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Quotes of the Day:
"Ignorant, restless desperadoes, without conscience or principles, have led a deluded multitude to follow their standard, under pretense of grievances which have no existence but in their own imaginations."
- Abigail Adams
"It is wonderful what strength of purpose and boldness and energy of will are roused by the assurance that we are doing our duty."
- Walter Scott
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- Eric Hoffer
1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, OCTOBER 13 (Putin's War)
2. Ukraine: CDS Daily brief (13.10.22) CDS comments on key events
3. China accuses US of 'Cold War thinking' in security strategy
4. Helsinki Commission Recommends Kicking Russia Off U.N. Security Council
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6. Will Xi’s Paranoia Defeat Him?
7. Integrated By Design: Building a Partner Air Force
8. Russia, under pressure in southern Ukraine, captures villages in east
9. Musk says SpaceX cannot fund Ukraine's Starlink internet indefinitely
10. Is the military too ‘woke’ to recruit?
11. Corrupt Contractor Orchestrated Chinese Counterfeiting Scheme
12. Lockheed Martin Laser Breakthroughs Could Signal A Turning Point For Missile Defense
13. How TikTok ate the internet
14. Army advisor brigade ramps up Pacific partners’ military effectiveness
15. Woke Army or Woe Army: What really happened in the social media controversy rocking the force?
16. US firepower showcased in Philippine joint combat drills
17. Ukraine’s Starlink problems show the dangers of digital dependency
18. FDD | New Terrorist Group on the Rise in the West Bank
19. FDD | Latest Ransomware Attack on U.S. Healthcare System Exposes Critical Weaknesses
20. Why Marine Corps forces are becoming less relevant to combatant commanders
21. China Censors ‘Beijing’ After Rare Protest in City Against Xi
22. Civilians Will Choose the Marine Corps’ Future—and Soon
23. The Army Can Predict When Some Leaders Are at Risk of Misconduct
24. Rare protest against China's Xi Jinping days before Communist Party congress
25. How Ukrainian Strategy Is Running Circles Around Russia’s Lumbering Military
1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, OCTOBER 13 (Putin's War)
Maps/graphics: https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-october-13
Key Takeaways
- Public reports of the first deaths of ill-prepared mobilized Russian troops in Ukraine have sparked renewed criticism of the Russian military command.
- Russian forces continued to launch strikes on critical Ukrainian infrastructure on October 13.
- Increasingly degraded morale, discipline, and combat capabilities among Russian troops in combat zones in Ukraine may be leading to temporary suspensions in offensive operations in limited areas.
- Ukrainian forces made gains northwest of Svatove.
- Russian forces are continuing defensive operations in anticipation of potential Ukrainian attacks towards Kreminna.
- Ukrainian and Russian sources stated that Russian troops are attempting to recapture positions in northern and northwestern Kherson Oblast.
- Damage to the Kerch Strait Bridge continues to impede the movement of Russian supplies and personnel to southern Ukraine.
- Russian forces continued ground attacks in Donetsk Oblast and claimed to make marginal advances south of Bakhmut.
- Russian incompetence continues to take its toll on mobilized personnel before they ever reach the front lines, likely exacerbating already-low morale.
- Russian officials are likely increasingly limiting freedom of movement in Russia to preserve additional mobilizable populations and prevent them from fleeing the country.
- Russian occupation officials called for the evacuation of civilians from occupied Kherson Oblast.
RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, OCTOBER 13
understandingwar.org
Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, October 13
Karolina Hird, Kateryna Stepanenko, Katherine Lawlor, and Frederick W. Kagan
October 13, 9:15 pm 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.
Public reports of the first deaths of ill-prepared mobilized Russian troops in Ukraine have sparked renewed criticism of the Russian military command. Russian media reported that five mobilized men from Chelyabinsk have already died in combat in Ukraine just three weeks after President Vladimir Putin’s declaration of partial mobilization on September 21.[1] The report led many pro-war milbloggers to claim that the number of dead and wounded among mobilized servicemen is likely higher than this due to lack of promised training, equipment, unit cohesion, and commanders, as well as repeated instances of wrongful mobilization.
Russian milbloggers claimed that Commander of the 58th Combined Arms Army of the Southern Military District (SMD), Mikhail Zusko, ordered the immediate deployment without any pre-combat training of newly mobilized servicemen of the 15th Regiment of the 27th Motor Rifle Brigade from Moscow City and Moscow Oblast to the collapsing frontline around Svatove around October 2nd and 3rd.[2] Ukrainian outlets had previously reported that the Kremlin has arrested Zusko due to combat losses, and it is unclear why an SMD commander would issue orders pertaining to a unit within the Western Military District (WMD).[3] Milbloggers noted that relatives found half of the 15th Regiment personnel wounded in a Belgorod Oblast hospital after the unit got caught in heavy artillery fire when attempting to reach the Svatove frontline. Milbloggers noted that the regiment had no orders, military command supervision, signal, or supplies, and that the other half of its personnel is still at the Svatove frontline. Another milblogger noted witnessing the coffins of mobilized men arrive in Chelaybinsk, Moscow, and Yekaterenburg, and claimed that many mobilized men are surrendering to Ukrainian forces.[4] One Russian milblogger complained on October 13 that newly mobilized men are being deployed in a haphazard way that will lead to 10,000 deaths and 40,000 injuries among them by February 2023.[5]
Russian mobilization structures are continuing to face bureaucratic challenges, which may further undermine the combat effectiveness of mobilized personnel. Milbloggers claimed that the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) did not set proper conditions to integrate and monitor the deployment of mobilized men at the frontlines.[6] Russian military units reportedly disperse mobilized men among different units without keeping proper records of their deployed locations on the frontlines, causing families to complain to military leadership. Russian military officials are also continuing to assign men with previous military experience to units that do not match their expertise. One milblogger even warned that Russian MoD’s inability to properly update families of the whereabouts of their relatives will lead mothers and wives to form human rights groups that “will break Russia from within.”[7]
ISW cannot independently verify milblogger claims, but the community has been proactive in highlighting the Kremlin’s mobilization since the day of its declaration in hopes of improving the prospects of the Russian war in Ukraine.[8] ISW has also previously reported on a video of mobilized men from Moscow Oblast in Svatove who complained about their lack of equipment and deployment to the frontlines without proper training, which corroborates some milblogger reports.[9] The persistence of such complaints supports ISW’s assessment that the mobilization campaign will not produce enough combat-ready Russian personnel to affect the course of the war in the short term. The Kremlin’s rapid deployment of mobilized servicemen to the Kreminna-Svatove line may also indicate that Russian President Vladimir Putin is willing to throw away the lives of mobilized men in a desperate effort to preserve a collapsing frontline.
The Kremlin continues to struggle to message itself out of the reality of mobilization and military failures. The Kremlin continued its general pattern of temporarily appeasing the nationalist communities by conducting retaliatory missile strikes on Ukraine in an effort to deflect from persistent mobilization problems. Renewed milblogger critiques about mobilization again show how ephemeral the Kremlin’s successes are at deflecting attention from them. The nationalist community resumed its calls on the Kremlin to replace senior officials and commanders and declare war, which some had anticipated would be the Kremlin’s response to the Kerch Strait Bridge explosions, broken mobilization process, and loss of most of Kharkiv Oblast and Lyman.[10] The Kremlin remains trapped in a cycle of appeasing its pro-war constituencies but retaining Russian President Vladimir Putin’s vision of a limited war in Ukraine that is incompatible with their demands and expectations.
Russian forces continued to launch strikes on critical Ukrainian infrastructure on October 13. Ukraine’s Western Air Command noted that Russian forces launched Kalibr cruise missiles at infrastructure in western Ukraine, four of which Ukrainian troops destroyed.[11] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian troops launched missile strikes on critical infrastructure and civilian objects in Kyiv, Dnipropetrovsk, and Mykolaiv Oblasts throughout the day on October 13.[12] Ukrainian military sources also reported that Russian troops continued drone attacks all over Ukraine, and that Ukrainian troops shot down four drones over Vinnytsia and Cherkassy on October 12.[13] Social media footage additionally shows explosions in Rivne, Ternopil, Lviv, Chernivitsi Oblasts following the activation of Ukrainian air defense systems.[14]
Russian forces are likely continuing to use Iranian Shahed-136 drones to support massive strike campaigns against critical Ukrainian infrastructure due to their low efficacy in active combat situations. Ukraine’s Southern Operational Command Spokesperson, Nataliya Humenyuk, claimed on October 13 that Russian forces are employing Shahed-136s primarily to strike buildings and infrastructure because the drones have limited efficacy against troop concentrations.[15] Humenyuk cited various sources who stated that Russia has received between 300 to several thousand Shahed-136s and is using them in areas as far away as 1,000km from the launch point, which is why Shahed-136 use has been densely concentrated around southern Ukraine.[16] Russian forces are also increasingly trying to launch the drones from the northern border area. Humenyuk’s statement, and the pattern of recent Shahed-136 strikes against infrastructure in Ukrainian rear areas, supports ISW’s previous assessment that Shahed-136s will not generate asymmetric effects for Russian forces because they are not being used to strike areas of critical military significance in a way that directly influences the frontline.[17]
Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin is likely continuing efforts to distinguish himself and Wagner Group forces from more conventional Russian and proxy troops. Prigozhin emphasized in a comment to Russian outlet RIA FAN that Wagner Group forces singlehandedly took control of Ivanhrad, a settlement just south of Bakhmut, on October 13.[18] However, the Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) Territorial Defense Force claimed that Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR) and DNR joint forces took control of Ivanhrad and the nearby settlement of Opytne, apparently contradicting Prigozhin’s statement that “not a single person from other units, except for employees of the Wagner Private Military Company” was in Ivanhrad at the time of its capture.[19] Prigozhin additionally rebutted the claim that Russian forces have taken Opytne and stated that fierce fighting is ongoing on its outskirts.[20] The disconnect between Prigozhin’s and the DNR Territorial Defense’s claims, as well as Prigozhin’s apparent desire to have Wagner Group fighters receive sole credit for the capture of Ivanhrad, is consistent with ISW’s previous observations that Prigozhin is jockeying for more prominence against the backdrop of his recent harsh critiques of the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) establishment.[21]
Increasingly degraded morale, discipline, and combat capabilities among Russian troops in combat zones in Ukraine may be leading to temporary suspensions in offensive operations in limited areas. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that, particularly in Donetsk Oblast, certain Russian units are receiving orders from commanders to temporarily halt offensive operations due to extremely low morale, psychological conditions, high rates of desertion, and non-execution of combat orders.[22] The General Staff statement is likely a reflection of the fact that Russian detachments are becoming increasingly degraded as they impale themselves on relatively small and insignificant settlements throughout Donetsk Oblast, especially around Bakhmut and the Donetsk City area. As these units become more degraded, they are likely reconstituted ad hoc with disparate combat elements, which leads to further demoralization and incoherence in the conduct of offensive operations. However, the apparent suspension of offensive operations in areas of Donetsk Oblast, nearly the only areas in Ukraine where Russian troops are engaged in offensive operations, will further complicate Russian efforts to take additional territory and likely further contribute to poor morale and overall attrition of combat capabilities.
Key Takeaways
- Public reports of the first deaths of ill-prepared mobilized Russian troops in Ukraine have sparked renewed criticism of the Russian military command.
- Russian forces continued to launch strikes on critical Ukrainian infrastructure on October 13.
- Increasingly degraded morale, discipline, and combat capabilities among Russian troops in combat zones in Ukraine may be leading to temporary suspensions in offensive operations in limited areas.
- Ukrainian forces made gains northwest of Svatove.
- Russian forces are continuing defensive operations in anticipation of potential Ukrainian attacks towards Kreminna.
- Ukrainian and Russian sources stated that Russian troops are attempting to recapture positions in northern and northwestern Kherson Oblast.
- Damage to the Kerch Strait Bridge continues to impede the movement of Russian supplies and personnel to southern Ukraine.
- Russian forces continued ground attacks in Donetsk Oblast and claimed to make marginal advances south of Bakhmut.
- Russian incompetence continues to take its toll on mobilized personnel before they ever reach the front lines, likely exacerbating already-low morale.
- Russian officials are likely increasingly limiting freedom of movement in Russia to preserve additional mobilizable populations and prevent them from fleeing the country.
- Russian occupation officials called for the evacuation of civilians from occupied Kherson Oblast.
We do not report in detail on Russian war crimes because those 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 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.
- Ukrainian Counter-offensives—Southern and Eastern Ukraine
- Russian Main Effort—Eastern Ukraine (comprised of one subordinate and two supporting efforts)
- Russian Subordinate Main Effort—Capture the entirety of Donetsk Oblast
- Russian Supporting Effort—Southern Axis
- Russian Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts
- Activities in Russian-occupied Areas
Ukrainian Counter-offensives (Ukrainian efforts to liberate Russian-occupied territories)
Eastern Ukraine: (Oskil River-Kreminna Line)
Ukrainian forces made gains in northeastern Kharkiv Oblast northwest of Svatove on October 13. Geolocated video footage posted on October 13 shows Ukrainian forces capturing Russian troops who voluntarily surrendered near the N26 highway in Krokhmalne, about 20km northwest of Svatove.[23] The footage likely indicates that Ukrainian troops have also taken control of the surrounding settlements of Pischane, Berestove, and Tabaivka.[24] Russian sources also claimed that Ukrainian troops conducted ground attacks further north of Krokhmalne and attempted to attack Orlyanka and Kotlyarivka, both within 30km northwest of Svatove.[25] Russian sources continued to claim that Ukrainian forces are consolidating positions west of Kreminna and attempting to cross the Zherebets River to prepare for attacks on the settlement.[26] ISW makes no effort to evaluate the veracity of Russian claims about future Ukrainian operations.
Russian forces continued to conduct defensive operations around Kreminna in anticipation of a potential Ukrainian attack. The chief of staff of the BARS-13 (Russian Combat Reserve of the Country) battalion in Kreminna claimed on October 13 that BARS-13 is “firmly” holding the defense of the settlement and have full control of the Svatove-Kreminna and Kreminna-Rubizhne roads.[27] The BARS-13 chief of staff additionally claimed that elements of the 20th Combined Arms Army are pushing west of Kreminna and trying to enter Terny, 15km northwest of Kreminna.[28] A Russian milblogger claimed that elements of the Central and Western Military Districts are attacking westward of Kreminna towards Lyman and that forces of the 3rd Motor Rifle Division of the 20th Combined Arms Army captured a Ukrainian prisoner somewhere around Terny.[29] Geolocated imagery posted on October 12 shows Russian “dragon’s teeth” defensive lines southeast of Kreminna around Zolote, further indicating that Russian forces are focusing on entrenching themselves near the Luhansk Oblast border.[30]
Southern Ukraine: (Kherson Oblast)
Ukrainian and Russian sources reported that Russian forces unsuccessfully continued to attack previously occupied positions in northern and northwestern Kherson Oblast on October 13. Ukraine’s Southern Operational Command reported that Russian forces launched an unsuccessful assault in the direction of Kostromka and Sukhyi Stavok on the eastern bank of the Inhulets River.[31] Russian sources also claimed that Russian forces conducted a reconnaissance-in-force in the vicinity of Sukhyi Stavok and captured Ukrainian prisoners of war but did not provide photographic evidence confirming the claim.[32] Geolocated footage also showed Russian forces targeting Ukrainian armored vehicles north of Sadok, approximately 14km east of Davydiv Brid.[33] Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces attempted to secure positions north of Ishchenka (approximately 8km southwest of Davydiv Brid), and that the Ukrainian 46th Airmobile Brigade carried out a sortie in the area of Borozenske and Bezvodne, both just east of Ishchenka.[34] Advisor to Kherson Oblast Military Administration Serhiy Khlan stated that Russian forces attempted to counterattack in the Ishchenka area, but Ukrainian forces repelled the attack.[35] Russian sources also noted that Russian forces continued to shell Ukrainian positions northwest of Kherson City in Pravdyne, Soldatske, and Ternovi Pody.[36]
Ukrainian forces continued their interdiction campaign on October 13. Ukraine’s Southern Operational Command spokesperson, Nataliya Humenyuk, noted that Ukrainian forces are continuing to target Russian pontoon and barge crossings across the Dnipro and Inhulets rivers.[37] Ukraine’s Southern Operational Command reported that Ukrainian forces destroyed a command and observation post in Beryslav Raion and destroyed five ammunition warehouses in unspecified locations.[38] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces also struck a Russian manpower concentration area in Tokarivka (approximately 30km east of Kherson City), killing 150 Russian servicemen.[39] The Ukrainian General Staff added that Russian forces are repairing up to 30 damaged armored vehicles per day in Kalanchak, about 70km southeast of Kherson City.[40] Ukrainian Telegram channels reported unspecified explosions in Nova Kakhovka.[41]
The damage to the Kerch Strait Bridge likely continues to slow down deliveries of Russian supplies and personnel to southern Ukraine. Krym Realii published satellite imagery of over 1,000 trucks on the Russian side of the bridge waiting in a three-to-four-day line to cross the strait via the ferry. Krym Realii found that there are only four ferries operating with a capacity of 90 trucks and 300 people each.[42] Maxar satellite imagery also showed Russian military trucks using the ferry to cross the Kerch Strait.[43]
Russian Main Effort—Eastern Ukraine
Russian Subordinate Main Effort—Donetsk Oblast (Russian objective: Capture the entirety of Donetsk Oblast, the claimed territory of Russia’s proxies in Donbas)
Russian forces conducted ground attacks in Donetsk Oblast and likely made incremental gains south of Bakhmut on October 13. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian troops repelled Russian attacks on settlements around Bakhmut, namely Bakhmutske (8km northeast of Bakhmut), Ozaryanivka (16km southwest of Bakhmut), and Ivanhrad (5km southeast of Bakhmut).[44] The Donetsk People’s Repulblic (DNR) Territorial Defense Force claimed that DNR troops took control of Ivanhrad and Opytne (4km southeast of Bakhmut).[45] However, Wagner Group financier Evgeny Prigozhin claimed that Wagner Group forces singlehandedly took control of Ivanhrad and that Opytne remains under Ukrainian control as fighting continues on its outskirts.[46] ISW has not observed any independent confirmation of either Wagner Group or DNR forces in Ivanhrad or Opytne, and the situation south of Bakhmut is likely obfuscated by active combat and a challenging informational environment, which is likely contributing to contradicting claims over the status of control of individual settlements. The Ukrainian General Staff additionally reported that Russian troops conducted a limited ground attack in Marinka, on the southwestern outskirts of Donetsk City.[47] Russian sources claimed that DNR troops are additionally fighting along the western outskirts of Donetsk City and preparing for an offensive on Nevelske.[48]
Supporting Effort—Southern Axis (Russian objective: Maintain frontline positions and secure rear areas against Ukrainian strikes)
Russian forces did not conduct any confirmed ground attacks west of Hulyaipole on October 13 and continued routine artillery strikes throughout western Zaporizhia, Mykolaiv, and Dnipropetrovsk Oblasts.[49] Ukrainian sources reported that Russian troops struck Nikopol, Dnipropetrovsk Oblast with Grad MLRS systems and Mykolaiv City with S-300 anti-aircraft systems.[50] Russian forces additionally launched Shahed-136 drone strikes on Mykolaiv, Dnipropetrovsk, and Odesa Oblasts.[51]
Russian nuclear operator Rosenergoatom claimed on October 13 that the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) will switch to Russian nuclear fuel when the ZNPP uses up all its available nuclear fuel reserves.[52] However, President of Ukrainian nuclear operator Energoatom Petro Kotin refuted claims that the ZNPP must be refueled soon emphasizing that there are still two years' worth of nuclear fuel at the plant, which he emphasized remains under the control of Ukrainian staff.[53]
Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts (Russian objective: Expand combat power without conducting general mobilization)
Russian incompetence continues to take its toll on mobilized personnel before they even reach the front lines, likely exacerbating already-low morale. Mobilized personnel continue to complain of poor living conditions, faulty or nonexistent equipment, and insufficient training. Russian-language opposition outlet Meduza reported that 19 mobilized men have died before reaching the front since mobilization began on September 21 from causes including suicide, beatings, accidents, overdoses, and untreated medical emergencies.[54] A Ukrainian official circulated a video on October 13 depicting a Russian armored personnel carrier (APC) running over a newly mobilized man as he stood in formation during training.[55] One milblogger warned that there is no such thing as “partial mobilization” and that new waves of mobilization will continue throughout the war to replenish losses.[56]
Even Russian officials are increasingly admitting that some mobilized men like prisoners are not expected to return to Russia. Wagner financier Yevgeny Prigozhin, who has been involved in the Russian campaign to mobilize prisoners in exchange for pardons, told a journalist on October 13 that prisoners will either die in combat or redeem themselves and continue to fight terrorists in other countries after the war in Ukraine.[57] Prigozhin said that “many of us will not return from this war” and implied that violent prisoners would never return to Russia but had been given an opportunity to “die a hero.”
Russian officials are likely increasingly limiting freedom of movement in Russia to preserve additional mobilizable populations and prevent them from fleeing the country. Authorities in St. Petersburg banned medical professionals from traveling overseas on business trips due to unspecified security concerns.[58] Medical professionals are reportedly only allowed to leave the country on private visits to member states of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), a Russian-dominated successor to the Soviet Union made up of Russia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. Some employers reportedly encouraged medical workers to sign a paper promising not to leave the country.[59] Russian officials had previously reported that about 3,000 doctors and other medical professionals could be mobilized under “partial mobilization.”[60]
Russian mobilization authorities continued to expand their aperture for the distribution of mobilization summonses while simultaneously cracking down on those who attempt to evade mobilization. Russian sources claimed that authorities are utilizing integrated databases to search for those evading mobilization notices, which include databases from police, border guards, tax authorities, and hospital and hotel registries.[61] Russian sources said that this will give traffic police the ability to detain and turn in evaders.[62] Police are also reportedly conducting mobilization raids on hotels and hostels in Moscow to deliver men to military registration and enlistment offices.[63] Residents of St. Peterburg additionally reported that citizens are receiving summonses in utility bills, and that housing authorities are compelled to help military registration and enlistment offices with the distribution summonses by any means.[64] Relatedly, heads of state-owned enterprises and private companies are reportedly competing against military registration and enlistment offices to retain their employees, from among whom military enlistment officers are trying to draw mobilizable men.[65]
Anecdotal reports suggest Russian officials may be preparing for a “second wave” of mobilization in some regions, despite official denials. Military commissariat officials reportedly told a Moscow man sometime before October 13 that he would be called up in a “second wave of mobilization after the New Year.”[66] Russian men also reportedly began receiving conscription notices before October 13 for the usual spring 2023 conscription cycle.[67] The regular semi-annual conscription cycle should not be confused with a new wave of mobilization, although conscripts may be deployed to the front lines. ISW had reported on October 11 that Russian federal subjects announced new phases of mobilization in select regions but framed them as “new mobilization tasks” rather than new waves.[68] The deputy chairman of the State Duma Defense Committee, Yuri Shvytkin, told reporters on October 11 that “this is not divided into stages. [Mobilization] is an ongoing process. Each region has its own mobilization plan, and some have already completed it.”[69] Rostov Oblast Military Commissar Igor Yegorov told reporters on October 11 that "all mobilization activities are carried out at the scheduled time and in the prescribed number.”[70]
Activity in Russian-occupied Areas (Russian objective: consolidate administrative control of occupied and annexed areas; forcibly integrate Ukrainian civilians into Russian sociocultural, economic, military, and governance systems)
Russian occupation officials called for the evacuation of civilians from occupied Kherson Oblast on October 13. The Russian-appointed head of the Kherson Occupation Administration, Vladimir Saldo, asked Russian officials on October 13 to support a widescale evacuation of civilians from Kherson to occupied Crimea and neighboring Russian oblasts to “protect” Kherson civilians from missile strikes.[71] Saldo suggested that all Kherson Oblast residents who want to leave should visit other parts of Russia for “vacation and educational” purposes and stressed the importance of evacuating the right bank of the Dnipro River. Ukrainian forces have pushed Russian forces to the banks of the Dnipro River in places and have cut Russian supply lines across the river in recent weeks. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin announced on October 13 that the Russian government would “organize assistance for the departure of residents” from Kherson.[72] However, Deputy Kherson Occupation Administration Head Kirill Stremousov claimed on October 13 that Saldo’s call was not an evacuation but rather an opportunity for a “temporary stay and rest” in other regions.[73] Stremousov emphasized that “nobody is going to withdraw Russian troops from the Kherson region.”[74] Ukrainian Southern Operational Command Spokesperson Nataliya Humenyuk reported on October 13 that Russian forces are looting stores in occupied Kherson and are preparing pontoon crossings to flee from the right bank to the left bank of the Dnipro River.[75]
Russian officials may also use the evacuations from Kherson to further remove Ukrainian children from Ukrainian territory. The Ukrainian General Staff reported on October 13 that Russian officials have removed over 170 children from Kherson City since early October.[76] ISW has previously reported on Russian attempts to remove Ukrainian children from Ukrainian homes and to send them to Russia.[77]
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.
[14] ttps://suspilne dot media/293868-ssa-dopomozut-ukraini-castkovo-zakriti-nebo-genasamblea-oon-uhvalila-istoricnu-rezoluciu-232-den-vijni-onlajn/; https://t.me/kozytskyy_maksym_official/4933; https://t.me/kozytskyy_mak... dot media/293868-ssa-dopomozut-ukraini-castkovo-zakriti-nebo-genasamblea-oon-uhvalila-istoricnu-rezoluciu-232-den-vijni-onlajn/; https://t.me/stranaua/69581
[37] https://armyinform dot com.ua/2022/10/13/na-hersonshhyni-zvilneno-5-naselenyh-punktiv-nataliya-gumenyuk/
[42] https://ru dot krymr.com/a/news-pereprava-ochered/32080825.html
[54] https://meduza dot io/feature/2022/10/06/mobilizovannye-v-rossii-umirayut-esche-do-togo-kak-ih-otpravili-na-front-nekotorye-sovershayut-suitsid-drugie-gibnut-pri-nevyyasnennyh-obstoyatelstvah; https://t.me/meduzalive/71165
[57] https://vk dot com/wall-177427428_1281
[58] https://tass dot ru/obschestvo/16037705
[59] https://www.fontanka dot ru/2022/10/12/71731202/
[60] https://meduza dot io/news/2022/10/13/vlasti-peterburga-zapretili-medrabotnikam-ezdit-v-zarubezhnye-komandirovki-s-chastnymi-vizitami-mozhno-tolko-v-strany-sng
[66] https://theins dot ru/news/255975
[67] https://theins dot ru/news/255975; https://t.me/mozhemobyasnit/13816
[69] https://www.rbc dot ru/politics/12/10/2022/6346754b9a794764b2facdb1
[70] https://www.rbc dot ru/politics/12/10/2022/6346754b9a794764b2facdb1
[75] https://armyinform dot com.ua/2022/10/13/na-hersonshhyni-zvilneno-5-naselenyh-punktiv-nataliya-gumenyuk
understandingwar.org
2. Ukraine: CDS Daily brief (13.10.22) CDS comments on key events
CDS Daily brief (13.10.22) CDS comments on key events
Humanitarian aspect:
96 Ukrainian children were returned to Ukraine from Russia and the temporarily occupied territories, the Ministry of Reintegration of the Temporarily Occupied Territories said today. However, as of October 13, 8,140 Ukrainian children still remain in deportation in Russia, according to the Ukrainian government's "Children of the War" portal.
