economy might be brought up for discussion. © Reuters

This Beidaihe meeting was held without the presence of the most prominent of party elders. Former President Jiang Zemin died at the age of 96 last November, and Xi's immediate predecessor, Hu Jintao, now 80, has seldom been seen since being unceremoniously escorted out of the Great Hall of the People at the party's national congress last October.

These absences might have helped create a desirable situation for Xi. But the matter was not that simple.

China today is not in the best shape. Its economy is receding in ways unseen since "reform and opening-up" began in the late 1970s. The real estate sector is in shambles, symbolized by the struggles of major developer Evergrande Group. The youth unemployment rate deteriorated to such an extent that Chinese authorities this summer stopped releasing figures.

The military is mired in commotion in the wake of two top Rocket Force generals being purged, the firings coming to light in July.

Foreign Minister Qin Gang has been removed from that post for unknown reasons, with suspicions continuing to ripple through the ministry.

The turmoil has worried many of the elders who ran the party during China's economic ascent.

Sources said that ahead of Beidaihe, party elders convened their own meeting to summarize their opinions before conveying them to the current leaders. The meeting was likely held in the suburbs of Beijing.

Afterward, only several of these elders traveled to Beidaihe to convey their consensus to the current leaders. The face-to-face meeting with the current leaders, including Xi, took place on a single day, the sources said.

The gist of the message was that if the political, economic and social turmoil continues without any effective countermeasures being taken, the party could lose public support, posing a threat to its rule.

We cannot have more turmoil, the elders pointed out.

The central figure of the elders was Zeng Qinghong, a former vice president and one of the closest aides to the late former President Jiang.

Then-President Jiang Zemin, left, is greeted by his right-hand man Zeng Qinghong during a send-off ceremony in Beijing on October 22, 2002. © Reuters

Zeng played the most important role in paving the way for Xi, once a little-known figure, to quickly take the helm of the party.

Now 84, Zeng remains influential within the party and enjoys a wide network of personal connections. Some say that in the wake of Jiang's death, Zeng has a bigger role to play.

Thus Xi's rough summer began. After receiving the unexpectedly harsh criticism from the elders, Xi huddled with close aides he has promoted to key posts. According to information that has begun to trickle out, Xi vented his frustration, pointing fingers at his three predecessors -- Deng Xiaoping, Jiang and Hu.

"All the issues that were left by the previous three leaders are on my shoulders" he is believed to have said. "I've spent the last decade tackling them but they remain unresolved. Am I to blame?"

He also is believed to have told his aides that it was now their job to resolve these leftover issues.

The venting left his aides shaken, especially Premier Li, No. 2 in the party hierarchy.

Premier Li Qiang will stand in for President Xi Jinping at the G20 summit in New Delhi on September 9-10.

Li is in charge of an economy that is facing significant headwinds.

One of those headwinds is the country's deteriorating relations with much of the outside world. Trade is sluggish, and foreign investment in the country is declining sharply.

Xi's decision to forgo the upcoming G20 summit in India is likely an attempt to avoid losing face.

There is a possibility that China's economy, and how it weighs on the global economy, might be discussed. Premier Li, who is in charge of China's economy, should travel to India to address these concerns, the inner circle has likely concluded.

But the skipping of the G20 follows another no-show. In late August, shortly after the Beidaihe meeting ended, Xi failed to appear at a business forum held on the sidelines of the BRICS summit involving Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, held in South Africa. His speech was read out by Chinese Commerce Minister Wang Wentao.

One take is that Xi did not attend the forum because there were concerns that he might be asked direct questions about the poor performance of the Chinese economy.

The lack of desire on both sides to make major compromises is making it difficult for President Xi Jinping to visit U.S. counterpart Joe Biden in San Francisco in November. © Reuters

Another major factor behind Xi's G20 absence is that no breakthrough in stalled relations with the U.S. appears on the horizon. While there is hope in Washington that the visit to China by U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo late last month served as one step toward a more stable relationship, this is not how the Chinese side sees it.

From Beijing's standpoint, Raimondo came bearing no gifts.

With neither the U.S. nor China able to make major concessions on important economic issues, it is difficult for Xi to justify a friendly meeting with U.S. President Joe Biden. Under the current circumstances, it is unclear whether Xi will be able to travel to the U.S. in November for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in San Francisco. His absence from that gathering would raise even more red flags.

The butterfly effect of Chinese politics never ceases to amaze. On Thursday, days after the Beidaihe meeting is thought to have closed, former Premier Li Keqiang made his first public appearance since being forced to retire in March.

The former No. 2 was smiling broadly when he appeared at the World Heritage Mogao Caves, also known as the Caves of the Thousand Buddhas, along the ancient Silk Road in Gansu province.

Then-Premier Li Keqiang lays a wreath at a statue of Deng Xiaoping in Shenzhen, China, in August 2022. (Screenshot from CCTV)

He was greeted by fans who chanted "Ni hao [hello], premier! Ni hao!"

Li Qiang has since taken over as premier and will be heading to the G20 summit in India in Xi's stead. But for the people at the caves, Li Keqiang was still very much their premier.

The video of Li Keqiang's appearance was widely dispersed on Chinese social media before being deleted by authorities.

It was a symbolic event. Li Keqiang is still a popular politician, and the cheers for him at the World Heritage site were not fake.

Now retired, Li Keqiang certainly was at the gathering of elders before the Beidaihe meeting.

Xi, the man who pushed Li into retirement, was absent from public view for many days this summer, busy having to address the harsh reprimand from the elders.

10. Was Xi Jinping actually reprimanded by retired Party leaders?

Was Xi Jinping actually reprimanded by retired Party leaders?

https://www.semafor.com/article/09/06/2023/xi-jinping-criticism-china

Sep 6, 2023, 8:42am EDT

GIANLUIGI GUERCIA/Pool via REUTERS/File Photo

POLITICS

EAST ASIA

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Tsui

/A much-discussed Nikkei article claiming that Chinese Communist Party elders “reprimanded” Xi Jinping over the handling of domestic issues has drawn skepticism from China watchers.

The story, written by Katsuji Nakazawa, cited anonymous sources saying that retired Party leaders were frank with Xi about the threat to his rule in “ways they had not until now” during an annual conference in the resort town of Beidaihe.

Nakazawa, a former China correspondent, claimed that receiving such abrupt criticism may be why Xi decided to skip this weekend’s G20 summit in India, saying it was “likely an attempt to avoid losing face.”

Since coming to power in 2012, Xi has issued a directive• 1 that would give once-powerful Party elders less agency to intervene in the leader’s decisions — making it a violation to disagree with the leader or badmouth his policies, Neil Thomas, a fellow of Chinese Politics at the Asia Society wrote. This would make it unlikely, he said, that China's leader would allow criticism to even be discussed privately, let alone expressed to him.

X, Neil Thomas

Neil Thomas 牛犇

@neilthomas123

The story says both Zeng Qinghong and Li Keqiang were at the meeting

A stunning feat of cross-factional cooperation under intense political constraints?

Zeng Qinghong (who supported Xi & escaped anti-corruption) is a Jiang Zemin crony & Li Keqiang is a Youth League person

Additional details are needed to give the story more credibility• 2 , Dennis Wilder, a professor of Asian Studies at Georgetown University wrote on X, such as what the so-called “leftover problems” Xi was being ordered to fix were. Former Chinese Vice President Zeng Qinghong, who was also allegedly present in the Beidaihe meeting with Xi, is often cited as a “rabble-rouser," Wilder said, adding that it is important to know who else was in attendance.

X, Dennis Wilder

Dennis Wilder偉德寧

@dennisw5

This story would have much more credibility if it specified what "leftover" problems Xi is being ordered to fix. Also, Zeng Qinghong alone does not make a group of elders. He is always sighted as the rabble-rouser. Who were the others?

Even if Nakazawa did have access to sources• 3 close to Xi, Foreign Policy’s James Palmer argues that the reported exchange between the Chinese leader and CCP elders, which ends with Xi expressing frustrations, demonstrates “wish casting” — which often circulates among “liberally minded” officials willing to talk with foreign journalists.

Foreign Policy, Xi Jinping Will Be a G-20 No-Show

11. US Army scraps Abrams tank upgrade, unveils new modernization plan

US Army scraps Abrams tank upgrade, unveils new modernization plan

Defense News · by Jen Judson · September 6, 2023

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Army is scrapping its current upgrade plans for the Abrams main battle tank and pursuing a more significant modernization effort to increase its mobility and survivability on the battlefield, the service announced in a statement Wednesday.

The Army will end its M1A2 System Enhancement Package version 4 program, and instead develop the M1E3 Abrams focused on challenges the tank is likely to face on the battlefield of 2040 and beyond, the service said. The service was supposed to receive the M1A2 SEPv4 version this past spring.

The SEPv4 will not go into production as planned, Army Under Secretary Gabe Camarillo told Defense News in a Sept. 6 interview at the Defense News Conference in Arlington, Virginia. “We’re essentially going to invest those resources into the [research and] development on this new upgraded Abrams,” he said. “[I]t’s really threat-based, it’s everything that we’re seeing right now, even recently in Ukraine in terms of a native active protection system, lighter weight, more survivability, and of course reduced logistical burdens as well for the Army.”

The Abrams tank “can no longer grow its capabilities without adding weight, and we need to reduce its logistical footprint,” Maj. Gen. Glenn Dean, the Army’s program executive officer for ground combat systems, said in the statement. “The war in Ukraine has highlighted a critical need for integrated protections for soldiers, built from within instead of adding on.”

Ukraine’s military will have the chance to put the M1 Abrams to the test when it receives the tanks later this month. The country is fighting off a Russian invasion that began nearly two years ago.

The M1E3 Abrams will “include the best features” of the M1A2 SEPv4 and will be compliant with modular open-systems architecture standards, according to the statement, which will allow for faster and more efficient technology upgrades. “This will enable the Army and its commercial partners to design a more survivable, lighter tank that will be more effective on the battlefield at initial fielding and more easy to upgrade in the future.”

“We appreciate that future battlefields pose new challenges to the tank as we study recent and ongoing conflicts,” said Brig. Gen. Geoffrey Norman, director of the Next-Generation Combat Vehicle Cross-Functional Team. “We must optimize the Abrams’ mobility and survivability to allow the tank to continue to close with and destroy the enemy as the apex predator on future battlefields.”

Norman, who took over the team last fall, spent seven months prior to his current job in Poland with the 1st Infantry Division. He told Defense News last year that the division worked with Poles, Lithuanians and other European partners on the eastern flank to observe happenings in Ukraine.

Weight is a major inhibitor of mobility, Norman said last fall. “We are consistently looking at ways to drive down the main battle tank’s weight to increase our operational mobility and ensure we can present multiple dilemmas to the adversary by being unpredictable in where we can go and how we can get there.”

General Dynamic Land Systems, which manufactures the Abrams tank, brought what it called AbramsX to the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual conference in October 2022. AbramsX is a technology demonstrator with reduced weight and the same range as the current tank with 50% less fuel consumption, the American firm told Defense News ahead of the show.

The AbramsX has a hybrid power pack that enables a silent watch capability and “some silent mobility,” which means it can run certain systems on the vehicle without running loud engines.

The tank also has an embedded artificial intelligence capability that enables “lethality, survivability, mobility and manned/unmanned teaming,” GDLS said.

The Army did not detail what the new version might include, but GDLS is using AbramsX to define what is possible in terms of weight reduction, improved survivability and a more efficient logistics tail.

The Army awarded GDLS a contract in August 2017 to develop the SEPv4 version of the tank with a plan then to make a production decision in fiscal 2023, followed by fielding to the first brigade in fiscal 2025.

The keystone technology of the SEPv4 version consisted of a third-generation forward-looking infrared camera and a full-site upgrade including improved target discrimination.

“I think the investment in subsystem technologies in the v4 will actually carry over into the upgraded ECP [Engineering Change Proposal] program for Abrams,” Camarillo said. “However, the plan is to have robust competition at the subsystem level for a lot of what the new ECP will call for, so we’re going to look for best-of-breed tech in a lot of different areas,” such as active protection systems and lighter weight materials.

For instance, the Army has kitted out the tank with Trophy active protection systems as an interim solution to increase survivability. The Israeli company Rafael Advanced Defense Systems develops the Trophy. But since the system is not integrated into the design of the vehicle, it adds significant weight, sacrificing mobility.

The Army plans to produce the M1A2 SEPv3 at a reduced rate until it can transition the M1E3 into production.

The M1E3 is expected to reach initial operational capability in the early 2030s, the Army said. “As longer-range threats increase in both lethality and survivability, the M1E3 Abrams will be able to defeat those threats,” the statement said.

About Jen Judson

Jen Judson is an award-winning journalist covering land warfare for Defense News. She has also worked for Politico and Inside Defense. She holds a Master of Science degree in journalism from Boston University and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Kenyon College.

12. Felony convictions vacated for 4 Navy officers in ‘Fat Leonard’ case

Felony convictions vacated for 4 Navy officers in ‘Fat Leonard’ case

navytimes.com · by The Associated Press · September 6, 2023

Editor’s note: This story was updated at 9:25 a.m. EST with additional information.

SAN DIEGO — The felony convictions of four Navy officers in one of the worst bribery cases in the maritime branch’s history were vacated due to prosecutorial misconduct Wednesday, the latest setback to the government’s yearslong efforts in going after dozens of military officials tied to a defense contractor nicknamed Fat Leonard.

U.S. District Judge Janis Sammartino called the misconduct “outrageous” and agreed to allow the four men to plead guilty to a misdemeanor and pay a $100 fine each.

Fat Leonard, fugitive in Navy bribery case, seeks Venezuelan asylum

The fugitive defense contractor nicknamed “Fat Leonard” has requested asylum in Venezuela, a law enforcement official said Monday.

The surprising turn of events occurred at a sentencing hearing in federal court in San Diego for the former officers.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Peter Ko, who was brought on after the officers were tried last year, admitted to “serious issues” with prosecutorial misconduct and asked the judge to vacate the officers’ felony convictions.

He said his office does not agree with all of the allegations but said errors were made.

“There were pretty obviously serious issues that affect our ability to go forward” defending the convictions or seeking a new trial, Ko told the judge, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune.

Andrew Haden, acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern California District, reiterated that in a statement after the hearing.

“As stated in court, we do not agree with all the allegations or characterizations in the motions or in court,” Haden said. “We recognize and regret, however, that errors were made, and we have an obligation to ensure fairness and justice. The resolutions of these defendants’ cases reflect that.”

Haden added that it “is also significant that the four officers who stood before the court today admitted for the first time, under oath, that they broke the law and are guilty of crimes related to their official duties.”

The officers — former Capts. David Newland, James Dolan and David Lausman and former Cmdr. Mario Herrera —were previously convicted by a federal jury on various counts of accepting bribes from foreign defense contractor Leonard Francis, and his company, Glenn Defense Marine Asia, or GDMA.

On Wednesday three of them pleaded guilty to one count each of disclosing information, and Lausman pleaded guilty to a charge of destruction of government property, for smashing a hard drive with a hammer.

Defense attorney Todd Burns, who represented Dolan, said his client was relieved to have this behind him. He and defense attorneys for the three other men had filed hundreds of pages outlining how the monthslong trial was rife with misconduct from prosecutors hiding evidence, ignoring false testimony and concealing facts that questioned the credibility of key witnesses.

“The government has a massive amount of power to coerce things, and that power is still evident in this context,” Burns said.

He said his client agreed to plead guilty to a misdemeanor after a decade of fighting the allegations against him, “bleeding legal fees” and enduring stress on his family.

“These four guys were facing what was going to be sentences by the original prosecutors that were going to be absolutely devastating financially and custody-wise,” he said. “Then they were offered a deal to plead to a misdemeanor and a $100 fine to walk away and end this brutal chapter.”

The men spent more than a year asking for a retrial. Theirs was the only case to go to trial out of the more than two dozen defendants charged. The jury deadlocked and reached no verdict on charges against a fifth defendant, retired Rear Adm. Bruce Loveless, and prosecutors later dropped those charges.

Nearly two dozen Navy officials, defense contractors and others have been convicted and sentenced on various fraud and corruption charges.

Several others are awaiting sentencing next month. It’s not clear if this could jeopardize those cases.

Francis admitted to buying off dozens of top-ranking officers with booze, sex, lavish parties and other gifts. Prosecutors say he bilked the Navy out of more than $35 million.

Three weeks before the Malaysian defense contractor faced sentencing last year, Francis made a stunning escape, snipping off his ankle monitor and fleeing the San Diego residence where he had been under house arrest.

The escape was also seen by some as a misstep by the prosecution for allowing him to not be held behind bars. He was later captured in Venezuela, where he remains.

The four former officers had served in the Navy’s 7th Fleet in the Eastern Pacific, where Francis’ company supplied ships for decades.

Francis was arrested in a San Diego hotel in September 2013 as part of a federal sting. Investigators say he and his company, Glenn Defense Marine Asia, bribed officers so he could overcharge for supplying ships or charge for fake services at ports he controlled in Southeast Asia.

The case, which delved into salacious details about service members cheating on their wives and seeking out prostitutes, was an embarrassment to the Pentagon. The U.S. attorney’s office handled the prosecution, offering independence from the military justice system.

13. US to send depleted uranium rounds to Ukraine

This is obviously generating some controversy. I do not believe the radiation hazard is at all significant. The DU round is arguably the most effective tank ammunition ever produced.

Excerpts:

Depleted uranium’s armor-piercing potential comes from its material — the dross left over when uranium is enriched. This results in a density twice that of lead, and hence greater umph.

But some are concerned about its use. Depleted uranium is 40% less radioactive than natural uranium, according to a United Nations report last year, and the radiation it does emit shouldn’t pierce the skin.

Still when ingested or inhaled, the substance can cause radiological damage — including, among other things, cancer and kidney failure. The rounds burst into a cloud of dust after impact, making such a risk possible, though less dangerous over time as the aerosols drift away.

US to send depleted uranium rounds to Ukraine

Defense News · by Noah Robertson · September 6, 2023

ARLINGTON, Va. — The Pentagon announced Sept. 6 it will send depleted uranium rounds to Ukraine in its latest military assistance package to the embattled country.

The rounds will arm previously committed Abrams tanks, 10 which reportedly will arrive later this month. In addition, their ability to bust through armor could aid Ukraine’s counteroffensive, now starting to show promise, amid Russia’s invasion.

Depleted uranium’s armor-piercing potential comes from its material — the dross left over when uranium is enriched. This results in a density twice that of lead, and hence greater umph.

But some are concerned about its use. Depleted uranium is 40% less radioactive than natural uranium, according to a United Nations report last year, and the radiation it does emit shouldn’t pierce the skin.

Still when ingested or inhaled, the substance can cause radiological damage — including, among other things, cancer and kidney failure. The rounds burst into a cloud of dust after impact, making such a risk possible, though less dangerous over time as the aerosols drift away.

Depleted uranium rounds have been used since the 1990s, in the Gulf War and later battles in the Balkans. Soldiers hit with depleted uranium fragments were studied and showed no long-term health consequences, according to an International Atomic Energy Agency report.

The U.S. hasn’t sent depleted uranium rounds to Ukraine yet, but insists that they aren’t a humanitarian issue.

The United Kingdom has provided Ukraine with such rounds, along with the Challenger 2 tanks it sent earlier this year. The material “is a standard component and has nothing to do with nuclear weapons”, the Defence Ministry said in a statement after sending them this March.

Wednesday’s announcement follows a trip by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken to Kyiv, where he unveiled $1 billion in further humanitarian and economic assistance to Ukraine.

