Quotes of the Day:

"A false conclusion once arrived at and widely accepted is not easily dislodged; and the less it is understood, the more tenaciously it is held." 

- Georg Cantor, German mathematician (1845-1918)

"The only time my education was interrupted was when I was in school."

- George Bernard Shaw 

"A mistake is valuable when you do four things with it: Recognize it. Admit it. Learn from it. Forget it."

- John Wooden, basketball coach and player

1. Ukraine aid is drying up. And the White House is under pressure to send more.

2. Britain to train Ukrainian pilots, supply more missiles and drones

3. In first, Kyiv says it shoots down volley of Russian hypersonic missiles

4. News From SOF Week 2023 | SOF News

5. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, May 15, 2023

6. Renewal and realignment in the US–Philippines alliance

7. What Secrets Are in the Leaked Pentagon Documents — and Who Leaked Them?

8. To Compete With China on Tech, America Needs to Fix Its Immigration System

9. Why America Is Struggling to Stop the Fentanyl Epidemic

10. Fill the Job of National Cyber Director, Lawmakers Urge Biden

11.  Introducing the Army Data Corps and Data Warfare Regiment—Restructuring the Army to Win in 2040

12. Studying US Warfighting Tactics For 30 Years, China Plans To Disrupt US Air Force's 'Kill Chain' & Deflate Its Military

13. Hypersonics, Nukes Top House Lawmaker’s Priorities List

14. Can the World Make an Electric Car Battery Without China?

15. Thinking Beyond the Taiwan Strait

16. In race with China, SOCOM must leverage private equity, say experts and VCs

17. Simple Sabotage 2.0: the Threat of Pro-Russian Civil Resistance in Ukraine

18. How Beijing Forces Uyghurs to Pick Cotton

19. How to Succeed in the Foreign-Policy Blob

20. AC-130J Ghostrider Could Get Huge Upgrade From AESA Radar

21. ‘The Diplomat’ vs. Reality

1. Ukraine aid is drying up. And the White House is under pressure to send more.

Excerpts:

“It is critical that the administration provide Ukraine with what it needs in time to defend and take back its sovereign territory,” Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) told Pentagon leaders during a hearing on Thursday. “We expect the administration not to wait until the eleventh hour if the Ukrainians need more before the end of the fiscal year.”

The White House is discussing a new package, and it will be timed to keep support for Ukraine flowing, said a senior administration official who was granted anonymity to speak ahead of an official announcement.

The official added that it’s unclear how Ukraine’s needs might change during or after the counteroffensive, but that the administration is “fully committed” to supporting Kyiv during and after the fight “for the long haul.”

Ukraine aid is drying up. And the White House is under pressure to send more.

By PAUL MCLEARY, ANTHONY ADRAGNA and JOE GOULD

05/15/2023 04:30 AM EDT

Politico

The Pentagon could run out money for weapons by midsummer.

The U.S. has sent millions of artillery shells, funded tanks, and shipped armored vehicles and advanced air defense systems into the Ukrainian military’s hands, but only $6 billion of the original $48 billion aid package remains. | OSCE SMM via AP

05/15/2023 04:30 AM EDT

Move over, Treasury. You’re not the only one with an X-date.

The $48 billion Ukraine aid package that Congress approved in December has about $6 billion left, meaning U.S. funding for weapons and supplies could dry up by midsummer.

That’s raising fresh concerns among lawmakers about what the White House is planning next, including when the administration will ask for another major package and whether it will be enough.

The funding, many members say, needs to continue to flow without interruption, especially as Kyiv prepares to launch what’s expected to be a sweeping counteroffensive and retake ground in the east from the Russians.

“It is critical that the administration provide Ukraine with what it needs in time to defend and take back its sovereign territory,” Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) told Pentagon leaders during a hearing on Thursday. “We expect the administration not to wait until the eleventh hour if the Ukrainians need more before the end of the fiscal year.”