The Ministry of Reintegration of the Temporarily Occupied Territories and Ukrposhta (Ukrainian postal service) paid 16.4 million hryvnias to people who survived the Russian occupation, the press service of the Ministry of Reintegration reported. Under this joint initiative, everyone who survived the occupation receives UAH 1,200 in one-time financial assistance.
Ukraine successfully completed another POW exchange freeing 20 soldiers from captivity, the head of the President's Office, Andriy Yermak, said. There are people whom the Russians had kept in the notorious Olenivka colony in Donetsk Oblast, as well as those who were held in the temporarily occupied territories of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson Oblasts.
The Russian military continues hitting Ukrainian civilian targets.
- At about 1 a.m. in the morning, the Russian forces fired 8 S-300 missiles at the city of Mykolayiv. They hit a 5-story apartment complex, destroying two top floors. According to preliminary information, two people were injured, including an 11-year-old boy pulled out from under the rubble. The bodies of 2 people were found under the rubble. A man was killed by a shell that hit a local boating station.
- A kamikaze drone attack was recorded at night in Kyiv Oblast. An infrastructure object in the Makariv community west of Kyiv was targeted.
- Dnipropetrovsk Oblast was shelled 5 times during the night. A 59-year-old man was wounded in Nikopol. He is currently hospitalized in serious condition. More than 30 high- rise and private buildings, gas pipelines and power lines were damaged. More than 2,000 families were left without electricity. Russian missiles also hit a hospital and a kindergarten.
- Over the past day, 7 civilians were killed, and 13 more were injured due to Russian shelling in Donetsk Oblast.
- The town of Orikhiv, Zaporizhzhya Oblast, was shelled for several hours. Residential buildings along the main street were ruined. The shelling took the life of a resident of the nearby village of Preobrazhenka. In addition, there are 9 wounded from Orikhiv and 1 from Preobrazhenka, 3 more people were wounded in Stepnohirsk.
- Russian missiles hit the city of Kharkiv and Kharkiv Oblast on the evening of October 13. There is damage to critical infrastructure and blackouts. The rest of the information is being clarified.
(Information about shelling and its consequences comes from Heads of respective Oblast Military Administrations.)
Bodies of 4 more killed civilians were uncovered in the recently liberated Lyman, Donetsk Oblast, the head of Donetsk Oblast Military Administration Pavlo Kyrylenko said. In addition, law enforcement officers discovered the bodies of three civilians killed by the Russian occupying forces in the Kupyansk district in Kharkiv Oblast. One of them was killed for helping the Ukrainian armed forces.
Occupied territories
Russia appointed head of the Kherson Oblast occupation administration, Volodymyr Saldo, recorded a video address to the Russian central authorities urging them to help residents of Kherson evacuate to the occupied Crimea and neighboring Russian regions. "We know Russia does not give up its own," Saldo said. Although the Ukrainian counteroffensive is presented in his speech as Ukraine's revenge for the "choice to join Russia" that the residents have reportedly made, it most likely means that the occupation authorities are beginning to feel threatened by it.
According to the Head of the Luhansk Oblast Military Administration, Serhiy Haiday, the newly mobilized Russian citizens are brought to the occupied territories. They are both civilians and those who were serving their prison sentences. Haiday did not give the exact number; he only said there were quite a few. He also said that the occupation authorities no longer allow local residents to leave the occupied territory. Haiday believes the Russian military plans to use them as a shield.
In the Krasnodar Krai of the Russian Federation, in front of the Kerch Strait crossing, more than 1,000 trucks waiting to be sent to the occupied Crimea after the explosion on the Kerch Strait bridge have gathered in a traffic jam, "Kavkaz Realii" reports. The occupying authorities of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea offer the drivers a land route accompanied by the Traffic police. It runs through the Ukrainian territories, annexed recently. According to the operational headquarters of Kuban, 10 new parking lots, which can accommodate 2,300 cars, have been prepared in the Temryuk district. As Serhii Aksyonov, the so-called "head" of the occupied Crimea, said, the average waiting time in the queue is 3-4 days. Currently, four ferries are operating on the crossing, which can accommodate up to 90 trucks and up to 300 people. The Kuban authorities claim that from October 8 to the morning of October 13, 9,000 people and 1,800 vehicles were transported in both directions.
Operational situation
(please note that this part of the report is mainly on the previous day's (Oct 12) developments)
It is the 232nd day of the strategic air-ground offensive operation of the Russian Armed Forces against Ukraine (in the official terminology of the Russian Federation – "operation to defend Donbas"). The enemy tries to maintain control over the temporarily captured territories. It concentrates its efforts on disrupting the counteroffensive actions of the Ukrainian troops, and continues the offensive in the Bakhmut and Avdiivka directions.
The Russian military shells the positions of the Ukrainian troops along the entire contact line, fortifies defensive positions and frontiers in certain directions, and conducts aerial reconnaissance. In violation of the norms of international humanitarian law, the laws and customs of war, it strikes critical infrastructure and residential quarters.
Over the past 24 hours, the Russian forces have launched 3 missile and 21 air strikes and fired 104 MLRS rounds. The Russian fire hit civilian targets and residents in more than 40 towns and villages. The Russian military struck, in particular, areas of Mykolaiv, Vinnytsia, Cherkasy, Chernyakhiv, Bilohorivka, Spirne, Pavlivka, Myrne and Davydiv Brid, using cruise missiles, aviation, anti-aircraft guided missiles and Iranian attack UAVs. In addition, Myropillya, Seredyna- Buda, Stukalyvka, Pavlivka, Buhruvatka, Hryanykivka, Dvorichna, Nova Vovcha, Strilecha, Udy, and Chervona Zorya of Chernihiv, Sumy, and Kharkiv Oblasts located near the state border were shelled.
The aviation of the Ukrainian Defense Forces made 32 strikes over the past day. Hits on 25 areas of enemy weapons and military equipment concentration and on 7 Russian anti-aircraft missile systems are confirmed. In addition, Ukrainian air defense units shot down 4 enemy helicopters and 26 UAVs.
Over the past day, Ukraine's missile forces and artillery hit 6 enemy command posts, 7 areas of manpower, weapons and military equipment concentration, and 4 ammunition depots. In addition, Russian artillery positions, EW and other military targets were destroyed.
Long-term downplaying of its problems by the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation significantly affects the effectiveness of Russia's mobilization efforts. The Russian Ministry of Defense claims that all mobilized personnel are provided with modern equipment, protective gear, medical and tactical equipment, appropriate field uniforms, and first-aid kits, which is not true. Russian forces experience a shortage of modern weapons.
Representatives of the Russian and occupation administrations forced residents of Melitopol to donate blood for wounded Russian soldiers.
Russian troops stationed military personnel and equipment in the schools of Yasynuvata Donetsk Oblast, Tokmak of Zaporizhzhia Oblast, Kadiivka of Luhansk Oblast, and Myrolyubivka and Gladivka of Kherson Oblast. The quartering of Russian troops in Ukrainian schools during the Ukrainian school year means that Russian soldiers use schoolchildren as "human shields."
The morale and psychological state of the personnel of the invasion forces remain low. In some combat areas, particularly in Donetsk Oblast, Russian units began to receive orders from the senior command to suspend offensive operations. The main reason is the extremely low morale and psychological condition of the recruits, numerous facts of desertion among the mobilized personnel, and refusals to comply with combat orders.
Kharkiv direction
• Zolochiv-Balakleya section: approximate length of combat line - 147 km, number of BTGs of the RF Armed Forces - 10-12, the average width of the combat area of one BTG - 13.3 km;
• Deployed enemy BTGs: 26th, 153rd, and 197th tank regiments, 245th motorized rifle regiment of the 47th tank division, 6th and 239th tank regiments, 228th motorized rifle regiment of the 90th tank division, 1st motorized rifle regiment, 1st tank regiment of the 2nd motorized rifle division, 25th and 138th separate motorized rifle brigades of the 6th Combined Arms Army, 27th separate motorized rifle brigade of the 1st Tank Army, 275th and 280th motorized rifle regiments, 11th tank regiment of the 18th motorized rifle division of the 11 Army Corps, 7th motorized rifle regiment of the 11th Army Corps, 80th separate motorized rifle brigade of the 14th Army Corps, 2nd and 45th separate SOF brigades of the Airborne Forces, 1st Army Corps of so-called DPR, PMCs.
Ukrainian troops continued to advance in the direction of Svatove and Kreminna. Ukrainian troops advanced to the outskirts of Vilshany. They have strengthened their positions in Dvorichyna with air defense, repelled the Russian attack on Novosadove, and maintained control over Terny and Yampil.
Russian troops repelled an attack by Ukrainian forces in the area of Kyselivka and Orlyanka in Kharkiv Oblast, Tabaivka and Kuzemivka in Luhansk Oblast. The Ukrainian defense forces made an unsuccessful attempt to cross the Zherebets River northwest of Kreminna near Raihorodok, Karmazynivka, Andriivka, Makiivka, and Novolyubivka in Luhansk Oblast. Russian troops have regained control over the left bank of the Zherebets River. The area around Torsky is currently a gray zone. Russian forces continued counterattacks west of Kreminna to delay the Ukrainian advance and buy Russian forces time to reinforce and replenish their units and strengthen defensive positions in the Svatove-Kreminna area. Fortification of defensive positions along the Kreminna-Svatove frontier continues, bridges are mined, and explosive barriers are built.
Kramatorsk direction
● Balakleya - Siversk section: approximate length of the combat line - 184 km, the number of BTGs of the RF Armed Forces - 17-20, the average width of the combat area of one BTG - 9.6 km;
● 252nd and 752nd motorized rifle regiments of the 3rd motorized rifle division, 1st, 13th, and 12th tank regiments, 423rd motorized rifle regiment of the 4th tank division, 201st military base, 15th, 21st, 30th separate motorized rifle brigades of the 2nd Combined Arms Army, 35th, 55th and 74th separate motorized rifle brigades of the 41st Combined Arms Army, 3rd and 14th separate SOF brigades, 2nd and 4th separate motorized rifle brigades of the 2nd Army Corps, 7th separate motorized rifle brigade of the 1st Army Corps, PMCs.
The Russian forces fired mortars, tanks, barrel and jet artillery in the areas around Bilohorivka, Zarichne, Novoyehorivka, Serebryanka, Spirne, Terny, Torske, and Yampolivka.
Donetsk direction
● Siversk - Maryinka section: approximate length of the combat line - 235 km, the number of BTGs of the RF Armed Forces - 13-15, the average width of the combat area of one BTG - 17 km;
● Deployed BTGs: 68th and 163rd tank regiments, 102nd and 103rd motorized rifle regiments of the 150 motorized rifle division, 80th tank regiment of the 90th tank division, 35th, 55th, and 74th separate motorized rifle brigades of the 41st Combined Arms Army, 31st separate airborne assault brigade, 61st separate marines brigade of the Joint Strategic Command "Northern Fleet," 336th separate marines
brigade, 24th separate SOF brigade, 1st, 3rd, 5th, 15th, and 100th separate motorized rifle brigades, 9th and 11th separate motorized rifle regiment of the 1st Army Corps of the so-called DPR, 6th motorized rifle regiment of the 2nd Army Corps of the so-called LPR, PMCs.
The Russian military shelled Ukrainian positions along the entire contact line with tanks and artillery of various calibers, in particular in the areas around Bakhmut, Bakhmutske, Zelenopillya, Soledar, Mayorsk, New York, Yakovlivka, Avdiivka, Krasnohorivka, Maryinka, Nevelske and Pervomaiske.
Over the past day, units of the Ukrainian Defense Forces repelled Russian attacks in the areas around Avdiivka, Pervomaiske, Krasnohorivka, Bakhmutske, Ozaryanivka, Ivanhrad, Bakhmut, Soledar, Spirne, Mayorsk, Mykolaivka, Maryinka. However, mercenary detachments of the "Wagner" PMC established themselves in Ivanhrad and advanced several kilometers from the center of Bakhmut. Russian troops captured the intersection of E40 and T1302 roads.
The 100th separate motorized rifle division of the so-called DPR attacked in the direction of Nevelske but failed to accomplish its combat mission and retreated.
Zaporizhzhia direction
● Maryinka – Vasylivka section: approximate length of the line of combat - 200 km, the number of BTGs of the RF Armed Forces - 17, the average width of the combat area of one BTG - 11.7 km;
● Deployed BTGs: 36th separate motorized rifle brigade of the 29th Combined Arms Army, 38th and 64th separate motorized rifle brigades, 69th separate cover brigade of the 35th Combined Arms Army, 5th separate tank brigade, 37 separate motorized rifle brigade of the 36th Combined Arms Army, 135th, 429th, 503rd and 693rd motorized rifle regiments of the 19th motorized rifle division of the 58th Combined Arms Army, 70th, 71st and 291st motorized rifle regiments of the 42nd motorized rifle division of the 58th Combined Arms Army, 136th separate motorized rifle brigade of the 58 Combined Arms Army, 46th and 49th machine gun artillery regiments of the 18th machine gun artillery division of the 68th Army Corps, 39th separate motorized rifle brigade of the 68th Army Corps, 83th separate airborne assault brigade, 40th and 155th separate marines brigades, 22nd separate SOF brigade, 1st Army Corps of the so-called DPR, and 2nd Army Corps of the so-called LPR, PMCs.
The Russian forces shelled more than 15 towns and villages, among them Bohoyavlenka, Vremivka, Zaliznychne, Mykilske, Novopil, Novosilka and Poltavka. They attacked Nikopol and Marhanets with incendiary ammunition.
In the area of Tokmak, Zaporizhzhia Oblast, Ukrainian units hit three Russian S-300 anti-aircraft missile complexes along with personnel. The injured Russian soldiers were transported to a local hospital.
Russian troops repelled a Ukrainian ground attack near Novodarivka. The Russian forces strengthen the front line along the Orihiv-Polohy frontier. For this purpose, they involve the military units of the 58th Army, although they suffered significant losses in previous battles and have not recovered their combat capability.
The Russian units increased reliance on logistics lines through the southern part of Zaporizhzhya Oblast and the western part of Donetsk Oblast after the attack on the Kerch Strait bridge. They built temporary storage and living facilities in Mariupol. Russia's reaction also shows increased fears of possible further degradation of Russian logistics lines through Crimea, in addition to fears related to the Kerch Strait bridge.
Tavriysk direction
- Vasylivka – Stanislav section: approximate length of the battle line – 296 km, the number of BTGs of the RF Armed Forces - 42, the average width of the combat area of one BTG - 7 km;
- Deployed BTGs: 114th, 143rd, and 394th motorized rifle regiments, 218th tank regiment of the 127th motorized rifle division, 57th and 60th separate motorized rifle brigades of the 5th Combined Arms Army, 37th separate motorized rifle brigade of the 36th Combined Arms Army, 429th motorized rifle regiment of the 19th motorized rifle division, 33rd and 255th motorized rifle regiments of the 20th motorized rifle division, 34th and 205th separate motorized rifle brigades of the 49th Combined Arms Army, 70th, 71st and 291st motorized rifle regiments of the 42nd motorized rifle division, 10th, 16th, 346th separate SOF brigades, 239th air assault regiment of the 76th Air assault division, 217th and 331st parachute airborne regiments of the 98th airborne division, 108 air assault regiment, 171st separate airborne assault battalion of the 7th Air assault division, 11th and 83rd separate airborne assault brigade, 4th military base of the 58 Combined Arms Army, 7 military base 49 Combined Arms Army, 224th, 237th and 126th separate coastal defence brigades, 127th separate ranger brigade, 1st and 3rd Army Corps, PMCs.
Areas around more than 20 towns and villages along the contact line suffered artillery fire damage.
Ukrainian troops attacked Russian positions in the northwestern and western Kherson Oblast. They continue to advance south from the current front line in the northwest of Kherson Oblast, advancing on Mylove and further in the direction of Beryslav. Ukrainian troops are trying to advance past Davydiv Brid. They attacked in the direction of Ishchenka and Kostromka from their positions near Davydiv Brid.
The Ukrainian defense forces have liberated Novovasylivka, Novohryhorivka, Nova Kamianka, Tryfonivka and Chervone. They block Russian areas of concentration, limiting the maneuver of the Russian forces. Thus, as a result of a point-fire attack in the Tokarivka area, the Russian forces lost up to 150 people who were killed in action.
Up to 500 mobilized men, equipped with Soviet-era gear, arrived to replenish the 205th separate motorized rifle brigade of the 49th Army.
The Russian repair base in the area of Kalanchak daily receives up to thirty pieces of damaged armored vehicles, which are still fit for repair.
Russian forces brought an unspecified number of Iranian instructors to Dzhankoy (occupied Crimea), Zalizny Port and Hladivtsi (Kherson Oblast) to train Russian operators of Shahed-136 attack UAVs. Iranian instructors directly supervise UAV launches on Ukrainian civilian targets, particularly in Mykolaiv and Odesa Oblasts.
Azov-Black Sea Maritime Operational Area:
The forces of the Russian Black Sea Fleet continue to project force on the coast and the continental part of Ukraine and control the northwestern part of the Black Sea. The ultimate goal is to deprive Ukraine of access to the Black Sea and to maintain control over the captured territories.
In the open sea, the Russian naval group numbers 14 units located along the southwestern coast of Crimea. Among them are 2 carriers of cruise missiles, namely two corvettes of project 21631 carrying a total of 16 missiles.
In the Sea of Azov waters, patrol ships and boats are located on the approaches to the Mariupol and Berdyansk seaports to block the Azov coast.
Russian aviation continues to fly from the Crimean airfields of Belbek and Hvardiyske over the northwestern part of the Black Sea. Over the past day, 12 Su-27, Su-30, and Su-24 aircraft from Belbek and Saki airfields were involved.
The Russian military continues shelling Ukrainian ports and coastal areas. On the morning of October 12, the Russian forces attacked Odesa and Mykolayiv with "Shahid 136" kamikaze drones. Six drones were shot down by air defense. In general, according to various sources, 50- 85% of Russian drones are shot down by the Ukrainian Air Defense Forces.
"Grain Initiative": on October 13, six ships with Ukrainian agricultural products left the ports of Chornomorsk, Odesa, and Pivdenny. According to the Ministry of Infrastructure, 7.38 million tons of agricultural products have already been exported since the first ship with Ukrainian food left. In total, 331 vessels with agricultural products have left Ukrainian ports for the countries of Asia, Europe and Africa.
Ukraine is working to extend the duration of the "grain deal" and is already raising the issue of expanding the range of exports from Ukrainian ports in the future, the Ukrainian Ambassador to Turkey, Vasyl Bodnar, said at an online briefing on Thursday, October 13. The diplomat noted that, in general, the "grain corridor" works well and, despite certain technical difficulties, which arise primarily due to the Russian Federation's attempts to slow down the process of inspecting ships, an average of 8 to 13 ships with Ukrainian agricultural products leave the ports of Ukraine.
It is also known that the President of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, also offered his Russian counterpart to extend the grain agreement, which allowed the Black Sea ports to be opened to export Ukrainian grain.
Russian operational losses from 24.02 to 13.10
Personnel - almost 63,800 people (+420);
Tanks 2,511 (+6);
Armored combat vehicles – 5,167 (+11);
Artillery systems – 1,556 (+17);
Multiple rocket launchers (MLRS) - 357 (+2); Anti-aircraft warfare systems - 183 (0); Vehicles and fuel tanks – 3,935 (+9); Aircraft - 268 (0);
Helicopters – 240 (+6);
UAV operational and tactical level – 1,182 (+33); Intercepted cruise missiles - 316 (0);
Boats / ships - 15 (0).
Ukraine, general news
During his speech at the PACE session, President Volodymyr Zelensky said that Ukraine has only 10% of the air defense systems it needs.
President Zelensky believes that the risk of Russia using weapons of mass destruction directly depends on how resistant Ukraine's Western partners will be to Putin's blackmail and whether he will receive a warning of a strong response. "He behaves like a terrorist... But you can't show weakness in front of this leadership of the Russian Federation. It is already clear that he will "bite off pieces", and the weak position of Europe will allow him to use any weapon he wants - because there will be no consequences", he emphasized.
According to a public opinion poll conducted by the Ilko Kucheriv "Democratic Initiatives" Foundation and the Razumkov Center in August 2022, 67% of surveyed Ukrainian citizens assess the collapse of the Soviet Union positively. The share of those who have a negative attitude to this event is 16%, which is approximately equal to those who are undecided (17%). Compared to 2020, Ukrainians have a much more positive attitude towards the collapse of the Soviet Union. Over two years, the share of those who positively assessed the collapse of the USSR increased by 18%, while the negative assessment of this event decreased by 16%. The most satisfied with the collapse of the Union are citizens who did not live in those times or saw the end of the USSR at a young age. Among them, 70-72% of respondents positively assessed the collapse of the Union.
"Ukrenergo" is stopping the introduction of emergency blackout schedules in Ukraine due to the stabilization of the electricity supply, Volodymyr Kudrytskyi, Chairman of the Board of the National Energy Company, said. He said Ukraine withstood one of the most significant attacks on its energy infrastructure. However, further attacks are to be expected. Therefore, the citizens are still asked to reduce consumption during peak hours. In Sumy Oblast, however, the scheduled power outages will continue because the Russian invaders destroyed about 10 energy infrastructure facilities, the head of Sumy OMA, Dmytro Zhivytskyi, told at a press briefing today.
International diplomatic aspect
Russia has hugely lost its diplomatic battle at the UN. Initially, Moscow tried to make an exemption to the procedure and hold a secret vote. This idea was rejected with fifteen Ayes and one hundred and four Nos. Yet the major defeat came with the voting results for the Resolution of "Territorial integrity of Ukraine: defending the principles of the Charter of the United Nations."
Russia found itself in the company of only four friends - Belarus, DPRK, Nicaragua, and Syria. One hundred and forty-three countries voted for the territorial integrity of Ukraine, whereas thirty- five abstained. Even Iran and Venezuela decided not to cast their vote at all. India and China abstained though they had been vocal about their support of the UN Charter principles and called on "both sides" to resolve the conflict at a negotiation table.
The Resolution reaffirmed member states' "commitment to the sovereignty, independence, unity and territorial integrity of Ukraine within its internationally recognized borders," declared that "the attempted illegal annexation of these regions has no validity under international law," and demanded Russia to "immediately, completely and unconditionally withdraw all of its military forces from the territory of Ukraine." Furthermore, the UN GA expressed its strong support for "the de-escalation of the current situation and a peaceful resolution of the conflict through political dialogue, negotiation, mediation, and other peaceful means, with respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine within its internationally recognized borders and in accordance with the principles of the Charter." These points, along with security guarantees, reparations, and bringing Russian criminals to justice, are part and parcel of a lasting peace formula acceptable to Ukraine.
It's worth noting that this time Russia was even more isolated. In 2014, its illegal annexation of Crimea found the support of ten "friends" of Moscow (Armenia, Belarus, Bolivia, Cuba, DPRK, Nicaragua, Sudan, Syria, Zimbabwe, and Venezuela). A hundred nations rejected the annexation by voting for the UN GA Resolution on "The Territorial integrity of Ukraine" (68/262 of 27 March 2014), and fifty-eight abstained. Only four "friends" (Belarus, DPRK, Eritrea, and Syria) voted against the UN GA Resolution on "Aggression against Ukraine" (ES-11/1 of 2 March 2022). At the same time, it was supported by one hundred forty-one states, with thirty-five nations abstaining.
While Moscow lost its diplomatic battle at the UN General Assembly, it tried to win a "translation battle." The UN GA Resolution is titled: "Territorial integrity of Ukraine: defending the principles of the Charter of the United Nations." However, the Russian translation says "adherence" to the principles of the UN Charter rather than their defense. Ukraine's Permanent Representative to the UN mocked the intentional typo, asking whether the Russian Defense Ministry should now be called the Ministry of Adherence.
After an urgent debate on "Further escalation in the Russian Federation's aggression against Ukraine," the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe has adopted a resolution declaring "the current Russian regime as a terrorist one." The Resolution, supported by nighty- nine, with a single voice abstaining, reiterated the support of Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity, rejected sham referenda, and defined null and void the illegal annexation of the Ukrainian territories. The PACE called Russia to "cease its aggression" and "completely and unconditionally withdraw its occupying forces" not only from all of Ukraine but "from the territory of Georgia and the Republic of Moldova" as well. Moscow was called to "stop threatening recourse to nuclear weapons and commit not to use them."
Meanwhile, the French President showed that the Russian nuclear blackmail works. "We do not want a World War," Emmanuel Macron twitted. And went on to explain in an interview that the French "doctrine is based on the fundamental interests of (our) nation, and they are clearly defined. If there were a nuclear ballistic attack in Ukraine, these interests would not be called into question." Apparently, Emmanuel Macron didn't consult his Allies, first and foremost Joe Biden, who warned Putin of catastrophic consequences, and Liz Truss, who said that she "would do it" [employ nuclear arms] if she were in a position to decide on the use of nuclear arms though the result would be "global annihilation." At her address at the UN, the UK Prime Minister dismissed as "saber-rattling" Vladimir Putin's warning that Russia will use "all the means at our disposal" to protect itself, warning that "this will not work."
Macron's words go against Josep Borrell, EU foreign policy chief, who warned that "Any nuclear attack against Ukraine will create an answer, not a nuclear answer but such a powerful answer from the military side that the Russian Army will be annihilated."
For some reason, the French leader threw away strategic ambiguity, which seems to be a joint NATO stance. Asked what NATO would do if Russia launched a nuclear attack, Jens Stoltenberg said: "We will not go into exactly how we will respond, but of course, this will fundamentally change the nature of the conflict… of course, that would have consequences."
Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel didn't regret her decision to buy large quantities of natural gas from Russia, turning it into the primary gas supplier on her long watch. It appears as whitewashing her strategic miscalculations after it was pointed out by the current Chancellor and the EU foreign policy chief. Olaf Scholz said that Putin was using energy "also as a weapon" and added that he "was always sure that he [Putin] would do that." "I think that we Europeans are facing a situation in which we suffer the consequences of a process that has been lasting for years in which we have decoupled the sources of our prosperity from the sources of our security… Our prosperity has been based on cheap energy coming from Russia. Russian gas – cheap and supposedly affordable, secure, and stable. It has been proved not (to be) the case," Josep Borrell told the EU Ambassadors' gathering.
Meanwhile, the Russian Foreign Ministry summoned ambassadors of Germany, Denmark, and Sweden for a "demarche." Russians aren't happy that they haven't been invited to participate in the investigation on the Nord Stream I and II pipelines incident and threatened not to recognize its findings. Vladimir Putin speculated that the United States is likely to blame for blowing up the strategic corruption pipeline.
Russia, relevant news
On September 28, the Government of the Russian Federation submitted the draft federal budget for 2023 and for the planning period of 2024-2025 to the State Duma. According to calculations of a Russian opposition media outlet Meduza, the authorities decided to keep the record amount of expenses secret, namely more than six and a half trillion rubles, which come up to about a quarter of the expenditures. Classified spending will increase by more than 2.8 trillion rubles in 2023. Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov confirmed on October 3 that resources for the
restoration of the occupied Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia Oblasts of Ukraine have already been budgeted, as the Kremlin calls them the territory of the Russian Federation.