The European nation’s counteroffensive has recently arrived at the second in Russia’s three defensive lines in the southern region of Zaporizhia. Russia is surging reinforcements to the area, but if Ukraine’s progress continues, it would be a major advance toward its main objective: breaking Russia’s so-called land bridge to Crimea, the peninsula Moscow annexed in 2014.

About Noah Robertson

Noah Robertson is the Pentagon reporter at Defense News. He previously covered national security for the Christian Science Monitor. He holds a bachelor’s degree in English and government from the College of William & Mary in his hometown of Williamsburg, Virginia.

14. Opinion | China’s Military Is Going Global

As usual I offer my thesis: 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.

Opinion | China’s Military Is Going Global

The New York Times · by Craig Singleton · September 7, 2023

Guest Essay

China’s Military Is Going Global

Sept. 7, 2023, 5:02 a.m. ET

Credit...Maxime Mouysset

Mr. Singleton is a China analyst and senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington.

At Cambodia’s Ream Naval Base, China is nearing completion of what U.S. officials suspect will be its first overseas military outpost in the Indo-Pacific region. This represents a major evolution in Beijing’s regional defense strategy. Beyond facilitating Chinese military adventurism in the South China Sea, the new base could provide the People’s Liberation Army (P.L.A.) with a staging ground to monitor and influence vital maritime routes like the Malacca Strait, through which an estimated 40 percent of the world’s trade flows.

But the base also shines a light on Beijing’s broader embrace of an innovative strategy to challenge American military strength that has potentially grave implications for Washington and its allies.

China’s expanding military mission centers on establishing what it calls “strategic strong points” along China’s major trade, energy and resource routes, especially those that run from China through the Malacca Strait and into the Indian Ocean and the Gulf of Aden. China has plainly stated that these points are designed to “provide support for overseas military operations” and “exert political and military influence” abroad.

Open-source intelligence and imagery suggest that China is laying the groundwork for this network with completed or potential projects stretching from Djibouti in East Africa and Equatorial Guinea on Africa’s Atlantic coast to the Solomon Islands in the South Pacific.

China’s defense strategy has historically been focused on defending Chinese territory closer to home. But as its military strength and overseas interests have grown, Beijing has pivoted toward deploying military assets further abroad. China remains at a great tactical disadvantage compared to the United States, which maintains a sprawling, expensive network of hundreds of military bases in more than 80 countries. But China now has the world’s largest navy. That, combined with its new approach — leaner and more cost-effective than the everywhere-at-once U.S. strategy — could chip away at America’s edge, giving Beijing the ability to strike military or other high-value targets during a conflict or neutralize America’s ability to redirect its forces to China’s immediate periphery should a conflict arise there.

In building this architecture, China is utilizing the groundwork already laid by its sprawling Belt and Road Initiative, first launched a decade ago and centered on revitalizing infrastructure at ports around the world with the goal of expanding Chinese economic and political power. Once-commercial projects are now being retrofitted with military assets.

Concerned U.S. policymakers need look no further than Djibouti — China’s first overseas “strategic strong point.” In 2015, China began work on a civilian multipurpose port in the east African country, located where the Red Sea meets the Indian Ocean. That port, near the U.S. military’s Camp Lemonnier, has since evolved into a heavily fortified base. According to intelligence platform Stratfor, it features more than 250,000 square feet of underground bunkers — a common P.L.A. technique for concealing artillery and other munitions from spy satellites.

Similar changes are afoot at the port of Khalifa in the United Arab Emirates, where a Chinese shipping conglomerate built and now operates a commercial container terminal. Biden administration officials believe China is building a covert military facility there — around 50 miles from a U.A.E. air base that hosts a major U.S. Air Force unit. In Pakistan, Beijing recently delivered two naval frigates to safeguard a multibillion-dollar infrastructure project that includes the Chinese-invested port of Gwadar, where China is believed to be considering establishing a naval presence.

China’s strategic strong points may result in new bases that could be advanced staging areas for its armed forces or platforms for spying on foreign militaries. In other cases it may reach access agreements with host countries that allow for refueling, repair, and short-term stopovers of Chinese military assets or personnel.

Source: Foundation for Defense of Democracies

By Sara Chodosh

But tomorrow’s wars will involve more than ships and planes. They will include heavy cyber, electronic warfare and space components as well. Beijing is positioning itself for victory on this new frontier, too.

Nearly a decade ago, President Xi Jinping tasked the P.L.A. with establishing “a new military doctrine, institutions, equipment systems, strategies and tactics” to wage “information warfare.” China’s Strategic Support Force (S.S.F.) — a part of the military that oversees space, cyberspace, communications and psychological warfare — has been charged with putting this vision into operation. The S.S.F. now maintains a presence in four known outposts in Argentina, Pakistan, Kenya and Namibia that operate tracking and telemetry stations for China’s military space program. China also reportedly has a newly uncovered eavesdropping station in Cuba, and satellite imagery suggests it has built signals intelligence infrastructure on reclaimed reefs in the South China Sea.

Personnel at these and potentially other locations could, according to leaked U.S. intelligence reports, conduct operations to “deny, exploit or hijack” U.S. satellites. They could also carry out cyber and cognitive warfare against American or allied infrastructure — a core component of China’s strategy for undermining American military superiority, including spreading false information onto an adversary’s airwaves to degrade its decision-making.

These “strong points” could give China the ability to distract and overextend U.S. and allied forces in different operational theaters, while using Beijing’s closer military and economic ties with other countries to pressure them to limit U.S. base access. If China were to harness this overseas framework during a conflict over Taiwan, it could create a dilemma for American decision makers, forcing them to prioritize between defending the island and responding to Chinese diversionary actions elsewhere.

Yet as China has rolled out this far-reaching strategy over the past several years, the U.S. government has often seemed to be playing a reactive game of Whack-A-Mole. During my time in the U.S. government, I watched as Washington waited until Chinese access agreements were finalized or nearly completed in the U.A.E., Equatorial Guinea and the Solomon Islands before dispatching high-level delegations to brief those governments about the perceived risks of hosting a Chinese military facility.

Policymakers in Washington must come to grips with the strategic depth of China’s moves and craft a strategy for pre-emptively neutralizing them, including incentives or punishments to convince host governments to rebuff China’s military advances. A single, high-ranking official should be empowered to lead this effort.

For a start, U.S. policymakers should direct their attention to the tiny West African nation of Gabon. China and Gabon have developed substantial military ties in recent years. A base in Gabon or nearby Equatorial Guinea — already identified by the United States as a likely P.L.A. basing target — could enable China to project power into the Atlantic Ocean for the first time.

Under the radar, Beijing is making moves that could reshape the global military landscape. America must stop playing catch-up, and devise a strategy for staying ahead of the game.

Craig Singleton (@craigmsingleton) is a senior China fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He previously spent more than a decade serving in national security roles in the U.S. government, focused on East Asia.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.

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The New York Times · by Craig Singleton · September 7, 2023

15. A Backdoor Call to Arms: Foreign Fighters in National Defense

We must anticipate this situation (learn, adapt, and anticipate).

Excerpts:

This article is for policy makers or defense officials considering what role unofficial foreign assistance might play as part of a nation’s total defense plan. After defining the terms “small-nation defense” and “foreign fighter,” this article presents recommendations on the latter’s use in small state defense and weighs the risks and rewards of doing so.

...

The Ukraine war will end. When it does, there will be over ten million Ukrainian combat veterans, perhaps more. What if, in 2030, vulnerable Moldova or plucky Latvia finds itself in a pitched fight with a reconstituted Russian invading force? Ukraine will offer a ready-made pool of ideologically committed and combat experienced volunteers. Many would—for different reasons and rationalities—put down the pitchfork and pick up the rifle. For any country that faces a campaign of annihilation or a heinous foreign occupation such as Ukraine, this option will be attractive. If considered and planned now, it could also be effective.

A Backdoor Call to Arms: Foreign Fighters in National Defense - Irregular Warfare Initiative

irregularwarfare.org · by Brian Petit · September 7, 2023

If you believe that activating irregulars, militias, and mercenaries to augment the security arm of the state is a dreadful policy idea, you are having a good year.

The spectacle of the late Yevgeni Prigozhin and his quasi-rogue Wagner Group fighting externally and then threatening internally, is a chilling example of a state employing, then losing control of, such groups. A quieter but longer-term case is Serbia (profiled in a running series by the New York Times), where the influence of 1990s Serbian militias are baked into the state power structures, three decades running. In the U.S., ongoing legal cases against militias, such as the Oath Keepers on January 6th, show how rapidly a fringe group can organize, activate, and deliver violence. While not state-sponsored, such groups fashion themselves as legitimate extensions of the state security apparatus. The warning is well voiced: it is often a regrettable proposition for a state to legitimize irregulars and or tolerate militias as official or unofficial state actors.

Even so, the U.S. and her 31 NATO allies should not abandon this idea. In fact, this article champions the very idea that foreign fighters can and should have a central place in the security forces of friendly, democratic, and rule-of-law respecting states. Small nations, even those with well-conceived defense strategies, such as Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Singapore, and Taiwan, have limited populations from which to draw fighting forces. Could enlisting foreign volunteers help close this national defense gap? Yes. The employment of foreign fighters can and should move from a wartime anomaly to a pre-planned pillar of small-nation national deterrence and defense.

This article is for policy makers or defense officials considering what role unofficial foreign assistance might play as part of a nation’s total defense plan. After defining the terms “small-nation defense” and “foreign fighter,” this article presents recommendations on the latter’s use in small state defense and weighs the risks and rewards of doing so.

Defining small-nation defense and foreign fighters

Small-nation defense is the art and science of being a more troublesome foe than outward appearance might suggest. In 2014, the Russian invasion of Ukraine stimulated new defense thinking for small states. One response was the Resistance Operating Concept (ROC), collaboratively written and published in 2020. The ROC posited that smaller nations, even those in powerful collective defense arrangements such as NATO, should consider whole-of-society strategies to ensure their resiliency and survival. The ROC suggests creative methods but stops short of enlisting foreign fighters.

A “foreign fighter” is a committed ideologue, willing to travel to foreign lands, equipped with some warfighting skill or experience, intent on exacting violence in support of a belief, in the name of a cause, or simply against a hated foe. Foreign fighters are technically, but not always behaviorally, non-state actors. Adopting foreign fighters into official state policy, even in this moment of great power clash, remains underexplored.

Modern war trends: privatization, commercialization

Categorically, foreign fighters (“volunteers”) are independent actors. Independents, private enterprises, and commercial organizations are rising in global influence and power. Their use in war is no exception. On the Ukrainian side of the war alone, the commercial and private enterprise trends are well reported, to include Starlink satellites, off-the-shelf drones, cryptocurrencies, global hacktivism, crowdsourcing, and corporate choices to support or deny a chosen side. One such trend (and not a new one) is less techy and more corporeal: the foreigners volunteering and fighting on behalf of Ukraine. As sovereign states harness the rising power of private enterprises untethered to government policies, related trends, such as the enlistment of soloist foreign fighters, should be embraced and logistically pre-planned in peace rather than reactively considered in crisis. The potential benefits address three gaps faced by all small nations: speed, scale, and skill of available forces.

The opening move: speed and scale

Foreign fighters are one means to offset the disadvantage of being outnumbered and overwhelmed in conflict. Ukraine-Russia is one example of a war in which a larger and better-armed country attacked a smaller country using the logic that mass, volume, and time can and will produce battlefield victory. Within 72 hours of the Feb. 24, 2022, Russian invasion, the government of Ukraine published a hyperlink for foreign applicants to fight for Ukraine, one of many salvos to nullify this asymmetry. Ukraine legitimized the cause with a plea from President Volodymyr Zelensky for “friends of peace and democracy” to come and assist. I opened the link. It took the same amount of time fill out as ordering a pair of socks from Amazon. Thousands clicked submit.

In the spring of 2022, volunteers sped to Ukraine. Those who took up arms became “foreign fighters.” Some joined international brigades, populated by foreigners but led by Ukrainians. Other volunteers struck out, enterprise-style, eager to battle Russians. Some were screened and turned away, unfit for fighting but suitable for other tasks. Some came, witnessed the horrors of war, and abruptly left. Some, like the Mozart Group (a cheeky rebuke to the Wagner Group), stayed, contributed meaningfully, and then fractured due to internal squabbles. Others like 22-year-old Willy Joseph Cancel, a Marine veteran, fought and died.

Ukraine enabled speed with the hope of creating scale. How many fighters came? How many stayed? Accurate numbers are hard to determine. In March 2022, the Ukraine Defense ministry claimed that 20,000 volunteers had come to Ukraine. It is estimated that hundreds of thousands more are filling non-combatant roles both inside and outside of Ukraine. The current estimates in spring 2023 range from 1,000 to 3,000 active foreign combatants on the fields of battle. Yet other reports estimate that the Georgians alone contribute to over 1,000 active combatants. The actual number of foreigners actively fighting is constantly fluctuating, adding to the problem of maintaining accurate accountability.

Even with this fuzzy math, the foreign fighter numbers are notable. Given the large scale of this conflict (over one million Ukrainians are reported to be activated in security forces), the effectiveness of foreign fighters is difficult to parse out. The Ukrainians are, and have been, providing most combat soldiers. Actual numbers and effectiveness notwithstanding, Ukraine showed one method of legalizing, advertising, and drawing on a willing pool of human resources. The conjecture is that with more malice of forethought, a similar, pre-planned effort can mobilize more, faster, and better.

Help wanted: skilled only

Conducting combat operations—from skirmishes to high-intensity warfare—against a larger, well-armed, and technologically sound invader requires advanced skills. A slim portion of these skills can be taught and trained in extremis, in short blocks of time (days, weeks), and can be mass produced. These basic skills include weapons handling and rifle marksmanship, basic defensive and protective measures, simple reporting means to improve friendly information and intelligence, and rudimentary medical skills. This task list also includes critical civil tasks like food procurement and preparation, transportation and infrastructure repair, and emergency management services.

The higher end skills require expertise and time to train and develop. Highly trained foreigners can provide large impacts, quickly. These skills include the operation of sophisticated weapons systems: artillery, radar detection systems, tanks, crew-served (multi-person) heavy weapons, air defense systems, and nearly all air and naval platforms. Whereas cyber skills can be “dragged-and-dropped” into national defense, there are few short cuts to qualified, cadre-style specialists who need to operate technical systems and generate new specialists to ensure redundancy.

The United States and her NATO allies are training on these more sophisticated military skills, at training locations inside and outside of Europe. Sometimes called “offset warfare,” this workaround alternative is one option when policy prevents foreign partners from participating in the active area of combat. In the Ukraine case, these higher-end training efforts were stymied or delayed by (foreign) domestic political landscapes. In the meantime, Ukraine has employed Georgians, Belarusians, Tatars, British, Americans, Danish, and foreigners from 50 countries into its ranks using the “come as you are” method.

Ukraine requires more official and unofficial help as the war progresses. Russian biannual conscription reports 147,000 new recruits for April 2023 to reinforce the 300,000 draftees from September 2022. The Russian strategy of fighting via human and material mass shows no signs of relenting. A nation that successfully incorporates foreign fighters, with appropriate skills, into its defense scheme opens a bypass valve when official channels lag. Admittedly imperfect, this first-mover advantage provides advantages when proper military assistance is held up in foreign capitals or stalled at railheads.

Gauging risk and controlling chaos

Are the risks worth the rewards? In a war against a superior foe, leaders must—and will—take risks that they otherwise would not consider in peacetime. With proper guardrails and guidelines, the rewards of enlisting foreign fighters are worth taking the potential political and behavioral risks.

The political risks are clear. Few political parties or policy makers are willing to openly support this idea in peacetime, as the accusations of outsourcing a nation’s security could be attacked as weak, irresponsible, or negligent. These risks should not stymie a sober consideration of a break-glass crisis plan that designates a responsible agency as the coordinating lead.

One option is to build a discriminating “entry portal.” States such as Israel, India, France, Australia, and the United States do allow foreigners to apply, join, and serve in their armed forces. These are peacetime policies that come with caveats such as language proficiency or contractual quid-pro-quo arrangements such as service for citizenship. Such policies could be quickly amended in a crisis to rapidly open a narrow pipeline into a superhighway. This hedging strategy prevents a disorganized stampede of helpers with unclear pathways to assist precisely when a state and its systems are under attack.

The behavioral risks are substantial. Ukraine does provide one instructive case. Since 2014, Ukraine has crafted unique methods of managing the militias and irregulars who, of their own accord, mobilized, organized, and successfully fought the Russian separatists of eastern Ukraine in the Russian seizure of Crimea. These examples are of Ukrainian irregulars rather than true foreigners, but the risks are similar and so are the management measures. The outcome is a mash-up of national guard, armed citizen watch, and private military company. Ukraine has struck a balance on this front that offers one case study on irregular force incorporation. This potential does come with pitfalls: combat volunteerism is a place where misfits, malcontents, misfortunates, and dreamers lurk. Quality control measures are essential.

A smarter plan is one with legal parameters, logistical support, and pre-considered risk mitigation measures such as command and control arrangements. If a NATO nation is attacked, it will take time for NATO to decide, muster, deploy, and directly influence the fight. To delay an enemy coup de main, a small state would be wise to be legislatively ready to rapidly incorporate, equip, and integrate an influx of freelance, foreign talent. A rehearsed plan and a trigger-based process to onramp foreign fighters could provide immediate combat power to a nation that simply cannot mobilize sufficient forces. The Islamic State (ISIS), a proto-state at one time, offers another example of online recruiting and the incorporation of volunteers into a formidable fighting force.

The concerns are in plain sight and can be unnerving, much like the Wagner Group’s skull-and-crosshairs flag. The activation of foreign fighters can invite behavioral chaos, associations with illegitimacy, or bald-faced counter-productive ideologies. Those risks should not deter a sober, studied examination followed by realistic and resourced contingency plans for the enlistment of foreign fighters. If facing an imminent defeat and a grisly occupation, states will warm up quickly to an uncomfortable idea: it is better to fight ugly than lose fast.

An uncomfortable vision

The Ukraine war will end. When it does, there will be over ten million Ukrainian combat veterans, perhaps more. What if, in 2030, vulnerable Moldova or plucky Latvia finds itself in a pitched fight with a reconstituted Russian invading force? Ukraine will offer a ready-made pool of ideologically committed and combat experienced volunteers. Many would—for different reasons and rationalities—put down the pitchfork and pick up the rifle. For any country that faces a campaign of annihilation or a heinous foreign occupation such as Ukraine, this option will be attractive. If considered and planned now, it could also be effective.

Brian Petit, a retired U.S. Army colonel, teaches and consults on strategy, planning, special operations, and resistance. He is an adjunct for the Joint Special Operations University and a 2023 Non-Resident Fellow with the Irregular Warfare Initiative, a joint production of Princeton’s Empirical Studies of Conflict Project and the Modern War Institute at West Point.

Main image: Sky Soldiers from 54th Brigade Engineer Battalion and 4th Battalion, 319th Airborne Artillery Regiment, 173rd Airborne Brigade teach the correct method to exit a plane during airborne operations during airborne training with the French paratrooper from the 35th Parachute Artillery Regiment, 11th Parachute, as part of Exercise Colibri in Tarbes, France, Sept. 21st 2016. (Philip Steiner/ US Army)

16. In Southeast Asia, U.S.-China Competition Is More than a Two-Player Game

In Southeast Asia, U.S.-China Competition Is More than a Two-Player Game

A new USIP essay series explores Southeast Asian states’ agency and options amid strategic rivalry.

https://www.usip.org/publications/2023/09/southeast-asia-us-china-competition-more-two-player-game

Wednesday, September 6, 2023 / BY: Alice Ba

Great power rivalry between the United States and China is frequently couched in bilateral terms with regions of the world merely serving as arenas of competition. Rarely considered is the reality that while third countries may be significantly weaker than either the United States or China, they are neither totally helpless nor completely without leverage or absent agency. As Southeast Asia is “where great powers meet,” the region’s states have a challenging balancing act to play, but also have options in how they manage the risks and opportunities presented by this competition.