The White House is discussing a new package, and it will be timed to keep support for Ukraine flowing, said a senior administration official who was granted anonymity to speak ahead of an official announcement.

The official added that it’s unclear how Ukraine’s needs might change during or after the counteroffensive, but that the administration is “fully committed” to supporting Kyiv during and after the fight “for the long haul.”

But this isn’t the same Congress that approved the last big batch of money, nor is it the same set of circumstances.

This time around, any late-summer proposal by the White House could run up against the raging debate over the debt ceiling, and will almost certainly face opposition from a small but vocal group of Republicans that wants to slash spending on Ukraine.

Keeping the money flowing

The original $48 billion package approved in December included about $36 billion for the Pentagon to craft a wide range of military aid to Kyiv. The U.S. sent millions of artillery shells, funded tanks, and shipped armored vehicles and advanced air defense systems into the Ukrainian military’s hands. The aid allowed them to beat back Russian attacks while preparing for the coming offensive meant to break the grinding stalemate across hundreds of miles of front lines.

Outside the hearing on Thursday, Collins said she is concerned about giving Ukraine what it needs for the coming counteroffensive and the pace of U.S. aid deliveries.

“It’s clear that it will” happen, Collins said. “I expect there will need to be a supplemental at some point. It’s also clear that it’s taken far too long to get munitions and tanks delivered to the Ukrainians.”

Frustration is also becoming evident on the Ukrainian side about the pace of those shipments.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said new armored vehicles promised by the U.S. are only “arriving in batches,” contradicting European Command’s Gen. Christopher Cavoli, who told Congress last month that Ukraine had received “over 98 percent” of the combat vehicles it had requested.

“I am very confident that we have delivered the matériel that they need, and we’ll continue a pipeline to sustain their operations as well,” Cavoli told the House Armed Services Committee.

When Collins on Thursday pressed Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin about why Abrams tanks pledged by Washington weren’t arriving sooner, he noted that some had already arrived in Germany for Ukrainians to train on. Kyiv’s troops would be ready when the rest “certainly” arrive in early autumn, he added.

Figuring out the X-date

Collins and a host of other lawmakers POLITICO interviewed were unclear about when exactly the Ukraine military aid would run out, and how large the next package might be.

The massive U.S. supplemental has been used to steadily supply Ukraine with everything from Patriot air defense systems to spare parts for Humvees. The Biden administration has settled into a mostly regular pace of doling out several hundred million dollars every week to 10 days.

This month, the U.S. announced a $1.2 billion package of drones, artillery, air defense systems, and software and technical help to network Ukraine’s air defenses. All of those items will be placed on contract with U.S. defense companies, and are meant to help support Ukraine in the long term. That package leaves $4 billion in the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, further draining the money available.

One congressional aide who closely tracks the issue estimated that, based on the rate of announcements, the money to draw down existing U.S. stockpiles will expire in July. That would mean the flow of equipment could be disrupted if Kyiv has to wait an extended period for a new tranche of funding.

The Pentagon is assessing how to spend the remaining money and continues to look at options “as the situation evolves to support battlefield successes during new offensives in the spring,” spokesperson Lt. Col. Garron Garn said in a statement.

Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) said he’d been told recently during a briefing with administration officials they would have sufficient funds for Ukraine for the next several months, therefore that the appropriations process — or an emergency supplemental funding bill around then — would likely be the next time Congress doled out more funds.

“We’re OK for the next several months,” he said in an interview.

“If I had to guess, probably September,” House Foreign Affairs Chair Michael McCaul (R-Texas) said. “The counteroffensive that’s gonna be waged in the next several days will have a major impact.”

Back to the budget

Timing for the next round is a major issue, especially as lawmakers continue to grapple with a host of other issues.

Congress will spend the next several months debating the fiscal 2024 defense budget, a wrinkle that could complicate Ukraine funding, even as lawmakers from both parties say they fully support keeping the aid spigot turned on.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), a senior appropriator, indicated the appropriations process would likely be the next time Congress would provide funding unless the situation changed substantially on the ground.