French retailer Auchan has chosen to stay in the Russian market and is even developing its chain of stores, despite the Russian aggression against Ukraine. It continues to help Russia in its import replacement efforts and pay taxes into the Russian state budget. The chain manages 241 stores in Russia, employing about 30 thousand people. The market of the aggressor country generates 11% of revenues for the parent Auchan Holding. Auchan CEO Yves Claude explained the decision to stay by "care for employees and the civilian population," Ekonomichna Pravda reports.
After ceasing its operations in the Russian Federation, IKEA cut 10,000 out of its 12,000 employees, Jesper Brodin, executive director of INGKA Group, which manages the stores, said in a comment to AFP. At the same time, IKEA reported a 6% increase in sales.
Amid falling exports and oil prices, Russia's revenue from oil exports fell to $15.3 billion in September, its lowest this year, according to the International Energy Agency data.
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3. China accuses US of 'Cold War thinking' in security strategy
A Chinese critique:
“Cold War thinking and zero-sum games, sensationalizing geopolitical conflicts and great power competition are unpopular and unconstructive,” said Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning. She called on Washington to “meet China halfway and promote China-U.S. relations back to a healthy and stable track.”
China accuses US of 'Cold War thinking' in security strategy
AP · by JOE McDONALD · October 13, 2022
BEIJING (AP) — The Chinese government on Thursday accused Washington of “Cold War thinking” and appealed for efforts to repair strained relations after President Joe Biden released a national security strategy that calls for “out-competing China” and blocking its efforts to reshape global affairs.
The foreign ministry also accused Washington of trade protectionism after Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said the United States would reinforce its global supply chains to guard against “geopolitical coercion” by China, Russia and other governments.
Biden’s document Wednesday accused China of trying to “erode U.S. alliances” and “create more permissive conditions for its own authoritarian model.” It called for “out-competing China” in political alliances and “global governance” as well as business, technology and military affairs.
U.S.-Chinese relations are at their lowest level in decades, strained by disputes over technology, security, Taiwan and human rights.
“Cold War thinking and zero-sum games, sensationalizing geopolitical conflicts and great power competition are unpopular and unconstructive,” said Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning. She called on Washington to “meet China halfway and promote China-U.S. relations back to a healthy and stable track.”
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The White House document calls for the United States to “maintain a competitive edge” over China, which has antagonized Japan, India and other neighbors with an increasingly assertive foreign policy and growing military.
China’s multibillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative to build ports, railways and other infrastructure across Asia and Africa has fed concern in Washington, Moscow and other capitals that Beijing is trying to build its strategic influence and undermine theirs.
China, with the second-largest global economy and military, is the “only competitor with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military and technological power to do it,” the document says.
Mao, speaking at a regular news briefing, said China was a “defender of the world order” and rejected “sensationalizing geopolitical conflicts and great power competition.”
Mao criticized the “weaponization of economic and trade issues” after Yellen said Wednesday the United States was trying to reduce reliance on China and other Asian suppliers of semiconductors, electric vehicle batteries, solar panels and other technology.
President Xi Jinping’s government is spending heavily to reduce its need for U.S. and other Western technology by developing its own creators of processor chips, artificial intelligence, aerospace and other know-how. Beijing is pressing Chinese companies to reduce reliance on global supply chains by using domestic vendors whenever possible, even if that increases costs.
“We know the cost of Russia’s weaponization of trade as a tool of geopolitical coercion, and we must mitigate similar vulnerabilities to countries like China,” Yellen said in Washington.
The United States should “abandon unilateralism and protectionism,” Mao said, and work with “the international community to maintain the security and smooth flow of the industrial and supply chain.”
AP · by JOE McDONALD · October 13, 2022
4. Helsinki Commission Recommends Kicking Russia Off U.N. Security Council
I would not hold my breath,
Excerpts;
There is a debate about how readily Russia might be booted from the Security Council. Ukraine, for instance, could take Russia’s old seat, warmed by the Soviet Union. Security Council members could push through a nine-country majority vote on Russia’s membership if the United States or another member backs a challenge by a Ukrainian representative to issue credentials to fulfill the Soviet Union’s old seat, wrote Thomas Grant of the University of Cambridge.
But such a move could prompt legal and political blowback. Since Ukraine was a charter member of the United Nations in 1946—added to the body by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin along with Belarus in a negotiated effort to give Moscow more votes—some doubt that it could lay any claim to Russia’s membership. Ukraine also supported Russia’s continuance of the Soviet Union’s United Nations membership in 1991 after it came into the body as an independent state (Russia was not a member of the United Nations until the breakup of the Soviet Union). From a legal standpoint, booting Russia in favor of Ukraine could require an amendment to the United Nations charter, something that has happened only five times in the world body’s 76-year history.
And despite the vote earlier this week and though several current U.N. security council members voted to denounce Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in March, some experts are skeptical that a challenge to remove Moscow from the body would fly politically. Russia has repeatedly received votes to continue sitting on other United Nations bodies, such as the United Nations Economic and Social Council, and experts said that smaller states—even those that have stood up against Russia since February—might be worried about the precedent that the United States booting a permanent member of the security council could set.
Helsinki Commission Recommends Kicking Russia Off U.N. Security Council
Foreign Policy · by Jack Detsch, Robbie Gramer · October 13, 2022
Not so fast, experts say.
By Jack Detsch, a Pentagon and national security reporter at Foreign Policy., and Robbie Gramer, a diplomacy and national security reporter at Foreign Policy.
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A general view shows a United Nations Security Council meeting at the UN headquarters in New York on September 30, 2022.
A overhead view shows a United Nations Security Council meeting at U.N. headquarters in New York on Sept. 30. Ed Jones/AFP via Getty Images
An independent U.S. government human rights and security watchdog is calling on the Biden administration to take immediate steps to remove Russia as a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, after Russia hit civilian areas in Kyiv and other major Ukrainian cities this week with missile strikes.
In a letter to U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken obtained by Foreign Policy, the bipartisan Helsinki Commission urged the United States to initiate a protest of Russia’s standing as a permanent member of the Security Council based on the violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty, which U.S. President Joe Biden has said flies in the face of the U.N. Charter.
Under the long-shot plan, Ukraine would issue credentials to a representative to claim the seat, allowing the United States or another nation to protest Russia’s standing as a Security Council member, which derives from a 1991 deal for Moscow to retain the Soviet Union’s permanent seat after the country collapsed. That could force a vote for Russia’s ability to remain on the Security Council.
“We urge you to initiate a process to replace Russia on the UN Security Council as the fifth permanent member,” Reps. Steve Cohen and Joe Wilson, a co-chair and the ranking member on the Helsinki Commission, respectively, wrote to Blinken on Wednesday. “Russia is not a responsible international actor and is unbecoming of a seat on the UN Security Council. Moreover, it has no right to this seat. Rather, it was provided to Russia in a deal after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Ukraine could and should be recognized to fill the USSR seat rather than Russia.”
The push also comes as Russia has faced criticism in New York from U.N. member states about the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The U.N. General Assembly on Wednesday voted overwhelmingly to condemn Russia’s attempts to annex Ukrainian territory as illegal in an action that underscored Moscow’s growing diplomatic isolation at the world body. Only four countries—North Korea, Belarus, Syria, and Nicaragua—backed Russia, while 143 countries voted against it.
Under the 1991 deal, Russia pledged to respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of its neighbors. Belarus and Ukraine were the two U.N. founding states that were also members of the Soviet Union, dating back to 1946, but as Belarus’s pro-Moscow government has “aided and assisted Russia in the war against Ukraine,” it should be deemed “unsuitable” for the seat, Cohen and Wilson wrote to Blinken.
For months, Ukrainian officials have also been urging for Russia to be expelled from the Security Council, fearing that it could use its veto power as one of the body’s five permanent members to escape condemnation for the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Last month, before this week General Assembly vote, Russia vetoed a draft Security Council resolution circulated by the United States and Albania that called Moscow’s illegal annexation of four Ukrainian territories as “a threat to international peace and security.”
Ukraine’s push to expel Russia from the security council dates back to before the invasion, but officials–all the way up to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky–have re-upped their concerns after Russian massacres, such as in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha, fearing Russia could continue to obstruct efforts to condemn human rights abuses.
“Where is the security that the Security Council was supposed to guarantee?” Zelenskyy asked in an impassioned speech to the security council after visiting Bucha in April. “Ladies and gentlemen, are you ready to close the U.N.? Do you think the time for international order is gone?” (Zelensky repeated his plea at the U.N. General Assembly meeting in September).
There is a debate about how readily Russia might be booted from the Security Council. Ukraine, for instance, could take Russia’s old seat, warmed by the Soviet Union. Security Council members could push through a nine-country majority vote on Russia’s membership if the United States or another member backs a challenge by a Ukrainian representative to issue credentials to fulfill the Soviet Union’s old seat, wrote Thomas Grant of the University of Cambridge.
But such a move could prompt legal and political blowback. Since Ukraine was a charter member of the United Nations in 1946—added to the body by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin along with Belarus in a negotiated effort to give Moscow more votes—some doubt that it could lay any claim to Russia’s membership. Ukraine also supported Russia’s continuance of the Soviet Union’s United Nations membership in 1991 after it came into the body as an independent state (Russia was not a member of the United Nations until the breakup of the Soviet Union). From a legal standpoint, booting Russia in favor of Ukraine could require an amendment to the United Nations charter, something that has happened only five times in the world body’s 76-year history.
And despite the vote earlier this week and though several current U.N. security council members voted to denounce Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in March, some experts are skeptical that a challenge to remove Moscow from the body would fly politically. Russia has repeatedly received votes to continue sitting on other United Nations bodies, such as the United Nations Economic and Social Council, and experts said that smaller states—even those that have stood up against Russia since February—might be worried about the precedent that the United States booting a permanent member of the security council could set.
“A lot of states worry about the general precedent for the U.S. and its allies trying to exclude countries from U.N. forums,” Richard Gowan, the United Nations director for the International Crisis Group, told Foreign Policy in a phone interview. “They worry that if Russia can be somehow turfed out of the security council, then in the future, the West will start trying to throw smaller countries that it doesn’t like out of U.N. bodies or trying to use the U.N. charter rules to expel smaller countries from the U.N. altogether.”
The United States also appears to be looking at other options to deal with Russia’s intransigence on the Security Council. Biden in his address to the U.N. General Assembly last month proposed reforming the U.N. Security Council, but only spoke of adding new members, rather than removing one. “The United States supports increasing the number of both permanent and non-permanent representatives of the Council. This includes permanent seats for those nations we’ve long supported and permanent seats for countries in Africa [and] Latin America and the Caribbean,” he said.
While experts and diplomats widely agree that the current makeup of the UNSC doesn’t reflect the current world order, few believe that the five major powers on the UNSC—namely China and Russia—would unanimously agree to adding new permanent members to the council.
If reforming the U.N. Security Council is indeed a longshot, Russia may have greased the wheels for more serious discussions on it after it launched its invasion of Ukraine in late February, leading to sweeping international condemnation and transforming Putin into a pariah on the world stage. And Moscow put itself on unsteady footing with the sham referendum vote on Ukrainian soil, experts said, opening themselves up to another round of condemnation.
“By challenging the principle of territorial integrity, the Russians managed to force a lot of other countries to voice direct support for Ukraine again,” said Gowan. “The Russians are in a pretty bad place diplomatically in New York right now.”
Jack Detsch is a Pentagon and national security reporter at Foreign Policy. Twitter: @JackDetsch
Robbie Gramer is a diplomacy and national security reporter at Foreign Policy. Twitter: @RobbieGramer
5. Opn Gothic Serpent and the Search for the Missing | SOF News
Crisis drives creativity:
Maj. Gen. (then Capt.) Robert Walters, the Assistant S-2, 1st Battalion, 160th SOAR, which deployed with TF Ranger, explained that after other search methods failed, the S-2 shop reached out to Durant’s wife for a list of his favorite songs, “divided the city into quadrants and then put speakers on [their] helicopters and played his favorite song, a different one in each of the four quadrants.” He explained their hope was Durant would hear the song and mention it in a Red Cross message, helping them narrow down the search. Unfortunately, none of Durant’s messages were mailed but, on 14 October 1993, after being held captive for eleven days, he was released to the International Committee of the Red Cross.
Opn Gothic Serpent and the Search for the Missing | SOF News
sof.news · by DVIDS · October 14, 2022
By Fiona G. Holter, USAICoE Staff Historian, October 13, 2022.
On 14 October 1993, CWO3 Michael Durant, a pilot with the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (SOAR), was released by Somali insurgents after being held captive for eleven days following the crash of his MH-60L Blackhawk. The Blackhawk, Super 64, was the second helicopter shot down in the Battle of Mogadishu after a high-risk raid by Task Force (TF) Ranger to capture two high value, Somali National Alliance (SNA) assets.
After successfully completing a high-risk raid to capture high-value SNA assets in the Habr Gedir sector of Mogadishu on 3 October, TF Ranger—a team of Army Special Operations Forces (SOF) and support elements—was faced with a new mission after enemy insurgents shot down Super 61, a Blackhawk piloted by CWO4 Clifton “Elvis” Wolcott and CWO3 Donovan “Bull” Briley, who were providing air support to the mission. As TF Ranger saw the helicopter crash, they diverted their resources to secure the crash site and rescue the crew.
As ground troops raced clan militias to the Super 61 crash site, in what became a baited ambush, Super 64, a second Blackhawk piloted by CWO3 Durant was shot down approximately twelve minutes later. A Quick Reaction Force (QRF) comprised of infantry from 2d Battalion, 14th Infantry and 1st Battalion, 87th Infantry were deployed as combat support as well as search and rescue. Supported by Pakistani tanks and Malaysian armored personnel carriers, the QRF teams eventually secured the Super 61 crash site, retrieved the dead and wounded, and provided support to elements of TF Ranger as they redeployed to safety. However, by the time they reached the Super 64 crash site, the crew was missing.
In the aftermath of the Battle of Mogadishu, casualties totaled thirteen dead, eighty-two wounded, and six missing. Lt. Col. (later Col.) James T. Faust, the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) J-2 Chief of Intelligence Operations, TF Ranger, explained that with six missing soldiers, TF Ranger quickly shifted their mission. He said, “everything we built for TF Ranger intelligence focused on Aideed and his infrastructure;” now their mission was to build a new collection plan, combining the efforts of human and signal intelligence and surveillance systems to find the soldiers missing in action.
Within a couple of days, HUMINT sources reported Somali insurgents were dragging dead American soldiers through the streets, which was later confirmed by CNN footage. They also recovered a soldier whose body was left at a roadblock within the city. Eventually, five of the missing were located and declared dead; however, the search for Durant continued.
Maj. Gen. (then Capt.) Robert Walters, the Assistant S-2, 1st Battalion, 160th SOAR, which deployed with TF Ranger, explained that after other search methods failed, the S-2 shop reached out to Durant’s wife for a list of his favorite songs, “divided the city into quadrants and then put speakers on [their] helicopters and played his favorite song, a different one in each of the four quadrants.” He explained their hope was Durant would hear the song and mention it in a Red Cross message, helping them narrow down the search. Unfortunately, none of Durant’s messages were mailed but, on 14 October 1993, after being held captive for eleven days, he was released to the International Committee of the Red Cross.
The events of 3-4 October 1993 prompted withdrawal of U.S. forces from Somalia. According to CWO4 (Retired) Gregory Peterson, a senior civilian analyst at JSOC at the time of the raid, “While the common legacy of TF Ranger is the casualties associated with the October raid, that operation survives today as [a] hallmark of surgical Special Operations units.”
Overall, it was a costly learning experience and one that also demonstrated the courage of SOF Soldiers who earned two Medals of Honor. In 2021, the Army and Congress approved upgrades for sixty awards for valor in the Battle of Mogadishu, including fifty-eight new Silver Stars and two Distinguished Flying Crosses.
**********
This story by Fiona G. Holter was first published on October 12, 2022 by the U.S. Army Intelligence Center of Excellence and posted by the Defense Visual Information Distribution System. DVIDS content is in the public domain.
Photo: Crew of Super 64, September 1993. From left: Winn Mahuron, Tommy Field, Bill Cleveland, Ray Frank, and Mike Durant. The crew served with TF Ranger in Operation Gothic Serpent in Somalia. Photo by Maj. Robin Cox.
Read more about “Operation Gothic Serpent” and the Battle of Mogadishu, SOF News, July 18, 2020.
sof.news · by DVIDS · October 14, 2022
6. Will Xi’s Paranoia Defeat Him?
Excerpts:
Like Hu, Xi wants to shift social management down to the grassroots to relieve the center’s burden. He has adopted the Hu-era slogan: “Small issues don’t leave the village, big things don’t leave the township, and no conflicts are passed on to higher authorities.” Since becoming party secretary of Zhejiang province in 2002, Xi has been promoting a method developed in a Zhejiang township during the Mao era in 1963. It is called the “Fengqiao experience,” referring to the way this community involved the masses in its struggle against reactionaries, along with the party and the police. Mao believed pressure from one’s neighbors is more effective than formal enforcement at bringing deviant thinking into line. It is what in CCP lingo is called a “mass line” approach to stability maintenance.
Xi has promoted the Fengqiao model of party-led social control at the village, township, and community levels as well as combined it with grid management, which uses surveillance technology on a mass scale. The high-tech version of the Fengqiao experience is supposed to be rolled out nationwide in the years to come. Many Chinese living in apartment communities throughout the country welcomed this high-tech social policing system as a force for good during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, but they resented it during the enforced monthslong lockdowns during the omicron surge. People outside of the country also have become more afraid of artificial intelligence technology empowering an Orwellian totalitarian state in China.
Xi’s sense of political vulnerability is reflected in his strivings to impose almost totalitarian social control on Chinese society and eliminate all potential rivals. Security has eclipsed economic development as the CCP’s defining goal. But this approach to governance could backfire on Xi during his third term. A party that puts ideological loyalty ahead of economic results is not going to retain its popular appeal for long.
Will Xi’s Paranoia Defeat Him?
The Chinese leader has taken security worries to a new level.
By Susan Shirk, chair of the 21st Century China Center at the University of California, San Diego.
Foreign Policy · by Susan Shirk · October 13, 2022
Over the past decade, Chinese President Xi Jinping has expressed many of the same anxieties as his predecessor, Hu Jintao, about domestic threats to social stability. Both leaders have worried about the fragility of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) rule in a rapidly changing society and sought to secure it by exerting greater control over social and economic life. Both, moreover, see security dangers as emanating mainly from domestic problems, though they also cast a suspicious eye on “malign” international forces. As Xi often observes, the security threats confronting China come from the “increasingly complex” external and internal threats that “are interlocked and can be mutually activated.”
The cover of Overreach: How China Derailed Its Peaceful Rise
This article is adapted from Overreach: How China Derailed Its Peaceful Rise by Susan Shirk (Oxford University Press, 424 pp., $29.95, October 2022).
However, Xi takes the paranoia that has been endemic to Chinese politics since Mao Zedong’s rule to an extreme. China is stronger than ever. It has a hugely successful economy, a capable military, and growing global influence. The government enjoys a high level of public support. Yet Xi’s fixation on security betrays his persistent feelings of vulnerability. Xi’s “overall national security outlook” is more holistic than Hu’s, more party-centered, and more explicitly highlights external threats.
In 2013, Xi established the Central National Security Commission to focus on domestic security threats and, more broadly, turned China’s political system into what one security scholar has described as a “national security state.” Another has argued that Xi’s grand strategy centers on the survival of CCP rule. Rather than being just a “constraint on foreign policy,” internal security “is one of the chief ends of China’s strategy.” No wonder Xi’s Politburo put political security first in its national security strategy for 2021 to 2025. Security considerations inform every party and government decision. Nearly every phrase in the communique of a CCP Central Committee meeting in October 2020 included the word “security” (anquan); the document itself was an illustration of the goal of “integrating the development of security into every domain,” as the communique put it.
Xi sees himself as waging a life-or-death struggle for the survival of party rule against subversive forces directed by hostile foreign governments and organizations. Although China’s security environment had not drastically deteriorated when Xi came into office, his perspective on it was “darker and more menacing” than Hu’s. Xi may be less sanguine about China’s international situation because by 2012, Beijing’s belligerent actions already were estranging other countries. And because his power is more concentrated than Hu’s—and his decisions more arbitrary—Xi’s fears that his critics are plotting his downfall are also greater.
Xi’s moves to suppress domestic threats have often shocked the world in part because they have been so sudden. These include the revision of the constitution to allow Xi to remain leader for life, the incarceration of around 1 million Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang, the imposition of the 2020 national security law that destroyed Hong Kong’s freedoms almost overnight, the 2021 regulatory storm against private internet firms, and the two-month COVID-19 lockdown of Shanghai. These actions came as bolts from the blue because Xi decided on them with little broader debate or deliberation. The combination of Xi’s unbridled power and the competition of other officials to prove their unquestioning loyalty to him propelled policy toward overreach.
Xi’s sudden decision to abolish presidential term limits by revising the constitution in 2017, before the end of his first term, remains one of the most stunningly unexpected events in my decades as a China watcher. I am not alone. His power grab sent shock waves throughout China and abroad.
One Chinese private businessman told me shortly afterward that he felt traumatized by Xi’s move. If the provincial leaders, who constituted the largest bloc in the CCP Central Committee, had been unable to prevent Xi from destroying the regular turnover of top leadership, he said, neither would they be able to stop him from expropriating private wealth. The 2021 regulatory storm against private internet firms seemed a fulfillment of the businessman’s darkest fears.
Overturning the hard-won rules of succession of power could backfire on Xi. A Leninist party leader who doesn’t share power or patronage is bound to frustrate other politicians, especially if no end to the monopoly is in sight. And many of Xi’s policy choices are controversial; critiques have appeared online before being erased by censors. Even after purging large numbers of officials during his first and second terms, Xi can’t be fully confident he has the loyalty of party elites. As one political scientist observed about Xi’s China, “elite discontent seems to be growing faster than social discontent.”
Overturning the hard-won rules of succession of power could backfire on Xi.
The inquisitors who had helped Xi get rid of potential enemies and consolidate his power in 2012 and 2018 are now themselves the targets of a third wave of purges to help Xi feel safer. As political scientist Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote in his classic 1956 study of the “permanent purge” in Soviet totalitarianism, after some officials fall, “the vacuum thus created is rapidly filled by a realignment of power, and the internal struggle continues between new alliances, new leaders, new pretenders.” In the meantime, Brzezinski wrote, the purge “has swallowed more victims.” The same could be said of Xi’s China.
It all came full circle when China’s former minister of justice, Fu Zhenghua, a man sometimes called “Xi’s muscle,” was himself arrested in April for corruption and disciplinary infractions. Another former deputy head of public security, Sun Lijun—who was considered so reliable that Xi sent him to Wuhan, China, after the COVID-19 outbreak—was arrested last year. Xi replaced Fu and Sun with two of his more trusted followers, Wang Xiaohong and Chen Yixin, who are likely to be elevated to the Politburo at the 20th Party Congress. Just weeks before the Party Congress, Fu and Sun were sent to prison for life.
By last fall, nearly 180,000 officials working in China’s judicial and law enforcement sectors as well as its party disciplinary departments had been reprimanded or punished for “violating party discipline and the law,” according to the leading group in charge of the “rectification” campaign. Xi’s campaign is modeled on the Yan’an Rectification Movement of 1942, which was about achieving Mao’s goal to “‘drive the blade in’ and ‘scrape poison off the bone,’ setting aside personal loyalties to expose wayward colleagues.” Chen, who is heading up Xi’s campaign, has called for officials within the political and legal system to “root out the harmful members of the herd.”
Read More
Xi holds an umbrella in the rain as he walks past a soldier.
The Chinese president faces tough choices on how to restore the country’s economic momentum.
Xi’s centralized version of social control is far more granular and pervasive—closer to a totalitarian state—than Hu’s fragmented bureaucratic version. The regime has unprecedented capabilities to surveil people and collect and analyze their personal data. For instance, China leads the world in facial recognition artificial intelligence. The security apparatus has grafted these surveillance technologies onto a system inherited from the Mao era of mutual supervision by neighbors.
Xi has consolidated all the internal security organizations, including the Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission, and placed them under the CCP’s Central National Security Commission, a body Xi chairs. He holds in his hands both internal security and the military. Xi has also had the legislature pass laws on national security, cybersecurity, counterterrorism, foreign nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and national intelligence. These laws formalize the party state’s long-standing broad powers over all Chinese citizens, reinforcing the idea that everyone is required to assist in protecting the state’s security. The 2017 Foreign NGO Law, for example, drove most international NGOs out of China because it required them to be supervised by the Ministry of Public Security; as of October, only 671 NGO offices were successfully registered.
Like Hu, Xi wants to shift social management down to the grassroots to relieve the center’s burden. He has adopted the Hu-era slogan: “Small issues don’t leave the village, big things don’t leave the township, and no conflicts are passed on to higher authorities.” Since becoming party secretary of Zhejiang province in 2002, Xi has been promoting a method developed in a Zhejiang township during the Mao era in 1963. It is called the “Fengqiao experience,” referring to the way this community involved the masses in its struggle against reactionaries, along with the party and the police. Mao believed pressure from one’s neighbors is more effective than formal enforcement at bringing deviant thinking into line. It is what in CCP lingo is called a “mass line” approach to stability maintenance.
Xi has promoted the Fengqiao model of party-led social control at the village, township, and community levels as well as combined it with grid management, which uses surveillance technology on a mass scale. The high-tech version of the Fengqiao experience is supposed to be rolled out nationwide in the years to come. Many Chinese living in apartment communities throughout the country welcomed this high-tech social policing system as a force for good during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, but they resented it during the enforced monthslong lockdowns during the omicron surge. People outside of the country also have become more afraid of artificial intelligence technology empowering an Orwellian totalitarian state in China.
Xi’s sense of political vulnerability is reflected in his strivings to impose almost totalitarian social control on Chinese society and eliminate all potential rivals. Security has eclipsed economic development as the CCP’s defining goal. But this approach to governance could backfire on Xi during his third term. A party that puts ideological loyalty ahead of economic results is not going to retain its popular appeal for long.
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Foreign Policy · by Susan Shirk · October 13, 2022
7. Integrated By Design: Building a Partner Air Force
Excerpts:
Unfortunately, the gains made after these changes in 2009 risk being lost if the air advisor enterprise continues on its current trajectory, despite significant demand remaining. Take Ukraine: Billions of dollars of Western equipment have bolstered defense efforts against Russian aggression. The House and Senate, in each of their versions of the National Defense Authorization Act, have called for studies on transitioning Kyiv from the Soviet-era MiG-29 to more modern American-made F-16s. These calls to modernize Ukraine’s air force will require investments in U.S. training capacity. This is a perfect example of where air advisors can enable a U.S. partner, beyond simply selling or providing weapons and a two-year training program.
The Air Force has a lengthy history of demand from partners seeking to improve their air operations capabilities and has an interest in building partners’ air capabilities to bolster collective security and improve interoperability. Yet the service has not implemented an operational program for developing these partners’ air services, instead choosing to focus on the sale of military equipment while foregoing critical development and interoperability needs. The lack of operational organization, dedicated resourcing, and tasking authorities at the strategic level have constrained the air advising mission at a time when it is more critical than ever to develop security partnerships. Without standing units dedicated, resourced, and aligned to this mission, the Air Force is lacking a critical capability to effectively integrate security partners into its global priorities.