A historical map of China and Southeast Asia, in Danang, Vietnam, Nov. 1, 2017. (Quinn Ryan Mattingly/The New York Times)

Indeed, the two powers’ competing agendas in Southeast Asia have become a recurrent theme of recent headlines. In July, Southeast Asia’s significance to both the United States and China was at center stage at Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) meetings attended by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and China’s top diplomat, Wang Yi. Both diplomats followed their respective well-rehearsed scripts on Southeast Asia, with each attempting to convince Southeast Asian states to distance themselves from the other.

We see this over and over again. U.S. analysts and policymakers reiterate the “upward trend of unhelpful and coercive and irresponsible Chinese actions in the South China Sea” and their threat to Southeast Asia’s maritime interests. And Chinese analysts and policymakers underscore to Southeast Asian counterparts the dangers associated with the so-called U.S. “Cold War” provocations and destabilizing economic policies. This suggests that U.S.-China tensions are leading to growing pressure on Southeast Asian states to make a choice between two critical relationships.

Southeast Asia’s Agency

But how, in fact, are Southeast Asian states responding to the expanding U.S.-China rivalry? How do they understand their options and constraints? And to what extent are states really finding their choices constrained or in need of reassessment? Too often, analyses highlight what is being done to Southeast Asian states, rather than considering whether and how Southeast Asian states are navigating the rivalry, positioning themselves and shaping dynamics to their own benefit and priorities.

As U.S.-China tensions intensify, how Southeast Asian states can and should respond is increasingly a question for both those outside and inside Southeast Asia. More than just front-line states, Southeast Asian countries can both complicate and facilitate the United States’ and China’s ability to achieve specific strategic goals. Similarly, Southeast Asian narratives can detract from, as much as add to, the relative standing and legitimacy of U.S. and Chinese agendas.

U.S. and Chinese attention to Southeast Asia, as well as efforts to engage and court Southeast Asian states by Japan, South Korea and European states, underscores a point that USIP China expert Andrew Scobell made at a workshop in Malaysia earlier this June — namely, that what is taking place in Asia is far “more than a two-player game.”

Nevertheless, the expansion of U.S.-China tensions into additional economic realms, especially the politicization of supply chains, broadens the impact on Southeast Asia. For all Southeast Asian states, economics is regarded as the foundation for legitimacy and regime stability and thus, unlike the South China Sea, U.S. and Chinese economic policies are felt more widely across the region. While ASEAN has been notoriously divided on responses to South China Sea challenges, there is much broader alignment on the need to preserve the conditions for economic growth.

The U.S.-China rivalry has destabilized integration trends of the last four decades and the foundations on which Southeast Asian states have achieved highly prized degrees of regional stability, economic prosperity, diplomatic standing and regime legitimacy. How will Southeast Asian states respond to this destabilization? Will they adopt new policies to address this surging rivalry?

The View from Southeast Asia

The track 1.5 workshop in Kuala Lumpur this past June provided the opportunity to discuss what the U.S.-China rivalry looked like in Southeast Asia and how government officials and regional scholars interpreted the rivalry’s significance for individual states and the collective region. They offered their assessments from the vantage points of all 10 ASEAN member states. The inclusion of all 10 offered an important effort to correct for a still too common tendency to focus selectively on a few states — that tend to align with Washington — as though they represent the Southeast Asian view.

This fall, USIP will be releasing 10 essays that explore topics from this workshop and highlight both areas of important convergence, but also a range of different views and priorities among ASEAN states. As two examples, the Philippines is a U.S. treaty ally and its views and approaches to the United States and China differ with both Thailand (the only other U.S. treaty ally in Southeast Asia) and Malaysia (a fellow South China Sea claimant). And while some states like Vietnam and Malaysia feel greater pressure from U.S.-China competition and have intensified their pursuit of “active” and “dynamic” neutrality, others see major power competition as an opportunity to diversify relations and choice.

The essays will examine whether there are particular domains (e.g., economic or security) where ASEAN states experience more or less pressure stemming from strategic rivalry. A key theme that will span these essays is the risks and opportunities presented by strategic competition and how Southeast Asian states can manage that competition to serve their interests. In other words, what does Southeast Asian agency look like amid strategic rivalry and what are the implications for these countries' much-coveted strategic autonomy?

For those concerned about the United States in Southeast Asia, these essays will offer some common takeaways that should be of interest and are worth paying attention to. They all emphasize developmental security and strategic diversification as priorities. Further, developmental security is also viewed as a foundation for regime security; however, none of the papers featured especially prominently the importance of the United States as an economic partner. There was also little discussion on the Biden administration’s signature Indo-Pacific Economic Framework , except to say that it existed. In contrast, China’s economic initiatives and expanded economic relations with individual states loomed large.

There is also the sense that the United States has not taken sufficient advantage of Southeast Asian interest in greater economic and diplomatic engagement — a perception that for some states is also reinforced by Washington’s normative democracy agenda. And while some in the United States may see such assessments as inaccurate or unfair given, for example, the amount of U.S. private investment in Southeast Asia, perception matters.

Alice Ba is Emma Smith Morris professor of political science and international relations at the University of Delaware.

17. ‘A Desperate Move’ – Kremlin Under Fire Over Russia’s Ammo Situation

He's "a desperate man - send lawyers, guns, and money." (apologies to Warren Zevon)

‘A Desperate Move’ – Kremlin Under Fire Over Russia’s Ammo Situation

As Ukraine's counteroffensive proceeds, experts from UK think tank Chatham House see signs of desperation in Moscow's plans to trade its technology and food for North Korean ammunition.

https://www.kyivpost.com/post/21310

by Kyiv Post | September 6, 2023, 1:16 pm | Comments ( 1)

The Kremlin is facing increasing criticism from Russian milbloggers over a lack of artillery ammunition, as a British think tank said President Putin’s courting of North Korea to gain more military supplies is a sign of “desperation.”

As Ukrainian forces’ counteroffensive advances, Moscow is growing more desperate to trade its technology for North Korean ammunition, experts at the UK think-tank Chatham House said.

“Ukraine has made significant progress and reached Russia's main defensive line in the south. This is therefore both a desperate and a logical move by Russia,” James Nixey, the director of the Russia and Eurasia program at Chatham House said in a press release.

Recent comments from Russian milbloggers also suggest the Kremlin’s ammo situation at the front is bleak.

In a post on Telegram, one prominent commentator said Russia’s forces are increasingly having to rely on Lancet drones and 220mm and 300mm rounds for Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (MLRS), both of which are available in limited quantities.

The Institute for the Study of War in its latest daily assessment, wrote: “Russian sources continue to complain that Russian forces lack sufficient counterbattery capabilities and artillery munitions in the face of ongoing Ukrainian counteroffensive activities, which the Kremlin and the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) are reportedly attempting to combat.

Sean Penn Calls Putin a ‘Vessel of Nothingness,’ Says US Should Fully Arm Ukraine 'Yesterday'

Speaking at a conference on mental health in Kyiv on Wednesday, the Hollywood actor and activist responded to a question from Kyiv Post with a brutal assessment of the Russian president.

Moscow now appears to be turning to North Korea to help solve the problem.

“One should be wary of falsely connecting cause and effect, but this weapons-for-tech (and money) exchange between Moscow and Pyongyang comes as the Russians are being pushed back in the counter-offensive,” Nixey said.

After weeks of mine clearance – Ukrainian forces broke through Russia’s first line of defense in the Zaporizhzhia region, Brig Gen Oleksandr Tarnavskiy told British media on Saturday, Sept. 2.

On Tuesday, Sept. 6, Ukrainian forces continued their advance south of the strategically important village of Robotyne – which they liberated on Aug. 28.

Tarnavskiy estimated that Russia had devoted 60 percent of its time and resources to building the first defensive line and likely only 20 percent to its second and third lines.

Nixey’s comments follow news that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un was planning to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin in Russia.

“Just as you can tell a person by their friends, you can tell a country by the company it keeps. In Russia's case, that company now consists largely of fellow rogue states,” Chatham House Senior Consulting Fellow Keir Giles said in the press release.

“China's reluctance to overtly supply Russia with serious and/or voluminous offensive weaponry leaves Russia with three primary options: indigenous production, Iran, and North Korea,” Nixey said.

According to The New York Times, Kim would come to Russia seeking advanced technology for satellites and nuclear-powered submarines as well as food aid for his impoverished nation.

“And Russia wants what North Korea has – vast stockpiles of the ammunition Russia has been burning through in its colonial war of reconquest at the other end of the country seven time zones away,” Giles said.

“Russia's past involvement in setting up a UN sanctions regime on [North Korea] is irrelevant. Such contradictions are no problem for Russia in peacetime, let alone wartime,” Nixey said.

Although he’s announced plans to visit China in October, Putin has not traveled abroad – apart from Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine – since his arrest warrant following an International Criminal Court ruling in March.

However, world leaders have been traveling to Russia.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan visited Putin in Sochi, Russia on Monday, Sept. 4 in an attempt to revive a Ukrainian grain export agreement.

Kim would likely visit the far-eastern Russian city of Vladivostok to attend Russia’s Eastern Economic Forum, which is scheduled to run Sept. 10 to 13.

18. Xi’s Policies Have Shortened the Fuse on China’s Economic Time Bomb

Excerpts:

However, Xi’s policies have undone much of Deng’s legacy and upended China’s prior economic success formula. China’s appeal as a destination for both tourism and business has dimmed, and a growing number of the country’s elite look beyond the border for their future. If this trend continues, China may fall into the dreaded middle-income trap or face even graver risks such as a financial crisis. A financial crisis in China would have far greater consequences than any other previous emerging market crisis. The size of China’s economy and its level of integration dwarf that of South Korea in the late 1990s, when it was at the epicenter of the East Asian financial crisis.

The West has a genuine interest in preventing the economic downfall of China. Washington and Brussels must closely coordinate to ensure their de-risking policies send a clear message to Beijing on its intended goals and limits by drawing a bright red line around sectors with potential military dual use while clarifying in which circumstances cooperation is still encouraged. Otherwise, the West risks legitimizing Xi’s claims that economic containment is to blame for China’s economic woes, and that further self-sufficiency is the only antidote. The West must be careful to communicate that its policies are designed to avoid the global alienation of 1.4 billion Chinese people.

When the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit meets this November in San Francisco, the sister city of Shanghai, China’s economy may be on considerably less sure footing than the United States for the first time in decades. That may prove to be an opportune time for both countries to repair the world’s most consequential bilateral relationship.

The Biden administration can take a page from the playbook of Otto von Bismarck: “Diplomacy is the art of building ladders to allow people to climb down gracefully.” A good start would be for the United States to lend a ladder this fall and help China clean out its gutters—if a Xi-led China is capable of accepting the help.

Xi’s Policies Have Shortened the Fuse on China’s Economic Time Bomb

Policy mistakes have mired the country in “Xi-flation.”

A drawing of Zongyuan Zoe Liu

Zongyuan Zoe Liu

By Zongyuan Zoe Liu, a columnist at Foreign Policy and fellow for international political economy at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Foreign Policy · by Zongyuan Zoe Liu · September 6, 2023

For the last three decades, the Chinese economy has resembled an impressionist painting: beautiful from afar, but a jumbled mess up close. China’s economic model has centered around investment-led growth made possible by the supply of cheap capital extracted through domestic financial repression, using a combination of policies—such as interest rate caps, capital controls, and restrictions on credit allocation directions and financial market entry—to channel capital into state-prioritized sectors. While this model has contributed to China’s rapid rise, it has also led to the entrenchment of structural issues that began to emerge well before President Xi Jinping assumed power in 2012. Instead of taking the chance for reform, though, Xi’s policies have only worsened these issues.

China faces three major structural challenges that expose it to the risk of economic stagnation akin to Japan’s “lost decades”: Escalating debt coincides with decelerating growth, sluggish household consumption lags overextended supply, and adverse demographic trends have blunted China’s edge in cheap but skilled young labor, which amplifies social welfare costs and causes housing market demand to dwindle. The inevitable reckoning of China’s structural challenges has been accelerated since Xi’s ascendence.

The fuse on this economic time bomb is steadily shortening. In recent months, critical economic indicators—from industrial profits and exports to home sales—have all recorded double-digit percentage declines. In July, while consumer prices rose globally, they fell in China, raising concerns that deflation could worsen the difficulties faced by heavily indebted Chinese companies. A convergence of idiosyncratic factors now threatens to ignite a crisis in the property and construction sector, which makes up nearly 30 percent of Chinese GDP. China Evergrande’s recently filed for bankruptcy. Coupled with the impending default of Country Garden, another major property developer, after missed bond payments earlier this month, it’s has deepened the already profound sense of uncertainty and fear among the business community.

This economic uncertainty is further heightened by the Chinese Communist Party’s ever-shifting targets of anti-corruption and anti-espionage campaigns. Health care is the latest sector to fall under the gaze of authorities, even as the effects of previous campaigns against tech, private education, gaming, and finance still linger. In the background, the friction between China and the United States continues largely unabated. Private conversations among Chinese citizens, particularly the young, reveal an undercurrent of pessimism and unease. Among the contributing factors is the looming specter of military conflict with the West regarding the future of Taiwan. China’s one-child generation would shoulder the weight if such a conflict were to happen, an existential threat of unparalleled proportions.

Milton Friedman was partially correct when he famously stated that “[i]nflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon.” In China, the manifestation of economic deflation symptoms—even transitory—has been shaped by Xi’s departure from the reform and opening up policy and the return of expansive political, ideological, and geoeconomic aspirations reminiscent of the Mao Zedong era. We might dub the resulting phenomenon “Xi-flation,” deflation with Chinese characteristics. The cumulative policy shocks of the last five years have exacerbated, rather than quelled, the structural challenges that have been dragging—but not crashing—China’s growth.

The posture of China’s teetering-but-not-tumbling growth trajectory has long called for careful structural reform. The goal should be to squeeze out the property market bubble without bursting it, to alleviate income inequality without stifling entrepreneurship, and to foster fair competition without hurting productivity. The success of these reforms hinges on a calibrated policy orchestration. Instead, Xi’s policy has produced grandiose political rhetoric, such as “common prosperity” or “shared human destiny,” mixed with clumsy and misguided enforcement.

Economically, Xi has been a bull in a china shop. His economic policies have often shifted focus but always emphasize the party’s overarching control across nearly all dimensions of China’s economic and financial activity. Since 2017, foreign companies operating in China have organized lectures for employees to study the role of the party and Xi speeches. As of October 2022, 1,029 out of the 1,526 of the mainland-listed companies (more than two-thirds) whose shares can be traded by international investors in Hong Kong acknowledge “Xi Thought” in their corporate constitutions and have articles of association that formalize the role of an in-house party unit.

In fairness, Xi did not create China’s structural woes. However, the reform and opening up policy suffered a quiet, unheralded death as Chinese policy thinkers attempted to compensate for the absence of prudent economic strategy under Xi by ceaselessly leaping from one grand idea to the next under the banner of national rejuvenation.

For example, since December 2016, the phrase “houses are for living, not for speculation” has become the principle to curb the property sector. In 2017, the “thousand-year project” Xiong’an New Area was launched as a city of the future. In 2019, “establishing a new national system for innovation” entered the lexicon for state-led science and technology innovation. Since 2020, “common prosperity” has become the mantra behind which to launch antimonopoly and antitrust probes into China’s tech sector. And since November last year, when Xi suddenly reversed China’s zero-COVID policy, the new catchphrase has shifted to “consumption promotion.”

Xi-flationary policies have exacerbated China’s latent structural problems and rung up a steep tab. For instance, Xi’s regulatory crackdown on China’s leading tech companies wiped out more than $1 trillion in market value, a figure comparable to the GDP of the Netherlands. The zero-COVID policy incurred costs of at least 352 billion yuan ($51.6 billion) for Chinese provinces, almost twice the GDP of Iceland ($27.84 billion in 2022).

The financial cost of these policy missteps is not their worst aspect. The most profound cost of Xi-flation so far is an unprecedented run on confidence in the Chinese economy from within and without. Beijing’s old economic playbook has run out of pages when it comes to tackling this crisis. China cannot export its way out of today’s economic challenges or stimulate its way toward a full recovery without also addressing the underlying political cause. As China moves up global supply chains, foreign companies are increasingly looking for alternative countries to sources for inputs and locate production to ensure they do not fall on the wrong side of any lines drawn as part of Western policymakers’ drive to “de-risk” their reliance on China.

This is, in part, a belated reaction to the willingness of China under Xi to use economic coercion. Researchers from the International Cyber Policy Centre found that between 2020 and 2022, China resorted to economic coercion in 73 cases across 19 jurisdictions, a marked increase compared to China under Xi’s predecessors.

China’s waning comparative advantage is a long-term structural problem, but political and geopolitical factors drive the current run on confidence. As Xi continues to consolidate power, the once lucrative China premium will be further discounted due to the growing regulatory and geopolitical uncertainty. Chinese technocrats cannot fully address this run on confidence using only their limited economic toolbox, such as the People’s Bank of China’s use of the so-called precision-guided structural monetary tools to selectively provide credit for state-preferred sectors.

Xi’s global assertiveness has caused negative spillback for China’s economy. Amid China’s fraying ties with the West and multinationals hastening to diversify their supply chains, ordinary Chinese households are left to deal with mounting anxiety. They are economically less secure as a consequence of Xi’s zero-COVID policy, and they are increasingly concerned that geopolitical forces beyond their control have limited their individual futures. Xi’s commitment to reunite Taiwan with the mainland, by force if necessary, has created the perception among some in China that conflict is inevitable—the same as in the United States. This loss of confidence aggregates across hundreds of millions of Chinese households, underpinning an economic condition that James Kynge has characterized as a “psycho-political funk.”

An essential factor behind China’s economic success during the reform and opening up period was what economist Alfred Maynard Keynes termed “animal spirits”—those emotional and psychological drivers that push people to spend, invest, and embrace risk. For decades, China not only benefited from the inflow of foreign direct investment and technology from the West, but also enjoyed a steady tailwind from the optimistic outlook of Western business leaders eager to capitalize on the globalization trend. When Western companies briefly reconsidered their involvement with China in the aftermath of the Tiananmen protests, Deng Xiaoping rescued the situation by embarking on his influential southern tour in 1992. During his tour, he the world of the party’s commitment to economic reform, stating, “It is fine to have no new ideas … as long as we do not do things to make people think we have changed the policy of reform and opening up.”

However, Xi’s policies have undone much of Deng’s legacy and upended China’s prior economic success formula. China’s appeal as a destination for both tourism and business has dimmed, and a growing number of the country’s elite look beyond the border for their future. If this trend continues, China may fall into the dreaded middle-income trap or face even graver risks such as a financial crisis. A financial crisis in China would have far greater consequences than any other previous emerging market crisis. The size of China’s economy and its level of integration dwarf that of South Korea in the late 1990s, when it was at the epicenter of the East Asian financial crisis.

The West has a genuine interest in preventing the economic downfall of China. Washington and Brussels must closely coordinate to ensure their de-risking policies send a clear message to Beijing on its intended goals and limits by drawing a bright red line around sectors with potential military dual use while clarifying in which circumstances cooperation is still encouraged. Otherwise, the West risks legitimizing Xi’s claims that economic containment is to blame for China’s economic woes, and that further self-sufficiency is the only antidote. The West must be careful to communicate that its policies are designed to avoid the global alienation of 1.4 billion Chinese people.