“I think you’ll see it in appropriations,” Murkowski said in an interview. “It’s not making the front page or the second page. It kind of continues to be out there — we know it’s there — but not at a level that is going to get people really focused.”

Alluding to those in her party skeptical of providing additional resources to Ukraine, Murkowski said that “it’s hard to say that the way that people are talking now is going to be the way that they will talk [in the future]. I just think there are so many uncertainties.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), one of the biggest backers of Ukraine in Congress, agreed lawmakers would eventually have to pony up more funding and predicted the annual government funding process would likely be the next best shot.

“Although there are dissenting voices, the large majority of certainly Republicans — for sure in the Senate and arguably in the House as well — believe strongly that we need Ukraine to win and that the outcome there is something that matters not only to that region, but to the United States and our national security interests,” he said.

Mark Cancian, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said he expects several smaller Ukraine packages to be proposed by the White House to get through the rest of the year.

The first would likely be enough to last through the current fiscal year that ends Sept. 30, followed by another package that would bridge the lag in getting the defense funding bill passed, which in recent years has been pushed to the end of the year or early the following year.

Once the budget passes, another funding package could be nestled within that annual bill since “at that point, they’re going to want to buy some time to see where the war is going and how the counteroffensive is going,” Cancian said By then, Ukraine will be planning its war strategy for 2024.

But more money isn’t guaranteed, especially in this environment in Washington.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said it would be a “mistake” for the Biden administration to bank on an additional Ukrainian supplemental funding measure.

“It looks like they’re expecting some sort of a supplemental at some point — they’re going to come back and ask for more money,” Rubio said. “I think that’s a mistake. I think it should be in their baseline” budget.

POLITICO

Politico

2. Britain to train Ukrainian pilots, supply more missiles and drones

I have questions. If the UK does not operate F-16s how are they going to train Ukrainian pilots on the F-16? And there is no mention of a commitment by any country to provide F-16s.

I think the Ukraine military will go down in history as the most INefficiently but perhaps effectively trained and equipped military with multiple countries providing multiple systems and training. When Ukraine is victorious it will be a testament to the Ukrainian military personnel and their ability to absorb, assimilate, and synthesize all these disparate weapons systems and training from multiple countries and produce a fighting force fighting a Ukrainian way of war that is capable of defeating a nuclear armed Russia that was once thought to have a relatively capable and formidable military,

Putin's war against Ukraine will be studied for years to come for lessons in security assistance, training, logistics, and direct and indirect support to combat operations conducted by a nation fighting for its survival.

Excerpts:

The British Royal Air Force doesn’t operate F-16s, but Sunak announced in February the country’s intention to provide pilot training at a time when arguments over whether the West will accede to Kyiv’s request for modern F-16 fighters were heating up.

Debates within NATO nations over providing Ukraine with combat jets continues unabated. But as the supply of Storm Shadow cruise missiles illustrates, capability that was once off the table can become acceptable to donate.

Ukraine’s president told reporters after the talks at Chequers that the issue was a “very important topic for us because we can’t control the sky. ... I think you will hear important decisions in the closest time, but we have to work a bit more.”

The British government has pledged to “adapt the program used by U.K. pilots to provide Ukrainians with piloting skills they can apply to different kinds of aircraft.”

Britain to train Ukrainian pilots, supply more missiles and drones

Defense News · by Andrew Chuter · May 15, 2023

LONDON — Britain is to start elementary flight training for Ukrainian pilots as part of a new military support package announced by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak during a face-to-face meeting in the U.K. with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Monday.

Sunak linked the training program to efforts by the U.K. and others to equip the Ukrainian Air Force with Lockheed Martin-made F-16 aircraft, which he called “Ukraine’s fighter jets of choice.”