Integrated By Design: Building a Partner Air Force - War on the Rocks
ETHAN BROWN AND LT. COL. JONATHAN MAGILL
warontherocks.com · by Ethan Brown · October 14, 2022
The demands for American military training is high. Yet, the program the United States has used to train partners around the world to fly is being cut without a replacement. The U.S. Air Force has an interest in building the capacity of partners and allies to expand U.S. reach and influence, but the security force assistance programs that tasked air advisors to help train foreign militaries is at risk of being cut, leaving the United States unable to keep up with foreign demand for operational training.
Air Force Chief of Staff, General C.Q. Brown, recently touted the strong bonds that should be present with allies and partners to succeed in the next conflict, stating that the Air Force must be “integrated by design.” However, the Air Force has never truly institutionalized the security force assistance mission, despite its recent successes and strategic partnerships being a priority of the chief of staff. Security force assistance has been subject to Air Force major commands, but not institutionalized at Headquarters Air Force, a result of leaders not fully understanding its capability to build partnerships or how to invest in the program to achieve maximum efficacy.
The Air Force’s air advisor programs, its version of security force assistance, faced extensive and complex issues, but overcame many challenges to have success in Iraq and Afghanistan. Air advisors have also had significant success in developing air forces outside of combat zones. Security force assistance, by definition, is meant to bolster capabilities amongst partners and has roots as far back as Baron Frederick von Steuben advising George Washington’s Continental Army. It was employed by U.S. special forces during the Cold War all over the world. Investing in security force assistance programs can help to provide partners with American military experts to develop airpower capabilities and extend American influence in places where the United States has security interests but cannot deploy forces unilaterally or maintain a large permanent presence.
Become a Member
The service has the ability to operationalize this capability, capitalizing on its benefits for the United States by improving military interoperability, building influence and access, and increasing partner capability in strategically important regions, especially with developing states in critical regions like Africa, the Middle East, and the Pacific. The programs explicitly provide operational capabilities to states and support America’s foreign military sales program. The value to American partners is that security force assistance can help to train the airmen and aircrew in these countries, after U.S. equipment is delivered or using a partner’s existing equipment. Air Force security assistance should be considered an operational capability, similar to the Army Security Force Assistance Brigades. Like the Army, the Air Force’s standing advisor units would be able to solve several issues that have plagued this program in the past. Opportunities have emerged, like Ukraine’s receiving extensive American weapons and materiel, for these advisor units to advance American security interests by building interoperability with partners whose security interests mirror its own.
Failure to Understand Air Power Security Assistance
We are not the first to make an argument in favor of creating a functional combatant command that operationalizes security assistance. However, the issue has become more urgent because the budget allotment for Air Force advisor units is not being renewed in 2023. It is unclear if this was purposeful or just overlooked by service planners who remain unaware of air advising demand. When the authors asked, both the 14th Fighter Wing and 492nd Special Operations Wing public affairs offices had no answer for why these advisor units were being divested. Elimination of these units now removes the Air Force’s institutional advisor capability because these personnel will simply be absorbed into their original career fields and will no longer be dedicated to working with American partners.
Air advisors are specially qualified airmen who deploy to partner nations and train host personnel on air operations, ranging from mission support to offensive air operations (like light air attack and close air support). In Afghanistan and Iraq, air advisors trained partner security forces in mission planning, aircraft maintenance and sustainment, and validation of air operations capabilities. Air Force advisors, for example, trained Afghan pilots how to fly the A-29 light attack aircraft in combat. The A-29 program and the performance of Afghan pilots was one of the only positive findings in the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction’s April 2022 report. As the program matured, Afghan pilots returned to Kabul to begin successful offensive operations against the Taliban. It was not until American forces curtailed support and began withdrawing that the program ceased operations and fell alongside the Afghan army.
Funding for an advisor unit ranges from $1 to $2 million annually without flying operations and can reach $10–15 million for those units with a flying mission. Comparatively, the Air Force’s active foreign military sales casework had a backlog of $226 billion in 2021 because of a lengthy and convoluted process of delivering equipment. Part of the problem with understanding security force assistance, which is perhaps unique to the Air Force, is that it often gets confused with and lumped under the broader term of security cooperation.
In the Air Force, the agency charged with all security cooperation is the office of the secretary of Air Force/international affairs. That organization focuses on Title 22 foreign military sales and not security force assistance operations. Title 22 refers to the military code regulating the sale of U.S. military equipment to allies and partner states. Security cooperation focuses on the initial procurement of military equipment and provides initial training to those partners, but often not full operationalization or integration into joint or multinational operations. It is security force assistance advisors who provide that operational and integration capability.
Traditional security cooperation activities are sometimes referred to as “type 1” and security force assistance activities as “type 2.” Type 1 is broadly defined as the Title 22 foreign military sales and predominantly focuses on partner education in the United States and/or equipment delivery. For example, the OV-10 Bronco close air attack platform was divested from U.S. inventories and transferred to the Philippines in 2019. The Filipino armed forces had already been flying the OV-10 aircraft, so it required no additional training from the United States. A type 2 security assistance operation is when advisors are sent to a partner nation and work within their aviation enterprise to fully train the host nation’s forces, not necessarily tied to any sale of U.S. equipment. For example, U.S. and NATO advisors joined Mediterranean security forces for the Orion and Iniochos 2022 air exercises, where Hellenic forces were trained in a variety of interoperability exercises by Western advisors.
How Does the Air Force Make This Happen?
To date, security force assistance has not been integrated into the Air Force’s doctrine and operational plans. As a first step, this should change, and this mission should be organized as a program, trained and equipped above the major command level. This simple change would help to overcome the biggest hurdle: recognizing the criticality of this capability as a core mission for the service. After this basic step, this program should be tasked by a security force assistance tasking authority based on support requirements sourced from combatant commanders whose theaters coincide with foreign military sales and strategic partnership priorities. This would allow Air Force leaders to use this program to address prioritized partners, whose receipt of foreign military sales and equipment could now achieve an initial operational capacity through advisor-led training and operational integration.
The challenge is that the service does not accurately forecast security force assistance requirements. This is the result of strategic planners not asking operational commanders for security assistance capabilities, which leads to an inability to prioritize theaters where U.S. advisors could be used to increase partner force capabilities. Admittedly, it is not easy to determine requirements for security assistance. According to the RAND Corporation, combatant command campaign plans are not explicit enough to plan and forecast security force assistance operations without knowledgeable staff. This issue could be resolved by including this program in Air Force strategy documents and creating a mechanism for combatant commanders to leverage security force assistance programs in locations where the United States has a strategic need to leverage partner nation capabilities.
Security force assistance should be considered an operational capability, worthy of its own enterprise structure, just like the Army’s security force assistance brigades. Security force assistance should be cross-functional, and not limited by a single major command’s mission or capabilities. Like the Army, the Air Force’s standing advisor units should be led by a senior officer, with the authority to assign personnel, and not be stove-piped into a functional or geographically aligned major command. Even if these changes are made, security force assistance capabilities will still be in limited supply because of the failure to institutionalize capable units, which has resulted in a small number of advisor-capable personnel dedicated to this mission. To truly operationalize security force assistance, the Air Force should consider creating enough units to meet specific demands. However, even when appropriately staffed, the demand for advising capabilities will be limited in initial scope, and combatant commanders would have to submit theater priorities to officers who would then decides how to task personnel to different combatant commanders. These commanders would then have the ability to begin sorting support requests with available assets and send advisors to designated places in their area of responsibility.
Sealing the Deal
Selling American military equipment to partners is important for developing partnerships. But integrating those purchasers’ security forces through standardized training and development ensures credible partners as the United States looks for opportunities to balance power abroad. However, as a 2009 report shows, the demand for air advising outstrips the supply of air advisors. According to that study, “components lacking assigned forces have a large unmet demand for aviation irregular warfare, building partnerships, and air advising capabilities … the Air Force lacks standing, discrete, dedicated units and lacks a process for planning how to develop aviation capabilities in less-developed countries.” At the time, both the Special Operations and Air Mobility Commands invested in standing units to meet mission demands. Those units would serve worldwide demands with relative success, while establishing a template for an air power security force assistance capability writ large.
Unfortunately, the gains made after these changes in 2009 risk being lost if the air advisor enterprise continues on its current trajectory, despite significant demand remaining. Take Ukraine: Billions of dollars of Western equipment have bolstered defense efforts against Russian aggression. The House and Senate, in each of their versions of the National Defense Authorization Act, have called for studies on transitioning Kyiv from the Soviet-era MiG-29 to more modern American-made F-16s. These calls to modernize Ukraine’s air force will require investments in U.S. training capacity. This is a perfect example of where air advisors can enable a U.S. partner, beyond simply selling or providing weapons and a two-year training program.
The Air Force has a lengthy history of demand from partners seeking to improve their air operations capabilities and has an interest in building partners’ air capabilities to bolster collective security and improve interoperability. Yet the service has not implemented an operational program for developing these partners’ air services, instead choosing to focus on the sale of military equipment while foregoing critical development and interoperability needs. The lack of operational organization, dedicated resourcing, and tasking authorities at the strategic level have constrained the air advising mission at a time when it is more critical than ever to develop security partnerships. Without standing units dedicated, resourced, and aligned to this mission, the Air Force is lacking a critical capability to effectively integrate security partners into its global priorities.
Become a Member
Ethan Brown is a senior fellow for defense studies at the Mike Rogers Center for Intelligence and Global Affairs (Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress). He is a U.S. Air Force Special Warfare veteran, having spent 11 years as a special operations joint terminal attack controller and air advisor. He is on Twitter @LibertyStoic.
Lt. Col. Jonathan Magill is an active-duty Air Force officer currently assigned to the Air Staff as the air advising cross functional manager, and previously commanded the 818th Mobility Support Advisory Squadron. He has significant experience in various roles throughout the security cooperation enterprise and has over four thousand hours of flight time in the C-17A and C-208B. As an air advisor, he has deployed throughout Africa and the Middle East.
The views expressed are those of the authors and do not reflect the official guidance or position of the U.S. government, the Department of Defense, the U.S. Air Force, or the U.S. Space Force.
Commentary
warontherocks.com · by Ethan Brown · October 14, 2022
8. Russia, under pressure in southern Ukraine, captures villages in east
Russia, under pressure in southern Ukraine, captures villages in east
Reuters · by Max Hunder
- Summary
- Governor of Russian region says all Kherson residents welcome
- Kherson is one of four provinces Russia claims to have annexed
- Ukraine defends Bakhmut in east in 'brutal' fighting -Zelenskiy
KYIV/KUPIANSK, Ukraine, Oct 14 (Reuters) - Russian-backed forces have made some advances in eastern Ukraine, Britain said on Friday, even as Moscow's hold weakens in the south, where a Russian-installed official has advised residents to flee a region Russia claims to have annexed.
A British intelligence update said forces led by the private Russian military company Wagner Group had captured the villages of Optyine and Ivangrad south of the fiercely-contested town of Bakhmut, the first such advance in more than three months.
"There have been few, if any, other settlements seized by regular Russian or separatist forces since early July," said the daily update from London, which normally focuses on Ukrainian battlefield successes.
Ukraine launched a counteroffensive in late August against Russian forces occupying the country since the start of their invasion in February, pushing them out of the northeast and putting them under heavy pressure in the south.
Its main focus now is Kherson - one of four partially occupied Ukrainian provinces that Russia claims to have annexed in recent weeks, and arguably the most strategically important.
Russia's TASS news agency said evacuees from the Kherson region were expected to begin arriving in Russia on Friday, a day after a Russian-installed official advised all residents of the region to flee, especially those around Kherson city.
While some people in Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine have fled to Russia as Ukrainian forces advance, others have reported being forced towards Russia and others still have fled westward to Ukrainian-controlled parts of their country.
STRATEGIC TARGET
A flight of civilians from Kherson would be a blow to Russia's claim last month to have annexed around 15% of Ukraine's territory and incorporated an area the size of Portugal into Russia.
Kherson city, the only major conurbation Russia has captured intact since invading in February, controls the only land route to the Crimea peninsula seized by Russia in 2014 and the mouth of the Dnipro river that bisects Ukraine.
Since the start of October, Ukrainian forces have burst through Russia's front lines in the region in their biggest advance in the south since the war began, aiming to cut Russian troops off from supply lines and escape routes across the river.
Ukraine said earlier on Friday that its armed forces had retaken 600 settlements in the past month, including 75 in the Kherson region and 43 in the eastern Donetsk region, where Optyine and Ivangrad lie.
"The area of liberated Ukrainian territories has increased significantly," the Ministry for Reintegration of the Temporary Occupied Territories said on its website.
1/9
A Russian military truck drives past an unexploded munition during Ukraine-Russia conflict in the Russia-controlled village of Chornobaivka, Ukraine July 26, 2022. REUTERS/Alexander Ermochenko
Reuters was not immediately able to confirm the battlefield reports.
Moscow calls the conflict, which has killed thousands of Ukrainians and left cities, towns and villages in ruins, a "special military operation" to demilitarise a country whose moves towards the West threaten Russia's own security. Kyiv and its Western allies say it is an unprovoked war of conquest.
The British report said Moscow's overall military campaign in Ukraine was still being undermined by Ukrainian forces along the northern and southern ends of the front line as well as by severe shortages of munitions and manpower.
Russia was targeting Bakhmut, it said, to try to seize the Kramatorsk-Solviansk urban area of the eastern Donetsk region, which was among those Russia said it had annexed despite not being in full control.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in a video address late on Thursday that "brutal" fighting was continuing there.
He also accused the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) of inaction in upholding the rights of Ukrainian prisoners of war and urged it to undertake a mission to a camp in the Russian-occupied east of the country.
In the latest of a series of Ukrainian criticisms of the ICRC, he said no one had yet visited Olenivka - a notorious camp in eastern Ukraine where dozens of Ukrainian POWs died in an explosion and fire in July.
Alongside the annexation, Russian President Vladimir Putin has responded to the battlefield setbacks with other moves to escalate the conflict: calling up hundreds of thousands of reservists and threatening to use nuclear weapons.
This week, Russia launched the biggest air strikes since the start of the war, firing more than 100 cruise missiles mainly at Ukraine's electricity and heat infrastructure.
Officials in Russia's Belgorod region bordering Ukraine have since accused Ukraine of targeting its power supplies and hitting an apartment block in the regional capital. Ukraine said the block was damaged by a Russian missile that went astray.
On Friday, Belgorod regional governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said train operations were suspended near Novyi Oskol, a town of about 18,000 people which lies about 90 kilometres (56 miles) north of the border, after remains of a missile fell nearby.
Putin said the Russian strikes on Ukraine were retaliation for a blast on Saturday that damaged Russia's bridge to Crimea.
Damage to the bridge, which is a showcase project of Putin's rule, will not be repaired until next summer, a document published on the Russian government's website said on Friday.
Reporting by Reuters bureaux; Writing by Stephen Coates and Philippa Fletcher; Editing by Michael Perry and Frank Jack Daniel
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Reuters · by Max Hunder
9. Musk says SpaceX cannot fund Ukraine's Starlink internet indefinitely
I don't care much for Musk and his politics but I have to cut him some slack here. We cannot depend on people like Musk to fund these efforts out of purse duty and goodness. He runs a business and the business needs to be properly compensated. If this is a critical war fighting capability then governments, starting with Ukraine, have to figure out how to fund and sustain the capability.
Musk says SpaceX cannot fund Ukraine's Starlink internet indefinitely
Reuters · by Reuters
Oct 14 (Reuters) - Elon Musk said on Friday SpaceX cannot "indefinitely" fund the Starlink internet service in Ukraine and send it several thousands more terminals after a report suggested that his rocket company had asked the Pentagon to pay for the donations.
Musk's comment on the question of support for the internet service in Ukraine comes after he angered many Ukrainians with a proposal to end Russia's war in their country that included ceding some territory.
"SpaceX is not asking to recoup past expenses, but also cannot fund the existing system indefinitely *and* send several thousand more terminals that have data usage up to 100X greater than typical households. This is unreasonable," Musk said on Twitter.
The billionaire boss of Tesla said Starlink was spending nearly $20 million a month, he called it a "burn", for maintaining satellite services in Ukraine. He recently said that SpaceX had spent about $80 million to enable and support Starlink in Ukraine.
CNN reported on Thursday that SpaceX sent a letter to the Pentagon last month saying it could not continue to fund the Starlink service in Ukraine and it may have to stop funding it unless the U.S. military helped with tens of millions of dollars a month.
SpaceX did not respond to a request for comment.
Musk activated Starlink in Ukraine in late February after internet services were disrupted because of Russia's invasion. SpaceX has since given it thousands of terminals. read more
Ukraine's vice prime minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, said this week Starlink services helped restore energy and communications infrastructure in critical areas after more than 100 Russian cruise missile attacks.
Russia calls its intervention in Ukraine a "special military operation" and says it does not target civilians.
Musk drew widespread criticism from Ukrainians over his peace plan in which he proposed that Ukraine permanently cede the Crimea region to Russia, that new referendums be held under U.N. auspices to determine the fate of Russian-controlled territory, and that Ukraine agree to neutrality.
Ukraine says it will never agree to cede land taken by force, and lawful referendums cannot be held in occupied territory where many people have been killed or driven out.
Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was among those who criticised Musk's proposal. read more
Ukraine's outgoing ambassador to Germany, Andrij Melnyk, also condemned the proposal in blunt terms, saying on Twitter: "Fuck off is my very diplomatic reply to you @elonmusk."
Musk, responding to a post referring to the fate of the Starlink service and the ambassador's remark, said:
"We’re just following his recommendation."
(This story has been refiled to remove extraneous word 'was' in paragraph 13)
Reporting by Shubham Kalia in Bengaluru; Editing by Robert Birsel
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Reuters · by Reuters
10. Is the military too ‘woke’ to recruit?
Excerpts:
But in the meantime, with every report of lower recruiting numbers, military leaders will have to fight a perception of political indoctrination.
“The U.S. Army has fallen 15,000 soldiers short of its recruitment goal this year,” tweeted Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz. “Maybe we ought to stop imposing vaccine mandates, preferred pronouns, and woke education training on them. Just a thought.”
Is there truth to any of that? Maybe, but the research hasn’t been done. Until it is, the narrative belongs to the loudest voices.
Is the military too ‘woke’ to recruit?
How political perceptions may be stifling the willingness to serve
militarytimes.com · by Meghann Myers · October 13, 2022
The Army missed its recruiting goal by about 15,000 new soldiers in 2022, coming up 25% short of its goal at a time when each of the services were struggling to meet their benchmarks. Military officials worry that all of the branches have had to reach deep into their pools of delayed entry applicants, a move that puts them behind in recruiting for the new year.
Military recruiters have leaned on tried-and-true factors to explain the challenges, including low unemployment and a dearth of applicants up to physical, educational and behavioral standards.
But the truth is, no one keeps detailed data on what’s stopping America’s youth from signing up. Experts and senior military leaders point to the perennial factors of competition from the private sector and a dwindling number of young Americans both qualified and interested in military service. But what they don’t have much information on is why that propensity is going down, and whether the country is undergoing an ideological shift in attitude toward military service.
One possibility that is increasingly resonating with veterans is that the military is too “woke.” Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., for example, is among a group of Republican senators who have repeatedly blamed recruiting problems on the Biden administration for trying to build a “woke Army.”
Thomas Spoehr, director of the Center for National Defense at The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, recently opined that wokeness is the “chief worry of grizzled American veterans today.”
“The largest threat they see by far to our current military is the weakening of its fabric by radical progressive (or ‘woke’) policies being imposed, not by a rising generation of slackers, but by the very leaders charged with ensuring their readiness,” he wrote. “Wokeness in the military is being imposed by elected and appointed leaders in the White House, Congress, and the Pentagon who have little understanding of the purpose, character, traditions, and requirements of the institution they are trying to change.”
Spoehr acknowledged that “direct ‘cause and effect’ studies on the impact of woke policies such as these do not exist,” but suggested that “common sense” dictates that it is having an effect on recruiting.
Tech. Sgt. Rachel Armstrong congratulates airmen during a basic military training graduation ceremony at Joint Base San Antonio July 13. (Vanessa R. Adame/Air Force)
“Is anyone surprised that potential recruits — many of whom come from rural or poor areas of the country — don’t want to spend their time being lectured about white privilege?” he wrote.
In an interview with Fox News, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, a West Point graduate and Army officer who served in Germany during the Cold War, talked about the campaign he is launching, including TV ads and a website, to target what he calls “woke polices” directed toward the military.
“How can we ask young men and women who have decided to risk their lives for America, even die for America, to affirm that our country is inherently racist?” Pompeo wrote in a Sept. 28 opinion column for Fox. “How can we ask them to view their brothers and sisters in arms through the narrow prisms of race or gender? The clear and obvious answer is that we cannot — not without putting their lives at risk on the battlefield. A woke military is a weak military.”
But Defense Department leaders, while often apprehensive to address the intersection of politics and recruiting, have said they don’t see a connection anecdotally or statistically
“That whole ‘woke’ terminology has me a little perplexed,” Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force JoAnne Bass told Air Force Times Sept. 6. “I don’t know that I agree [with] and appreciate that term.
“I’ve said it before; I think perhaps we do need to wake up to what our society is about today. Perhaps we need to wake up to how we actually have more in common than not. Perhaps we need to wake up to the goodness of the diversity that America brings to the table. That diversity is not just singular to demographic diversity, but … it’s experiences and it’s cognitive diversity as well. I don’t subscribe to the ‘wokeness’ in the way that it’s discussed. I actually think that, yeah, we probably need to wake up to the goodness of what all airmen and what all people bring to the fight.”
In reality, service members spend hundreds of hours a year on mandatory training, covering everything from operational safety to financial responsibility and suicide and sexual assault prevention, with a tiny fraction of that focusing on diversity, equity and inclusion education.
A U.S. Military Academy cadet practices physical training and the Army Combat Fitness Test during Cadet Basic Training at West Point, N.Y., July 14, 2020. (Matthew Moeller/Army)
But what seems to incense people is that the issue of racial disparity is discussed at all, not that it’s truly cutting into time spent on training.
Reader feedback
When Marine Corps Reserve Col. Matthew F. Amidon, director of veterans and military families at the George W. Bush Institute, wrote a commentary urging veterans to help during the recruiting crisis by recommending military service to their kids and other young people, Military Times was inundated with a hundreds of emails from veterans saying they would do no such thing.
Their reasons varied, but most said wokeness is to blame. They accused the military of becoming so “political,” or such a “social experiment,” that even proud veterans wouldn’t recommend service.
“I’ll be blunt. I wouldn’t encourage anyone to join today’s armed forces and I discouraged both of my sons from considering serving,” wrote Peter Demas, who described himself as a third-generation veteran. “America’s military leaders have sold out the Services for their own advancement and reflect all the poorest qualities of civilian ‘leadership’ from whom they accepted thirty pieces of silver; instead of being the nation’s repository of integrity and moral courage, they have become more political than the political animals they grovel before.”
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Army Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has had enough.
Survey data compiled by the Defense Department three times a year shows that propensity to serve has been dipping in recent years. A report from fall 2021 shows that just 9 percent of 16- to 24-year-old survey respondents affirmed that they were likely to be serving in the military “in the next few years,” down from highs of 13% in 2018 and 15% in 2013.
But the survey doesn’t drill down into the why, leaving open questions of whether that’s due to disinterest in the military, known factors that would prevent someone from joining, or a concrete aversion overall. So, while the Pentagon regularly takes the temperature of American youth and their likelihood to join up, they don’t regularly drill down into the “why.”
Still, a vocal group of veterans insist they know the answer.
Sailors stand in formation during a pass in review graduation ceremony at Recruit Training Command in Great Lakes, Ill., Sept. 6, 2019. (MC1 Spencer Fling/Navy)
“With a woke military, whose most senior officer is concerned about ‘white rage,’ searching for a tattle tale process to discover and discharge white ‘extremists,’ blaming it on toxic masculinity, discharging real warriors for not getting vaccinated, having a two-day stand down to discuss white extremism, the promotion and expansion of women in combat, lowering physical fitness standards to accommodate naturally weaker women, recruiting with social justice and diversity ads, stating we need more female and minority pilots, promotions based on the color of one’s skin or genitalia, lowering recruiting standards, blaming the military for 247 years of institutional racism, is not the military I was in for 26 years,” wrote Dale Papworth, who said he was a retired Marine Corps lieutenant colonel.
Papworth’s comments run counter to some evidence. For instance, the dearth of women and people of color in the upper ranks suggests that if there is a biased promotions system, it’s biased toward white men.
His comments resemble those made by Fox News host Tucker Carlson last year, in response to news reports that the Air Force had authorized a maternity flight suit.
“So, we’ve got new hairstyles and maternity flight suits,” Carlson said, also referring recently updated Army and Air Force hair regulations allowing braids and ponytails. “Pregnant women are going to fight our wars. It’s a mockery of the U.S. military.”
That statement was misinformed at best, and deliberately misleading at worst. Pregnant women in the military are not allowed to deploy, while pilots and aircrew are required to secure waivers from their doctors in order to do training flights.
That is without even mentioning that the maternity flight suit that so incensed Carlson is not just worn by aircrew onboard aircraft ― it’s a standard day-to-day office uniform in aviation units.
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Senior leaders dunk on Tucker Carlson’s misogynistic comments about maternity flight suits
Leadership was so incensed by Carlson's comments that the Pentagon issued its own statement.
Reader feedback suggests that a military and veteran population that has traditionally leaned conservative is no longer supportive of an institution they find unrecognizable.
Army Infantry soldiers-in-training begin their first day of Infantry One Station Unit Training at Fort Benning, Ga., on Feb. 10, 2017. (Patrick A. Albright/Army)
“My 19-year-old has expressed in no uncertain terms he does not want to serve in the U.S. military in any capacity,” wrote Adam, who asked to be identified by his first name only. “The politicization of our [government] institutions is creeping into the services now, and that is also having an effect. They may as well put out a sign that conservative or right of center Americans are not welcome. They just keep making it worse with their messaging. Boys want to be challenged and go on adventures, not be schooled on pronouns or the sins of their skin color. Girls want to beat boys and prove themselves.”
Since 2020, the services have ramped up their diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, following a lead from then-Defense Secretary Mark Esper, who in the wake of George Floyd’s murder called on the department to do better.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin ran with that idea in the early weeks of the Biden administration, ordering a day-long stand down in every unit to discuss the threat of violent extremism, following years of proclamation from the FBI that right-wing domestic terrorism is on the rise.
But to some, these efforts were a direct attack on their worldview.
“Instead of training and preparing for combat, today’s military is too busy worrying about teaching proper pronouns, how to incorporate men who think they’re women and women who think they’re men into the barracks and showers,” wrote Ron Eslick, describing himself as a 1970s-era Navy submariner. “[Joint Chiefs Chairman] General Milley and Sec Def Austin are a disgrace to the uniform I once wore. They are nothing less than lap dogs to the current administration. What a shame that our country has now become a second rate threat in today’s world.”
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Defense Secretary Mark Esper called George Floyd's death a wake-up call for military leadership.