When the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit meets this November in San Francisco, the sister city of Shanghai, China’s economy may be on considerably less sure footing than the United States for the first time in decades. That may prove to be an opportune time for both countries to repair the world’s most consequential bilateral relationship.

The Biden administration can take a page from the playbook of Otto von Bismarck: “Diplomacy is the art of building ladders to allow people to climb down gracefully.” A good start would be for the United States to lend a ladder this fall and help China clean out its gutters—if a Xi-led China is capable of accepting the help.

Foreign Policy · by Zongyuan Zoe Liu · September 6, 2023

19. U.S. Deterrence Against China Is Not Working

I think the headline is misleading. Has China attacked? Rhetoric and military moves aside, so far deterrence is working.

But as Sir Lawrence Freedman: "Deterrence works, until it doesn't."

ARGUMENT

An expert's point of view on a current event.

U.S. Deterrence Against China Is Not Working

With U.S. military superiority in Asia no longer a given, defense planners need a different strategy.

By Bryan Clark, the director of the Center for Defense Concepts and Technology at the Hudson Institute, and Dan Patt, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.

For more than three decades, the U.S. military’s global preeminence has been the rock on which U.S. strategy and security policy are built. But technology diffusion, growing global challenges, and antiquated force design have eroded the United States’ military edge against China, which could exploit its geographical proximity and advancing capabilities to win a regional war against Taiwan. Without the certainty of continued military dominance that, until now, gave Washington the ability to simply deny and suppress aggression in East Asia, U.S. leaders seeking conventional deterrence will need to devise a different strategy.

Despite the rhetoric in parts of Washington, war with China is not imminent, and an invasion of Taiwan carries many risks for the Chinese Communist Party as it faces mounting economic, demographic, and diplomatic challenges. To make an invasion unattractive for Beijing, the U.S. military may merely need to raise China’s perception that any conflict would be drawn out and exceedingly costly. Instead of optimizing the U.S. military for an invasion that may never come, Washington should therefore mount a long-term campaign that undermines Beijing’s confidence in a range of violent paths to realizing its ambitions in Taiwan and the region. This campaign should involve military and nonmilitary means that seek to steer China toward more responsible and peaceful paths to its foreign-policy goals.

Proponents of an unchanged strategy of deterrence through denial argue the best way to deter Beijing is to make an invasion of Taiwan infeasible by massing sufficient strike capability in the region to convince Chinese President Xi Jinping that an attack would fail. With China now operating the world’s largest navy, army, rocket force, civilian fleet, and industrial base (which builds new ships and missiles at more than twice the U.S. pace), this plan has become simply unrealistic over the long term. Furthermore, some scenarios—such as a Chinese blockade, quarantine, or operation against Taiwan’s smaller islands—may prove impossible to completely deny.

What denial really means under these new conditions, then, is to create uncertainty in the minds of Chinese leaders that their plans could succeed on terms acceptable to Beijing. An invasion that bogs down and drains resources like Russia’s war in Ukraine or sinks China’s faltering economy could quickly lose support, and any victory would be pyrrhic. However, U.S. defense planning and decision-making still focus on whether an operation succeeds or a system works on an East Asian battlefield—not whether the result is sufficient to make Xi and other Chinese leaders think twice about aggression as they consider launching it.

To gain that understanding and restore the role of strategy in defense planning, the U.S. Defense Department should begin by following its own directives. One of the 2022 National Defense Strategy’s main components is the notion of campaigning, which in military doctrine describes an orchestrated series of military and nonmilitary actions designed to achieve specific objectives. But in Pentagon practice, the campaigning element of U.S. strategy has become little more than a bucket for various budget items related to military readiness that don’t easily fall under the defense strategy’s other headings.

A more promising strategy would focus on lowering Xi’s preference for aggression in the first place, making other paths more attractive.

Rather than using campaigning as a budget justification for a motley collection of training programs, maintenance, deployments, and exercises, the Defense Department should take its own definition of campaigning seriously—and build a strategy to reveal and eventually shape the perceptions of Chinese leaders.

China is already engaged in its own campaign, exemplified by sustained air and maritime intrusions into Taiwan’s airspace and waters, as well as invasion rehearsals featured on WeChat. The numbers of troops, ships, aircraft, missiles, and vehicles involved fall far short of what would be needed to subdue an island of 23 million people, but the operations are not intended to test either the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) or Taiwanese forces. Instead, these events are part of a campaign to shape perceptions at home and abroad.

This is not to say the Defense Department has been idle in its broader effort to shape Chinese decision-making. In the last two years, the establishment of the Australia-United Kingdom-United States (AUKUS) security pact, expanded military cooperation with the Philippines and Japan, and continued support for Ukraine have all undoubtedly eroded Chinese leaders’ confidence.

As we recently outlined in a Hudson Institute report, a proper strategy of campaigning would build on these initiatives. Big moves like AUKUS cannot be repeated at will or be timed to best effect, which reduces their utility as a signal. But small military actions, such as new force compositions, capabilities, tactics, postures, and allied operations, can elicit diverse and frequent signals from the way China responds; test hypotheses regarding areas of Chinese concern or confidence; and provide opportunities to shift Beijing’s beliefs.

During the Cold War, U.S. national security leaders practiced a similar approach to expose and exploit Soviet neuralgia regarding issues such as homeland missile defense and submarine vulnerability. Today, new information technologies, from open-source satellite imagery to algorithmic analysis, can empower and accelerate the process. Instead of the traditional use of technology to serve an operational plan, it would be used to build and orchestrate the campaign plan.

U.S. campaigns will need surprise to elicit useful revelations about the PLA and other Chinese security forces. Predictable actions such as freedom of navigation operations will draw formalized responses that show nothing about Chinese leaders’ real concerns or levels of confidence. However, an unexpected multinational exercise or a new, previously experimental military capability showing up in East Asia could yield insights via the words and actions of China’s security establishment.

A deep magazine of surprise is already available to the U.S. military, both in the field and on the shelves of the Pentagon’s laboratories, warfare centers, and agencies. New combinations of existing and emerging U.S. and allied units or systems, as well as the accompanying operational concepts, offer almost endless options for eliciting unanticipated new signals and reactions from China. The Pentagon’s Joint All-Domain Command and Control initiative was intended to enable this kind of interchangeability, but the effort has fallen short. Recent efforts by the U.S. Congress to help U.S. military commanders combine sensors, operators, and weapons from the bottom up hold more promise.

To maximize their impact on Chinese leaders’ beliefs, campaign surprises should come in two main flavors: those that undermine the PLA’s strategy of attacking perceived U.S. communications and logistics vulnerabilities and those that undermine Chinese hopes for a quick or cheap victory by demonstrating U.S. and allied readiness for a protracted conflict. By defeating the PLA’s strategy and showing that China’s opponents are prepared for the long haul, U.S. campaigns can increase the perception in Beijing that an attack on Taiwan or a U.S. ally could become as messy, costly, and entangling as Russia’s misadventure in Ukraine.

Washington’s current military strategy aims to prove to Xi that an invasion would be defeated in battle—a notion that presupposes continued U.S. military dominance in the region. Instead, campaigning would focus on lowering his preference for aggression in the first place, making other paths more attractive. This strategy of dissuasion would require U.S. leaders to accept that China will not fade away, Xi will not give up on his goals, and U.S. military preeminence is no longer guaranteed. But focusing on a campaign of dissuasion may be the only path to peaceful coexistence in a world no longer dominated by the United States.

Foreign Policy · by Bryan Clark, Dan Patt · September 5, 2023

20. America’s Digital Achilles’ Heel

Excerpts:

As great powers around the world invest more in their digital arsenals, modern militaries need to approach the protection of these new systems on a case-by-case basis. In some instances, the Defense Department will have to invest in expensive, potentially redundant technologies because the United States simply cannot afford for these systems to fail in a contingency. One clear area is the U.S. nuclear arsenal, which is undergoing a massive modernization effort. As policymakers upgrade aging systems, they must ensure that digital safety is a top priority—perhaps even by seriously considering the use of legacy technologies such as floppy disks that may be inefficient but are inherently secure because they are not widely produced and are therefore difficult for an adversary to sabotage or hack. There may be cases, on the other hand, in which digital capabilities are the resilient option; some cloud architectures, for instance, allow one cloud network to fail without causing major operational disruptions.

The task of building such resilience extends far beyond the battlefield. Disruptive global events—be they pandemics, climate disasters, or threats to democratic institutions—increasingly seem to be the norm rather than the exception. Policymakers can and should look beyond technology for ways to better defend the country against new, unexpected threats. Militaries, for instance, can improve their ability to withstand attacks by practicing, conducting stress tests, and incorporating lessons learned into future plans. Moreover, some disruptive events may prove too difficult, costly, or simply impossible to deter or defend against; these are the challenges in which resilience will be essential. Given these rising stakes, the United States must be prepared to accept some measure of risk—specifically, accepting that some disruptions are inevitable and that failures may occur in the short term. As new kinds of digital threats and warfare capabilities emerge, it is critical that the United States take resilience seriously—or it will find itself floored by attacks that its friends and rivals will be able to withstand.

America’s Digital Achilles’ Heel

The United States’ Reliance on Sensitive Technology Leaves It Vulnerable to Attacks

By Erica Lonergan and Jacquelyn Schneider

September 7, 2023

Foreign Affairs · by Erica Lonergan and Jacquelyn Schneider · September 7, 2023

For all its tremendous benefits, digital technology carries innumerable downsides. Cell phones enable location tracking that erodes privacy. Data can be manipulated and destroyed. Mechanical systems can be hijacked by a malicious actor who finds chinks in their digital armor. But these technologies have become essential components of day-to-day life and continue to boost economic growth, increase productivity, and allow access to information at an unprecedented scale. Societies must wrestle with the devilish bargain they have struck; they rely on digital capabilities that leave them extremely vulnerable to attacks.

Nowhere are these risks more apparent and more dangerous than in war. Modern armies, including that of the United States, depend on digital capabilities in almost everything they do. The work of navigation, command and control, logistics, intelligence, and targeting is all made possible by data that are collected, stored, and disseminated by a complex system of information technologies—data that, if commandeered and exploited, could wreak havoc on U.S. military operations. As states and organizations develop new digital warfare capabilities, each with more destructive potential than the last, the United States should work to insulate itself from such attacks—or risk inviting an assault that could leave the U.S. military dead in its tracks.

FLIES IN THE DIGITAL OINTMENT

Digital technologies have radically transformed warfare. In the 1970s, the advent of the microchip enabled precision-guided munitions. Two decades later, the Internet made it possible to link such “smart weapons,” creating networks of sensors and shooters that exponentially increased the speed and precision of warfare. This so-called information technology revolution promised to create significant advantages for states that adopted such systems.

The game-changing potential of digital warfare was demonstrated with stunning effect, for instance, by the United States in the 1990–91 Gulf War. The U.S. military’s use of smart weapons and coordinated strikes made possible by advanced communications systems helped it defeat Iraqi forces. Today, digitized warfare—once considered a burgeoning revolution in military capabilities—is how states compete and fight wars. Recent flare-ups between Armenia and Azerbaijan have heavily featured the use of drones; North Korea has engaged in cybertheft to evade sanctions; China has built a large program of digital espionage targeting the United States. And the United States has intensified its efforts to integrate electronic and information warfare with cyberwarfare capabilities on the battlefield.

The United States has no choice but to work to insulate itself from digital attacks.

But the same digital capabilities that have enabled such military advancements are susceptible to various kinds of attacks. Early warning satellites that are essential for any response to a nuclear launch could be duped or hijacked, potentially eroding the stability of nuclear deterrence—such chicanery could even lead countries to launch unprovoked strikes in response to fictitious threats. Preemptive electromagnetic assaults and cyberattacks could temporarily disable air defenses in advance of an actual nuclear strike. The digital technologies that societies and armies depend on can be undone with strikes on infrastructure such as transmitter stations, cables, and database facilities that are sitting targets for precision munitions and sabotage. And the reliance on high-tech components exposes all digital technologies to supply chain risks; states with large arsenals of smart munitions, for instance, depend on access to microchips for their weapons to work, but their militaries can be paralyzed if that supply dries up.

The reliance of countries on digital technology poses especially large risks when it comes to intelligence. Vast troves of sensitive information are stored, processed, and transmitted through digital means, creating valuable advantages for states that have invested in data collection and analysis. The United States showcased the enormous potential of digitally enabled intelligence collection during counterterrorism operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, using large repositories of digital imagery and cell phone and signals data to strike terrorist targets on the battlefield from thousands of miles away. But the 2015 cyberbreach at the Office of Personnel Management—resulting in the theft of over 20 million records relating to the private information of U.S. federal employees, a gargantuan feat unthinkable in the analog spying world—laid bare the peril of poorly secured digital data storage. And these threats are just as much internal as they are external; in 2013, Edward Snowden, a midlevel contractor at a National Security Agency annex, used his privileged access to steal massive amounts of data, damaging the United States’ ability to collect information on certain targets undermining U.S. military and intelligence operations.

Today, this tension between the necessity of technology and its concurrent risks is on full display in Ukraine, where efforts to gain the upper hand in digital warfare are shaping the physical conflict. Technologies including GPS-guided artillery, small drones, and civilian cell phone videos have given Ukraine an edge against a much larger Russian military force, allowing Kyiv to more accurately strike Russian targets. But Moscow’s assaults have revealed the fragility—and potential unreliability—of such technology: Russian cyberattacks on satellite communications can cut Ukrainian troops off from commanders; attacks that jam GPS systems blunt the effectiveness of smart artillery; and electromagnetic assaults destroy up to 5,000 small drones a month. Ukraine—and other countries that are seeking to transform their armed capabilities in line with the future of digital warfare—must find a way to make these systems less vulnerable.

NECESSARY TRADEOFFS

The United States has no choice but to work to insulate itself from digital attacks. Rejecting digital technologies wholesale in favor of analog ones is unrealistic and expensive. At the same time, no level of investment will guarantee absolute security; governments must accept that trying to strengthen digital capabilities could expose new vulnerabilities. Countries are currently making such tradeoffs with little guidance about how to manage and mitigate risks.

For over a decade, the United States military has been engaged in a long-standing debate about how to build resilience in the face of digital threats. Some policymakers see investing in redundancy, especially for critical military capabilities, as the best way to achieve resilience. Others call for reducing risk through limiting or even banning foreign technology companies—especially ones from rival countries such as China—from the defense information and communications technology supply chain. Despite these high-profile pushes, however, Washington has made little progress in building resilient systems. The Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan auditing agency, routinely publishes reports that document significant and persistent deficiencies in the military’s attention to digital vulnerabilities throughout the technology acquisitions process. Policymakers worry about the cybersecurity of critical weapons systems such as nuclear command and control or advanced fighter aircraft, for example, often after the system has been designed rather than at the outset of its development. But given that the United States and its partners have come to rely so heavily on technologies replete with vulnerabilities, it is past time for Washington to prioritize digital resilience.

The Defense Department is stuck in a digital no man’s land.

As policymakers—and particularly those in the U.S. Department of Defense—seek to build more resilient systems capable of withstanding digital attacks, they could learn something from those sectors that have already made significant advancements in digital security: those in highly regulated industries, such as financial services. The global financial sector, which is completely dependent on digital technology, would risk collapse if it were not resilient to digital attacks. In order to shore up their security, financial organizations have invested in insulating themselves from these threats while preparing for potentially catastrophic disruptive events, such as significant state-sponsored cyber attacks. Other forces in the private sector have encouraged such efforts: insurance companies have incentivized investments in security and resilience capabilities, and regulatory entities have threatened penalties for noncompliance with leading practices and requirements (exemplified, for instance, by the $80 million fine Capital One was forced to pay to a bank and regulator as the result of an extensive breach in 2019). As a result, the financial sector tends to have a strong track record of anticipating digital threats, evaluating vulnerabilities, and creating the means to respond and restore operations in the event of a disruption.

Such work is difficult; even the most established firms in the financial services sector are just now reaching a point where they can effectively manage their digital assets and understand the weaknesses inherent in their digital infrastructure. The Department of Defense faces a steeper uphill battle. Its information technology modernization efforts lag far behind those of the most mature entities in the private sector. Its combination of old and new technology platforms interact in ways that can create unexpected vulnerabilities, with outdated software reliant on old Internet browsers, for instance, and a nuclear command and control reliant on floppy disks. And officials do not always have a complete window into the defense supply chain that underpins critical services, making it difficult to be sure of where their software and hardware may come from. The Defense Department, in short, is stuck in a digital no man’s land, as it relies on outdated digital technologies whose disadvantages far outweigh their advantages in terms of both effectiveness and resilience. The time to fix that discrepancy is now.

NO MORE LAGGING BEHIND

As great powers around the world invest more in their digital arsenals, modern militaries need to approach the protection of these new systems on a case-by-case basis. In some instances, the Defense Department will have to invest in expensive, potentially redundant technologies because the United States simply cannot afford for these systems to fail in a contingency. One clear area is the U.S. nuclear arsenal, which is undergoing a massive modernization effort. As policymakers upgrade aging systems, they must ensure that digital safety is a top priority—perhaps even by seriously considering the use of legacy technologies such as floppy disks that may be inefficient but are inherently secure because they are not widely produced and are therefore difficult for an adversary to sabotage or hack. There may be cases, on the other hand, in which digital capabilities are the resilient option; some cloud architectures, for instance, allow one cloud network to fail without causing major operational disruptions.

The task of building such resilience extends far beyond the battlefield. Disruptive global events—be they pandemics, climate disasters, or threats to democratic institutions—increasingly seem to be the norm rather than the exception. Policymakers can and should look beyond technology for ways to better defend the country against new, unexpected threats. Militaries, for instance, can improve their ability to withstand attacks by practicing, conducting stress tests, and incorporating lessons learned into future plans. Moreover, some disruptive events may prove too difficult, costly, or simply impossible to deter or defend against; these are the challenges in which resilience will be essential. Given these rising stakes, the United States must be prepared to accept some measure of risk—specifically, accepting that some disruptions are inevitable and that failures may occur in the short term. As new kinds of digital threats and warfare capabilities emerge, it is critical that the United States take resilience seriously—or it will find itself floored by attacks that its friends and rivals will be able to withstand.

ERICA LONERGAN is Assistant Professor of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University.
JACQUELYN SCHNEIDER is a Hoover Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution.

Foreign Affairs · by Erica Lonergan and Jacquelyn Schneider · September 7, 2023

21. Putin Grows More Paranoid of Potential Threats to Power

Just because you are paranoid does not mean they are not out to get you.

Excerpts:

Prior to Prigozhin’s rebellion, Mishustin regularly traveled abroad. For example, in May 2023, he visited Beijing where he was received by Chinese President Xi Jinping (Government.ru, May 24). However, after the events of June 24, the prime minister’s foreign activities sharply decreased. He did not attend the BRICS summit, though, as the individual in charge of the economy, he would have been most effective in discussing all the issues on the agenda, including various economic integration projects. He will also not replace Putin at the G20 summit, where the state of the global economy is set to be the primary subject of discussion.

This suggests that, following the attempted coup, Putin has become wary of any contact between Mishustin and the leaders of other states, especially China and India. Both Beijing and New Delhi are important partners for Moscow, but they are increasingly concerned about Putin’s adventurous and unpredictable foreign policy. Within these circumstances, it is natural for a suspicious, aging dictator to fear that a younger, far less odious leader could negotiate more effectively in exchange for “some adjustment” in the Kremlin’s policies.

Putin Grows More Paranoid of Potential Threats to Power

Publication: Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 20 Issue: 136

By: Boris Bondarev

September 6, 2023 05:22 PM Age: 14 hours

jamestown.org · by Boris Bondarev · September 6, 2023

Until June 2023, Russian President Vladimir Putin was apparently quite confident in his power and the lack of any true challenge to it. Anti-Putin activists were successfully squeezed out of the country, the most vociferous were imprisoned or killed. The more measured dissatisfied voices largely stayed silent. The Russian elites were seemingly willing to endure the president’s exhaustive foreign policy agenda, consistently supporting him in the public sphere (The Moscow Times, June 8).