During the meeting, which took place at the prime minister’s Chequers country retreat just outside of London, the British government announced it would step up the supply of air defense missiles and 200-kilometer-range (124-mile-range) attack drones as part of a steadily growing arms package supplied by the U.K. to Ukraine.

Last week, Britain became the first Western nation to supply long-range cruise missiles to Ukrainian forces when the Defence Ministry announced it was already delivering MBDA-built Storm Shadow weapons to equip Kyiv’s Soviet-era combat jets with a potent strike capability.

An MBDA Storm Shadow/Scalp missile is seen at the Farnborough Airshow in London on July 17, 2018. (Ben Stansall/AFP via Getty Images)

Earlier this year, Britain led the way with the supply of Western main battle tanks to Ukraine, which is fighting off a Russian invasion.

The British Royal Air Force doesn’t operate F-16s, but Sunak announced in February the country’s intention to provide pilot training at a time when arguments over whether the West will accede to Kyiv’s request for modern F-16 fighters were heating up.

Debates within NATO nations over providing Ukraine with combat jets continues unabated. But as the supply of Storm Shadow cruise missiles illustrates, capability that was once off the table can become acceptable to donate.

Ukraine’s president told reporters after the talks at Chequers that the issue was a “very important topic for us because we can’t control the sky. ... I think you will hear important decisions in the closest time, but we have to work a bit more.”

The British government has pledged to “adapt the program used by U.K. pilots to provide Ukrainians with piloting skills they can apply to different kinds of aircraft.”

The training could begin later this summer.

British military training, including that for elementary and basic flights, is largely provided by the Lockheed Martin-led Ascent joint venture, which also includes Babcock International.

Zelenskyy’s talks in the U.K. follow visits to Italy, France and Germany over the last few days.

Italian officials pledged open-ended military and financial support as well as stronger backing for Ukraine’s cherished aim to join the European Union.

Premier Giorgia Meloni, who staunchly supports military aid for Ukraine, said Italy would back the country “360 degrees for all the time necessary and beyond.” Since the war began, Italy has contributed about €1 billion (U.S. $1.1 billion) in military and financial aid, as well as humanitarian assistance.

France promised to supply dozens of light tanks, armored vehicles and more air defense systems “in the weeks ahead,” without giving specific numbers. About 2,000 Ukrainian soldiers would also receive training in France this year and nearly 4,000 others in Poland as part of a wider European effort, according to the office of the French president.

Germany dedicated its largest military support package for Ukraine to date, including arms deliveries worth €2.7 billion.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

About Andrew Chuter

Andrew Chuter is the United Kingdom correspondent for Defense News.

3. In first, Kyiv says it shoots down volley of Russian hypersonic missiles

Excerpts:

"The enemy's mission is to sow panic and create chaos. However, in the northern operational zone (including Kyiv), everything is under complete control," General Serhiy Naev, Commander of the Joint Forces of the Armed Forces, said.

The six Kinzhals, ballistic missiles which travel at up to 10 times the speed of sound, were among a volley of 18 missiles Russia fired at Ukraine overnight, lighting up Kyiv with flashes and raining debris after they were blasted from the sky.

Russia's defence ministry said it had destroyed a U.S.-built Patriot surface-to-air missile defence system with a Kinzhal missile, the Zvezda military news outlet reported.

But the commander-in-chief of Ukraine's armed forces, Valeriy Zaluzhnyi said all had been successfully intercepted.

In first, Kyiv says it shoots down volley of Russian hypersonic missiles

Reuters · by Gleb Garanich

• Summary
• First time Kyiv has claimed to shoot down multiple Kinzhals
• Putin had touted the nuclear-capable missile as a world beater
• Ukraine preparing major counteroffensive
• Already claims biggest battlefield gains for six months

KYIV, May 16 (Reuters) - Ukraine said on Tuesday it had shot down six Russian hypersonic Kinzhal missiles in a single night, thwarting a superweapon Moscow had previously touted as all but unstoppable.