And then came the COVID-19 vaccine mandate, one of nearly two dozen inoculations service members must receive in order to join and/or stay in the military, but one whose controversy pushed thousands to preternaturally end their careers.
“Covid vaccine mandates are undermining the military’s recruitment goals as well as harming overall morale,” wrote Harrison Wills. “Even if most troops complied with the mandate, how many did so only because their livelihoods were threatened? How many troops applied for exemptions but were denied? How many soldiers suffered and/or are suffering from side effects? How many people would consider joining the military but now won’t due to coercive mandates?”
Recruits with Echo Company, 2nd Recruit Training Battalion, execute drill movements during final drill practice at Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island, S.C., Sept. 12. (Lance Cpl. Bradley Williams/Marine Corps)
A survey released this year of more than 8,600 military families found that troops are becoming less likely to recommend that their kids join up, potentially cutting into a traditionally reliable recruiting pool.
But it wasn’t because of politics, according to Shannon Razsadin, president and executive director of the Military Family Advisory Network, who put out the survey. It was because of quality of life.
“At the end of the day, families are having a hard time making ends meet, and that’s affecting their overall well-being,” she said in July. “We see the connection between well-being and loneliness, well-being and housing, well-being and food security. When you layer that on top of the fact that fewer people are likely to recommend military service, it paints a very clear picture of concern related to the future of the all-volunteer force.”
Notably, however, the survey doesn’t ask specific questions about politics.
Addressing the ‘woke military’ message
Each of the services, along with DoD, are continuously researching the recruiting environment, including tweaking resources and messaging to draw in more prospects.
“The Department continues to review our recruiting programs to ensure current funding and policies align with the realities of today’s youth market. We recognize we must ensure the Services have the resources and support they need to successfully man the All-Volunteer Force,” Army Maj. Charlie Dietz, a Pentagon spokesman, told Military Times.
But they don’t always get it right. In 2018, the Army missed its recruiting goal by about 6,500, the result of an end-strength bump that opened up the doors for more accessions.
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The service announced a host of initiatives to improve its 2019 prospects, including a push into major metropolitan areas, with the feeling that their suburban/small-town Southeast well was starting to dry up.
Chief Boatswain's Mate Omar Aleman briefs new sailor recruits at the Golden 13 recruit in-processing center at Recruit Training Command, Great Lakes, Ill., Dec. 17, 2018. (MC2 Fernan/Navy)
“They did report some positive effects, but the fact that they’re not doing that now suggests that they were limited,” Bruce Orvis, a senior behavioral scientist at the federally funded think tank Rand Corp. who has done dozens of recruiting studies, told Military Times on Sept. 13.
It’s unlikely the Pentagon’s strategy for communicating about its initiatives will change.
“The communication methods on new policies continue to follow a long-standing standard and there have not been any discussions of framing the policies to appease someone that will mold it to meet their argument,” Dietz said.
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The military isn’t ‘distracted’ by the critical race theory conversation, SECDEF says
The Defense Department doesn't "embrace" critical race theory, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said.
So, while department officials don’t plan on getting into a direct argument with some of its detractors, they will continue to present their case in as straightforward and nonconfrontational a manner as possible.
“A policy that may increase diversity and inclusion makes us a better military because it brings new perspectives of decision making, operational decision making that we conduct, as well as better ideas, more unique perspectives and increased understanding of experiences which might actually make us smarter on the battlefield,” Dietz added. “We are a stronger military because of our diversity and because we represent all Americans, just like we defend all Americans.”
The chief master sergeant of the Air Force described the path forward differently.
“I feel like I’m a pretty conservative American, but … I’m a conservative American who values what everybody brings to the fight,” Bass said. “… We actually have to educate ourselves and help make ourselves more aware. Often, what you see in a two-second sound bite is not truth. When we read things like, ‘Hey, the military is focused more on pronouns,’ that could not be more inaccurate. We are not focused more on pronouns. We are focused on warfighting and ensuring that we’re able to defend the homeland. That’s what we’re focused on. But the quick two-second sound bite always seems pretty attractive.”
If a misunderstanding of policy is driving down propensity to serve, particularly in communities that have been more likely to join the military in the past, the service could take steps to diagnose that.
More than 600 airmen assigned to the 433rd Training Squadron graduate Basic Military Training at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland, Texas, June 8-9. (C Arce/Air Force)
One would be to expand the DoD Youth Poll’s questions to drill down into why the respondents answered the way they did.
For example:
- Do you have work or education plans already lined up?
- Do you believe you wouldn’t be able to meet accessions standards?
- Has someone in your life discouraged you from serving in the military?
- Have you read or seen media reports that discourage you from military service?
A task force is already dedicated to looking into some theories about why propensity to serve is down, Orvis said.
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“We have to be realistic today,” Air Force recruiting boss Maj. Gen. Ed Thomas said.
The trick will be determining which factors can be remedied without second and third-order effects. For instance, if tight regulations on past mental health history, or criminal history, are keeping the recruiting pool small, the services may be wary of risking continued issues once someone is in uniform.
“Because you don’t want to implement something nationally, on a more or less a permanent basis, if it turns out it’s going to bite you later on it, and you just don’t know,” he said.
The services will also have to redouble their efforts to explain to American youth what it means to serve in the military.
“We must also increase desire to serve in the Army by reconnecting to America through improved marketing and meeting America through interactive events across our nation, including a dedicated surge of Army leaders and soldiers telling their stories,” retired Gen. Paul Funk II, formerly head of Army Training and Doctrine Command, told Military Times last summer.” American youth simply don’t understand us, we owe it to them to ensure they understand all the benefits of service.
But in the meantime, with every report of lower recruiting numbers, military leaders will have to fight a perception of political indoctrination.
“The U.S. Army has fallen 15,000 soldiers short of its recruitment goal this year,” tweeted Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz. “Maybe we ought to stop imposing vaccine mandates, preferred pronouns, and woke education training on them. Just a thought.”
Is there truth to any of that? Maybe, but the research hasn’t been done. Until it is, the narrative belongs to the loudest voices.
Air Force Times senior reporter Rachel Cohen contributed to this report.
About Meghann Myers
Meghann Myers is the Pentagon bureau chief at Military Times. She covers operations, policy, personnel, leadership and other issues affecting service members.
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militarytimes.com · by Meghann Myers · October 13, 2022
11. Corrupt Contractor Orchestrated Chinese Counterfeiting Scheme
Corrupt Contractor Orchestrated Chinese Counterfeiting Scheme
coffeeordie.com · by Carl Prine · October 13, 2022
A Brooklyn defense contractor who orchestrated a vast Chinese counterfeiting scheme that sent unsafe knockoff uniforms to US troops is going to prison.
On Wednesday, Oct. 12, in Providence, Rhode Island, US District Judge William E. Smith sentenced Ramin Kohanbash to 40 months in a federal penitentiary and ordered him to repay $20 million for the bogus gear, some of which ended up with US Army soldiers and Air Force airmen in Afghanistan.
In 2019, Kohanbash, 52, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and trafficking in counterfeit goods. Investigators estimate that at least 13,332 bogus jackets that failed to baffle night vision goggles and 18,597 flame-resistant hoods that actually could catch fire were shipped to US military supply depots worldwide.
Kohanbash’s crooked contractor co-defendants — Bernard Klein, 41, of Brooklyn, and Terry Roe, 49, of Burlington, North Dakota — have also pleaded guilty.
Klein exited federal prison on May 27 after serving an 18-month sentence. Roe, the owner of Dakota Outerwear, is slated to be sentenced Oct. 20 to 37 months behind bars.
“American servicemen and women risk their lives every day in defense of the nation,” said US Attorney Zachary A. Cunha in a prepared statement released in the wake of Kohanbash’s sentencing. “But the risks they face should never come from the uniforms they wear, and the equipment they carry. In this case, defendants’ actions did exactly that, substituting substandard, foreign-made knockoffs for American products. I am tremendously pleased that the defendants charged in this matter are being held accountable for their actions.”
US Air Force Tech. Sgt. Jason Demoss, the 407th Expeditionary Civil Engineer Squadron’s assistant chief of firefighting operations, squeezes agitated foam from a fire hose while transferring fire retardant from a trailer with Senior Airman Francisco Villalobos (left) and Staff Sgt. Clinton Manus, both 407th ECES firefighters, at the 407th Air Expeditionary Group, Jan. 6, 2016. US Air Force photo by Master Sgt. Benjamin Wilson.
US Air Force photo by Master Sgt. Benjamin Wilson.
Neither Kohanbash nor his criminal defense attorneys returned multiple Coffee or Die Magazine messages seeking comment.
According to federal filings, he’s paid back $634,398 of the $20 million he owes. Another $24,105 in cash was seized by federal agents executing a search warrant four years ago.
The trio’s scheme began in 2013 and hinged on duping both Chinese and American customs officials, according to federal prosecutors.
Knockoff uniforms were sewn in China and then shipped to Kohanbash’s New Jersey warehouse to be sold to the US military and its suppliers, including Dakota Outerwear.
Even after federal agents raided Kohanbash’s warehouse in late 2018, he toiled to schedule another illicit shipment from China in early 2019. Agents seized it, too.
According to federal inventory sheets obtained by Coffee or Die, Kohanbash’s company, California Surplus, was caught with 6,588 articles of phony military gear, including multicolor ponchos, US Army gloves, and fleece jackets.
US Air Force Senior Airman Christopher Crusius, a 612th Air Base Squadron firefighter, is engulfed in flames as he opens the hood during a car fire as part of the Central America Sharing Mutual Operational Knowledge and Experiences (CENTAM SMOKE) Exercise on Aug. 27, 2013, in Honduras. US Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Jarrod Chavana.
US Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Jarrod Chavana.
Lt. Gen. Stacey T. Hawkins, who oversaw the US Air Force’s logistics, civil engineering, force protection, and nuclear integration programs during the probe, told prosecutors last year that 30 types of counterfeit items ended up in his service’s supply chain.
Military investigators found that more than 18,000 hoods sold to the Air Force as fire retardant clothing offered no protection against flames.
Hawkins warned that these and “thousands of items” sold by Dakota Outerwear and California Surplus made it to airmen deployed overseas.
Other bogus duds included fake multicam trousers, parkas, rain suits, and ponchos that failed to disrupt infrared scanners. Units were ordered to seize them worldwide, according to a Government-Industry Data Exchange Program Problem Advisory issued in early 2020.
US Air Force Airman Chelsea Kidman from the 790th Missile Security Forces Squadron Security Support Team checks gear off a list as she receives new nametags and rank insignia Feb. 2, 2015, on F.E. Warren Air Force Base, Wyoming. The new tags attach to the Operation Enduring Freedom Camouflage Pattern uniforms issued to missile field defenders. US Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Brandon Valle.
US Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Brandon Valle.
Like a malignant octopus, his tentacles reaching into China, Pakistan, New York, and New Jersey, Kohanbash dabbled in all aspects of the conspiracy, including the manufacturing, smuggling, and transportation of the counterfeit goods.
To cover it all up, he lied to the military and its contractors in the supply chain about the authenticity of the gear he sold and where it was made.
Federal investigators identified a dozen US businesses that suffered from the counterfeiting scheme. The corrupt contractors folded garments to conceal where trademarks should’ve been; hid their hangtags or repackaged and labeled goods to mask their true contents; and made sure “Made in China” stickers and markers could be easily removed before the troops ever saw them.
Portrayed in federal filings as a fat cat real estate baron with millions of dollars in New York property investments, Kohanbash was motivated to make a lot of money, investigators concluded.
Prosecutors urged the judge to send Kohanbash away for at least 51 months.
New Operation Enduring Freedom Camouflage Pattern uniforms line shelves on F.E. Warren Air Force Base, Wyoming, in February 2015. US Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Brandon Valle.
US Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Brandon Valle.
Kohanbash asked for no time behind bars, largely so he could continue to care for his sick wife and repay taxpayers what he bilked from them.
In a letter he penned to the judge on Aug. 30, Kohanbash insisted that he, an Iranian refugee who left Shiraz in 1984 and traveled through Pakistan and Austria before arriving in Baltimore, remains grateful to the US for giving him the chance to “build a new life.”
“I am very embarrassed that I did things that were not honest,” Kohanbash wrote. “I always had a high standard that I tried to keep for myself because I am a father and I try to be a good example. I did something that was against everything I try to teach my children.”
The judge shaved 11 months off the prison sentence prosecutors requested.
coffeeordie.com · by Carl Prine · October 13, 2022
12. Lockheed Martin Laser Breakthroughs Could Signal A Turning Point For Missile Defense
Excerpts:
Over time, though, the laser work Lockheed has pioneered is blazing the trail to new operational concepts. The day may arrive when laser weapons in low-earth orbit offer a viable means of blunting strategic-missile attacks originating in China or Russia within moments after they are detected.
That would transform the practice of nuclear deterrence, and greatly diminish the power of Moscow’s nuclear threats. Long before that occurs though, lasers are likely to find their way onto the conventional battlefield as an affordable, reliable way of intercepting diverse overhead threats—aircraft, missiles, drones, even hypersonic weapons.
Lockheed Martin presents its laser work as just one facet of company efforts to chart new paths for 21st century security, and when it comes to beam weapons, it seems to be leading the pack.
Lockheed Martin Laser Breakthroughs Could Signal A Turning Point For Missile Defense
Forbes · by Loren Thompson · October 13, 2022
The Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency awarded Lockheed Martin LMT a $2 million contract in September to assess how high-energy lasers might be integrated into the nation’s missile-defense architecture.
It’s a modest contract for a company that generates over a billion dollars in revenue per week, but it could have outsized implications for how wars will be waged in the future, given the series of breakthroughs the world’s biggest defense company has achieved in laser systems.
Lockheed, a contributor to my think tank, recently delivered the most powerful laser it has ever built, a 300-kilowatt system, to a project run by the Pentagon’s research and engineering chief called the High Energy Laser Scaling Initiative.
As reported by Jason Sherman in Inside Defense, the initiative as conceived in 2019 called for further scaling to a 500-kilowatt system in 2024, and then to 1,000 kilowatts (one megawatt) later in the decade. At the latter level of intensity, a laser could deposit enough energy on a hostile ballistic missile during its vulnerable boost phase to destroy the missile.
... [+]Wikipedia
Reporter Sherman, one of the few people in the trade press who covers beam-weapons research, says that Pentagon officials are so impressed with recent progress that they may elect to skip the 500-watt stage and leap ahead to the megawatt weapon.
MORE FOR YOU
Two other companies, Nutronics and General Atomics, are also developing 300-kilowatt systems.
This isn’t the only laser breakthrough that Lockheed has reported of late. In August it delivered the Navy’s first tactical laser weapon suitable to serve as an integral element in layered defense of warships, a 60+ kilowatt system dubbed Helios.
Earlier this year, Lockheed and engine-maker Rolls Royce demonstrated a 100-kilowatt laser capable of destroying cruise missiles in flight. The system in its final configuration will be sufficiently compact to carry on a C-130 airlifter pallet, a Stryker SYK troop carrier, or in the mission bay of the Navy’s smallest warship.
What all these efforts and others demonstrate is that, after decades of anticipation, the age of fast-as-light kill mechanisms for defending friendly forces has arrived.
That could have huge operational and budgetary consequences for the joint force.
The customary way of engaging overhead threats is with interceptor missiles, but as such threats proliferate, U.S. forces increasingly find themselves using high-cost weapons to defeat low-cost threats. That kind of unfavorable cost-exchange relationship could not be sustained in a major conflict—the defenses would be exhausted before the attackers were.
Laser weapons offer a way out of this dilemma. Because they use energy rather than kinetic systems as their kill mechanism, it only costs a few dollars to engage a million-dollar cruise missile. They don’t expend costly technology with each shot, and thus can destroy dozens of targets without any loss of capability.
Equally important, they hit intended targets instantaneously, at the speed of light (about 300,000 kilometers per second). And the same beam technology that is used to kill attackers can also be used to track them.
This is possible because high-energy lasers organize light, either visible or infrared, into tightly focused, coherent beams that do not lose their intensity over great distances. A missile eventually exhausts its propellant and then loses velocity. Lasers don’t. In a vacuum like outer space, they can hit targets thousands of kilometers away with minimal loss of energy.
So, it has long been a dream of military scientists to bring laser weapons to the battlefield. There are other beam technologies being developed, most notably high-power microwaves where Raytheon (another contributor to my think tank) appears to be the top source of innovations.
Unlike lasers, which use heat as their kill mechanism to disable hostile missiles and aircraft, microwave weapons are designed to scramble the electronics of their targets in milliseconds so that, for instance, their seekers fail.
However, microwave weapons, while offering the same speed-of-light, low-cost, inexhaustible magazine advantages of lasers, are less discriminate than lasers. Thus, while they may be more lethal than high-energy lasers in some circumstances, they increase the danger of collateral damage.
Laser weapons, on the other hand, are the most precise weapons ever devised. As long as defenders know exactly where to point them, they will only disable their intended targets.
The research contract awarded to Lockheed Martin last month will help answer the question of how soon high-energy lasers might be integrated into U.S. tactical and strategic defenses.
At this point, nobody is seriously suggesting that beam weapons should replace kinetic interception systems in U.S. missile defenses. There are details that first need to be understood, such as how the kind of inclement weather found in places like Ukraine might interfere with the propagation of beams.
So, systems like the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, for which Lockheed recently delivered the 700th interceptor missile, won’t be exiting the force for a long, long time. If anything, their global footprint will grow as allies seek reliable protection from the tactical and theater-range missiles of countries like North Korea.
Over time, though, the laser work Lockheed has pioneered is blazing the trail to new operational concepts. The day may arrive when laser weapons in low-earth orbit offer a viable means of blunting strategic-missile attacks originating in China or Russia within moments after they are detected.
That would transform the practice of nuclear deterrence, and greatly diminish the power of Moscow’s nuclear threats. Long before that occurs though, lasers are likely to find their way onto the conventional battlefield as an affordable, reliable way of intercepting diverse overhead threats—aircraft, missiles, drones, even hypersonic weapons.
Lockheed Martin presents its laser work as just one facet of company efforts to chart new paths for 21st century security, and when it comes to beam weapons, it seems to be leading the pack.
Forbes · by Loren Thompson · October 13, 2022
13. How TikTok ate the internet
National security issue? I think so.
Many people who read my daily news probably do not use TikTok (but if so we fall into this category of the "global exception.").
Excerpts:
If you have not used TikTok, you are rapidly becoming the global exception. In five years, the app, once written off as a silly dance-video fad, has become one of the most prominent, discussed, distrusted, technically sophisticated and geopolitically complicated juggernauts on the internet — a phenomenon that has secured an unrivaled grasp on culture and everyday life and intensified the conflict between the world’s biggest superpowers.
...
Even as the app has transformed into a public square for news and conversation, TikTok’s opaque systems of promotion and suppression fuel worries that China’s aggressive model of internet control could warp what appears there. Many users already are self-censoring, adopting a second language of code words — “unalive,” not dead; “procedure,” not abortion — in hopes of dodging the app’s censors and preserving their chances at online fame.
If this is such a" public square," how do we use it? What do organizations with a mission of public diplomacy, influence, or psychological operations do with this platform? E.g., the Global Engagement Center?
And then what do we do about the Chinese harvesting data from the platform?
How TikTok ate the internet
The world’s most popular app has pioneered a new age of instant attention. Can we trust it?
The Washington Post · by Drew Harwell · October 14, 2022
On the night Shelby Renae first went viral on TikTok, she felt so giddy she could barely sleep. She’d spent the evening painting her nails, refreshing her phone between each finger — 20,000 views; 40,000 — and by the next morning, after her video crossed 3 million views, she decided it had changed her life.
She didn’t really understand why it had done so well. The 16-second clip of her playing the video game “Fortnite” was funny, she thought — but not, like, millions-of-views funny. She wasn’t a celebrity: She grew up in Idaho; her last job was at a pizza shop. But this was just how the world’s most popular app worked. TikTok’s algorithm had made her a star.
Shelby Renae, a former pizza-shop worker, posts TikTok videos of herself playing the video game “Fortnite.” She has 1.3 million followers and her videos have been liked 37 million times.
Now 25, she spends her days making TikTok videos from her apartment in Los Angeles, negotiating advertising deals and always chasing the next big hit. Many days, she feels drained — by the endless scramble for new content; by the weird mysteries of TikTok’s algorithm; by the stalkers, harassers and trolls. Yet still, in her off hours, she does what all her friends do: watches TikTok. “It will suck you in for hours,” she said.
If you have not used TikTok, you are rapidly becoming the global exception. In five years, the app, once written off as a silly dance-video fad, has become one of the most prominent, discussed, distrusted, technically sophisticated and geopolitically complicated juggernauts on the internet — a phenomenon that has secured an unrivaled grasp on culture and everyday life and intensified the conflict between the world’s biggest superpowers.
Rise of TikTok
The web’s most popular app has reshaped American culture, hypnotized the world and sparked a battle between two global superpowers.
Part 1: How TikTok ate the internet.
Part 2: Sorry you went viral. (Coming soon.)
Part 3: As Washington wavers, Beijing exerts control. (Coming soon.)
Its dominance, as estimated by the internet firms Cloudflare, Data.ai and Sensor Tower, is hard to overstate. TikTok’s website was visited last year more often than Google. No app has grown faster past a billion users, and more than 100 million of them are in the United States, roughly a third of the country. The average American viewer watches TikTok for 80 minutes a day — more than the time spent on Facebook and Instagram, combined.
Two-thirds of American teens use the app, and 1 in 6 say they watch it “almost constantly,” a Pew Research Center survey in August found; usage of Facebook among the same group has been cut in half since 2015. A report this summer by the parental-control tool Qustodio found that TikTok was both the most-used social media app for children and the one parents were most likely to block. And while half of TikTok’s U.S. audience is younger than 25, the app is winning grown-ups’ attention, too; the industry analyst eMarketer expects its over-65 audience will increase this year by nearly 15 percent. (AARP last year even unveiled a how-to guide.)
More than just a hit, TikTok has blown up the model of what a social network can be. Silicon Valley taught the world a style of online connectivity built on hand-chosen interests and friendships. TikTok doesn’t care about those. Instead, it unravels for viewers an endless line of videos selected by its algorithm, then learns a viewer’s tastes with every second they watch, pause or scroll. You don’t tell TikTok what you want to see. It tells you. And the internet can’t get enough.
“We’re not talking about a dance app,” said Abbie Richards, a researcher who studies disinformation on TikTok, where she has half a million followers. “We’re talking about a platform that’s shaping how a whole generation is learning to perceive the world.”
The Washington Post’s TikTok account has more than a million followers. One in three TikTok viewers in the United States regularly use it as a source of news.
TikTok’s cultural influence on a new generation of media has led to some astounding ripple effects. Viral videos of people delighting in their favorite books, many of them with the hashtag #BookTok, which has 78 billion views, helped make 2021 one of the publishing industry’s best sales years ever. Books from the author Colleen Hoover, BookTok’s biggest star, have sold more copies this year than the Bible, according to data from NPD BookScan, which tracks sales at 16,000 stores nationwide.
America’s biggest technology innovators are reinventing themselves in TikTok’s image, not only in developing short-video copycats — Meta’s Reels, YouTube’s Shorts — but in swapping out networks of friends and families for feeds of strangers chasing viral glory. TikTok’s model could soon shape the entire internet.
But TikTok’s ownership, by the Beijing-based tech giant ByteDance, has also made it one of the biggest pariahs in Washington. Former president Donald Trump tried to dismantle it. Top branches of the U.S. government and military have banned it from government-issued phones. And members of Congress insist it could be a Trojan horse for a secret Chinese propaganda and surveillance machine.
Even as the app has transformed into a public square for news and conversation, TikTok’s opaque systems of promotion and suppression fuel worries that China’s aggressive model of internet control could warp what appears there. Many users already are self-censoring, adopting a second language of code words — “unalive,” not dead; “procedure,” not abortion — in hopes of dodging the app’s censors and preserving their chances at online fame.
TikTok executives have argued they aren’t influenced by government agendas and want only to foster an entertainment platform that is fun and conflict-free. They have worked to soothe doubts and make friends in a hostile Washington by hiring U.S.-based specialists, promising transparency and piping American users’ data through servers in the United States.
But former TikTok employees and technical experts argue that the company’s fixes do nothing to address its biggest risk: that its top decision-makers work in a country skilled at using the web to spread propaganda, surveil the public, gain influence and squash dissent. That crisis of trust has led to an ongoing debate among U.S. regulators: whether to more closely monitor the app or ban it outright.
Many TikTok creators say speculation about the app’s Chinese roots distracts from the more grounded issues they face as a result of its explosive growth. TikTok’s ability to make anyone go viral overnight, they say, has meant that the anger and pressure once endured mostly by big influencers have become facts of life for the masses.
Drew Maxey, a high school literature teacher in St. Louis, said he has gotten used to seeing glimpses of TikTok in class and hearing its sounds in the school hallways. It has become the main way most students socialize and pass the time; he’s even become a TikToker, gaining more than 50,000 followers with videos that use comic books as literary tools.
Drew Maxey, a high school teacher in St. Louis, uses comic books to explain literary concepts to his more than 50,000 TikTok followers. He worries the app’s rules could be “training a whole generation of people not to say what they actually mean.”
But he worries about how TikTok’s enigmatic machinery and students’ desire for viral attention have already shaped how some of them talk and behave. He’s started changing his wording, too; on some book videos, he won’t even say the word “death,” anxious it might stunt his reach.
“Everything they need, they get from TikTok,” he said. “Yet we’re training a whole generation of people not to say what they actually mean.”
Sensory rush
TikTok starts studying its users from the moment they first open the app. It shows them a single, full-screen, infinitely looping video, then gauges how they react: a second of viewing or hesitation indicates interest; a swipe suggests a desire for something else. With every data point, TikTok’s algorithm narrows from a shapeless mass of content to a refined, irresistible feed. It is the ultimate video channel, and this is its one program.
The “For You” algorithm, as TikTok calls it, gradually builds profiles of users’ tastes not from what they choose but how they behave. While Facebook and other social networks rely on their users to define themselves by typing in their interests or following famous people, TikTok watches and learns, tapping into trends and desires their users might not identify.
The system runs on a sophisticated machine-learning engine — ByteDance researchers have championed its “sub-linear computational complexity” — but to TikTokers, the process could not be simpler. Launch the app. See the video. Passively consume.
TikTok fans say they’ve been both surprised and unsettled by an algorithm that can read them eerily well, showing them videos they never searched for or even realized they wanted to see: One creator’s parody of an algorithmic flow chart narrowed from “teenage thirst traps” to moms and lumberjacks before reaching “videos only 10 people understand.” And few places on the web can match TikTok’s constant promise of surprise delight: If a viewer doesn’t like what’s on, there’s always another video, one swipe away.
From the outside, watching someone use TikTok mostly looks like mindless swiping. But this system of serendipitous reward is the app’s backbone, and it turns entertainment into an endless game. Every swipe could bring something better, but viewers don’t know when they’ll get it, so they keep swiping in anticipation of something they might never find. It’s satisfying enough to keep people interested and so unsatisfying they don’t want to stop.
TikTok tells advertisers that these “continuous cycles of engagement” make it more memorable, emotional and immersive than TV. A company-funded study that used brain-imaging scans on test subjects found that TikTok users engaged with the app about 10 times a minute, twice as often as its social media peers. “The TikTok audience is fully leaned in,” a marketing document said.