However, Yevgeny Prigozhin’s “march for justice” broke that coerced calm. It turned out that several thousand armed men could move freely throughout Russia, take control of critical military facilities and major cities, as well as fire on the military aircraft that tried to stop them. Most importantly, none of Putin’s most ardent supporters came out to meet Prigozhin and defend Moscow with their forces. Some supporters allegedly even tried to flee from danger (Current Time TV, June 24; Vesma, June 27).

The Wagner Group’s mutiny shone a light on Putin’s weak side, demonstrating that it is possible to pressure the Russian president when possessing adequate resources. Thus, his image as a “strong leader” was irreparably damaged. At first, he characterized the march on Moscow as “treasonous” and a “betrayal,” promising to crush the “mutineers”; by the end of the day, his aggressive stance had all but evaporated. In this, the lasting damage to Putin’s image should be emphasized, as even the destruction of Prigozhin’s private jet cannot erase from memory how weakly and inadequately the Kremlin leader behaved on June 24 (Vazhnie Istorii; Meduza, June 24). It is unlikely that the Russian elites have forgotten that, in stopping the Wagnerites, Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka had to be involved.

As a result, Putin is now undoubtedly more suspicious of his entourage than he was when seeking to tighten his inner circle earlier this year, which has affected his approach to foreign policy (see EDM, April 10). The Russian president did not attend the BRICS summit in South Africa in person due to security concerns. He also abandoned the idea of attending the G20 summit in India in person. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was designated to replace Putin as Russia’s head of state at both events (Lenta.ru, July 19, TASS, August 25)

Summits often involve face-to-face communication between heads of state who determine the main areas of their interaction. If the head of state is unable to participate, it is logical to replace them with the next most senior person. However, in the Russian sense, the next most senior official is not Lavrov, but rather Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin.

Mishustin is often considered a possible compromise figure for a post-Putin Russia (24TV, October 20, 2022). He is an experienced administrator who has dealt primarily with economic issues. As such, Mishustin is one of the most informed Russian officials in regard to the true state of the domestic economy. At the same time, he is not a member of the siloviki clans, and he does not seem to share the extreme anti-Western views widely shared within Russia’s security services (Current Time TV, November 11, 2022). Thus, it is logical to assume that, once in power, Mishustin would be more likely to offer Ukraine and the West negotiations for a peaceful settlement of the war than other potential successors.

According to the Russian Constitution, it is the head of government who assumes the duties of the president in the case of the latter’s incapacity (Constitution.ru, accessed September 5). This was the case, for example, after the resignation of President Boris Yeltsin, when then–Prime Minister Putin acted as head of state until the presidential elections in the spring of 2000.

Prior to Prigozhin’s rebellion, Mishustin regularly traveled abroad. For example, in May 2023, he visited Beijing where he was received by Chinese President Xi Jinping (Government.ru, May 24). However, after the events of June 24, the prime minister’s foreign activities sharply decreased. He did not attend the BRICS summit, though, as the individual in charge of the economy, he would have been most effective in discussing all the issues on the agenda, including various economic integration projects. He will also not replace Putin at the G20 summit, where the state of the global economy is set to be the primary subject of discussion.

This suggests that, following the attempted coup, Putin has become wary of any contact between Mishustin and the leaders of other states, especially China and India. Both Beijing and New Delhi are important partners for Moscow, but they are increasingly concerned about Putin’s adventurous and unpredictable foreign policy. Within these circumstances, it is natural for a suspicious, aging dictator to fear that a younger, far less odious leader could negotiate more effectively in exchange for “some adjustment” in the Kremlin’s policies.

These considerations can be applied to the same extent to another potential “successor”—namely, Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin. Overall, Sobyanin might carry even more weight within the Kremlin “power vertical” than Mishustin, having formerly served as the governor of Tyumen region, head of the Presidential Administration and head of the Government Staff (Mos.ru, accessed September 5). Nevertheless, as mayor, his foreign contacts are more effectively and legally restricted.

Lavrov, unlike Mishustin and Sobyanin, does not possess such administrative and political weight. Nor is he an independent player. For two decades in office, he has proven himself to be Putin’s faithful weathercock, incapable of defending his own opinions, much less pursuing his own ambitions. Therefore, it is safe to say that Putin does not feel especially threatened by Lavrov.

Overall, it seems that Mishustin may represent the greatest direct threat to Putin. If this is indeed true, that likely means the Russian premier will no longer serve as the head of the Russian delegation at major international events, though he will likely be able to maintain his contacts in the Commonwealth of Independent States and Collective Security Treaty Organization. It will also give credence to speculation that tensions are growing within the Russian elites due to the failing war and have been further aggravated by Prigozhin’s mutiny and subsequent demise. And Putin’s increasing suspicions may lead him to commit more mistakes that could further exacerbate this tenuous situation.

jamestown.org · by Boris Bondarev · September 6, 2023

22. With His Nuclear Threats, Putin Plays the West Like a Fiddle

Excerpts:

More fundamentally, what’s missing in most Western governments is a comprehensive, strategic effort to address Russian influence operations and other means of manipulation. One immediate step would be for Biden to issue an executive order requiring every U.S. department and agency head to commit to a governmentwide response to counter psychological and information warfare directed at the United States. This would go far to increase awareness of these operations, decrease their effectiveness, and direct more resources at the problem.

Biden should also designate a department or agency to coordinate the United States’ own information operations, with the aim of countering adversaries’ messaging and ensuring that these operations are coordinated among various parts of government. The U.S. National Security Council, relying on key departments and agencies, should promote and coordinate similar efforts among U.S. allies and partners.

In addition, Biden could enlist the help of Congress to expand the scope and resources of the U.S. Global Engagement Center, which currently has a mostly defensive mission focused on discovering and understanding foreign propaganda. This is all for good but woefully inadequate for winning a high-stakes information war. With little appetite in Washington for reestablishing the U.S. Information Agency, which helped counter Soviet propaganda during the Cold War, expanding the Global Engagement Center’s mission to include offensive operations in the information space would help build resilience against foreign influence operations and strengthen U.S. national security.

The West should not fall prey to Russia’s psychological games. It is time for the Biden administration to stop acting the way Putin plans for it to act. Since the end of the Cold War, Washington’s use of information operations has deteriorated amid a fixation on hard power. Russia, meanwhile, has achieved significant successes through psychological warfare. It is time for policymakers to understand how Russia is manipulating Western decision-making processes—and respond forcefully.

With His Nuclear Threats, Putin Plays the West Like a Fiddle

It’s time for Washington to see through the Kremlin’s mind games.

By David R. Shedd, a former acting director of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, and Ivana Stradner, a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

Foreign Policy · by David R. Shedd, Ivana Stradner · September 6, 2023

In June 2016, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned of a “growing barrage of information attacks unleashed against Russia,” one of numerous times the Kremlin has accused the West of engaging in psychological mind games. In fact, it is the West that has let itself be manipulated by the Kremlin’s calibrated influence operations. Among these, Putin’s most effective tactic has been to use nuclear blackmail to play on Western fears of escalating the war in Ukraine. He has repeatedly used this tactic to successfully deter the West from scaling up military aid to Ukraine, providing new types of weapons, and fully backing Kyiv’s victory over Moscow.

These manipulations mirror the old Soviet technique of reflexive control, which refers to a sustained campaign of feeding an opponent information that has been crafted to push that opponent to act, out of its own volition, in the Kremlin’s interest. In the context of Russia’s war to subjugate Ukraine, Putin knows that nothing better pushes the West’s buttons than threats of nuclear escalation.

Putin has relied on Western fears of nuclear escalation to manipulate Ukraine’s supporters in Washington, Berlin, and other Western capitals. The result has been self-deterrence out of fear of pushing Putin too far. The Biden administration, in particular, has allowed itself to be played by Putin in this way. It has limited military aid, placed strict restrictions on how Ukraine can use certain weapons, and delayed the required permission for various NATO allies to reexport U.S.-made weapons to Ukraine. If the United States and its allies truly want Ukraine to win, it is high time to see through the Kremlin’s manipulation.

Russia rolled out its nuclear escalation game as soon as the war started in February 2022. As a warning to the West not to stand in its way, Russia placed its nuclear force on high alert. In September 2022, Putin warned the West to take his nuclear weapons threats seriously. A few weeks later, U.S. President Joe Biden reminded Americans that the world was facing possible nuclear “Armageddon,” and, like Pavlov’s famous dog, the Western news media couldn’t help but jump on lurid scenarios of World War III. Out of fear of escalation, the Biden administration has refused to send various weapons to Ukraine, including longer-range missiles, such as Army Tactical Missile Systems.

Moscow’s nuclear rhetoric is calculated to grab Western news headlines, inspire fear, and create political pressure on Western leaders.

The Kremlin saw that its tactic worked. This June, Belarusian strongman Aleksandr Lukashenko publicly confirmed that Russia was moving tactical nuclear warheads to Belarus; the following week, Biden warned that this constituted a credible threat of Putin using nuclear weapons in the war. And just last week, Russia announced that it had placed the advanced Sarmat nuclear missile system on “combat duty,” warning Moscow’s enemies to “think twice.”

Putin is fully aware that the memory of the Cold War and its ever-present threat of nuclear war lingers in people’s minds—and that any talk of a nuclear attack automatically triggers an Armageddon scenario in the collective memory. And so he and his helpers never tire of pressing the nuclear fear button.

Russia’s rhetoric thus conjures up images of World War III, threatens the use of Russian tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine, and accuses Kyiv of planning to blow up a nuclear reactor (when, in fact, it is Russia that has booby-trapped the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant). All of this is calculated to grab Western news headlines, inspire fear, and create political pressure on Western leaders, who believe they are reacting rationally to real potential outcomes. Nearly imperceptibly, the Kremlin’s messages are thus influencing Western thinking and all but forcing decisions to support the Moscow’s objectives.

While Russia’s nuclear threats make many Western policymakers uncomfortable, Ukraine’s military intelligence chief, Kyrylo Budanov, believes that Russia is bluffing. He is probably correct, especially given the very high priority given to influence operations in Russian thinking. The Russian Defense Ministry website officially states: “Information war is the confrontation between two or more states in the information space … a massive psychological manipulation of the population to destabilize the state and society, as well as coercion of the state to take decisions for the benefit of the opposing force.”

Of course, we do not know what Putin is willing to do. CIA Director William Burns said “potential desperation” could lead Putin to order the use of tactical nuclear weapons. Putin, however, has no rational incentive to use nukes. First, in absence of outright victory, his main strategy is to settle in for a protracted war, either exhausting the West’s desire and ability to support Ukraine or waiting for the U.S. and other elections to produce a more Russia-friendly leader, and a nuclear standoff could get in the way of that preferred outcome. Second, China and India—two important partners on which Russia relies—appear to have warned Putin already against using nuclear weapons. And third, any radioactive fallout in Ukraine would likely float into Russia given short distances and the region’s prevailing westerly winds.

But the nuclear question isn’t about strategic reality—it’s about successfully manipulating the West. When a journalist asked then-French Defense Minister Florence Parly if her country’s military should be sent to defend Ukraine, her rejoinder was: “Do you want a nuclear war?” German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said Germany takes Putin’s nuclear threats “very seriously—anything else would be frivolous.” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, defending Germany’s continued reluctance to supply Ukraine with better weapons, warned that “there must be no nuclear war.” Italian Defense Minister Guido Crosetto emphasized that Russia may resort to nuclear weapons “if the point of no return is passed, if they risk defeat.”

Other prominent public figures play into the Kremlin’s manipulation as well. U.S. presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. warned that “we are now at the edge of nuclear war,” while former U.S. President Donald Trump—who called Putin “genius” and “savvy” for invading Ukraine—said that “first come the tanks, then come the nukes.” Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who has adopted a host of Kremlin talking points, added to the nuclear hysteria as well. If pushed into a corner by Ukraine, he inquired, “why wouldn’t [Putin] use those nuclear weapons?” Former U.S. Rep Tulsi Gabbard claimed that Biden is pushing toward an imminent nuclear war “would destroy the world as we know it.” Score all this rhetoric as a win for the Kremlin.

It’s high time for Washington to see through Putin’s games and stop amplifying the fears Moscow is deliberately instilling. The first step is changing the content of the conversation. To this end, Biden said that if Russia were to use nuclear weapons, it will “become more of a pariah in the world than they ever have been.” U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan threatened “catastrophic consequences” if Russia escalated to using nuclear weapons. This is a good start: Instead of amplifying the Kremlin’s messaging with Armageddon scenarios, the argument must be about what would happen if Putin used them. One consequence could be nonnuclear retaliation, such as the destruction of the Russian Navy’s Black Sea Fleet.

More fundamentally, what’s missing in most Western governments is a comprehensive, strategic effort to address Russian influence operations and other means of manipulation. One immediate step would be for Biden to issue an executive order requiring every U.S. department and agency head to commit to a governmentwide response to counter psychological and information warfare directed at the United States. This would go far to increase awareness of these operations, decrease their effectiveness, and direct more resources at the problem.

Biden should also designate a department or agency to coordinate the United States’ own information operations, with the aim of countering adversaries’ messaging and ensuring that these operations are coordinated among various parts of government. The U.S. National Security Council, relying on key departments and agencies, should promote and coordinate similar efforts among U.S. allies and partners.

In addition, Biden could enlist the help of Congress to expand the scope and resources of the U.S. Global Engagement Center, which currently has a mostly defensive mission focused on discovering and understanding foreign propaganda. This is all for good but woefully inadequate for winning a high-stakes information war. With little appetite in Washington for reestablishing the U.S. Information Agency, which helped counter Soviet propaganda during the Cold War, expanding the Global Engagement Center’s mission to include offensive operations in the information space would help build resilience against foreign influence operations and strengthen U.S. national security.

The West should not fall prey to Russia’s psychological games. It is time for the Biden administration to stop acting the way Putin plans for it to act. Since the end of the Cold War, Washington’s use of information operations has deteriorated amid a fixation on hard power. Russia, meanwhile, has achieved significant successes through psychological warfare. It is time for policymakers to understand how Russia is manipulating Western decision-making processes—and respond forcefully.

Foreign Policy · by David R. Shedd, Ivana Stradner · September 6, 2023

23. Our Modern-Day Mackinder (Robert Kaplan)

Needless to say I am a fan of Kaplan and I have had the good fortune to talk to him about Korea and the Philippines and special operations over the years.

While this is surely a great honor for him, my discussions with him reveal a more humble man. While sipping whiskey in a DC hotel, I once asked him to describe himself and his work. He called himself a "travelogue writer." He said he travels to fascinating places, interviews people about those places and events and chronicles their stories. Actually I think he is a modern day renaissance man.

Excerpts:

Robert Kaplan, a former Pentagon consultant and the current Robert Strausz-Hupe Chair in Geopolitics at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, is the prolific author of 22 books, but the essence of his geopolitical thought are found in seven of them: Monsoon: The Indian Ocean and the Future of American Power (2011), The Revenge of Geography: What the Map Tells Us About Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against Fate (2012), Asia’s Cauldron: The South China Sea and the End of a Stable Pacific (2014), The Return of Marco Polo’s World: War, Strategy and American Interests in the Twenty-First Century (2018), Adriatic: A Concert of Civilizations at the End of the Modern Age (2022), The Tragic Mind: Fear, Fate, and the Burden of Power (2023), and his latest tome, The Loom of Time: Between Empire and Anarchy from the Mediterranean to China (2023).

References to Mackinder and other classical geopolitical thinkers such as Nicholas Spykman and Alfred Thayer Mahan are ubiquitous in these books. Kaplan understands that he stands on the shoulders of giants. But not only the giants of geopolitical thought. In The Tragic Mind, Kaplan reaches back to the ancient Greeks and Shakespeare, the novelists Joseph Conrad and Fyodor Dostoevsky, and the chronicler of the rise and fall of civilizations Arnold J. Toynbee to gain insight into human nature and the behavior of states and their leaders throughout history. Those writers teach us about human ambition and frailties, the irrational aspects of human actions, the sin of pride and the dangers of unbounded hubris. They allow us to see tragedy and human realities behind the illusion of progress.

Our Modern-Day Mackinder

By Francis P. Sempa

September 07, 2023

https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2023/09/07/our_modern-day_mackinder_977949.html?mc_cid=4c2dc31cdf

The great British geographer and statesman Sir Halford Mackinder wrote compelling books and essays in the first half of the 20^th century that urged his countrymen to adjust their democratic ideals to the realities of our earthly home. Those realities included geography, history, and human nature. Mackinder’s works are where all current global geopolitical analyses should begin. He grasped timeless geopolitical realities--the centrality of Eurasia, the sea power-land power dichotomy, relative population distribution, and the importance of economic and social momentum (the “going concern”) --that should still guide our statesmen and strategists in today’s world. Contemporary America is fortunate to have its own modern-day Mackinder: Robert D. Kaplan.

Robert Kaplan, a former Pentagon consultant and the current Robert Strausz-Hupe Chair in Geopolitics at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, is the prolific author of 22 books, but the essence of his geopolitical thought are found in seven of them: Monsoon: The Indian Ocean and the Future of American Power (2011), The Revenge of Geography: What the Map Tells Us About Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against Fate (2012), Asia’s Cauldron: The South China Sea and the End of a Stable Pacific (2014), The Return of Marco Polo’s World: War, Strategy and American Interests in the Twenty-First Century (2018), Adriatic: A Concert of Civilizations at the End of the Modern Age (2022), The Tragic Mind: Fear, Fate, and the Burden of Power (2023), and his latest tome, The Loom of Time: Between Empire and Anarchy from the Mediterranean to China (2023).

References to Mackinder and other classical geopolitical thinkers such as Nicholas Spykman and Alfred Thayer Mahan are ubiquitous in these books. Kaplan understands that he stands on the shoulders of giants. But not only the giants of geopolitical thought. In The Tragic Mind, Kaplan reaches back to the ancient Greeks and Shakespeare, the novelists Joseph Conrad and Fyodor Dostoevsky, and the chronicler of the rise and fall of civilizations Arnold J. Toynbee to gain insight into human nature and the behavior of states and their leaders throughout history. Those writers teach us about human ambition and frailties, the irrational aspects of human actions, the sin of pride and the dangers of unbounded hubris. They allow us to see tragedy and human realities behind the illusion of progress.

Mackinder cautioned the idealists of his time that they ignored geographical and human realities at their peril. In “The Geographical Pivot of History” (1904), Mackinder showed how modern Europe was shaped by invasions and migrations from inner Asia, and remarkably foreshadowed geopolitical trends that resulted in the two world wars and Cold War of the 20^th century. Kaplan in a report originally written for the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment, updated Mackinder’s analysis to the 21^st century rivalry between the United States and China. Kaplan wrote that China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and growing naval power threatened to make Mackinder’s concept of the “World-Island” (a politically dominated Eurasian-African landmass) a 21^st century reality. Mackinder famously warned in 1919: “Who rules the World-Island commands the world.” Kaplan sees Mackinderesque geopolitical design in China’s actions in the South China Sea and Indian Ocean, its naval build-up, its strategic partnership with Russia, its growing nuclear arsenal, and its growing economic and political influence in Central Asia and Africa. “Geography,” wrote Kaplan in The Revenge of Geography, “is the preface to the very track of human events.” Mackinder noted that China’s geography--continental sized landmass with significant oceanic frontage--and vast human and natural resources made it a potential seat of a world empire.