It was the first time Ukraine had claimed to have struck an entire volley of multiple hypersonic missiles, and if confirmed would be a demonstration of the effectiveness of newly deployed Western air defences.

Air raid sirens blared across nearly all of Ukraine early on Tuesday and were heard over Kyiv and its region for more than three hours.

"The enemy's mission is to sow panic and create chaos. However, in the northern operational zone (including Kyiv), everything is under complete control," General Serhiy Naev, Commander of the Joint Forces of the Armed Forces, said.

The six Kinzhals, ballistic missiles which travel at up to 10 times the speed of sound, were among a volley of 18 missiles Russia fired at Ukraine overnight, lighting up Kyiv with flashes and raining debris after they were blasted from the sky.

Russia's defence ministry said it had destroyed a U.S.-built Patriot surface-to-air missile defence system with a Kinzhal missile, the Zvezda military news outlet reported.

But the commander-in-chief of Ukraine's armed forces, Valeriy Zaluzhnyi said all had been successfully intercepted.

City authorities in the Ukrainian capital said three people were wounded by falling debris.

"It was exceptional in its density - the maximum number of attack missiles in the shortest period of time," Serhiy Popko, head of Kyiv's city military administration, said on Telegram.

Zvezda quoted the Russian ministry as saying the attacks had been aimed at Ukrainian fighting units and ammunition storage sites.

Zaluzhnyi said his forces had intercepted the six Kinzhals launched from aircraft, as well as nine Kalibr cruise missiles from ships in the Black Sea and three Iskanders fired from land.

Earlier this month, Ukraine claimed to have shot down a single Kinzhal missile over Kyiv for the first time using a newly deployed U.S. Patriot air defence system.

[1/6] A firefighter works at a site of vehicle parking area damaged by remains of Russian missiles, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine May 16, 2023. Pavlo Petrov/Press service of the State Emergency Service of Ukraine in Kyiv/Handout via REUTERS

The Kinzhal missile, whose name means dagger, can carry conventional or nuclear warheads up to 2,000 km. Russia used the weapon in warfare for the first time in Ukraine last year and has only acknowledged firing the missiles on a few occasions.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has frequently touted the Kinzhal as proof of world-beating Russian military hardware, capable of taking on NATO.

With Ukrainian forces preparing to go on the offensive for the first time in six months, Russia is now launching long-range air strikes at the highest frequency of the war.

It has launched eight drone and missile volleys so far this month, compared to weekly during the winter and a lull in March and April. Kyiv says it has been shooting most down.

"UNDER CONTROL"

The past week has seen Ukrainian forces make their biggest gains on the battlefield since last November, recapturing several square km of territory on the northern and southern outskirts of the battlefield city of Bakhmut. Moscow has acknowledged that some of its troops have retreated but denies that its battle lines are crumbling.

Kyiv says those advances are localised and do not yet represent the full force of its upcoming counteroffensive, which is expected to take advantage of hundreds of modern tanks and armoured vehicles sent by the West this year.

A Ukrainian counteroffensive would bring the next major phase of the war after a huge Russian winter offensive that failed to capture significant new territory despite the bloodiest ground combat in Europe since World War Two.

Moscow mounted its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February last year and now claims to have annexed around a sixth of its neighbour's territory. Ukraine turned back Russian troops from the outskirts of Kyiv early in the war and recaptured territory in two counteroffensives in the second half of 2022, but has kept its forces on the defensive since November.

Russia says its invasion was necessary to counter a threat to its security posed by Kyiv's close ties to the West. Ukraine and its allies call it an unprovoked and unlawful war of conquest, and Kyiv says it will not stop fighting until all Russian troops leave its land.

European leaders meanwhile were meeting in Iceland on Tuesday for a two-day Council of Europe summit meant to show their support for Ukraine.