The app’s infectiousness is so widely accepted that it’s become an inside joke. Videos with the #tiktokaddict hashtag have nearly 600 million views. One audio clip — a woman saying, “Like this video if you should be doing something else but instead you’re watching TikTok because you downloaded it as a joke and now you’re addicted” — has been pasted onto more than 70,000 separate videos and “liked” tens of millions of times.
TikTok’s infectiousness has become an inside joke. Videos with the #tiktokaddict hashtag have been viewed nearly 600 million times.
The average number of hours each American user spent every day on TikTok exploded 67 percent between 2018 and 2021, while Facebook and YouTube grew less than 10 percent, investment analysts at Bernstein Research wrote in an August report. TikTok has replaced “the friction of deciding what to watch,” the researchers said, with a “sensory rush of bite-sized videos … delivering endorphin hit after hit.”
For viewers who’ve been scrolling too long, TikTok shows “take a break” alerts urging them to “get some water and then come back later”; scrolling past them has become a meme in itself. In June, the app started sending routine reminders to viewers showing how long they’d been watching; teenage viewers are now nudged to limit their TikTok time if they scroll more than 100 minutes in a day.
TikTok’s mesmerizing appeal has made it effectively mandatory for modern stars like the Puerto Rican rapper Bad Bunny, who in January got more than 90 million views on one of his first videos, in which he expressionlessly eats Froot Loops. Industries that once wrote the playbook for appealing to mass audiences are now desperate for TikTok’s viral boost: A new box office record for the July 4 weekend was set thanks largely to an absurd bit of TikTok meta-comedy — packs of suited-up “Gentleminions” mobbing the premiere of “Minions: The Rise of Gru.”
The Puerto Rican rapper Bad Bunny has used his TikTok account to share new songs, dance routines and slices of life. One video, in which he eats Froot Loops, has been viewed more than 90 million times.
But many of the app’s best-known names have become celebrities purely on the basis of TikTok itself. Khaby Lame, a 22-year-old former factory worker from Italy, has 150 million followers, 60 million more than Trump had on Twitter at his peak. Videos by Charli D’Amelio, an 18-year-old dancer from Connecticut, have been liked 11 billion times.
The app flourished by making the creation of eye-catching videos accessible to anyone, with giant libraries of free music clips, editing tools, camera effects and augmented-reality filters in a simple, immersive interface. TikTok’s central “For You” feed serves up videos without context or dates, making everything feel relevant and new.
And unlike YouTube and Instagram, where creators are forced to compete with established influencers’ polished productions, even the simplest, silliest or most spontaneous TikToks can become massive hits. Quick “duets,” “stitches” and “remixes,” where people riff off or react to someone else, are widely shared and given almost instant affirmation. Many use the app’s “green screen” feature — in which their heads float over a tweet or chart or video — to offer criticism or commentary in the style of a TV news report.
TikTok creators, including Natasha Cougoule, left, and Eli Rallo have used app video features such as “green screen” to present a new style of online commentary.
For young viewers who see social media influencer as a popular career path, the allure is obvious. Teachers talk about students skipping class to record dances in the bathroom; Buddhist shrines in Nepal feature “No TikTok” signs. John Christopher Dombrowski, a Cornell University student whose TikToks about science facts have earned him 2.8 million followers, told the Information he’s paid his college tuition with ad-deal money from Adidas and Lancôme. “Social media is the new American Dream,” he said.
TikTokers are increasingly using the app as a visual search tool; 40 percent of Generation Z respondents to a Google survey this year said they had opened TikTok or Instagram, not Google, when searching for nearby lunch spots. (One tweet in June, “I don’t Google anymore I TikTok,” has been ‘liked’ 120,000 times.)
And as Americans’ trust in news organizations has fallen, TikTok’s role as a news source has climbed. One in three TikTok viewers in the United States said they regularly use it to learn about current events, Pew Research Center said last month. In the United Kingdom, it’s the fastest-growing news source for adults. (The Washington Post’s TikTok account has more than a million followers.)
TikTok has been credited with helping supercharge book sales. Books from the author Colleen Hoover — popular with TikTok creators including Kendra Keeter-Gray, left, and Sydney Blanchard — have sold more in the United States this year than the Bible.
Thanks to its gravitational pull on creators and audiences, the app’s videos now encompass practically every topic on earth. There is fishing (#fishtok, 14 billion views), farming (#farmtok, 7 billion) and role-playing (#medievaltiktok, 4 billion). There are TikTok cops, lumberjacks, nurses and nuns. There is domestic bliss (#cleantok) and chaos (#cluttercore). There is #happiness (16 billion views) and #pain (76 billion).
And, this being the internet, there are TikTok animals. The Chipmunks of TikTok account, with 15 million followers, features Bubba, Dinky, SpongeBob, Stinky and other chipmunks gobbling up hazelnuts; one video, “Fill the cheeks Squishy,” has been viewed more than 280 million times. Brad Zimerman, a 53-year-old karate instructor in St. Louis, said he started the account while out of work during the pandemic and now makes money through creator payouts from TikTok and YouTube, as well as from personalized happy-birthday videos on Instagram.
The “Chipmunks of TikTok” account — featuring the mealtimes of Squishy, top; SpongeBob, left; and Mooshy, right — has 15 million followers. No one even knows who I am,” creator Brad Zimerman said.
Zimerman said he doesn’t do brand sponsorships and declined to share how much he makes, saying only that he’s earned more money from chipmunk videos than his actual job. One influencer-marketing group estimated that, with his account’s level of interest, he could charge up to $14,000 per post.
“I get thousands of offers to do deals with my chipmunks,” he said. “No one even knows who I am.”
Industrializing virality
After cornering the market on entertainment, TikTok began offering its model of behavioral tracking and algorithmic suggestion to advertisers, promising them a way to know which ads people find most compelling without having to ask. It was an instant hit: The company’s ad revenue tripled this year, to $12 billion, according to eMarketer estimates, and is expected to eclipse YouTube at nearly $25 billion by 2025. In the United States, the cost to advertisers for TikTok’s premium real estate — the first commercial break a viewer sees in their feed, known as a “TopView” — has jumped to $3 million a day.
Beyond traditional marketing, TikTok has rapidly industrialized the way companies pay young people to hawk their stuff. TikTok runs a giant catalogue of people, the Creator Marketplace, that companies can use to sort creators by their interests and follower counts; the service is invite-only, and creators have to post frequently if they want the chance to get paid. Influencers paid to promote goods in their videos now make more ad money on TikTok than Facebook: roughly $750 million, U.S. estimates from Insider Intelligence show. (Instagram, which beats both of them, this summer debuted its own “Creator Marketplace” clone.)
TikTok also takes a cut of the virtual tips, or “Video Gifts,” that fans pay to creators with its central currency of TikTok “coins.” Displayed online as neon roses and doughnuts, this economy now rivals that of a small nation: In the past three months, TikTokers spent more than $900 million inside the app — the highest quarterly spending for any app in history.
TikTok’s diverse creator base has made the app into a showcase for radical self expression. It’s also inspired jealousy inside Facebook, where bored users are leaving en masse.
At a time when Silicon Valley’s stock prices are crumbling, TikTok’s success has triggered deep jealousy — especially for Facebook, which in February reported it had lost users for the first time in its 18-year history. (The top link on all of Facebook in the second quarter of this year was TikTok, Facebook’s parent company Meta said.)
Meta tried beating TikTok by hiring a Republican lobbying firm to undertake a secretive letter-writing and lobbying campaign calling it the “real threat” to America’s teens. But by the summer, Meta ended up just copying TikTok’s style, ditching its focus on people’s friends and families and swapping in computer-selected unknowns.
Not everyone was happy about it. On internal message boards, employees have griped that Facebook is abandoning its strengths, such as “the social graph and human choice.” The celebrity socialite Kylie Jenner told her 360 million Instagram followers the company should “stop trying to be” TikTok. But there are some early signs that these copycats are succeeding. YouTube said in June that its Shorts service was being watched by 1.5 billion users every month — beating the 1 billion user count TikTok reported last fall.
TikTok, however, seems bent on taking on a wider range of digital life. It’s tested features for interactive minigames and job résumés. It started selling concert tickets. It built a live-streaming business used for meal-cooking showcases, lottery scratch-offs, tarot readings and apartment tours. And it tested a shopping feature that would let viewers buy products from QVC-style live streams in a few quick taps.
Even without that expansion, there can be no denying that TikTok has become a world-shaping force of its own — so colorful and compelling that many viewers find it hard to quit. That’s even the case in Russia, where the company, abiding by Kremlin directives, has blocked everyday Russians from posting new TikToks or seeing any videos from outside the country since the Russian military invaded Ukraine.
The TikTok people watch in Russia has become its own parallel universe, frozen in time — an endless stream of old Russian videos and pro-Kremlin propaganda. But many young Russians continue to use it “quite actively” nearly eight months into the war, said a few who spoke with The Post on the condition of anonymity because of the country’s draconian speech laws.
Some teens said they use technical workarounds to see foreign TikToks, risking punishment for a glimpse of the outside world. But one 18-year-old said he just settles for watching whatever the algorithm shows. “Yes, all videos are old,” he said. “But it’s still enough.”
Will Oremus and Natalia Abbakumova contributed to this report.
About this story
Editing by Mark Seibel, Jayne Orenstein and Karly Domb Sadof. Additional editing by Dave Jorgensen, Virginia Singarayar, Shannon Croom, Drea Cornejo and Monique Woo. Design and development by Emily Wright.
The Washington Post · by Drew Harwell · October 14, 2022
14. Army advisor brigade ramps up Pacific partners’ military effectiveness
Excerpts:
In an upcoming training event this month, Blair said that South Korea, Indonesia, Philippines and Thailand are all sending company-sized elements to participate, and another seven Asian nations are sending observers.
Much of that work is aimed at getting a steady pipeline of partner nations flowing into the Joint Pacific Multi-National Readiness Center in Hawaii, Blair said. The facility offers partner forces realistic training, evaluation and opposition.
“A lot of countries will go into training, but they’ve never had an opposing force,” Resmondo said.
Army advisor brigade ramps up Pacific partners’ military effectiveness
Defense News · by Todd South · October 13, 2022
WASHINGTON — In front of its headquarters near the Pacific Ocean, soldiers from 5th Security Force Assistance Brigade are planting palm trees.
The unit, established in 2020, has set up partnerships with six nations in U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, including Japan, Indonesia, Mongolia, Thailand, Malaysia and the Philippines. The 5th SFAB is headquartered at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington.
SFABs were created to build expert advising units to help partner nations fill gaps in their militaries, key to the U.S. strategy to have coalitions to counter the weight of peer adversaries such as Russia or China.
Each palm tree so far planted represents one of the countries the unit has built partnerships with. The unit plans to plant more.
“There’s one for every country, as we grow partnerships, we will plant more palm trees,” Lt. Col. Dustin Blair, 4th Battalion, 5th SFAB commander, told Army Times in an interview at the annual Association of the U.S. Army conference on Wednesday.
SFAB soldiers are seeing some of those early partnerships show their own signs of military capability growth already.
“The greatest counterweight to our growing adversary in the Indo-Pacific region is this nested group of partners and allies,” Blair said.
The unit sent advisors to Mongolia more than two years ago.
Capt. Dan Sprouse, Team Leader, Maneuver Advisor Team 5132 built a powerful relationship in Indonesia beginning upon his arrival in Indonesia in May. (Army)
“Our (non-commissioned officers) worked directly with the sergeant major of the army of Mongolia to stand up an NCO education system,” Command Sgt. Maj. Brian Robert, 3rd Squadron, 5th SFAB, told Army Times.
SFAB soldiers worked with the Royal Thai Army for their first combined training with Strykers and an Infantry Brigade Combat Team, Lt. Col. Gerry Resmondo told Army Times.
Those Thai units now use Strykers at their own combat training centers and are working on ways to maneuver a brigade, Lt. Col. Gerry Resmondo, 3rd Squadron, 5th SFAB commander, told Army Times.
That’s not a capability they had before working with 5th SFAB, Resmondo said.
Staff Sgt. Jesse Enebrad, an advisor with 5th SFAB, supervises members of the Maldives National Defense Forces on a marksmanship range at Central Area Command, Kahdhoo, Maldives, May 23, 2022 (Spc. Jacob Núñez/Army)
In an upcoming training event this month, Blair said that South Korea, Indonesia, Philippines and Thailand are all sending company-sized elements to participate, and another seven Asian nations are sending observers.
Much of that work is aimed at getting a steady pipeline of partner nations flowing into the Joint Pacific Multi-National Readiness Center in Hawaii, Blair said. The facility offers partner forces realistic training, evaluation and opposition.
“A lot of countries will go into training, but they’ve never had an opposing force,” Resmondo said.
The Joint Pacific Multi-National Readiness Center gives users access to five islands that help replicate some of the maritime-focused terrain they’ll face if fighting China. But it’s sometimes not an option.
The portable combat training center program began last year with groups from Army CTCs taking expedient range monitoring gear and observer-trainer-controllers to offsite locations.
SFAB soldiers trained with one such portable CTC this year in Indonesia, which has hosted Garuda Shield, formerly a bilateral training exercise with the United States.
That grew to Super Garuda Shield earlier this year with 14 nations participating in the large-scale exercise, Blair said.
While the reach of SFABs in the region is far, the unit is doing a lot of that in small teams.
Resmondo said that about 11 teams with a total of 130 soldiers are now conducting six-month rotations in the region. They have the authorized capacity to increase that to 20 teams with 272 personnel.
The entire brigade includes 820 volunteer soldiers split into 64 advising teams. Those teams deploy every 18 months for six months at a time.
Some teams may be as small as a captain and two enlisted personnel. Others might be larger, depending on the needs of the training package.
The brigade has the authorization to build partnerships with another eight nations currently.
So, there might be some more trees to plant. And some species of palm trees live more than 100 years.
Clarification: This article has been updated to accurately state the deployment cycles of the advisor teams.
About Todd South
Todd South has written about crime, courts, government and the military for multiple publications since 2004 and was named a 2014 Pulitzer finalist for a co-written project on witness intimidation. Todd is a Marine veteran of the Iraq War.
15. Woke Army or Woe Army: What really happened in the social media controversy rocking the force?
Analysis and insights from Peter Singer, one of the best thinkers in this space.
Woke Army or Woe Army: What really happened in the social media controversy rocking the force?
How can the Army dominate the information space when its leaders retreat from it?
BY PETER W. SINGER | PUBLISHED OCT 12, 2022 12:39 PM
taskandpurpose.com · by Peter W. Singer · October 12, 2022
It is not often that a delay in the retirement of a senior Army officer becomes national news, but as the current social media imbroglio goes to show, that is apparently no longer the case in America’s hyper-partisan political environment.
The current controversy that’s embroiled the force began in September when news broke that Maj Gen. Patrick J. Donahoe, commander of the Army’s Maneuver Center of Excellence at Fort Benning, Georgia, had his scheduled retirement put on pause. Reporters quickly pieced together that the pause was due to an Army Inspector General investigation into allegations of misconduct linked to Donahoe’s social media use.
Within hours, the news rocketed across military social media and then crossed into the national press ecosystem with outlets ranging from the Washington Post to New York Post. The reason for the stir is how the investigation tied into a range of important and controversial issues, from America’s culture wars and hyper-partisanship to proper online behavior to civil-military relations and the very future of the U.S. military.
Yet, as with almost every controversy today, what actually happened has become warped and misunderstood — including maybe even by the investigators themselves. Even more striking, the lessons and implications of the controversy go well beyond the incident in question and could haunt the Army, the military profession, and American politics for years to come.
As someone who has actually read the 41-page Army IG report, as well as worked on the questions of social media and conflict for the last decade, here’s what you need to know about the investigation, the controversy, and what comes next.
Who is Patrick Donahoe?
Donahoe joined the Army out of ROTC at Villanova University in 1989. In the decades that followed, his career reflected the demands foisted upon the force in the post-Cold War era of American hegemony and then the long arc of the Global War on Terror. He served everywhere, from Bosnia and Korea to Iraq and Afghanistan, receiving a Bronze Star and rising to the rank of major general. In July 2020, he was moved from his role as deputy commanding general of the Eighth Army in Korea to the new role of commander of the U.S. Army Maneuver Center of Excellence and Fort Benning, Georgia; as the name indicates, it is one of the key facilities for training and thinking on the future of the Army.
It was primarily during this latter period, just before his move to Benning, that Donahoe apparently began to see social media as a place to reach his increasingly online force. Twitter, with its rapid messaging format and widespread use by both American political leaders and journalists, was an ideal platform for this manner of strategic communication, and his personal Twitter account, @PatDonahoeArmy, soon became one of the more followed Army leaders on the social network.
Donahoe’s social media strategy — “to tell the Army story,” as he put it in the IG report — differed from the norm of formal organizational announcements. He mixed in inspirational quotes with articles he had read that he thought valuable for the military profession and talked up everything from base visits and recruiting to his love of tanks. He also was Army direct in his tone, as captured in a pinned tweet that stated, “We are leaders in the worlds most intellectually demanding profession where the cost of crappy preparation is the death of your people and the fate of your nation.”
Donahoe built up thousands of military followers on Twitter and Military Times named him No. 1 among “the top service members” to follow online in 2019. He wasn’t just popular, though; the institutional Army also showed its pleasure by highlighting his online presence in articles on the official Army website and, most notably, a Facebook livestream in 2020 where he talked about the importance of maintaining vigilance against the novel coronavirus (COIVD-19) despite widespread weariness over controversial restrictions intended to combat the spread of the virus.
“COVID is not tired, so we can’t be either,” he said at the time.
The woke military
Donahoe’s social media activity should have been a success story, and, indeed, was treated by the Army as such — until two other forces converged during his career: the rise of hyper-partisanship, in which toxic online behavior became endemic, and the U.S. military’s shift from respected institution to cultural war punching bag in the eyes of many conservatives.
After the victory of Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election, the U.S. military — which had traditionally been lionized by the Republican party — was targeted by a new wave of far-right figures who condemned the armed forces as “woke.” “Woke” or “wokeness” is an internet-driven term for being “actively attentive to important facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice),” one which conservatives quickly co-opted into a pejorative for progressive policies and sensibilities, namely those that, in the case of the Defense Department specifically, focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.
The story of how Donahoe’s career and these larger forces crossed begins in December 2020. One of Donahoe’s staff officers, who according to both the report and online discussion was angry at being passed over for an assignment, filed a complaint against him. Contrary to the subsequent controversy on social media issues, the centerpiece of the officer’s complaint was not Donahoe’s online behavior, but allegations that ranged from him being a “toxic” leader to claims that he had misspent money and broken the law.
These were serious charges, and an investigation was launched by the Army IG to assess their validity. In February 2021, the IG found “no evidence” to the officer’s accusations. It also found that, contrary to being a toxic leader, Donahoe was, in the words of one interviewee who had served under him, “a charismatic and passionate leader, teacher, mentor, and was approachable.” As such, the IG dismissed the investigation on Feb. 25, 2021.
All would normally be good news for the Army and, in a previous era, would have closed the matter and Donahoe would have gone on to his retirement. Yet, in the interim,, the disgruntled officer sent eleven additional annexes of complaints about his boss that extended the investigation, leading to the new report that was issued in August of this year and sparked the recent social media firestorm. The litany of complaints ranged from not being verbally congratulated when he was selected to war college, that Donahoe was “blunt” in his interactions, to intimations that Donahoe was having affairs, to accusations that Donahoe was being irresponsible on social media.
While the IG found no substance to the other new allegations and dismissed them again “as not credible,” the IG did find that Donahoe “failed to display Army Values and core leader competencies on social media.” There were three episodes in particular that the IG report honed in on — and, notably, each related to tweets that Donahoe had posted in support of fellow Army members and Army policies.
The TV host
The first instance came in March 2021, when Fox News host Tucker Carlson attacked the U.S. military as being weak and ‘woke’ under the new Biden administration, specifically describing the appearance of women in uniform as a “mockery of the U.S. military” compared to more masculine adversaries like the Chinese and Russian militaries.
The remarks immediately created controversy, as Carlson had obviously intended, and Donahoe was among the hundreds of thousands of people, both military and civilian, who responded online. The general in particular posted a video of him proudly leading the re-enlistment ceremony of a female soldier, commenting that the service of her and tens of thousands of other female soldiers showed that Carlson “couldn’t be more wrong.”
This is me, yesterday, conducting a re-enlistment for one of the tens of thousands of women who serve in our Army. Just a reminder that @TuckerCarlson couldnt be more wrong. https://t.co/M1MHe5zHrf
— Patrick Donahoe (@PatDonahoeArmy) March 11, 2021
The IG’s report found that Donahoe defending women in uniform was “overly political” and it “cast the Army in a negative light,” due it to drawing attention to the matter from other Fox personalities like Laura Ingraham. Donahoe disagreed that his posts crossed the line into what is actually prohibited by Army policy, namely “partisan activity.” He told the investigators that what he had done was an “attempt to defend” the service of women in the Army. “If we…as Army leaders are unwilling to defend them in public, I think that is a tremendous threat to the cohesion of our Army.”
In assessing these competing claims between the IG and Donahoe, it is important to note that we have had decades of women successfully serving in the military. To attack them in a uniform as a “mockery” is not just contrary to how honorably serving military members deserve to be treated, but also blatantly unfactual. Given the recent performance of Russia’s “masculine” army, oft cited as comparison to the weak and ‘woke’ U.S. military, it is also laughable.
More relevant to the question of military law and policy on social media, five matters stand out. The first matter is that a member of the military disagreeing with a civilian is actually not that remarkable. It happens all the time, on issues that range from military budgets to weapons systems, in settings that range from real-life congressional hearings, press briefings, and think tank events to online discussions, lectures, and social media.
The second matter is the question of whether Donahoe crossed into prohibited activity, such as by using his military status to endorse a political candidate or party. Active duty military members have rights as all Americans do to vote and voice opinions, but they cannot use their official status to participate in partisan political activity. Just as they may vote but not wear a uniform at a political candidate’s rally, they may “follow” “friend” or “like” a political party or candidate running for office but cannot share posts from them. In this case, Donahoe had not made a mention of either Democratic or Republican party positions on women being a “mockery,” nor is Tucker Carlson an elected official or candidate for office.
The third matter is whether Donahoe had crossed an obvious professional line, such as being personally insulting. He did write that Carlson “couldn’t be more wrong,” but that is fairly tame disagreement for the online world.
The fourth matter is the actions of others. While he is the only one cited by the IG, Donahoe was far from the only military leader to publicly disagree with Carlson. As just one illustration, the previous commanding general of the Army’s Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC), the organization that Donahoe served in, weighed in to “agree” that Carlson was “wrong,” followed by the currently-serving Sergeant Major of the Army, layering on top of their two tweets that Carlson’s “words are divisive, don’t reflect our values.”
Women lead our most lethal units with character. They will dominate ANY future battlefield we’re called to fight on. @TuckerCarlson’s words are divisive, don’t reflect our values. We have THE MOST professional, educated, agile, and strongest NCO Corps in the world. https://t.co/WeqWk6IWDq
— SMA Michael Grinston (@16thSMA) March 11, 2021
The deputy commanding officer at TRADOC, a lieutenant general, also weighed in.
Contrary to what you may be hearing this WOMAN & 1000's of WOMEN like her are NOT "making a mockery of our military". You WISH your daughter was as AWESOME as MINE! so BACK OFF. #ARMY #Navy #USMC #USAF @16thSMA pic.twitter.com/h98tpKXPJn
— LTG Ted Martin (@TedMartin1775) March 10, 2021
The fifth and final matter was how the remarks landed on the targets of the discussion. While Carlson’s remarks that female service members were a “mockery” had obviously cast them “in a negative light,” many did not feel the same of the male soldiers like Donahoe who spoke out on their behalf against Carlson. As Martina Chesonis, spokeswoman for the Service Women’s Action Network, told Military Times, seeing senior military leaders address Tucker Carlson’s comments “so quickly and so directly is really validating, honestly.”
The Twitter pundit
The second issue that the IG report raised was Donahoe’s interaction with a private citizen, Josiah Lippincott, a Marine veteran, college radio talk show host, and graduate student at the conservative Hillsdale College. Lippincott has a combative online presence, frequently describing military officials and service members as “woke losers,” and appearing in “Don’t Join The Army” videos. Notably, Lippincott’s account has since been banned from Twitter for repeated violations of its rules against celebrating violence and spreading election disinformation. Even more, Lippincott’s later attempt to evade the ban, by creating a new account, was foiled after he was found out by mocking those grieving the deaths of U.S. soldiers.
Before he was banned from Twitter, Lippincott responded to Donahoe’s posts on the military’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate policy by blaming the rules for soldier suicides and describing them as “a way bigger killer than the virus.” Donahoe took issue with this statement and responded that such a comparison was “a false equivalency” before tagging Lippincott’s college in a subsequent tweet encouraging them to “come get your boy” for posting falsehoods. During the exchange, Donahoe also posted back at an anonymous user weighing in with other falsehoods, “Don’t be a shill for Putin.”
Here, Donahoe clearly violated three rules of online conflict as opposed to Army rules. To begin, in social media arguments, there’s no value in fighting down: a major general has no need to engage a college radio station host. Even by follower numbers, Donahoe had an order of magnitude more, making him several weight classes above Lippincott; he could have easily shrugged it off with few noticing. The second rule is a familiar one: you don’t feed the trolls. They are seeking attention and granting them that gives them the win. And, third, don’t forget the real world: While Donahoe was using an internet meme by stating “come get your boy,” it was too easy to misinterpret by those not in the know and view as unbecoming of his rank.
Donahoe would have done far better to ignore Lippincott altogether. Alternatively, he should have utilized the disagreement as a teaching moment, such as by screenshotting the post (so that the troll doesn’t get the clicks) and then commenting on it as a false belief circulating online, then explaining the facts of the issue.
What’s interesting is that Donahoe subsequently came to the same realization. According to the IG report, he actually told his battalion commanders and sergeant majors that what he had done on Twitter was “not the way to go about it.” He encouraged them to behave differently, using his own mistake as a teaching moment. The IG report even noted that “after the Meeting, the BN CDRs and CSMs commented that MG Donahoe demonstrated a trait [admission of when he was in the wrong] they desired from leaders.” The same regret came in his interaction with the IG investigators; Donahoe told them his “snarky” tone was “beneath him” and that he was regretful because he had not been “following his own advice” to others on proper internet behavior.
The junior officer
The final track of IG concern came from Donahoe’s online interaction not with civilians, but with a junior officer.
A female officer in the Armor Basic Officer Leader Course at Fort Benning posted an image of herself on her social media account. Sadly, and as happens to far too many female soldiers online, she then became the target of threats of sexual assault and harassment online, extending to calls for her to be “raped.” Donahoe weighed in, posting messages of support for this soldier. It was also intended to make clear that senior leaders in the force were aware of what was going on, to scare off any service members participating in the toxic behavior.
The investigators here worried about potential interpretations of him reaching out to support a lower-ranking soldier, who was the target of “misogynistic and cruel” comments. Donahoe here again, disagreed, telling them he saw this kind of open support to a junior officer as part of his job as a leader, “protecting his soldier in the ‘larger context of gender integration in the combat arms branches.’”