In The Loom of Time, Kaplan makes his strongest case yet for a realist approach to foreign policy based on history, geography, and an understanding of human nature. It is an approach that values “order” over “chaos” and “anarchy.” (Kaplan even has a few good things to say about the “order” imposed by empires of the past). It is an approach that considers the importance of culture, ethnicity, nationalism, and religion in formulating an effective foreign policy that advances America’s interests. And while Kaplan is no fan of former President Donald Trump, he very much favors an “America-first” foreign policy in the tradition of George Washington and John Quincy Adams. He derides the liberal internationalist and neoconservative vision that favors crusades in support of democracy and apologizes for his own abandonment of realism to support the futile and disastrous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Mackinder was a professional geographer who traveled to the many lands that he wrote about. He served as Britain’s envoy to a faction of the “White” forces during the Russian Civil War after World War I. He presciently warned his countrymen then about the threat Bolshevism would pose to the global order should they emerge victorious in Russia. He wrote many books about the geography, history, and peoples of other countries. His foreign policy goal, as he wrote in his last major essay “The Round World and the Winning of the Peace” (1943), was “A balanced globe of human beings. And happy, because balanced and thus free.”

Robert Kaplan, like Mackinder, travels to the lands that he writes about, and sees a global balance of power as the surest guarantee of American liberty in an anarchic world of nation-states. Kaplan has enlisted geography, history, and an understanding of human nature as aids to effective statecraft. He is our modern-day Mackinder.

Francis P. Sempa writes on foreign policy and geopolitics. His Best Defense columns appear at the beginning of each month. Read his latest: Last Gasp of the Neoconservatives

24. Revisiting the Hedge Strategy with Renewed Urgency

Conclusion:

As the United States confronts a more dangerous world at any time since the Cold War, the country’s national security requires decisive action to realize newer, faster, and more cost-effective ways to dominate the battle space. Such decisive action includes a strategy to leverage new technologies, organizational and budget changes that reinforce the importance and urgency of this transformation, as well as an unwavering commitment to get the job done. The United States is not on the wrong end of another Pearl Harbor-style attack — yet. However, without timely structural changes and critical process improvements, it could be. By enacting a hedge strategy, the United States can significantly improve the capability of the U.S. Joint Force within the next four years and within the existing budget.

Revisiting the Hedge Strategy with Renewed Urgency - War on the Rocks

MICHAEL BROWN AND REAR ADM. LORIN SELBY

warontherocks.com · by Michael Brown · September 7, 2023

Deterring China in the Indo-Pacific requires a different set of U.S. capabilities than wars in the Middle East or Ukraine. The vast maritime expanse and China’s buildup across the South China Sea would make it difficult for U.S. forces to operate within the first and second island chains. Most of America’s major weapon systems are 30 years old and many of the new major systems for a high-end conflict won’t be operational until the 2030s.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping has tasked the Chinese military with modernizing by 2027 to be ready for military action and he has declared that he will reunify Taiwan with China by force if necessary. Many defense and intelligence officials including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a former Indo-Pacific commander, and the CIA director have all stressed the risks of invasion by 2027. We believe that the United States should act quickly to deter Chinese military action.

The United States should implement a hedge strategy across all domains. This strategy would require developing and purchasing small and low-cost, unmanned, many, and smarter weapons and designs to complement existing exquisite (costly, complex, massive, and few) weapon systems. The hedge strategy should leverage emerging technologies with an emphasis on adopting these technologies at scale within the next three years.

As a partner at Shield Capital, an investor in technology companies which sell to the Department of Defense, one of us has an interest in contracting outcomes. However, my experience as the former director of the Defense Innovation Unit and as a Presidential Innovation Fellow informed my perspectives about the best way forward for the United States. Because our proposed strategy is so different from the status quo, we believe that Congress should create a new undersecretary of defense for innovation and commercial technology to serve as the department’s chief innovation officer and lead this transformation. This new organization would consolidate the innovation organizations within the Office of the Secretary of Defense — like the Defense Innovation Unit and Strategic Capabilities Office — and coordinate with those within the services who are all aligned to modernize the department faster.

Become a Member

While we have called for this strategy for more than a year now, we note that deputy secretary of defense Kathleen Hicks recently introduced the Replicator initiative at the National Defense Industry Association conference. This includes the ideas of the hedge strategy but without any of the organizational changes or other recommendations we advocate to ensure its successful implementation. We argue that where the Defense Department is still the primary buyer in the market for new technologies, such as space infrastructure or small drones, it can ensure it develops a viable vendor base. Where the commercial market is leading technology development, such as in AI, cyber, or satellites in low-earth orbit, the Defense Department should adapt its procurement and budgeting process to buy more current technology and refresh this as soon as companies introduce new solutions.

Why Is a Hedge Strategy Urgent?

The war in Ukraine demonstrates the competitive advantage that a military can achieve by rapidly exploiting commercial technologies. Over the past half-century, Department of Defense procurement processes have ossified. These processes were optimized for procuring more of “what the U.S. military has” instead of “what the military needs” for the next conflict. As a result, the new companies that supply leading technologies struggle to get on a long-term procurement contract and, as a result, U.S. warfighters are not as prepared as they could be for conflict. In a conflict with the United States, China would likely enjoy advantages in surface warfare and deny the U.S. air superiority. Even if the United States decided to match China ship for ship or plane for plane, the United States does not have the industrial capacity to match China’s commercial and military production of ships and planes.

With a hedge strategy, the U.S. military would field many more assets. Chinese weapons designed to destroy a few high-value targets would now have to contend with tens of thousands of targets. Voluminous smaller targets — each with its own command and control capabilities —would potentially overwhelm China’s conventional weapons and fleets. China’s warfighting plans would now be immensely complicated in dealing with sensors and weapons in massive numbers. Their military leadership would no longer be able to conclude that a cross-strait invasion could succeed. The U.S. Navy has already pioneered a portion of this strategy with Task Force 59 by completing fleet exercises integrating autonomous systems with manned vessels. As its commander, Cdre. Michael Brasseur, shared with us, Task Force 59 proved its capability in 15 bilateral maritime exercises and 4 major international exercises, extending the visibility from a manned vessel hundreds of miles in each direction and operating safely for more than 35,000 hours.

U.S. Indo-Pacific Command is already thinking about how to geographically distribute assets by moving them west of the international date line. However, the Defense Department is not moving rapidly enough to field “a large number of small things” such as dedicated synthetic aperture radar satellites in Taiwan’s latitude, swarming drones, smart mines (which can be turned on and off), and autonomous barges (which can be landing platforms or supply depots), to name just a few examples. A key lesson from Ukraine is speeding up the procurement of new vendors and concepts from tech firms such as SpaceX, Anduril, Hawkeye 360, and Vannevar Labs for capabilities such as commercial satellite data feeds, drones, loitering munitions, contested logistics, and software that fuses sensor information.

America’s post-Cold War defense strategy relies on traditional platforms (ships, tanks, planes) that take decades to develop and are fielded for many more decades, providing very stable targets for adversaries to understand, copy, and develop counter-strategies. In the context of a technology environment that is changing more rapidly than at any time in history and with technology spreading faster globally than ever before, the United States should explicitly address the fact that such rapid, distributed technological change presents an increasing opportunity for its adversaries to achieve devastating strategic surprise. In contrast, mastering new technologies provides the United States with both surprise and asymmetric advantage. It’s not that the Defense Department isn’t creating new concepts enabled by emerging technologies and developing special capabilities in classified programs — it certainly is. However, the limited scale of creating these concepts places them at the margin rather than in the mainstream. Scaling these capabilities systematically should be a part of the U.S. vision, concept of operations, and acquisition ecosystem moving forward. As the former heads of the department’s innovation unit and the Office of Naval Research, we believe the technology exists today for the hedge strategy and — with focused intent — the U.S. military can operationalize this strategy within the next four years. However, given the inertia in the world’s largest bureaucracy, the Defense Department will not achieve this without a major push from Congress.

The Four Elements of a Hedge Strategy

Primarily, the hedge strategy incorporates small and low cost, unmanned, many, and smarter designs. Small and low-cost ensures the fielding of many resilient, disposable systems with diverse capabilities at an affordable cost that can overwhelm and confuse adversaries. Unmanned extends the operational reach and efficacy of warfighters, which also mitigates the need for larger manned forces and potentially saves lives. Many matters because quantity is an important deterrent and provides a resilient, asymmetric advantage relative to exquisite platforms — especially in survivability. Smarter is better because software is the key to enhanced functionality of all hardware, can be updated in real time, and because AI, machine learning, and cyber can provide new capabilities as combinations of smaller systems. Such capabilities can be combined in new ways with agility in asset size, multi-domain movement, and mission capability that together offer a greater element of surprise. Such agility compares favorably to hardware platforms that remain largely unchanged for decades. Additionally, U.S. allies and partners would benefit from a more cost-effective strategy compared to buying more large U.S. weapons platforms. Not relying on the same vendors with years-long backlogs also means that allies and partners can begin fielding these commercial technologies today.

Second, the U.S. military should better leverage emerging technologies to adopt more alternative concepts and capabilities both faster and at scale to complement existing, exquisite (meaning costly, dominant, massive, and few) weapons system platforms. An outcome of this effort will also be increased competition in defense procurement and the introduction of more and new vendors to offset a consolidating vendor base. Use of commercial technologies is also an enabler for interoperability and joint operations with allies and partners since these technologies are available today and are not classified.

Third, adopting these commercial solutions with a sense of urgency enables fielding capabilities at scale within the next three years (not decades). In contrast, a recent U.S. Army program to provide small drones took almost a decade to field capability that is available to adversaries on the internet. Additionally, the Army placed special requirements on the vendor so that the resulting cost is 17 times the price the vendor offers on the internet. During this time, Chinese drone maker DJI, the global market leader, introduced six successive generations. Moving rapidly increases deterrence since unpredictability in what we field creates uncertainty for adversaries focused on the U.S. platforms in service for decades.

Fourth, capabilities should be widely dispersed given the vast distances of the Indo-Pacific and the need for resilience and reconstitution of forces. Given China’s focus for decades on countering U.S. power projection in and around the South China Sea, the United States should now counter the Chinese military with the surprise of a much larger quantity of dispersed assets that are less expensive, more resilient, and difficult to eliminate with conventional missile defenses. Dispersing assets is easier with smaller, autonomous, and disposable assets (rather than large weapons platforms) whose value increases when networked together to provide increased situational awareness and maneuverability over a broad area. The United States learned this lesson the hard way in 1941 at Pearl Harbor. This principle of dispersed capability is already being applied by the U.S. Marine Corps in their Force Design 2030 plan and by the U.S. Army of the Pacific under the direction of Gen. Charles Flynn, who recognizes the benefit of distributing U.S. and allied assets across the first island chain.

How Is the United States Positioned to Implement?

The short answer is not well because the defense procurement system was designed 60 years ago at the height of the Cold War when the United States was the unquestioned technology leader globally and the U.S. military — as the key developer of technologies it needed — comprised 36 percent of global research and development. Today, the U.S. military comprises only 3 percent of global research and development and commercial companies are developing 80 percent of the technology it needs. The current lengthy and linear system of developing plans, setting requirements, acquiring, and budgeting was better matched to an era when the United States was the dominant military superpower and technology leader than to the present when the commercial technology industry is both software-led and experiences rapid product cycles. Buying more of “what the U.S. military has” will likely be inadequate in the next conflict, which may include swarms of drones executing autonomous missions powered by AI algorithms and informed by near real-time sensor imagery from space.

Because the budgeting process begins three years before dollars are appropriated and there is little discretionary spending beyond what’s in the budget, current incentives are aligned to perpetuate the status quo — which, unfortunately, may be the equivalent of buying many more battleships on the eve of Pearl Harbor. Those incentives will continue to commit trillions of dollars to more tanks, ships, planes, and nuclear weapons at the expense of fielding alternative capabilities and investing more in new domains like space and cyber, or investing to support a new industrial base in small drones or commercial satellites. To be clear, a hedge strategy is not an argument against exquisite platforms but is an argument for a more balanced mix of existing platforms and new capabilities that create uncertainty for adversaries and more military options. As the New York Times observed in May 2023, the Department of Defense is failing today at ingesting, fielding, and leveraging these new commercial technologies whose utility is being proven in Ukraine. As a result, new companies supplying this technology are navigating a valley of death.

Five Recommendations for Implementing the Hedge Strategy

First, Congress should create a new undersecretary of defense for innovation and commercial technology as the Defense Department’s chief innovation officer to advance new capabilities from rapid prototypes to fielded capabilities at scale (meaning in warfighters’ hands in under three years instead of decades). These capabilities should support combatant commanders who do not have procurement authority and budget (except for their operations and maintenance appropriation). The key metric for this role is how many new capabilities are validated by combatant commands and fielded in the next three years.

Creating a new undersecretary role is necessary because the current undersecretary of defense for research and engineering should focus on the unique military technology that will not be available unless the department develops the requirements and funds the research and development. Today, this role is focused on delivering hypersonic weapons and directed-energy (such as laser) weapons in working with the existing defense primes. In fact, this current role specifies 14 technologies critical to national security but 11 of those are being developed by the commercial sector rather than the defense primes. If the president appoints a senior defense official to oversee three (20 percent) of those technologies, there should be an equivalent role to oversee the successful integration of 11 (80 percent) of those technologies.

This new undersecretary should have responsibility for the Defense Innovation Unit, the Strategic Capabilities Office, the newly-created Office of Strategic Capital, and the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office so that these organizations are all focused on speed and aligned in mission. This new defense official should also have a dotted-line relationship with the service innovation organizations such as AFWERX, SpaceWerx, NavalX, Marine Innovation Unit, and Army Applications Lab to achieve greater unity of purpose and avoid duplication across these organizations. This new undersecretary should oversee a budget that allows for scaling of successful prototypes from any of the innovation organizations (as the Accelerated Production and Fielding of Innovative Technologies program does today on a smaller scale) as an incentive to work together and avoid duplication of effort. This new role should also ensure that the Defense Department provides the appropriate signaling to private sources of capital (venture capitalists and private equity) as to the department’s technology needs to better leverage the $350 billion invested each year by venture capitalists and $1 trillion invested each year by private equity. The Defense Department should be actively influencing this funding for national security purposes since it is 13 times the amount of the record Fiscal Year 2023 defense research and development budget.

The new organization should collaborate with the services and the Joint Staff to rapidly explore new fighting concepts that would be possible with a foundation of small, unmanned, many, and resilient designs.

Where the Defense Department can be the largest customer of a technology and lead in establishing new commercial markets, it can leverage its purchasing power to shape an industrial base for dual-use technologies. Examples are rocket launch capability, small satellites, space infrastructure, air taxis, new battery chemistries, small drones, advanced communications (6G), a pandemic warning system of sequencing pathogens, new sources of energetics, and hypersonic air travel. The Defense Department can ensure the United States is a first mover in these technologies by investing in these markets, creating programs that set industry standards, and developing suppliers capable of scaling in the United States.

Where the Defense Department is not a first mover or major customer of the technology, the department should implement a fast follower strategy whereby it can rapidly access and field commercial technology. Examples of these technologies include AI and cyber software, commercial satellite data, electric vehicles, autonomously controlled tactical aircraft, surface ships, and undersea vehicles. A fast follower strategy requires the department to change its current practices for adopting commercial technology. The first practice to change is replacing or significantly streamlining the requirements process for commercial solutions, since it’s not necessary to specify to commercial suppliers what to build in a market that already exists outside defense. Instead, the department should institute a rapid experimentation and assessment process demonstrating a capability need or problem to solve.

Second, the department should name organizational homes for these commercial technologies to focus building centers of expertise for assessing these technologies, assign an ongoing budget, better signal demand to private industry, and avoid duplication across the department. If the department does not establish the responsible organization to procure these commercial technologies, then there is no clarity as to who should budget for the capability — and history has shown that this means that requirements will be splintered across the services, making it more difficult to establish a cost-effective supplier base or leverage buying power.

Third, the department should embody a commercially oriented acquisition process that maximizes competition and operates at commercial speed and with commercial terms (especially for intellectual property). These best practices would include more widespread use of other transaction authority through implementing the Defense Innovation Unit’s Commercial Solutions Opening, or commercial selection process. Crucially, this process has warfighters assessing and prototyping commercial solutions facilitating rapid iterations to better meet their needs.

Finally, the department should ensure a sustained budget for these commercial capabilities in a “capability of record” (rather than an episodic program of record) to keep current with commercial product cycles. A capability of record recognizes the ongoing need to procure a capability (such as small drones or commercial satellite imagery data-as-a-service) but does not tie appropriations to a single vendor’s specifications for years, enabling the department to upgrade to new technology from the best vendor.

Conclusion

As the United States confronts a more dangerous world at any time since the Cold War, the country’s national security requires decisive action to realize newer, faster, and more cost-effective ways to dominate the battle space. Such decisive action includes a strategy to leverage new technologies, organizational and budget changes that reinforce the importance and urgency of this transformation, as well as an unwavering commitment to get the job done. The United States is not on the wrong end of another Pearl Harbor-style attack — yet. However, without timely structural changes and critical process improvements, it could be. By enacting a hedge strategy, the United States can significantly improve the capability of the U.S. Joint Force within the next four years and within the existing budget.

Become a Member

Michael Brown is a partner at Shield Capital and a visiting scholar at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He was the director of the Defense Innovation Unit between 2018 and 2022. He previously served as the CEO of two public tech companies in Silicon Valley: cybersecurity firm Symantec Corporation (2014–2016) and computer hardware maker Quantum Corporation (1995–2001).

Rear Adm. Lorin Selby served as the Chief of Naval Research from May 2020 until his retirement in June 2023. He previously served as the Navy’s chief engineer and the Naval Sea Systems Command deputy commander for ship design, integration, and naval engineering (2016–2020), and prior to that commanded the Naval Surface Warfare Centers (2014–2016).

Commentary

warontherocks.com · by Michael Brown · September 7, 2023

25. Ukraine’s Strikes Behind Enemy Lines Are Paying Off

Excerpts:

There is good reason to believe that one of the psychological motives for these deep-strike attacks isn’t just to remind a largely apathetic Russian populace that this is their war, too, but also to persuade the United States and NATO that they can afford to poke the bear harder by means “seen and unseen,” as U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan might put it. Gone are the days of worrying that a conventional war between NATO and Russia would be a close-run thing; or gone should be those days, the Ukrainians are signaling.

A senior HUR official close to Budanov messaged one of the present writers on the day of the Pskov operation. “This raises the question of the Russian Armed Forces’ inability to withstand Ukrainian air attacks,” he wrote. “But an even bigger problem is the insecurity of Russia’s military infrastructure on its border with NATO. If NATO attacks, the Russian Federation will lose aircraft and equipment at airfields and bases 400 kilometers [250 miles] deep from the border in a matter of hours. After each Ukrainian strike, Russia’s insecurity becomes more and more obvious to potential adversaries.”

Ukraine’s Strikes Behind Enemy Lines Are Paying Off

The attacks deep into Russia are bolder and more frequent

Michael Weiss

Michael Weiss is contributing editor at New Lines magazine

James Rushton

James Rushton is an independent security and foreign policy analyst based in the U.K.

newlinesmag.com · September 6, 2023

At first, it looks like ordinary surveillance footage of a large military plane sitting on the tarmac. But then the wing catches fire. A second plane flickers across the screen, and in an instant its fuselage is engulfed in flames. Even in grainy black and white you can see the smoke billowing up into the night sky.

Two Russian Ilyushin IL-76 strategic airlifters were destroyed by Ukrainian drones on Aug. 29 at Kresty air base in Pskov, Russia, at a cost of about $100 million to the Kremlin. Kresty is home to the 334th Military Transport Aviation Regiment, a seemingly well-fortified location close to Estonia’s southern border but over 430 miles from the battlespace in Ukraine. Two more IL-76s were also left badly damaged by the attack, perhaps beyond repair.