According to a draft of the final declaration seen by Reuters, the leaders will approve a new Register of Damages, a mechanism to record and document evidence and claims of damage, loss or injury incurred as a result of the Russian invasion.

European leaders such as Germany's Olaf Scholz, Britain's Rishi Sunak and French President Emmanuel Macron are attending the summit, which Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy will address via videolink.

Reporting by Gleb Garanich and Sergiy Karazy in Kyiv; Writing Lidia Kelly in Melbourne; Editing by Christopher Cushing

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Reuters · by Gleb Garanich

4. News From SOF Week 2023 | SOF News

A useful roll-up from SOF week last week.

News From SOF Week 2023 | SOF News

sof.news · by SOF News · May 16, 2023

The Editor of SOF News attended the week-long SOF Week 2023 in Tampa, Florida from May 8-11, 2023. There were hundreds of exhibits, seminars, panel discussions, and presentations. It was impossible to see all of them as many of them ran concurrently. In addition, there is no way for one single media outlet to write about all of the events and happenings. So found below is some coverage of SOF Week 2023 by several different media sources. Enjoy!

Can SOF Shift from CT/COIN to GPC? During a panel discussion the head of Special Operations Command Pacific (SOCPAC) suggested that some operators are struggling in the new mission of ‘competitive campaigning’. “The ‘morale challenge’ facing some special operations in the era of Great Power competition”, Breaking Defense, May 11, 2023.

USSOCOM and a New Approach. The Pentagon’s McNamara-era philosophy is woefully insufficient to a world that changes daily. USSOCOM is working to put together a ” . . . new management philosophy, enabled by data, analytics, and AI . . .” Dan Folliard, the Chief Digital and AI Officer at U.S. Special Operations Command, provides his perspective on this topic. “DOD Managers Need a New Approach. SOCOM Can Lead the Way”, Defense One, May 12, 2023.

Refining SOF’s Role in GPC. During a panel discussion on Wednesday at the Global SOF Foundations’s SOF Week the role of special operations forces in a time of strategic competition was a topic. “Special operations role in great power competition needs work”, Military Times, May 11, 2023.

Photo: A Vision 60 Q-UGV ground robot does a simulated route mission at Holloman Air Force Base, N.M., April 17, 2023. The robot is capable of maneuvering through rough terrains. (Photo by Airman 1st Class Isaiah Pedrazzini) Several firms had their ground robots on exhibit; many of them walking along the exhibition hall floor and on the grounds outside.

SOF and Space. Over the past four years there has been increasing coordination among SOCOM, Cyber Command, and Space Command. This was demonstrated in a recent mission in Syria where the three commands coordinated to take down an ISIS leader. “Special Operators Look to Space to Boost Capabilities”, National Defense Magazine, May 11, 2023.

Ukraine on a Shopping Trip. Howard Altman interviews a Ukrainian arms dealer who is trying to procure weapons, drones, and other military equipment from U.S. companies for his country’s fight against Russia. “Ukrainian Arms Dealer’s Experience Shopping at a U.S. Special Ops Trade Show”, The WarZone, May 15, 2023.

Ukraine to Get M-ACE C-UAS Systems. One of the counter-unmanned aerial systems (C-UAS) displayed during SOF Week 2023 was the Northrop Grumman Mobile, Acquisition, Sueing and Effector System (M-ACE) and its gun truck. It will soon be deployed to Ukraine. The M-ACE platform identifies the UAS and shares its exact location with the gun truck – which will shoot the UAS down with its M230 Link Fed 30 mm weapon system and proximity ammunition. “Ukraine will operate Northrup Grumman M-ACE C-UAS”, Military Embedded, May 8, 2023.

Photo: A U.S. Army paratrooper assigned to the 173rd Airborne Brigade uses a Dronebuster 3B to disrupt enemy drones as part of Exercise Shield 23, April 20, 2023 in Pula, Croatia. (Photo by Sgt. Mariah Y. Gonzalez)

Next Generation Drones. Defense and commercial companies showcased several cutting-edge uncrewed aerial systems (UASs) at the SOF Week 2023 exhibition. The companies aim to fill capability gaps and meet the often-uniqe needs of SOF teams. “What capabilties can next-generation drones provide to SOF teams?”, Military Embedded, May 11, 2023.