In the week that followed, Donahoe named her account as among 15 military Twitter handles to follow and had a subsequent interaction online, during which he joked that wanted “co-author credit” for the job that she had done on a battle analysis. Investigators said it could have given the impression that the report “may have actually been MG Donahoe’s work.” Donahoe responded that the communication was intended to show continued support to the officer who had been under online siege, that all the messages had been out in the open, and the “co-author” tweet was very obviously a joke about the classwork. As above, no one ever actually raised the concern that he had written her report.
Two aspects are notable about this last incident. The first is that the IG’s concerns were over potentials of what people might think and do rather than actuals. The second is that it illustrates the new questions about a leader’s role in and with the 21st-century force. Their interactions, and even jokes, with their subordinates play out both in the barracks and in the online world. That is, one of the seven core Army Values is “Respect,” to treat others as they should be treated. The IG and Donahoe clearly had different interpretations of what that meant in an era of online interaction and soldiers under attack.
What are the repercussions?
With the IG’s report in, it is now up to the senior leadership of the Army on how to respond. It can punish Donahoe for one or all of these social media transgressions, all the way to stripping him of his rank, or it can let the general retire as planned and essentially ignore the report as tone-deaf. But how this plays out matters for far more than Maj. Gen. Donahoe, however, with the repercussions going far wider and longer for the force in four key ways.
The first is that the IG’s biggest concern seemed to be Donahoe drawing attention to the force that could “cast the Army in a negative light.” By that measure, the IG may now need to conduct a report upon its own report. The entire episode is a near perfect illustration of what is known as the ‘Streisand Effect.’ This concept comes from an early 2000s incident in which actress Barbara Streisand discovered that a picture of her Malibu mansion was available online via a record of the California Coastal Records Project and sued to take it offline. But, in doing so, she drew far more attention to it than ever would have been otherwise.
In this case, the IG’s report highlighting episodes that had already died out online drew scores of major media articles and generated almost a quarter million social media posts within the first 24 hours. In seeking to respond to perceived negative publicity of a perceived problem, it actually drew attention to it, now forcing leaders across the service to respond. Even more, it did so literally days before AUSA, the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual convention in Washington, D.C. Whatever one’s take on the rightness or wrongness of either Donahoe’s actions or the IG report, one can agree that it was not the topic that the Army wanted talked about both online and in the hallways during its biggest event of the year. Indeed, half of the opening questions at the AUSA press conference with Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth and the Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville were related to the episode.
The second effect comes from the IG’s failure to understand the very same rule that Donahoe failed to respect: don’t feed the trolls. It is clear that there is a culture war going on in America and, as part of that conflict, a variety of actors are trying to make political hay and personal gain out of turning the acts of the military and its individual members into their punching bag. The IG’s report seems to recognize this, but not its own role in it now. Intentionally or unintentionally, the IG not only waded into this conflict, but sent the message out to those engaged in such efforts (who, in this case, ranged from a disgruntled subordinate to a national media figure) that there is value to be had by such episodes. You not only can gain and then regain attention months after a throwaway tweet, but you also have the potential means to professionally punish those you target.
This leads to the third implication, the larger effect of what the episode means for military members in the future. Not only does it message that such tactics can work all the way up to a senior leader, but it also has been interpreted by those under attack from various parts of American civil society that they are now on their own.
The Donahoe episode was not a one-off but builds upon a practice that took off in the summer of 2021. Online trolls and far-right activists have engaged in witchhunts for individual soldiers with “radical beliefs” who had committed the supposed sin of being “woke” or “anti-racist,” their targets ranging from young corporals up to lieutenant colonels. The resulting mob sicced upon well-meaning officers and sought to “end their career[s]” in the service of “the removal of metastatic cancer from the ranks,” contacting their chain of command and trying to turn them into a problem for their superiors. It is a surprisingly effective strategy, especially for an institutional Army that is caught flat-footed in its response.
Green Berets transport a simulated casualty during Medical Evacuation training (Spc. Peter Seidler/U.S. Army)
Indeed this came to the fore at a Monday AUSA press conference, where Army Secretary Wormuth answered questions on the episode by stating that, “One of the things I think that’s most important to [Army Chief of Staff] Gen. [James] McConville and I is keeping the Army apolitical and keeping it out of the culture wars.” The challenge for this is that both “culture war” topics that drew in Maj. Gen. Donahoe and the broader military were women in the military and military health policy. Trotsky’s aphorism may need to be updated for military leaders: “You may not be interested in culture war, but culture war is interested in you.”
The hard truth is that the U.S. military needs to expect more of these attacks on not just the force overall, but its individual members; an even harder truth is that provocatuers will also go after military families. Look no further than Donahoe, whose wife has received death threats via her Facebook page and his children’s names posted online. This is all now baked into our social media ecosystem. Its very design and how it drives our new politics, encourage what retired Marine Corps colonel and former Pentagon spokesman David Lapan calls “manufactured outrage.”
It won’t stop at culture war, though. Our foreign enemies are learning from our domestic hyper-partisans about what divides us and how such rifts can be weaponized. As an essay in the Naval Institute’s Proceedings explains, we can expect online smears against individual military members to be part of any future conflict. Today, it is fellow Americans fighting a culture war. Tomorrow, it might be Russia or China in a real war undermining units by sidelining officers with faux crises and online mobs. Sadly, they will likely find bands of U.S. citizens ready to pitch in as what Soviet intelligence professionals called “useful idiots” and “fellow travelers.”
The Army IG’s report has not only sent a message to future attackers that such provocations work, but also to their future victims — female service members in particular. Part of what drove the IG report viral was not just the news itself, but initial expressions of shock from female soldiers that a senior leader who had spoken out on their behalf was being punished for it. As one noncommissioned officer told Military.com, “Intentionally or not, this whole thing showed women that we are not worth defending. If he can get slapped for this, why would anyone defend women in public?” Searing comments from female service members and veterans capture the depth of their anger. “Every time these guys shit all over us [women in uniform] … it’s fucking crickets, it’s fucking silence from all the guys out there, from all our buddies, from the high-ranking officers, from the whole culture.” Others were concerned about what it would mean for recruiting. “Why would any women want to serve now?” an anonymous Army general told Military.com on the ripple effects of the IG report. “The Army gave a hunting permit to radical partisans.”
This illustrates the fourth and perhaps biggest effect of the episode on the military: Whether it was the IG’s intent or not, its actions will reverberate across the entire profession now, and it will lead officers to fear, perhaps rightfully, even being present in a needed communication space. What happens on social media matters, shaping everything from individual behavior to the outcomes of battles now. It also shapes the health of nations, both figuratively (over more than 30 democratic nations have seen their elections attacked by foreign government disinformation campaigns) and literally (the return of childhood diseases is linked to anti-vaxxer conspiracy theories). How can the Army dominate the information space when its leaders retreat from it?
Social media abhors a vacuum and while officers may fear to wade into it for fear of killing their careers, our adversaries won’t. This matters not only to the external fight, but also to officers’ task of leading the force. Social media is where their soldiers, their families, their partners in industry, other agencies, and allied militaries are now. It is also where public narratives about the military are shaped. To avoid it may be best for avoiding an IG report, but it also means avoiding communicating with those who matter.
***
P.W. Singer is a strategist at New America and the co-author of LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media, described by the US Army Training and Doctrine Command as “Essential reading if today’s Leaders (both in and out of uniform) are to understand, defend against, and ultimately wield the non-kinetic, yet violently manipulative effects of Social Media.”
taskandpurpose.com · by Peter W. Singer · October 12, 2022
16. US firepower showcased in Philippine joint combat drills
US firepower showcased in Philippine joint combat drills
militarytimes.com · by Jim Gomez, The Associated Press · October 13, 2022
CAPAS, Philippines — Truck-mounted launchers blasted off rockets and U.S. stealth fighter jets streaked across the northern Philippine sky on Thursday in a combat drill that marked the latest display of American firepower in a region where Washington has tried to deter what it warns as China’s growing aggression.
The live-fire exercises at a gunnery and bombing range in a desolate valley in Capas town north of Manila were the highlight of two weeks of combat readiness maneuvers, which included mock amphibious assaults and joint coastal defense tactics involving more than 2,500 American and Philippine marines.
Howitzer artillery shots boomed across the dusty valley hemmed in by a mountain range and hills from U.S. and Philippine marine fire positions, some concealed by camouflage tents.
American Marines ride their vehicle across a stream during annual combat drills between the Philippine Marine Corps and U.S. Marine Corps in Capas, Tarlac province, northern Philippines, Thursday, Oct. 13, 2022. (Aaron Favila/AP)
Called Kamandag — a Tagalog acronym for “Cooperation of the Warriors of the Sea” — the military maneuvers ending on Friday were being held simultaneously with combat drills between U.S. Marines and Japanese army forces on Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido that involve about 3,000 military personnel from the two sides, U.S. military officials said.
U.S. Maj. Gen. Jay Bargeron of the Japan-based 3rd Marine Division has said the exercises were aimed at bolstering the defensive capabilities of the U.S. alliance with the Philippines and Japan, and ensuring that “we are prepared to rapidly respond to crisis throughout the Indo-Pacific.”
“This exercise is an important opportunity to bring together U.S. and Philippine capabilities and personnel to strengthen our combined readiness, proficiency and trust,” U.S. Marine Lt. Col. Kurt Stahl told The Associated Press.
America’s High-Mobility Artillery Rocket System or HIMARS rocket launchers, which have recently helped Ukraine gain momentum in its war with Russia, and F-35B supersonic fighter jets were showcased in the military exercises on Wednesday and Thursday.
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Pentagon sending Excalibur guided artillery, more HIMARS to Ukraine
US officials had avoided publicly acknowledging sending Excalibur, co-developed by Raytheon Missiles and Defense and BAE Systems Bofor of Sweden.
The HIMARS launchers fire GPS-guided missiles. Depending on the munitions and system configuration, HIMARS are capable of hitting targets up to 186 miles away, Stahl said. The highly mobile launchers are hard for the enemy to spot and can quickly change position after firing to escape retaliatory airstrikes.
While it could deliver a precision strike against critical targets like a communications system or radar, HIMARS could also be used to stop an enemy force from gaining “on a contested piece of coastal terrain,” Stahl said.
F-35B jets also can play a significant role “in increasing battlefield awareness” between allied forces on the ground and in the air through a communication link, and providing details on positions of adversarial forces, he said.
Stahl echoed remarks by Philippine military officials that the regularly scheduled annual exercises were not directed against any country.
The combat maneuvers, however, were being held at a time when Washington has more sternly warned Beijing over its increasingly assertive actions against Taiwan and rival claimant states in the South China Sea.
U.S. President Joe Biden has said American forces would defend Taiwan if Beijing tries to invade the self-ruled island, sparking angry protests from China.
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More than 5,500 personnel will be participating in Resolute Dragon 22.
Separately in July, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken called on China to comply with a 2016 arbitration ruling that invalidated Beijing’s vast territorial claims in the South China Sea. He warned that Washington is obligated to defend the Philippines under a 1951 U.S.-Philippines Mutual Defense Treaty if Filipino forces, vessels or aircraft come under attack in the disputed waters.
The ruling was issued by a tribunal set up in The Hague under the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea after the Philippine government brought China to arbitration in 2013 over Beijing’s seizure of a shoal off the northwestern Philippines. China did not participate, called the arbitration decision a sham and continues to defy it.
Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan and Brunei also have overlapping claims in the busy waterway, where an estimated $5 trillion in goods passes each year and which is believed to be rich in undersea gas and oil deposits.
The military drills were the first large-scale exercise between the treaty allies under newly elected Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., who took office in June after a landslide election victory.
His predecessor, Rodrigo Duterte, was an outspoken critic of U.S. security policies and nurtured closer ties with China and Russia.
Early in his presidency, Duterte threatened to sever ties with Washington and frowned on military exercises with American forces that he said could offend Beijing.
Duterte later attempted to end a key defense pact that allowed large number of American forces to visit the Philippines for combat exercises but walked back his threat.
Associated Press journalist Joeal Calupitan contributed to this report.
17. Ukraine’s Starlink problems show the dangers of digital dependency
You cannot let defense depend on the altruism of a businesman.
Ukraine’s Starlink problems show the dangers of digital dependency
Musk’s technology raises questions about the extent to which a capricious billionaire should be involved in defence
Financial Times · by Gillian Tett · October 13, 2022
This week, Chris Bryant, a British politician, floated a once unimaginable idea in parliament: “Is there a moment at which we might have to consider sanctioning Elon Musk [the American billionaire]?” he asked. The reason? He “seems to be playing a double game” in the Ukraine war.
The defence minister brushed it off. But Bryant raised this for two reasons. First, Musk has posted tweets that appear to echo some elements of Vladimir Putin’s ideas about Ukraine (such as Moscow’s claim to Crimea).
Second, a strange tangle has erupted around Starlink, the mobile satellite internet system created by Musk’s SpaceX company. And while this is still partly swathed in the fog of war, investors and policymakers should pay attention, since it has implications that extend well beyond Ukraine.
To understand why, we need some history. When Russia invaded Ukraine, Musk agreed to transfer Starlink terminals into the country, to provide internet to civilians and the military alike. These small devices, which were initially intended for a consumer market, work via a link to SpaceX’s satellites.
Musk deserves praise for this, in my view. As I have written before, one crucial attraction of Starlink is that it creates a “distributed” system — ie one that is spread about. This is much harder to destroy with missiles than something centred on a cell tower.
And with some 25,000 Starlinks now sitting in Ukraine, according to Musk, this network has kept vital civic and humanitarian functions running, ranging from hospitals to banks. Starlinks have also been extensively used by the Ukrainian army to fight its savvy campaign, funded by multiple sources.
But recently events became odd. Last month Musk suddenly tweeted that “Starlink is meant for peaceful use only” (even though American officials tell me that SpaceX is selling thousands to Nato groups at ever-increasing prices). Ian Bremmer, head of the risk consultancy Eurasia Group, alleged in a subscriber note sent on Monday that Musk told him he had declined Ukrainian requests to turn on coverage in Crimea, fearing Russian retaliation. Musk retorted that “nobody should trust Bremmer”. Other officials have corroborated Bremmer’s point.
Then, in late September, Starlink terminals stopped working in parts of eastern and southern Ukraine that Putin claims to have annexed, but which have been recaptured by the Ukrainian army. Kyiv officials say this has created some “catastrophic” situations.
Coincidence? Perhaps. Or possibly a technical glitch or Russian jamming. But well-placed Ukrainian observers wonder whether SpaceX officials were trying to slow Ukraine’s advance. To add to the rumour mill, Vladimir Solovyov, the Russian television personality, said this week that Musk was taking a pro-Russia stance to avoid sparking attacks on his satellites.
I and others have asked Musk’s team about this, without response. (Musk previously tweeted that the coverage issue was “classified”, SpaceX had provided $80mn subsidies for Ukraine and he desired peace). But since the malfunctions were first reported last week, coverage has apparently mostly returned. And when Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s digital transformation minister, posted praise for Starlinks this week, Musk tweeted in reply that he was “Glad to support Ukraine”.
But while it remains unclear exactly what has (or has not) really happened, the saga raises unsettling questions for western policymakers and investors. To what degree will US politicians permit a capricious billionaire to exert influence in fields ranging from social media to a foreign war? How should investors price the policy risks when private companies supply military agencies, or venture into space? Could the US government invoke the Defense Production Act over SpaceX? Is it acceptable for Musk to talk with the Russian government, as Eurasia suggests he has done?
Then there is a wide lesson about utility dependence — and diversification. Ukraine became dependent on using Starlink to get internet coverage this year since it needed to act fast, and the system was far better than alternatives, and initially quite cheap. As Fedorov notes, it has delivered enormous benefits. But this reliance also creates a potential vulnerability (not dissimilar to Germany’s previous heavy use of Russian gas, or US dependence on Taiwanese computing chips).
I have little doubt that if Ukraine needs to reduce its exposure to a billionaire in the future, it would eventually find a way. But in the meantime, the events will be carefully studied by other small nations — be that Taiwan or Estonia — who fear they might also need to defend themselves one day, and need distributed internet systems.
And, more widely, the saga should be a big wake-up call for any business leader, investor and policymaker. The war in Ukraine underscores in a very extreme form the degree to which we live in a digital world, where platforms are the lifeblood of the economy and much else. The question of who controls them, and whether we trust their reliability, thus matters deeply in these unstable times. Trust when shattered is hard to restore. Diversification matters.
Hopefully, Musk will demonstrate that he is reliable — and Starlink will continue to deliver miracles for Ukraine. But if more strange twists occur, Bryant’s question might not seem quite so crazy. Meanwhile, we should all consider our own digital dependencies.
gillian.tett@ft.com
Financial Times · by Gillian Tett · October 13, 2022
18. FDD | New Terrorist Group on the Rise in the West Bank
FDD | New Terrorist Group on the Rise in the West Bank
fdd.org · October 13, 2022
Latest Developments
A new Palestinian terrorist group known as The Lions’ Den claimed responsibility on Tuesday for killing an Israeli soldier in the West Bank. An Israel Defense Forces (IDF) statement said two suspects “arrived in a vehicle adjacent to the community of Shavei Shomron” and shot at IDF soldiers “conducting operational security activity.” The shooting follows a string of high-profile attacks claimed by the Nablus-based group against IDF troops and Israeli communities in recent weeks. The organization’s establishment reflects the undermining of the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) rule by terrorist groups.
Expert Analysis
“The Palestinian Authority has demonstrated far too little appetite to tackle the growing problem of militant organizations in its territory. This lax approach has led to a marked increase in attacks against IDF troops and Israeli communities. These militant organizations, which view Israel as an enemy and the PA as a failing institution, operate largely unchecked. The PA must reassert its control in the northern West Bank to curb the erosion of its influence by militias linked to Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran.” – Joe Truzman, Research Analyst at FDD’s Long War Journal
Increasing Violence in the West Bank
Militant activity in the West Bank escalated long before the establishment of The Lions’ Den in September 2021. Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades have grown in numbers in the northern West Bank and have frequently clashed with IDF troops since last year. The Lions’ Den, for its part, has claimed responsibility for numerous shooting attacks against IDF troops and Israeli communities in the West Bank. For example, one of its cells carried out a September 22 attack on Har Bracha, an Israeli community near Nablus, though it did not result in any casualties.
The Palestinian Authority’s Lax Security Enforcement
The PA has made only sporadic efforts to limit the illegal activity of The Lions’ Den and other terrorist groups. At one point, the PA negotiated with The Lions’ Den to lay down its arms in exchange for joining the Palestinian security forces. The talks ultimately failed when the group refused to surrender its weapons. In another case, The Lions’ Den apprehended a group of Israelis who drove into Nablus, but PA security forces reacted quickly and transferred the Israelis to IDF custody.
Stopping the Flow of Weapons
To curb the violent acts committed by The Lions’ Den and other Palestinian terrorist organizations, Israel and the PA need to stop the flow of illegal weapons into the West Bank. The IDF said in August that it prevented “approximately 300” illicit weapons from entering Israel this year. The Iranian proxy Hezbollah sent some of these arms in an effort to further destabilize the West Bank.
Related Analysis
“Hezbollah smuggling weapons to the West Bank amid surge in militant activity,” by Joe Truzman
“A Newly Established Militant Organization in the West Bank Claims Several Attacks,” by Joe Truzman
fdd.org · October 13, 2022
19. FDD | Latest Ransomware Attack on U.S. Healthcare System Exposes Critical Weaknesses
Excerpt:
Punishing ransomware victims with HIPAA enforcement fines is unlikely to lead to greater information sharing and the collaboration necessary to strengthen national cyber resilience. Thus, before increasing OCR’s funding or other funding to HHS to execute its SRMA responsibilities, Congress should demand — as Sen. King and Rep. Gallagher requested — a detailed briefing on the steps HHS is taking to improve healthcare cybersecurity and how the department will spend resources to accomplish meaningful progress.
FDD | Latest Ransomware Attack on U.S. Healthcare System Exposes Critical Weaknesses
Annie Fixler
CCTI Deputy Director and Research Fellow
Michael Sugden
Intern
fdd.org · by Annie Fixler CCTI Deputy Director and Research Fellow · October 13, 2022
CommonSpirit Health, the second-largest non-profit hospital chain in the United States, suffered a ransomware attack last week. The latest in a string of cyberattacks against the healthcare and public health sector, the incident confirms the need for better collaboration between the U.S. government and this critical infrastructure sector.
CommonSpirit — which has 140 hospitals and more than 1,000 facilities across 21 states — announced on October 4 that it was experiencing “IT security issues.” It is unclear how many hospitals have been affected, but local reporting indicates that facilities in Iowa, Nebraska, and Washington have been impacted. In at least some locations, ambulances were diverted and procedures delayed.
The healthcare sector has rapidly emerged as a key target of cyber criminals, particularly ransomware actors, since the COVID-19 pandemic’s onset. Last month, an annual survey of healthcare IT professionals found that 90 percent had experienced a cyber incident in the previous year. More than half said their facility had suffered a ransomware attack over the previous two years.
Ransomware encrypts data on a device until the device’s owner pays the attacker to release the data. When ransomware locks up a hospital’s data, it can lead to serious disruptions of medical services and complications in patient care. Among survey respondents, nearly one quarter said that ransomware attacks led to increased mortality rates at their hospitals. Last year, more than a third of respondents that ransomware attacks had led to increased post-operative complications.
Earlier this year, the White House held a roundtable discussion on improving cybersecurity in the healthcare sector. Industry leaders and government officials agreed there has been progress, but the results have been mixed. In a letter to Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Xavier Becerra, Sen. Angus King (I-ME) and Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI) expressed concern “about the lack of robust and timely sharing of actionable threat information with industry partners and the need to dramatically scale up the Department’s capabilities and resources.” The letter also asked for details of how HHS is executing its role as the Sector Risk Management Agency (SRMA) for healthcare, which entails a statutory obligation to support and enhance the sector’s performance.
Part of the problem stems from a lack of resources. Last year, the Health Sector Coordinating Council (HSCC) — the body responsible for serving as the sector’s representative to the government — testified to HHS’s advisory body that the sector needs more grants for cybersecurity programs at hospitals and that HHS needs more funding to fulfill its SRMA role, enabling it to better engage with the sector and expand collaboration and partnership with industry.
HHS is asking for a 58 percent increase in the budget for the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) — the office responsible both for helping organizations bolster their cyber defenses and for enforcing the data privacy provisions of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). The latter, however, appears to be the priority of the OCR director who told the press that more funding “will give us a stronger hammer” for enforcement.
Increasing OCR’s budget may not improve the sector’s security if the office is primarily focused on punishing hospitals for cyberattacks whose exposure of private data constitutes a HIPAA violation. Congress tasked SRMAs with providing expertise to, supporting programs for, and collaborating with industry. HSCC Executive Director Greg Garcia explained, “If OCR is looking for money that will protect hospitals … good. That’s HHS’ role — not just to penalize the victim.”
Punishing ransomware victims with HIPAA enforcement fines is unlikely to lead to greater information sharing and the collaboration necessary to strengthen national cyber resilience. Thus, before increasing OCR’s funding or other funding to HHS to execute its SRMA responsibilities, Congress should demand — as Sen. King and Rep. Gallagher requested — a detailed briefing on the steps HHS is taking to improve healthcare cybersecurity and how the department will spend resources to accomplish meaningful progress.
Annie Fixler is the deputy director of the Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation (CCTI) at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD). Michael Sugden is a CCTI intern. For more analysis from the authors and CCTI, please subscribe HERE. Follow Annie on Twitter @afixler. Follow FDD on Twitter @FDD and @FDD_CCTI. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
fdd.org · by Annie Fixler CCTI Deputy Director and Research Fellow · October 13, 2022
20. Why Marine Corps forces are becoming less relevant to combatant commanders
Why Marine Corps forces are becoming less relevant to combatant commanders
BY STEPHEN BAIRD AND TIMOTHY WELLS, OPINION CONTRIBUTORS - 10/13/22 3:00 PM ET
THE VIEWS EXPRESSED BY CONTRIBUTORS ARE THEIR OWN AND NOT THE VIEW OF THE HILL
The Hill · by Daniel de Visé · October 13, 2022
The 2022 National Defense Strategy characterizes the global security environment as a “great power competition,” pitting a rising China and resurgent Russia against the United States and its allies. The U.S. recently deployed significant forces to Europe and the Pacific in response to malign actions by Russia and China, signaling our embrace of the strategic competition construct. One important lesson is already clear: Combatant commanders need more forward-based/forward-deployed forces to support their strategies for global military competition.
The Marine Corps has unwisely elected to cut structure and capability to achieve Force Design 2030 (FD2030) targets at a time when the demand signal from combatant commanders for flexible, balanced forces is increasing. Commanders need more forces to execute tasks across the spectrum of competition and on both sides of the violence threshold. Common missions include forward presence, bilateral training and exercises, security cooperation, capacity building, deterrence, crisis response and contingency operations (high-, mid- and low-intensity).
Marine Corps forces are particularly well suited for capacity building and security cooperation missions. However, the Corps has been reluctant to offer high-demand active component forces and often relies on its Reserve to fill these requirements. Eliminating five infantry battalions and focusing III Marine Expeditionary Force on the employment of specifically tailored and narrowly defined stand-in forces for the Indo-Pacific Command further limits the pool of available forces to support capacity building and security cooperation. One can conclude that fully supporting combatant commanders’ requirements undermines the FD2030 implementation plan.
FD2030 directs significant cuts in infantry, cannon artillery, armor, engineer and aviation capabilities to self-fund smaller, lighter, more specialized forces for employment by the Navy. Nearly a third of the Corps will be organized, trained and equipped to support maritime campaigns — making them less suitable for operations in other operating environments. Divestments in close combat capabilities render FD2030 forces more vulnerable and less capable for mid- and high-intensity ground combat during crisis response and contingency operations.
The Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) has been the force of choice for combatant commanders for nearly 40 years because of its utility, flexibility, agility and offensive “punch.” It is arguably the Corps’ most successful innovation; yet its future viability is uncertain. While the current inventory of seven units will be retained in 2030, the organization, composition and deployment frequency are still to be determined.
The Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations concept states: “The 2030 MEU will operate from a combination of amphibious shipping, alternative platforms and shore basing. It will not be exclusively tied to the three-ship Amphibious Ready Group.” The Marine Corps and Navy are working on a joint concept for the 2030 MEU. The traditional MEU is an infantry-centric, combined arms task force equally capable of operating from the sea or ashore. The 2030 MEU will have no standard task organization or table of equipment and will be optimized for maritime operations. An asset once viewed as the commanders’ most versatile capability for forward presence and crisis response may become an afterthought.
One of the Commandant’s first priorities was to set the Corps on a path of closer integration with the Navy. Naval integration fundamentally changes the nature of Corps operations by placing forward-deployed forces under Navy command. This approach, while appropriate in specific instances, will be detrimental to both the Marine Corps and Marine Air Ground Task Forces if universally applied.
The FD2030 task organization specifies six Marine Service Components; five assigned to COCOMs and one assigned to a Sub-unified Command (Korea). In his initial planning guidance, the Commandant stated: “Our MARFORs are intended as administrative headquarters that advise their respective commands on the Marine Corps. In a functional component construct, we will complement and augment the [Joint Force Maritime Component Command].” Although he did not elaborate on how the composition and mission might change, his comments suggest the service components will play a less important role after Navy and Marine Corps forces are fully integrated.