The symbolism of this sortie was profound. The IL-76 is the type of transport plane Russian paratroopers flew on into Kyiv in an abortive attempt to decapitate the Ukrainian government in late February 2022, a mission Moscow and many Western analysts believed would take no more than 72 hours. Eighteen months later, Ukraine is not only “invading” Russia on a near-daily basis, launching long-range drones from Ukrainian territory, but also — and more embarrassingly for Moscow — using assets recruited by Ukrainian military intelligence (HUR) to launch short-range ones from within Russian. HUR’s popular and highly meme-able chief, Maj. Gen. Kyrylo Budanov, has confirmed that the latter method was used for the Pskov operation.

In fact, six different Russian regions were lit up on Aug. 29 by an unprecedented, multipronged attack whose other targets, successfully struck, included a fuel depot in Kaluga and a microelectronics factory in Bryansk, where components for Russian weapons systems are manufactured. Just a week earlier, on Aug. 22, Ukrainian saboteurs used quadcopter drones — weaponized versions of the type of hobbyist kit readily available for purchase — to take out a supersonic Tupolev Tu-22M3 Russian nuclear bomber on the tarmac at the Soltsy-2 air base, south of St. Petersburg. Soltsy-2 is over 370 miles from the Ukrainian border, meaning that any such unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) would almost certainly have been launched from within Russia by HUR-recruited assets.

That Ukraine’s premier spy service has such an extensive agent network within Russia comes as little surprise. Lt. Gen. Valeriy Kondratyuk, the former chief of HUR under former President Petro Poroshenko and then the head of the foreign intelligence service under President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, told one of the present writers in 2021 that he had in place any number of cross-border operations, many of which bore resemblances to tradecraft of the Israeli Mossad intelligence agency, but was asked by the United States to forbear for fear of “provoking” Russia. A genocidal war of conquest has evidently diminished this provocation quotient considerably as Russian proxy forces under the control of HUR have staged repeated incursions into Russia’s border regions over the past year. In June 2023, just as Ukraine’s counteroffensive in the south was getting underway, these assets managed to occupy vast swaths of Belgorod oblast for a little over two weeks, an abasement of Russia’s FSB-controlled Border Guard, local law enforcement and military, which were equally caught flat-footed (or left indifferent) in late June to the abortive putsch by the mercenary Wagner Group. The proxies used MaxxPro MRAP (Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected) vehicles in seeming contravention of the U.S. condition that no American weapons be used over the border. Yet the incursions have been met with no public complaint from Washington, much less a cut-off in security assistance to Kyiv.

“What is happening?” a disoriented Vladimir Solovyov asked three times in the space of 30 seconds on the state-owned Rossiya-1 television channel on Aug. 30, before demanding to know how Russia would be able to “cope with F-16s” if it “can’t cope with drones.”

Russia’s most febrile propagandist has a point.

Ukraine’s ability to project power well behind a 1,000-mile line of contact has grown nearly exponentially since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion last year. In 2023, Ukrainian UAVs have, among other things, exploded near the dome of the Senate Palace within the Kremlin, smashed into apartments in central Moscow rumored to be the homes of members of the Russian special services and hit a tower block housing Russian government offices in the city’s busy business district. Relying on Russian-language media and open-source material sourced from Russian social media channels, the BBC counted 190 suspected Ukrainian attacks inside Russia and occupied Crimea in 2023. The regular drone strikes have forced Moscow’s airports to cancel, delay and divert hundreds of incoming and outgoing flights, further damaging Russia’s aviation industry, which has already come under heavy pressure from Western sanctions.

“For all the sniping from anonymous Pentagon officials about how Ukrainians aren’t performing well in the current counteroffensive, what they’re doing superbly is something the Pentagon has long advocated: multi-domain warfare,” retired Gen. Ben Hodges, the former commander of the U.S. Army in Europe, told New Lines, describing American military doctrine in general. “They’re hitting Russia by land, sky and sea and doing so harder and harder.”

A nation home both to a famous military-industrial complex and a population of engineers and IT specialists is only growing savvier and more innovative as the war carries on. As Budanov himself put it when asked about attacks inside Russia, we should expect only more of these operations, “deeper and deeper” across Russia.

One of the most audacious in the Crimean Peninsula was an Aug. 23 strike that took out a Russian S-400 air defense system, reportedly using a modified ground attack version of Ukraine’s Neptune anti-ship missile. Adding to that humiliation was the fact that the elimination of the S-400 was filmed by an HUR reconnaissance drone flying high above, similarly unmolested by Russia’s much-touted air defenses. Zelenskyy has claimed that “the range of our new Ukrainian weapons is now 700 kilometers [435 miles],” without specifying the systems.

So far as is publicly available, the most significant tool in Ukraine’s long-range strike arsenal is its fleet of indigenously developed long-range UAVs, which can be viewed as a Ukrainian version of Russia’s Iranian supplied Shahed-136 suicide drones. There are a number of programs developing this capability for the Ukrainian military, with private industry and Ukrainian civil society taking the lead. As with the Shahed, the key feature of these autonomous aircraft is their low cost and ease of assembly.

At one end of the spectrum are repurposed Chinese drones such as the Mugin-5 Pro, which can be purchased for less than $10,000 on Chinese marketplace websites Alibaba or AliExpress. These were successfully used in strikes against an oil refinery in Novoshakhtinsk, in the Rostov region, in June 2022, and against the headquarters of the Black Sea Fleet, in Sevastopol, Crimea, in August. At the other end is the Ukrainian Beaver attack drone, a far more sophisticated platform built specifically for HUR. A number of Beavers were believed to have been used in recent Ukrainian strikes on Moscow, the largest of which consisted of up to 25 drones that attacked the city in waves on May 30. The Ukrainian government did not officially claim responsibility in keeping with its preferred method of resorting to innuendo and snark, which nonetheless leaves little room for doubt. (Budanov’s acknowledgment that the Kresty mission was HUR’s handiwork, and his agency’s release of the footage of the hit IL-76s described above, was a rare exception to Kyiv’s policy of implausible deniability.)

The Beaver is a characteristic example of Ukraine’s civil-military wartime collaboration and penchant for rubbing Russians’ noses in their own vulnerability. Ukrainian politician and comic actor Serhiy Prytula stated on camera on July 30, “We have no idea what could fly to Moscow,” mere hours after drones slammed into a Moscow high-rise containing government offices. Prytula said this while standing in front of three Beaver drones, whose distinctive silhouette was identical to the aircraft that hit the Russian capital. In April 2022, Prytula told the present writers in Kyiv that his eponymous foundation was financing an ambitious drone program for Ukraine via crowdfunding. Over a year later, he has raised more than $10 million. Each Beaver is estimated to cost around $110,000.

The Kremlin is under no illusions about the potential threat of these cheap and plentiful munitions.

Even before the Ukrainian strikes had begun, in January, it started positioning short-range air defense systems in Moscow. Now a common sight is the Pantsir platform atop government buildings, including the headquarters of the Ministry of Defense. In a move reminiscent of the German “flak towers” that ringed Berlin during World War II, the Kremlin has now been erecting large static platforms around Moscow to mount air defense systems.

In addition to these bespoke solutions and modified commercial platforms, Ukraine is turning to heterodox means of expanding its long-range arsenal. Earlier in the war, dated Tupolev Tu-143 reconnaissance drones, first produced in the 1970s, were used as makeshift cruise missiles against Russian targets, one such example being shot down over Kursk, western Russia, in June 2022 by a Russian Buk surface-to-air missile.

More impressively, Kyiv has repurposed the Soviet-era and obsolete S-200 surface-to-air missile into a precision-strike weapon. The first evidence of this relatively novel application was when a Russian CCTV camera filmed an incoming object with the dagger-shaped profile of the S-200 slamming into a sawmill in Bytosh, in the Bryansk region, on July 9. Russian authorities have claimed the Ukrainians have used more S-200s to target other positions both within Ukraine and in Russia including the Kerch Bridge, which connects mainland Russia to occupied Crimea, on more than one occasion, although with apparently little to no success.

Ukrainian naval drones, meanwhile, routinely harass the Black Sea Fleet and Russian logistics. What began as little more than a militarized Jet Ski, using a jerry-rigged Starlink satellite internet system for guidance and carrying a relatively small warhead, has matured into one of the sophisticated seaborne drones currently in active service.

The Sea Baby, produced and operated by Ukraine’s internal security service, the SBU, has so far been used against the large Russian landing ship Olenegorsky Gornyak, near the port of Novorossiysk, and the Russian tanker SIG. Both suffered severe damage, large holes punched into their hulls, with the Russian warship possibly damaged beyond economical repair. More importantly, the naval drones have heavily damaged the Kerch Bridge.

On July 17, one Sea Baby detonated under the dual-track roadway section of the $4 billion structure, sending one of its spans into the water. Approximately five minutes later, another drone hit under the railway section, causing less serious damage. This was the second SBU-launched attack on the bridge; the first, in October 2022, used a truck bomb and heavily damaged both the road and railway components. The Russian military has resorted to sinking block ships in the Kerch Strait in order to partially defend the channel against further drone strikes; but as the waterway is an active shipping route, a potential attack route will always have to be left open.

Ukrainian seaborne drones have now also created significant problems for Russian commercial shipping in the Black Sea.

A common misconception in the popular coverage of the Turkish-negotiated grain deal that allowed Ukrainian grain to be safely exported, from which Russia unilaterally withdrew in July and doesn’t seem likely to rejoin in the near future, was that it just protected Ukrainian shipping. The reality was that it also protected Russian merchant ships transiting to and from the various Black Sea ports, which are responsible for a significant amount of Russia’s maritime trade. In a sign of the importance Ukraine has placed on the weapons, an SBU special brigade has been created to operate the Sea Babies. The existence of the 385th Separate Special Purpose Unmanned Surface Vehicle Brigade was revealed on Aug. 24, when Zelenskyy presented the unit with its battle flag.

“Novorossiysk isn’t just a naval base,” David Rider, a maritime security and intelligence analyst, told New Lines. “It’s also where the Caspian Pipeline Consortium oil conduit from Kazakhstan terminates and an important grain export hub for Russia. Marine insurance for the region is already incredibly difficult for vessel operators to secure.” Rider added that, as of Aug. 23, the waters around Russia’s Black Sea ports — which collectively account for about 70% of Russian grain exports — will be designated a war-risk area by Ukraine, putting Russia’s economy, already crippled under sanctions, under even greater stress.

“Freight costs are rising and Russia has had to turn to less well established vessel operators who use smaller, older ships to transit grain,” Rider said. “Added to that, requests for ship charters from Russia reportedly doubled year on year in July.”

There is good reason to believe that one of the psychological motives for these deep-strike attacks isn’t just to remind a largely apathetic Russian populace that this is their war, too, but also to persuade the United States and NATO that they can afford to poke the bear harder by means “seen and unseen,” as U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan might put it. Gone are the days of worrying that a conventional war between NATO and Russia would be a close-run thing; or gone should be those days, the Ukrainians are signaling.

A senior HUR official close to Budanov messaged one of the present writers on the day of the Pskov operation. “This raises the question of the Russian Armed Forces’ inability to withstand Ukrainian air attacks,” he wrote. “But an even bigger problem is the insecurity of Russia’s military infrastructure on its border with NATO. If NATO attacks, the Russian Federation will lose aircraft and equipment at airfields and bases 400 kilometers [250 miles] deep from the border in a matter of hours. After each Ukrainian strike, Russia’s insecurity becomes more and more obvious to potential adversaries.”

newlinesmag.com · September 6, 2023

26. Cyberwar and Conventional Warfare in Ukraine

The Irregular Warfare Center? I have not seen this specific activity.

Excerpts:

A useful public-private operating model is the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s Joint Cyber Defense Collaborative (JCDC). Communications between the U.S. government and private sector corporations and non-profit organizations must be improved and to boost resilience to cyberattacks and malign operations. A useful approach would be to enhance the strategic planning role of the U.S. Cyberspace Solarium Commission.

Developing capacities appear straightforward compared to developing a mindset that understands irregular warfare and prioritizes multi-domain operations. The digital domain cannot be separated from the conventional military domain in Russia’s war in Ukraine and beyond. The U.S. has begun challenging mindsets with investments in and partnerships developed through the Irregular Warfare Center (IWC). However, more needs to be done in elevating irregular warfare to the level of strategic planning. Battlespaces are just as important as battlefields.

Cyberwar and Conventional Warfare in Ukraine

19fortyfive.com · by Chris Dolan · September 6, 2023

Although Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, the cyberwar began much earlier. Russian cyberattacks are part of an at least eight-year campaign of malicious operations against Ukrainian civilians and critical infrastructure. While some cyberattacks sought to degrade and destroy Ukraine’s energy, transportation, and financial sectors, most were designed to traumatize the Ukrainian population.

These attacks range from Russia’s attempt in 2015 to disrupt Ukraine’s electricity supply to Russian operatives targeting the Viasat satellite company a few hours before Russia’s full-scale invasion and a sustained campaign of disinformation and false narratives to malign Ukrainian identity and sovereignty. Russian state-sponsored hackers are widely known for cyberoperations designed to disrupt and degrade life in Ukraine. Still, Ukraine’s telecommunications and electric grid are functioning, its banks are open for business, and 86% of Ukrainians support integration with NATO and the European Union.

This article addresses the evolution and convergence of the cyberwar with the conventional military domain, highlights trends in Russian cyberattacks and Ukrainian resilience, and recommends ways forward for both Ukraine and the United States.

Early Patterns

In 2015, Russian hackers deployed BlackEnergy3 malware to compromise information and data systems in Ukrainian energy companies to turn off Ukraine’s power grid. One year later, Russian hackers launched malware attacks against Ukrenergo, Ukraine’s national grid corporation to expose vulnerabilities at a transmission site near Kyiv that resulted in blackouts in the capital.

However, the watershed moment in cyberwarfare came in 2017 with the NotPetya malware attack that was attributed to Russian state-sponsored hackers. The NotPetya malware, named after its deceptive similarity to the Petya ransomware, surpassed cyberattacks in 2015 and 2016 in terms of its destruction.

Unlike ransomware, which encrypts files, holds data and information hostage, and then demands a ransom, NotPetya’s objective was severing cyber-physical connections in supply chains, hospitals, and radiation monitoring stations. The malware was propagated using a compromised update from Ukrainian accounting software.

Notpetya was a paradigm shift in the cyberwar threat landscape by demonstrating the risks and dangers of escalation. Notpetya was contagious with no immediate way of stopping its spread. The malware masqueraded as ransomware, and its worm-like capabilities caused significant damage within networks by encrypting the Master File Table (MFT) of NTFS file systems.

The sophistication and scale of the NotPetya attack indicated a high level of planning and resource allocation. The use of cyber weapons like NotPetya by state actors like the Russian GRU has not only escalated tensions in cyberspace but also underscored the need for robust cybersecurity and critical infrastructure protection as the country was thrust into a grim realization of digital vulnerabilities.

Although Notpetya damaged government, energy, and financial institutions, Ukraine gained an incredible amount of experience in responding to Russian cyberattacks. Furthermore, it underscored demand for a robust cyber defense strategy and catalyzed Ukraine’s rapid efforts to shore up its digital defenses.

In 2021, Ukraine established the National Cybersecurity Coordination Center (NCCC), a reflection of its commitment to coordinating cyber defense policies and combating cybercrime. The NCCC operates as a national headquarters for cyber threat intelligence, coordinating between various governmental and non-governmental agencies for cyber incident detection and response. However, its primary mission is developing a culture of cybersecurity awareness and establishing best practices in public-private collaboration.

In the wake of Notpetya

As cyber incidents in Ukraine intensified between 2017 and 2021, most were categorized as disruption operations as opposed to degradation operations against critical infrastructure. The Center for Strategic and International Studies describes espionage operations as accessing vital information for short-term objectives and degradation operations as inflicting physical damage on critical infrastructure. Before Russia’s full-scale invasion, espionage and degradation operations represented less than half of the attacks.

Disruption operations include low-cost, low risk cyber incidents to spread propaganda and disinformation through social media and state media outlets. These include Russia’s use of wiper malware or malicious software to destroy data, wage digital vandalism, and deface public websites and symbols of Ukrainian identity. It also involved spreading lies about Ukrainians as Nazis and blaming NATO for the war. The Kremlin’s propaganda has maintained that its “special military operation” is designed to “denazify Ukraine” and push back against NATO. In 2022, 57.4% of Russian cyberoperations were classified as disruptive, followed by espionage operations and degradation operations.

Russian malign operations showed a systematic series of disruption operations that, although delivered through digital means, extended far beyond the digital realm. The goal was to interfere and intervene in Ukraine’s social and political landscapes and manipulate and exploit Ukrainian national identity. Coordinated through an organized campaign of lies and distortions, Russia sought to weaken Ukraine’s political system and undermine trust in government. Russia used subtle and covert tactics of disruption to plant doubt and foment social and political discord to chip away at Ukrainian identity. But Russian disinformation operations failed to sway the Ukrainian population.

No Shift in Russian Cyber Strategy

Although the number of cyberattacks have increased from roughly 4,500 in 2022 to an expected 4,800 in 2023, there is no significant shift away from Russia’s malign and disruptive patterns. Why has Russia not launched more espionage and degradation attacks or shifted strategy?

First, Ukraine has improved cyber defense components and industrial controls in critical infrastructure protection. Russia’s cyberattacks against Ukraine’s energy, health, and transportation sectors have increased Ukraine’s experience, knowledge, and awareness in detection, incident response, and resilience. Ukraine’s computer emergency response teams (CERT) are now more skilled in fending off advanced persistent threats, distributed denial of service, and malware attacks from trained Russian hackers.

Also, Ukraine’s cybersecurity strategy has since evolved, placing a strong emphasis on the fortification of critical infrastructure, and bolstering national security. Ukraine has undertaken a rigorous process of revamping its cyber legislation and creating new bodies charged with the task of addressing cyber threats. For example, in 2022, after Russia launched cyberattacks against Kyivstar, a Ukrainian mobile telecommunications operator. While mobile services were disrupted, they quickly recovered and the damage was mitigated because of additional cybersecurity measures and cooperation among Ukrainian telecommunications carriers.

Still, Russia has launched missile and drone strikes against civilian critical infrastructure to cause human suffering. The purpose of these criminal attacks has been to brutalize the civilian population. Russian missile and drone attacks have killed countless civilians, knocked out electricity, and damaged water and wastewater systems. However, they have not fulfilled the Kremlin’s goal of breaking the will of the Ukrainian people.

Second, Ukraine’s national cybersecurity strategy has embraced relationships and partnerships in cyber defense, namely with the U.S., NATO members, and the E.U. In particular, U.S. government departments and agencies have provided Ukraine cybersecurity assistance and expanded access to U.S. cyber resources. The Federal Bureau of Investigation shared cyber threat intelligence with Ukraine’s law enforcement and national security agencies and provided capabilities to combat cyberattacks and disinformation operations.

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) partnered with critical infrastructure operators in the Ukrainian energy sector to identify Russian malware, restore digital services and communications systems after cyber incidents, and build a more resilient electrical grid. USAID also transferred ground based Starlink data terminals, satellite technologies, and communications systems vital to the Ukrainian military supplied by SpaceX, providing Ukrainians with internet access after their systems were interrupted by Russia’s full-scaled invasion. However, Elon Musk would later restrict Starlink access near Crimea after Ukraine targeted Russian ships with sea drones.