Sky Warden Begins Production. Jim Smith, the United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) acquisitions executive, says that the initial production run has begun for the AT-802U Sky Warden program. The aircraft will replace the Pilatus U-28A Draco turboprops used by SOCOM for aerial reconnaissance. The program of record includes up to 75 aircraft at a value of $3 billion. “Armed Overwatch special-ops turboprop enters low-rate production”, FlightGlobal, May 12, 2023.

SOF and Leveraging Private Equity. During a panel discussion last week at SOF Week 2023 a discussion was held on how to speed the integration of commercial technology by a panel of venture capitalists and other experts. The commerical market and small-medium enterprises continue to drive hi-tech development in defense – particularly in the areas of artificial intelligence, cyber, and autonomy. These are tech areas that can help SOF stay on the cutting edge. “In race with China, SOCOM must leverage private equity, say experts and VCs”, Breaking Defense, May 15, 2023.

Amphib MC-130J? Not So Fast. The aircraft that USSOCOM hoped would provide an amphibious capability is going to be delayed. Converting an MC-130J special operations tanker / transport aircraft into a floatplane is about two or three years away. It is anticipated that this capability would be very useful for special operations in the Pacific region. “Amphibious C-130 Won’t fly For Two to Three More Years”, The War Zone, May 9, 2023.

Arrow Security & Training, LLC is a corporate sponsor of SOF News. AST offers a wide range of training and instruction courses and programs to include language and cultural services, training, role playing, and software and simulation. https://arrowsecuritytraining.com/

SOF Small Arms – Improvements Needed. Special operators need a host of small arms, ammunition, weapons accessories, and explosive devices to be more competitive on the battlefield. “New guns means new bullets, suppressors and tech for special ops”, Marine Corps Times, May 10, 2023.

2nd Generation CCMs for NSW. According to US Special Operations Command there is ongoing planning for a second-generation Combatant Craft Medium (CCM). The USSOCOM Program Executive Office – Maritime confirmed that the command is looking to replace the 31 legacy CCMs which are currently in sustainment. The CCMs are a multi-role surface vessel with a primary mission to insert and extract special operations forces. “US special forces kick off search for new multi-role watercraft”, Shepard News, May 11, 2023.

Dry Minisub News. Naval Special Warfare Command are set to receive its long-awaited dry minisub – an underwater vehicle that will deliver Navy SEALs to coastal targets without them getting completely wet in the process. “Navy SEALs Receive Long-Awaited Dry Minisub”, Maritime Executive, May 11, 2023. See also “Navy SEALs’ New Mini-Submarine to be Operational Within Weeks”, The War Zone, May 11, 2023.

Videos

Video – MARSOC and Recruiting. The Commander of US Marine Forces Special Operations Command talks about recruiting and retaining talent during SOF Week 2023. Major General Matthew Trollinger outlines the challenges of finding the right talent for unique requirements. Shepard Media, YouTube, May 10, 2023, 3 minutes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-i3VD6P7vxk

Video – NSW Challenges and Priorities. The Commander of US Naval Special Warfare Command, Rear Admiral Keith Davids, is interviewed at SOF Week 2023 and speaks about how NSW seeks to be on the leading age using technology to communicate, extend operational reach, field systems of systems, and accelerate its warfighting advantage. Shepard Media, YouTube, May 10, 2023, 4 minutes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6UkK-SXEwY

Video – AFSOC Training and Recruitment Priorities. Lieutenant General Tony Bauernfeind, Commander of U.S. Air Force Special Operations Command, talks about investing in Air Commandos and an outreach program to share information about AFSOC. Shepard Media, YouTube, May 11, 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHZ3O8E7MqA