Service componency is complex; there are no true experts in the field. In reality, only a few Marines will ever serve on a MARFOR staff — and those who do face a steep learning curve. Having served on the battle staff at the Division, MEF and MARFOR, we learned that the MARFOR operates somewhere between the boundaries that separate “warfighting” from “administrative.” During the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Marine Service Component for U.S. Central Command (MARCENT) deployed to Bahrain with a three-star commander and staff; retained OPCON of all Marine Corps forces in three sub-theaters (Arabian Peninsula, Afghanistan/Central Asia and the Horn of Africa); exercised OPCON/TACON of Marine Logistics Command and Combined Joint Task Force Consequence Management; completed dozens of preparatory tasks that helped set the theater for offensive operations; and served as executive agent and mayor of Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti.
At the end of these wars, MARCENT coordinated the redeployment of Marine Corps forces and equipment from Iraq and Afghanistan with multiple theater agencies and the Marine Corps Supporting Establishment and exercised OPCON/TACON of the Special Purpose MAGTF conducting Maritime Prepositioned Force regeneration operations in Kuwait.
The variety and complexity of these tasks required far more leadership and staff experience than would be resident in an administrative staff or component liaison cell envisioned by the commandant. The MARCENT staff was organized to perform operational — not warfighting — functions appropriate to its role as the Marine component to U.S. Central Command during contingency operations. We won’t have the luxury of choosing where or when we fight, nor what tasks we are given. Reducing capabilities during great power competition has little upside and makes Marine Corps forces less visible — and therefore, less relevant to the combatant commanders.
Disaster after disaster, hospital preparedness remains a deficiency Joe, Hunter and the right’s heartlessness
Combatant commanders engaged in great power competition will need Marine Corps forces more than ever before. A smaller, more specialized Corps will find it difficult to meet this growing demand. A Corps overly reliant on the Navy to fulfill its promises may fall victim to another “Guadalcanal moment” and become operationally irrelevant.
Stephen Baird is a retired U.S. Marine Corps colonel and career artillery officer. His experience includes command of a direct support artillery battalion; assistant chief of staff, G-5 Plans for I MEF; chief of staff, 1st Marine Division; and chief of staff, Marine Forces Central Command during Operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom.
Timothy Wells is a retired U.S. Marine Corps colonel and career infantry officer. His experience includes command of the Marine Corps Mountain Warfare Training Center; assistant chief of staff, G-3 for Marine Corps Forces Central Command during Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom; lead MAGTF planner for I MEF; and command of Marine Corps Embassy Security Guard Forces, Near East and South Asia.
The Hill · by Daniel de Visé · October 13, 2022
21. China Censors ‘Beijing’ After Rare Protest in City Against Xi
China Censors ‘Beijing’ After Rare Protest in City Against Xi
ByBloomberg News
October 14, 2022 at 12:02 AM EDTUpdated onOctober 14, 2022 at 3:35 AM EDT
Chinese censors have taken the extreme step of restricting the search term “Beijing” on social media, after a rare public denouncement of President Xi Jinping days before his highly anticipated crowning moment in the capital.
Two banners were unfurled from the Sitong Bridge, in northwestern Beijing, on Thursday, blasting Xi and his strict Covid Zero policy of lockdowns and mass testing. Photos and videos circulating on social media showed smoke rising from a fire behind the handwritten slogans, which were soon after removed by authorities.
“We want food, not PCR tests. We want freedom, not lockdowns and controls. We want respect, not lies,” one banner said. It also called for elections instead of having a “lingxiu,” a title meaning “leader” that was previously reserved for Mao Zedong but has recently also been associated with Xi. The second banner called for a boycott of schools and strikes.
By Friday, most references to the event had been scrubbed from China’s heavily censored internet. Restricted terms on the country’s major social media platforms had grown from “Sitong Bridge” and “brave man” on Thursday to include words as vague as “bridge” and “courage” by Friday. The name of a person speculated to have been involved with the banners was among the censored words.
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On China’s Twitter-like Weibo, even the term “Beijing” had been heavily restricted, with search results limited to posts from verified accounts, which usually belong to state media or government agencies. That move coincides with the capital hosting China’s most important political event in five years from Sunday. The banners were unfurled on the day delegates began to arrive in the capital for that event.
The Beijing city government’s news office didn’t respond to a request for comment on Thursday. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said she was not aware of the protest at a regular news briefing in Beijing on Friday.
Teng Biao, a New Jersey-based Chinese lawyer and human-rights activist, called the protest an act of “extreme bravery.” “It’s a signal that so many people are not happy under the new dictator Xi Jinping,” he said. “He will see it as a big humiliation. He cannot cover it up.”
The protest, in broad daylight in full view of surveillance cameras, represents an embarrassing public outburst against Xi days before he outlines his vision for China at the Communist Party congress, at which he’s expected to secure a precedent-defying third term. Chinese officials go to great lengths to portray unity and restrict any signs of dissent ahead of the event, bolstering security across the capital.
Scorched pavement is seen on the side of a highway overpass on Oct. 13.Photographer: Ng Han Guan/AP Photos
There have been sporadic displays against Xi in recent years, however, as he tightens his grip on the nation. In 2018, a woman splashed ink on a billboard featuring the Chinese leader, saying she opposed his “tyranny.” She was later admitted to a psychiatric facility.
On WeChat and QQ, messaging services operated by Tencent, many users saw their accounts permanently suspended Friday after sharing images of the protest. People wrote posts pleading for their accounts to be restored on a hashtag for Tencent’s customer service, which has since been deleted.
One user wrote they’d “accidentally shared unverified news” and had “deeply reflected” on their mistake. They vowed to never breach WeChat community rules again, according to screenshots of the comments posted to Twitter.
Tencent didn’t immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.
Government agencies were recruiting workers to watch bridges Friday. One job advert offered 320 yuan ($45) a day to patrol Haidian district, where Sitong Bridge is located, and 280 yuan a day for a month-long role in Fangshan district.
A guard on a pedestrian bridge in Beijing on Oct. 14.Photographer: James Mayger/Bloomberg
When Bloomberg News called the telephone number on the advert, the recruiter said he’d been hiring for various positions over the past three months, but yesterday and today were the first time he’d advertised for bridge watchers. The positions were with a government department, he said. He declined to give his real name for privacy reasons.
Meanwhile, QQ Music on Friday was no longer carrying a song called Sitong Bridge, by Beijing band Mr. Graceless, which lamented the vagaries of life. Search results for songs including The Brave One, by Taiwanese indie rock band No Party For Cao Dong and Hong Kong singer Eason Chan’s new track Warrior of the Darkness were also restricted.
Chinese internet users had begun a game of cat and mouse with censors, posting cryptic messages seemingly in reference to the event. Some on Friday had adopted a Mao-era saying, which they posted without context: “A bit of spark can start a prairie fire.”
— With assistance by Linda Lew, Colum Murphy, Sarah Zheng, Xiao Zibang and James Mayger
(Updates with Chinese Foreign Ministry comment.)
22. Civilians Will Choose the Marine Corps’ Future—and Soon
Civilians Will Choose the Marine Corps’ Future—and Soon
And they will do it by selecting the next commandant and other four- and three-star generals.
defenseone.com · by Paula Thornhill
A battle is underway for the future of the U.S. Marine Corps. It is being waged in print, in blogs, on Capitol Hill, at thinks tanks, and in the Pentagon. It has drawn in serving and retired Marines, all passionate about the future of their Corps. But the Corps’ ultimate direction will be set by senior civilian leaders—and sooner, perhaps, then anyone thinks.
The core issue is whether the Marines should continue to shift to the maritime littoral or revitalize its role as an autonomous, “first to fight” force. As physicist and philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn might have said, this is a choice between paradigms. Kuhn argued that most scientists—indeed, most people—work under an existing paradigm that assumes they know what the world is like. This paradigm drives the choice and construction of equipment, carries a set of rules, establishes the criteria for choosing problems, and provides the means to solve them. Eventually, though, even the strongest paradigm fails, and alternatives arise. When a particularly convincing alternative presents itself, Kuhn notes, it triggers a paradigmatic “crisis”: a difference so stark that one must decide to live in either the existing or emerging paradigms because one cannot live in both.
The Marines’ existing paradigm is championed by retired generals such as Charles Krulak and Anthony Zinni, following logic powerfully articulated by Krulak’s father, Victor Krulak, in First to Fight. In this vision, the Corps is perpetually under siege by Congress and the other services, but loved by the nation because it is an independent operating force, always ready to go whenever the country calls. Operational problems are secondary. What is paramount is that Marines will be first to address them. So, to ensure the Corps is ready when that call comes, it must be self-contained and retain its own complement of tanks and cannon artillery, among other things, to ensure it has whatever it needs.
Gen. David Berger, the current Commandant, offers a different paradigm. His Force Design 2030 identifies China’s increasing dominance in the Pacific as the critical, albeit not sole, problem. To address this “pacing challenge,” General Berger argues that the Corps must return to its maritime roots. He focuses on creating a “stand in” force to meet demands such as proliferated precision long-range fires, mines, and other smart weapons that are shaping a tough, contested operating environment. Moreover, rather than emphasize independent operations, he stresses the importance of the Corps’ responsiveness and relationship to the Navy and the joint force.
There is considerable overlap between the traditional and Force Design 2030 paradigms, but they represent two different understandings of the largest problem and how to solve it. This in turn compels different visions of how the Marine Corps should relate to the joint force and the nation. This explains why today’s Marine Corps leaders, even while keeping much of the Corps’ essence intact, find themselves under siege by those adhering to the traditional paradigm. The Corps, in short, is facing a crisis—and now must choose between the traditional paradigm and its increasing discontinuities or the new one and its unanswered questions.
To date, the most public manifestations of this crisis have concerned organizational, training, and equipment debates. Considerable discussion has also occurred over personnel issues such as lateral entry to the officer ranks. The most important personnel decisions, however, are not in this space; rather they are in the general officer ranks.
When the commandant states a position, it is usually considered synonymous with the Marine Corps’ position, and only infrequently does one hear dissenting voices from inside the Corps. Still, with distinguished retirees loudly proclaiming their disagreement with Berger, one must assume that many current senior Marines adhere to the traditional paradigm but feel duty-bound not to air their views.
This means that the most important decisions to resolve the Corps’ crisis are not about organizations, equipment, or training, but about the selection of the next generation of three- and four-star general officers—and particularly of a successor to General Berger, who is to retire next year. Ultimately, this person’s leadership will determine whether the Marine Corps continues with its Force Design 2030 shift or returns to its traditional paradigm.
Thus, despite the cacophony of serving and retired Marine Corps voices making cases for or against the paradigm shift, the most important voices belong not to Marines but senior civilian leaders in the Pentagon, at the White House, and on Capitol Hill. These civilians will set selection criteria, nominate, and then confirm the generals for these senior leadership positions.
But before they do so, these executive and legislative branch leaders—especially the Defense Secretary and president—must possess a strong sense of how the Marine Corps best fits into the joint force and serves the nation. These civilian leaders, too, must choose between the Force Design 2030 and traditional paradigms. Then they must discern which Marine Corps leaders adhere to the former and which to the latter. Not choosing is also a choice.
The interview, nomination, and confirmation processes can take several months. Now, not 2023, is the time for civilian defense leaders to settle on which paradigm is best for the joint force and the nation, and then to start evaluating closely who has the vision and tenacity to lead the Marine Corps in that direction.
Paula G. Thornhill is a retired U.S. Air Force brigadier general. She is an associate professor at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies and author of Demystifying the American Military.
defenseone.com · by Paula Thornhill
23. The Army Can Predict When Some Leaders Are at Risk of Misconduct
The Army Can Predict When Some Leaders Are at Risk of Misconduct
And they’re using targeted counseling to intervene before those high-risk periods begin.
defenseone.com · by Elizabeth Howe
The U.S. Army has figured out when command sergeant majors are at risk of losing focus or even going bad—and has successfully used counseling to reduce instances of undesirable behavior, its top enlisted leader said Wednesday.
“We’ve identified some points where our sergeant majors look like they’re in a danger zone,” Sergeant Major of the Army Michael Grinston said at the Association of the United States Army’s annual conference in Washington, D.C.
Grinston showed a slide with “danger zones” marked in red: three months into a command sergeant major’s tour, one year in, and when he or she has just two months left.
“At those points, they’re at a high risk of investigation. Our goal is to prevent those types of things from happening using targeted counseling,” he said.
And the Army has been successful, Grinston said. Because counseling for command sergeant majors is now required after they have served 10 or 11 months, misconduct has trended downward for three years.
The Army aimed to help these leaders before they’d been in their jobs for a year, when data shows the highest spike in instances of misconduct among command sergeant majors.
“At the one-year mark, you’re at a point where you think you’ve got it, but you don’t. You’re getting comfortable where you’re at, but you need to continue to grow. You think you’ve arrived, but you still have a lot to learn,” Grinston said.
He said the targeted counseling strategy aims to lower instances of misconduct, but also provide the best command culture possible.
“It’s all about making sure that we provide you the absolute best leaders we have in the United States Army,” Grinston said.
The success of targeted counseling was just one of a slew of announcements Grinston made at AUSA this week with the goal of focusing on “people first” and retaining every soldier the Army is working so hard to recruit.
Among the initiatives most popular with soldiers was an app that leaders could download to personal devices with a suite of tools that could track the deployability of soldiers, conduct formal counselings, and manage a large range of varying scheduling obstacles.
The SMA also announced that soldiers who score above 540 on the Army Combat Fitness Test might soon be exempt from the controversial height-and-weight evaluation. This announcement received an immediate round of applause.
defenseone.com · by Elizabeth Howe
24. Rare protest against China's Xi Jinping days before Communist Party congress
Rare protest against China's Xi Jinping days before Communist Party congress | CNN
CNN · October 13, 2022
CNN —
A rare protest against Chinese leader Xi Jinping and his policies was swiftly ended in Beijing Thursday, just days before he is set to secure a third term in power at a key meeting of the ruling Communist Party.
Photos circulating on Twitter Thursday afternoon show two banners hung on an overpass of a major thoroughfare in the northwest of the Chinese capital, protesting against Xi’s unrelenting zero-Covid policy and authoritarian rule.
“Say no to Covid test, yes to food. No to lockdown, yes to freedom. No to lies, yes to dignity. No to cultural revolution, yes to reform. No to great leader, yes to vote. Don’t be a slave, be a citizen,” reads one banner.
“Go on strike, remove dictator and national traitor Xi Jinping,” reads the other.
The photos and videos also show plumes of smoke billowing from the bridge, and a voice recording of the protest slogans played on loudspeaker.
CNN cannot independently verify the images and footage, but has geolocated them to Sitong Bridge, an overpass on Beijing’s Third Ring Road in Haidian district.
A protest banner on the Sitong Bridge overpass in Beijing on October 13, 2022.
Twitter
When CNN arrived at Sitong Bridge around 3.30 p.m. Thursday, no protesters or banners could be seen. However, a large number of security personnel were on the overpass and in the vicinity. Security personnel were also spotted patrolling every overpass CNN drove by on the Third Ring Road.
Chinese authorities have yet to comment on the incident. CNN has reached out to Beijing police for comment.
The protest sent China’s stringent online censorship into overdrive.
A worker wearing a protective suit holds a sign with a QR code for people to scan as they stand in line for COVID-19 tests at a coronavirus testing site in Beijing, Wednesday, Oct. 12, 2022. Chinese cities were imposing fresh lockdowns and travel restrictions after the number of new daily COVID-19 cases tripled during a weeklong holiday, ahead of a major Communist Party meeting in Beijing next week. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
Mark Schiefelbein/AP
Anger at China's zero-Covid policy is rising, but Beijing refuses to change course
Weibo, a Twitter-like platform, immediately censored search results for “Sitong Bridge,” the site of the protest. Before long, key words including “Beijing,” “Haidian,” “warrior,” “brave man,” and even “courage” were restricted from search.
Numerous accounts on Weibo and WeChat, the super-app essential for daily life in China, have been banned after commenting on – or alluding to – the protest.
Still, many spoke out to express their support and awe. Some shared the Chinese pop hit “Lonely Warrior” in a veiled reference to the protester, who some called a “hero,” while others swore never to forget, posting under the hashtag: “I saw it.”
“Thank you for letting me still see hope for this land,” one comment said.
“The person has disappeared, the name of the site has disappeared, so many words are disappearing. But there are so many Chinese characters, so many pair of eyes. Can you censor us all?” said another.
Public protest against the top leadership is extremely rare in China, especially in the run-up to important political meetings, when authorities turn Beijing into a fortress to maintain security and stability. The twice-a-decade Communist Party national congress is the most important event on China’s political calendar.
At the 20th Party Congress beginning on Sunday, Xi is widely expected to break with recent norms and extend his rule for another term, potentially paving the way for lifelong rule.
Xi, the most powerful and authoritarian Chinese leader in decades, has waged a sweeping crackdown to crush dissent, both within the party and in wider society.
His draconian zero-Covid policy has fueled growing public frustration, as rolling lockdowns upend lives and wreak havoc on the economy.
CNN · October 13, 2022
25. How Ukrainian Strategy Is Running Circles Around Russia’s Lumbering Military
How Ukrainian Strategy Is Running Circles Around Russia’s Lumbering Military
Classic military operations and nimble battlefield decision-making are exploiting the incompetence and top-down command of Russian forces
https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-ukraines-strategy-is-running-circles-around-russias-lumbering-military-11665584517?mod=series_rusukrainenato&utm_source=pocket_mylist
By Stephen FidlerFollow
, James MarsonFollow
and Thomas GroveFollow
Oct. 12, 2022 10:21 am ET
Eight months into Ukraine’s war with Russia, its emerging strategy is combining classic military operations with opportunism on the battlefield to exploit the incompetence of Russian forces—and is changing the course of the battle.
Ukraine’s command structure encourages junior officers to make in-the-moment battlefield decisions, an authority that they have used to seize opportunities and quickly take advantage of enemy weaknesses.
Russians, by contrast, have been slowed by a Soviet-era decision-making structure, in which orders trickle down the chain of command from Moscow, and troops at the front lines take little initiative.
In weeks, Ukraine has cleared Russian forces from thousands of square miles in the Kharkiv region of the country’s northeast. Its forces are now advancing south toward the occupied city of Kherson, a regional capital.
Rather than directly engaging with the grinding artillery exchanges and tank battles that Russia favors, Ukraine has sought instead to surround Russian forces and cut off supply lines. It has effectively integrated Soviet-era equipment with long-range precision Western artillery and rocket systems to starve its enemy of fuel, ammunition and other supplies.
A Russian-built bridge to Crimea critical to supplying Russian forces on the peninsula was seriously damaged in an explosion Saturday that Moscow has blamed on Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin said Monday he would strike back, hours after his forces launched a barrage of missiles hitting civilians and energy infrastructure in Kyiv and other cities. Russia has denied targeting civilians and residential infrastructure.
Flames and smoke rising Saturday from the bridge connecting Russia and Crimea.
PHOTO: ASSOCIATED PRESS
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Thursday that Russia’s military “strategy and goals are not changing.”
Mr. Putin has responded to the battlefield setbacks with a politically risky military draft of hundreds of thousands of civilians and appears to be digging in for a long campaign.
While Moscow retains a large proportion of its gains from the war’s early days, and nobody knows how the conflict will end, Western military historians say Ukraine’s battlefield successes will be long studied. They cite parallels to classic military strategies used in major conflicts over the past century.
The Ukrainian advances in the east and the south of the country looked like separate operations but in retrospect they appear to be part of a coordinated plan. “I see them as part of a whole,” said Phillips O’Brien, professor of strategic studies at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.
Areas controlled by Russia
Ukrainian counteroffensives
September 1
October 11
RUSSIA
RUSSIA
Area of detail
UKRAINE
Oskil River
Oskil River
Kharkiv
Kharkiv
UKRAINE
Izyum
Izyum
UKRAINE
Dnipro
Dnipro
Donetsk
Donetsk
Inhulets River
Inhulets River
Dnipro River
Dnipro River
Kherson
Kherson
Sea of Azov
Sea of Azov
Source: Institute for the Study of War and the American Enterprise Institute's Critical Threats Project (control areas)
Ukraine telegraphed its plan to attack Kherson in the south as early as August. In response, Russia reinforced its southern front with thousands of its more experienced troops.
Moscow’s decision reflected the economic importance of the region, which controls access and water supplies to Russian-occupied Crimea. But moving its troops there meant depleting its forces in the east. The Kharkiv region was left with a single layer of defense, manned largely by poor-performing troops from Russian-controlled separatist enclaves nearby.
Ukrainian forces took advantage of those weakened defenses last month, launching a surprise advance in Kharkiv. Once Ukrainian forces succeeded in punching a hole in the line, they retook thousands of square miles of territory, and the Russians made a chaotic retreat. The attack delivered a victory that boosted morale, as well as Ukraine’s standing among its Western allies.
The attack in Kharkiv was made possible by the Kherson operation, Mr. O’Brien said.
Military historians say the rout of Russian forces on the Kharkiv front with a highly mobile force—known as maneuver warfare—echoes classic examples of the strategy in the 20th century.
A Ukrainian soldier advancing last month toward the front line in Kupiansk, Ukraine.
PHOTO: MANU BRABO FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
François Heisbourg, defense adviser at the Paris-based Foundation for Strategic Research, likened the operation to German Gen. Heinz Guderian’s crossing of the River Meuse in Belgium against French forces in May 1940. The move helped to open the rest of Belgium and northern France to a rapid advance by German armor.
Mr. Heisbourg also cited Israeli Maj. Gen Ariel Sharon’s surprise move over the Suez Canal in the 1973 Yom Kippur war, which decisively shifted the war against Egypt and other Arab states in Israel’s favor.
While Ukrainian forces moved quickly into Kharkiv, the Kherson front moved slowly. Facing a larger, better-performing force than in Kharkiv, Ukrainian troops over weeks wore down Russian resistance by striking supply depots and routes across bridges over the Dnipro River, cutting off thousands of Russian troops in and around Kherson.
Having secured a bridgehead onto the eastern bank of the Inhulets River in August, Ukrainian troops began this month to press down the western bank of the Dnipro, threatening a pincer movement around Russian forces and forcing a retreat.
Agility, arms
Mick Ryan, a military strategist and retired major general in the Australian army, said Ukraine has sequenced its campaigns to great effect.
He described the Ukrainian strategy as one of corrosion, the hollowing out of the physical, moral and intellectual capacity of Russian forces to fight.
Ukraine has used “an indirect approach,” Mr. Ryan said, which was first outlined by the 20th century British military strategist Basil Liddell Hart. It seeks to change the balance of force “by draining the enemy’s force, weakening him by pricks instead of risking blows.” The approach capitalizes on surprise and nimble movement.
Ukrainian troops near the front line of Kherson in July.
PHOTO: MANU BRABO FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
“Russians want attrition, they want formations clashing en masse—that’s where they’re used to having the advantage,” said John Spencer, chair of urban warfare studies at the Madison Policy Forum. “But the Ukrainians won’t give them that.”
Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, said Ukraine’s introduction from the West of a command-and-control model based on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization provided a competitive advantage. “A junior commanding officer has the ability to make decisions depending on the situation and takes responsibility for himself, for his soldiers and for the territory,” he said.
Eliot Cohen, a military historian and strategist with the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said the Russians “are capable of making big decisions, but I wouldn’t call it an agile military, by a long shot.”
Especially not compared with the Ukrainians, he said: “When they see opportunities, they’ll take them and, in war, there are always opportunities.”
Modern tools of warfare critical to Ukraine include precision long-range artillery and rocket launchers provided by the U.S. and other allies. Together with shared Western intelligence and drones, which help Ukrainian forces to see over the horizon, the advanced weapons, including Himars, have allowed Ukraine to hit supply lines, air-defenses and military bases far behind enemy lines.
Two Ukrainian soldiers and a passing HIMAR on Ukraine's southern front last month.
PHOTO: ADRIENNE SURPRENANT/MYOP FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
The speed and mobility of Western military vehicles—including infantry fighting vehicles and personnel carriers—have given Ukrainian forces the upper hand in piercing Russian defensive lines, quickly expanding control and creating fear among enemy troops.
“Without high mobility, we wouldn’t have been able to outplay Russians in terms of maneuvers,” said Mykola Bielieskov, research fellow at the Kyiv-based National Institute for Strategic Studies, a government-backed think tank.
Two steps back
Russian failures also helped open the way for Ukraine’s advance in the Kharkiv region. When Ukrainian commandos slipped behind enemy lines last month, they were stunned to find Russian troops so unprepared.
At the end of August, drone teams and special-forces squads crept through forests and along treelines to probe for weak points. They were surprised by how relaxed Russian soldiers appeared, barely seeking cover from aerial surveillance. There were only a handful of armored vehicles in front-line villages.
The reconnaissance teams called in artillery strikes using Starlink—a U.S. satellite system providing access to the internet—targeting ammunition depots, vehicles and personnel. Intelligence officers used radio intercepts and other surveillance to locate enemy positions. Drone pilots offered artillerymen a range of targets and sometimes called in strikes directly. Paratroopers and other assault units fanned out through villages, communicating on encrypted radios.
Russia’s military often had no internet or cellphone signal, and radios reached only a couple of miles.
Russian forces dug few trenches around positions in the Kharkiv region, allowing Ukrainian forces to quickly push toward occupied towns. In many cases, only land mines slowed the Ukrainians’ advance, including those they had laid themselves during their retreat five months earlier.
A man cheers passing soldiers last month in Izyum, Ukraine.
PHOTO: ADRIENNE SURPRENANT/MYOP FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
The Ukraine forces advanced roughly 50 miles within days, flushing thousands of Russian troops from northeastern Kharkiv. They avoided street fighting in urban centers, including the cities of Balakliya and Shevchenkove, by seizing villages around them, and then surrounding the Russians in small pockets, forcing them to withdraw.
Many Russians ran, leaving behind equipment as well as their dead and wounded. Unlike the Russians, Ukraine hasn’t bombarded cities, avoiding the hostility of residents, whose loyalties may be mixed.
Ukrainian troops pushed ahead to the Oskil River, cutting the main Russian supply lines from the north. Izyum, the largest city in the area, was nearly surrounded. Forces pressed from the south to block the last road out.
By Sept. 10, the Russians had withdrawn, sometimes commandeering civilian vehicles to escape. Soldiers raced across fields in armored vehicles that got stuck, forcing a retreat on foot. Moscow said it was regrouping forces in the Donetsk region and called the hasty withdrawal an organized operation.
The Russians left behind hundreds of tanks, howitzers and fighting vehicles. Ukrainians got many of them running to use against their former owners.
“We didn’t have air superiority, we didn’t have superiority in firepower, we just had the proper conditions and exploited lower concentration of Russian troops, their lack of reserves and geography,” Mr. Bielieskov said.
Stephen Kalin and Ian Lovett contributed to this article.
Write to Stephen Fidler at stephen.fidler@wsj.com, James Marson at james.marson@wsj.com and Thomas Grove at thomas.grove@wsj.com
De Oppresso Liber,
David Maxwell
Senior Fellow, Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation
Senior Advisor, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy
Editor, Small Wars Journal
Twitter: @davidmaxwell161
Phone: 202-573-8647
email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com
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