Furthermore, the U.S. Department of Energy assisted Ukrainian public utilities in cyber enhancements in the energy sector and U.S. Department of Treasury has worked with Ukrainian financial institutions to improve network defenses in the banking sector. U.S. Cyber Command organized and led hunt forward operations in Ukraine that included supplying Ukrainian government agencies and businesses with analytic support and data to better understand Russian cyberattacks and increase U.S. homeland defense.

Moreover, American corporations extended cyber assistance to help Ukraine in cyber incident response and restore its electrical grid and financial services in the wake of cyberattacks. Microsoft helped transfer data from physical sites that could be destroyed in missile strikes to cloud-based networks and in data storage centers in Europe. By the end of 2023, Microsoft will have provided more than $400 million in technology support to Ukraine.

Other corporations have stepped up. Amazon Web Services developed cloud-based architecture to secure Ukrainian government information. Mandiant supplied Ukraine with analytic tools and techniques to better understand how Russia’s GRU military intelligence agency launches cyberattacks against Ukrainian targets. Mandiant developed a GRU Disruptive Playbook that provides operational guidance and information on Russian military intelligence disruptive operations in Ukraine and a Ukraine Crisis Resource Center that raises awareness of the global implications of Russian offensive cyber operations. Cisco has supplied the Ukrainian government with networking software, namely secure wireless networks, sensors, switches, access points, accessories, and cameras.

In addition, CRDF Global, a global non-profit organization created in 1995 to prevent the spread of advanced weapons technologies in the wake of the collapse of the USSR, has developed the Cyber Defense Assistance Collaborative platform for Ukraine. CRDF Global worked with the Ukrainian government to develop its first national Cybersecurity Strategy. After Russia’s full-scale invasion, CRDF Global mobilized cyber defense personnel from American cyber companies and non-profits to assist Ukraine in investigating malware attacks and enhancing resilience.

On its face, Russia’s cyber strategy does not seem to be anything more than a series of haphazard attempts to cause digital chaos in Ukraine. In effect, Ukraine is a testing ground for Russia’s cyber weapons deployed alongside the destructive conventional war.

Recommendations

Ukraine has performed very well in building resilience against Russian cyberattacks. Future U.S. security assistance should emphasize cyber and digital assistance as much as conventional weapons. But the U.S., NATO, and E.U. must replicate in the cyber and information domains what has been done thus far in the military domain on artillery, tanks, and armored vehicles. Ukraine can access how many shells, tanks, warplanes, and vehicles it needs to retake territory. However, it is more challenging to determine how many servers, data centers, cloud systems, and human detection and response units Ukraine needs to secure data and communications.

Also, NATO must provide Ukraine with greater access to it cyber defense resources. In May 2023 Ukraine joined NATO’s Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence (CCDOE), an alliance research and training institute that provides members access to advanced technologies and facilitates cyber intelligence sharing. But Ukraine lacks formal NATO membership and is therefore not covered by the Article V collective defense guarantee in NATO’s founding treaty. Since NATO’s 2014 Wales Summit, members have agreed that cyberattacks could trigger Article V and must agree on the response on a case-by-case basis. While NATO members consider cyber defense as a core element in collective security, Ukraine lacks that protection.

After Finland and Sweden, Ukraine must become NATO’s thirty-third member. In 2008, NATO agreed that Ukraine and Georgia should become members in the Bucharest Summit in 2008 but no plans were provided. Fifteen years later, at the Vilnius Summit, NATO members recommitted to Ukrainian membership. Not only should Ukraine become a NATO member, the alliance itself would also benefit from Ukraine’s experience and knowledge of Russian cyber and malign operations. The U.S. should also extend a bilateral Israel-like security compact to Ukraine.

Moreover, public-private partnerships must be expanded to enable Ukraine to withstand future Russian cyberattacks. While the U.S. government and American companies have provided cyber defense assistance, resources, and intelligence to Ukraine, there should be a more concerted effort among government and private sector firms to not only enhance incident response but build more resilient systems.

A useful public-private operating model is the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s Joint Cyber Defense Collaborative (JCDC). Communications between the U.S. government and private sector corporations and non-profit organizations must be improved and to boost resilience to cyberattacks and malign operations. A useful approach would be to enhance the strategic planning role of the U.S. Cyberspace Solarium Commission.

Developing capacities appear straightforward compared to developing a mindset that understands irregular warfare and prioritizes multi-domain operations. The digital domain cannot be separated from the conventional military domain in Russia’s war in Ukraine and beyond. The U.S. has begun challenging mindsets with investments in and partnerships developed through the Irregular Warfare Center (IWC). However, more needs to be done in elevating irregular warfare to the level of strategic planning. Battlespaces are just as important as battlefields.

About the Author

Dr. Chris J. Dolan is professor and director of the Institute for Threat Intelligence and Cyber Defense at Lebanon Valley College in Annville, PA, a two-time Fulbright U.S Scholar (Kosovo; North Macedonia), and will serve as a Fulbright specialist in cyber defense in Kosovo.

19fortyfive.com · by Chris Dolan · September 6, 2023

27. Japanese, U.S., the Philippines Drill in the South China Sea; China Contests U.S. Position on Territorial Disputes

JAROPUS (Japan - the Republic of the Philippines - US)

Japanese, U.S., the Philippines Drill in the South China Sea; China Contests U.S. Position on Territorial Disputes

news.usni.org · by Dzirhan Mahadzir

JS Izumo (DDH-183), destroyer JS Samidare (DD-106) and an Oyashio class submarine. JMSDF Photo

Japanese naval units carried out antisubmarine warfare drills in the South China Sea on Monday while the U.S and Philippine navies conducted a joint sail in the South China Sea the same day. Meanwhile, the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) and Royal Thai Navy (RTN) commenced the joint naval and marine forces drill Blue Strike 2023 on Sunday, which takes place around the Gulf of Thailand and Eastern Thailand.

In a Tuesday release, the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF) stated that on Monday, helicopter destroyer JS Izumo (DDH-183) and destroyer JS Samidare (DD-106) held an antisubmarine warfare exercise with an submarine in the South China Sea. Image released by the JMSDF showed the submarine to be an Oyashio class.

IPD is an annual regional presence and engagement deployment by the JMSDF that began in 2019. This year’s deployment consists of three surface units and one submarine unit. The first surface unit consists of Izumo, Samidare and destroyer JS Shiranui (DD-120), with Shiranui largely operating independently; the second surface unit consists of JS Shimokita (LST-4002) and the third surface unit consists of the frigate JS Kumano (FFM-2).

Destroyer USS Ralph Johnson (DDG-114) and Philippine Navy frigate BRP Jose Rizal (FF-150) conducted a joint bilateral sail in the South China Sea on Monday, according to a Navy release. During the sail, the ships completed division tactics, which is at-sea training designed for ship handlers to practice maneuvering in close proximity to other vessels and improve bridge team confidence.

The two drills follow a series of bilateral and multilateral military drills and engagement by Australia, Japan and the United States over the past two weeks, as the three countries seek to deter China from aggressive actions toward the Philippines, particularly in regard to Philippine resupply missions to the grounded LST BRP Sierra Madre (LS-57) at Second Thomas Shoal—part of the disputed Spratly Islands.

Australia carried out the bilateral amphibious Exercise Alon 2023 drill in late August with the Philippines, deploying amphibious assault ship HMAS Canberra (L02) and frigate HMAS Anzac (FFH-150) with MV-22B Ospreys from Marine Rotational Force-Darwin to support the exercise. Following the exercise, Australian Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister Richard Marles stated that joint patrols between Australia and the Philippines in the South China Sea will occur soon.

USS Ralph Johnson (DDG-114) and Philippine Navy guided-missile frigate BRP Jose Rizal (FF-150) on Sept. 4, 2023. US Navy Photo

Exercise Alon was followed by a multilateral exercise between Australia, Japan, the Philippines and the United States on Aug. 24 with Canberra, Anzac, Izumo, Samidare, littoral combat ship USS Mobile (LCS-26) and Royal Australian Air Force F-35 Lightning fighters drilling with Philippine Navy landing platform dock BRP Davao del Sur (LD-602). From August 26 to 27, senior military leaders of the four countries discussed in Manila on further ways to improve the cooperation in the four countries.

China’s Ministry of National Defense has pushed back against the U.S position on the dispute over Second Thomas Shoal. During the Ministry’s monthly press conference on Thursday, Ministry spokesperson Senior Col Wu Qian stated that China has indisputable sovereignty over the Nansha Islands and the adjacent waters, and the Philippines action violated China’s sovereignty. “The U.S has encouraged, supported and helped the Philippines in shipping building materials to the vessel illegally grounded at the Ren’ai Jiao [Second Thomas Shoal],” said Wu, who urged the U.S to stop meddling in the South China Sea.

Asked to comment on recent joint military exercises carried out in the South China Sea and on reports that the exercises targeted China, Wu replied, “China advocates that bilateral and multilateral defense and security cooperation between regional countries should contribute to peace and stability in the region, and should not target at other countries,” adding that the Chinese military will take solid measures to safeguard China’s national sovereignty and maritime rights and interests.

Meanwhile, the PLAN and RTN are carrying out the joint bilateral drill Blue Strike 2023, which opened on Sunday at Sattahip Naval Base in Thailand, “During the joint training, the Marine Corps from both sides will conduct training exercises including urban warfare, light weapons shooting, sniping tactics, armored tactics, chemical defense, battlefield first aid, wilderness survival, humanitarian assistance, and disaster relief,” stated a Chinese Ministry of National Defense release on Monday.

The drills will conclude on Sept. 10 with activity centered around the Gulf of Thailand and the Royal Thai Marines camp and training areas in Sattahip district. The PLAN has despatched frigate CNS Anyang (599), amphibious transport dock CNS Siming Shan (986), fleet oiler CNS Chaohu (890) and a Song-class submarine, while the Royal Thai Navy is deploying frigates HTMS Bhumibol Adulyadej (FFG-471) and HTMS Naresuan (FFG-421) and amphibious assault ships HTMS Angthong (LPD-791) and HTMS Chang (LPD-792) for the drills.

news.usni.org · by Dzirhan Mahadzir

28. Biden’s stance on Ukraine should be clear

Biden’s stance on Ukraine should be clear

washingtontimes.com · by The Washington Times https://www.washingtontimes.com

By L. Scott Lingamfelter - - Tuesday, September 5, 2023

OPINION:

In the foreign policy and national security business, it’s preferable to be clear unless being vague is necessary for your purpose.

Sometimes national leaders are opaque when they are considering actions they do not want to telegraph. In Ukraine, however, we should be explicit.

Indeed, being explicit is exactly what the United States and its allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization should be in declaring our clear stance concerning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

In the early phases of this war, the Biden administration fumbled. It did not deter Russia, but rather teased its aggression through the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan just two years ago. When NATO members realized the danger of Russia’s invasion, President Biden seemed to cower behind them until it was clear that the Ukrainians would not roll over and play dead while Russia stormed their country.

Mr. Biden seemed incapable of saying that we want Ukraine to win. And when his advisers finally persuaded him to declare as much, his provision of military support was sluggish. It’s better now, but the inexplicable delays have made it harder for Ukraine.

The war has reached a critical point where Ukrainian forces are beginning to make progress against a battered Russian army whose morale, by all accounts, is profoundly low. Indeed, the Russian mercenary force, the Wagner Group, revolted over the poor orchestration of the war, an event that shook the Russian regime to its roots. The unexplained death of the Wagner potentate Yevgeny Prigozhin has put that immediate threat on hold.

Nonetheless, Russian President Vladimir Putin senses American fatigue in supporting Ukraine and has decided to rattle his nuclear saber again, provoking the hand-wringers in Congress and putting anti-Ukraine gasbags in high dudgeon.

Some panicked observers are even peddling the stunningly unlikely belief that unless we abandon Ukraine now, we will be compelled to eventually deploy U.S. forces there to deter Russia from seizing the entire country. Mr. Putin delights in our war-weariness and baseless anxiety.

On the contrary, the U.S. and NATO need to “sit steady in the saddle.” Moreover, we must be clear about our policy in Ukraine, which heretofore has been episodic, halting, inconsistent and trite, like declaring that “we’re in it as long as it takes.”

It’s time to seriously state what that takes.

Try this declaration:

“The U.S. policy in Ukraine is designed to unambiguously stand against the naked aggression of one sovereign nation over another. Our goal is to support Ukraine with military provisions, economic assistance, and diplomacy to compel Russia to withdraw from Ukrainian territory Russia seized from 2014 to the present.

“Our support with NATO for Ukraine will not be deterred by escalatory threats from Russia, nor will we tolerate any aggression by Russia directed at our alliance. On this, we are firm.

“Nonetheless, we seek a peaceful solution to Russia’s war of aggression that will secure the safety of not only Ukraine but also Russia’s return to a cooperative place within the family of European nations committed to peace, open commerce, and mutual respect for the self-determination and sovereignty of all nations in Europe.

“In that regard, we reaffirm our support for a free Ukraine, as well as our pledge to Russia that the U.S. and NATO do not seek the demise of the Russian state in any manner. We seek peace but will support Ukraine as long as Russia’s aggression continues against a neighboring free state.

“For those who say we have no interests at stake in the war’s outcome in Ukraine, peace in Europe is a key national security objective for the U.S. and NATO. It is important to remember that the NATO treaty is one of ‘North Atlantic’ nations. This includes Canada and the U.S. So, in every respect, Russian aggression in Ukraine has an impact on the entirety of NATO.

“While the U.S. does not desire to introduce ground forces in Ukraine, we remain unwavering in our support to Ukraine to defeat Russia’s aggression. However, we are now ready to entertain serious discussions regarding peace. The preconditions for that are (1) cessation of all hostilities against Ukraine, (2) the disengagement of all combat forces, (3) withdrawal of Russian forces to pre-2014 international borders, (4) a complete exchange and accounting of all prisoners of war, and (5) a return of all Ukrainian civilians and children forcibly removed from Ukraine by Russia.”

Given Mr. Biden’s inclination to mishandle international crises, it is unlikely he would issue a statement of this nature. However, his state and defense secretaries would do well to summon the courage to affix their names to something similar and make clear to the president that we are at a critical point in this war where clarity, not obscurity, is vitally needed.

• L. Scott Lingamfelter is a retired Army colonel. He is the author of “Desert Redleg: Artillery Warfare in the First Gulf War” (University Press of Kentucky, 2020) and “Yanks in Blue Berets: American UN Peacekeepers in the Middle East” (UPK, 2023).

washingtontimes.com · by The Washington Times https://www.washingtontimes.com

29. Opinion | Inside the saga of the State Department’s missing Iran envoy

Opinion | Inside the saga of the State Department’s missing Iran envoy

The Washington Post · by Josh Rogin · September 6, 2023

Anyone who criticized the Chinese government for its secrecy surrounding the disappearance of former foreign minister Qin Gang (including me) is guilty of hypocrisy unless they acknowledge that the U.S. government is being similarly opaque about the fate of one of America’s top diplomats. Congress and the American people deserve to know more about what’s going on with the State Department’s Iran envoy Robert Malley.

First, a bit of background. Until four months ago, Malley was leading the U.S. diplomatic effort on Iran’s nuclear program and the fate of U.S. hostages held by Tehran. But it was only two months ago that Congress and the public learned — from the media — that the State Department had suspended his security clearance because of an investigation into a possible mishandling of classified information. It’s since emerged that the FBI is also investigating this matter. (In some cases, mishandling classified information may constitute a federal crime.)

Since that original revelation, a steady trickle of leaks — many via Iranian media — has shown that the State Department has given both Congress and the public incomplete and often misleading information about the case.

The State Department’s lack of transparency has caused a rift with Capitol Hill. Meanwhile, the Iranian state media continues to drop exclusive stories about the affair, sometimes with sensitive U.S. documents attached.

To be clear, there is no public evidence that Malley has done anything wrong. He has not been formally accused of anything and is presumed innocent. But what has lawmakers riled is not only the alleged offense, but also the mounting evidence of a coverup. The timeline of events shows a pattern of obfuscation.

For example, we now know, through leaked U.S. government documents published by the state-controlled Tehran Times, that Malley was informed on April 21 that he was under investigation for mishandling protected information and that his security clearance was suspended. Yet the State Department told Congress and the public nothing about this for weeks, and Malley continued to conduct some of his duties that did not require a security clearance.

On May 16, congressional staffers noticed that Malley had failed to show up for a Senate briefing on Iran. State Department officials told them Malley was on extended “personal leave” and implied he was dealing with a family medical issue.

It wasn’t until June 29 that U.S. media came out with their first reports on the Malley investigation. That very day, the State Department was telling the press that he was still on the job as U.S. envoy to Iran. In reality, he had been placed on unpaid leave that day.

Then, on July 7, Semafor reported that the FBI was also investigating Malley’s possible mishandling of classified information. The State Department has yet to publicly acknowledge the FBI’s involvement. Malley declined to comment.

Feeling misled, lawmakers began demanding answers. House Foreign Affairs Chairman Michael McCaul (R-Tex.) demanded a classified briefing. He emerged from the briefing to decry the lack of information provided.

“The Department’s failure to inform Congress of this matter demonstrates at best a lack of candor, and at worst represents deliberate and potentially unlawful misinformation,” he wrote to Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

In Washington, Malley is a polarizing figure with strong supporters and detractors. At the time of his security clearance suspension, Malley was deeply involved in a complicated set of multilateral negotiations. His extensive network of relationships, including with Iranian officials and various go-betweens, was surely an asset in those diplomatic endeavors. But the question is whether he crossed the line by sharing some sensitive information he shouldn’t have with the wrong person.

Most of the public information about the case has come from the Tehran Times, which first reported (on July 10) that Malley’s security clearance had been suspended much earlier than the State Department acknowledged.

The Tehran Times claims to also possess a classified internal State Department memo detailing options for U.S. intelligence agencies to help the Iranian protesters late last year. Malley surely would have been involved in such a memo; could that be connected to his security clearance issue? The State Department won’t say — and now McCaul is calling for a leak investigation as well.

Administration officials have given congressional staffers explanations for each of these perceived slights. In April and May, Malley technically was on “personal leave,” and the State Department officials who conveyed that to Congress weren’t aware of the investigation and therefore didn’t know they were omitting key information about why, officials said.

Officials claim it was a coincidence that Malley was transferred to unpaid leave the same exact day the news broke of his investigation. They say any misstatements to reporters were the result of internal confusion rather than a deliberate attempt to mislead. Yet even this most benign reading of events (which stretches credulity) amounts to a defense of incompetence.

There’s a privacy issue at play as well. One State Department official told me that “consistent with long-standing practice across administrations of both parties, we cannot and do not brief committees on the facts of ongoing investigations.”

Fair enough. But the State Department’s months-long coyness about who was running U.S. Iran policy has eroded trust with lawmakers, the press and the public.

Meanwhile, Malley is keeping busy during his purgatory, taking on new roles at Princeton and Yale. In that sense, he is doing much better than Qin, who has not been seen in public since he fell under investigation and went on extended “personal leave” before eventually being relieved of his official duties.

Malley deserves a fair process. The rule of law is one thing that distinguishes the U.S. democratic system from authoritarian ones. Another is honesty and transparency in government.

The Washington Post · by Josh Rogin · September 6, 2023

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

If you do not read anything else in the 2017 National Security Strategy read this on page 14:

"A democracy is only as resilient as its people. An informed and engaged citizenry is the fundamental requirement for a free and resilient nation. For generations, our society has protected free press, free speech, and free thought. Today, actors such as Russia are using information tools in an attempt to undermine the legitimacy of democracies. Adversaries target media, political processes, financial networks, and personal data. The American public and private sectors must recognize this and work together to defend our way of life. No external threat can be allowed to shake our shared commitment to our values, undermine our system of government, or divide our Nation."

Access NSS HERE

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RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, SEPTEMBER 6, 2023

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