**********

sof.news · by SOF News · May 16, 2023

5. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, May 15, 2023

Maps/graphics/citations: https://understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-may-15-2023

Key Takeaways

• Leaked US intelligence accessed by The Washington Post indicates that Wagner Group financier Yevgeniy Prigozhin offered to disclose the locations of Russian positions to Ukrainian intelligence in exchange for Bakhmut.
• Ukrainian officials acknowledged limited Ukrainian battlefield successes during recent localized counterattacks in and around Bakhmut.
• Russian milbloggers uniformly attacked a proposal for “military censorship,” further indicating that the community is highly motivated to defend its privileged position within the Russian information space.
• The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) claimed that it intercepted a Ukrainian Storm Shadow missile for the first time on May 15.
• The Kremlin has reportedly banned high-ranking officials from resigning during the war in Ukraine, likely in an attempt to maintain stability within domestic security organs, government bodies, and the Russian military command.
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky met with French President Emmanuel Macron and UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on May 14 and 15 confirming the provision of more Western military aid.
• Russian sources claimed that Russian forces captured Masyutivka, Kharkiv Oblast and established a bridgehead on the west bank of the Oskil River, but ISW has observed no visual confirmation of these claims.
• Russian forces continued to launch ground assaults in and around Bakhmut and conducted limited offensive operations near Donetsk City.
• Ukrainian intelligence reported that approximately 152,000 Russian military personnel in southern Ukraine continue defensive efforts ahead of a possible Ukrainian counteroffensive.
• Russian authorities continue efforts to take advantage of migrant labor and incentivize foreigners into contract military service.
• Russian officials and occupation authorities continue to set conditions to forcibly relocate Ukrainians from occupied territories to Russia.
• Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko received a briefing from Belarusian generals on May 15 following recent speculation about his possible illness or death.

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, MAY 15, 2023

May 15, 2023 - Press ISW

Download the PDF

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, May 15, 2023

Kateryna Stepanenko, Riley Bailey, Grace Mappes, Layne Philipson, and Frederick W. Kagan

May 15, 2023, 6:35pm ET

Click here to see ISW’s interactive map of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This map is updated daily alongside the static maps present in this report.

Click here to access ISW’s archive of interactive time-lapse maps of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. These maps complement the static control-of-terrain map that ISW produces daily by showing a dynamic frontline. ISW will update this time-lapse map archive monthly.

Note: The data cutoff for this product was 1pm ET on May 15. ISW will cover subsequent reports in the May 16 Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment.

Important Note: ISW has reindexed its map layer for reported Ukrainian counteroffensives on May 12, 2023. We removed reported Ukrainian counteroffensive coded before May 1, 2023, in order to delineate more clearly new Ukrainian territorial gains from gains secured in previous Ukrainian counteroffensives. ISW retained a few reported Ukrainian counteroffensives polygons from before May 1, 2023, specifically on the Dnipro River Delta south of Kherson Oblast, to preserve context in that complex area of operations. May 1, 2023, is an arbitrary date and does not mark the beginning or end of any assessed Ukrainian or Russian effort. ISW has reindexed its map layers before and similarly removed old reported Ukrainian counteroffensives around Kyiv, Zhytomyr, Chernihiv, and Sumy oblasts following the conclusion of the Battle of Kyiv in April 2022.

Leaked US intelligence accessed by The Washington Post indicates that Wagner Group financier Yevgeniy Prigozhin offered to disclose the locations of Russian positions to Ukrainian intelligence in exchange for Bakhmut.[1] The Washington Post reported on May 15 that Prigozhin offered the Ukrainian Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) information about Russian troop positions in exchange for a Ukrainian withdrawal from Bakhmut, and two Ukrainian unnamed officials confirmed that Prigozhin had spoken to GUR officials on numerous occasions. GUR officials reportedly rejected Prigozhin’s offer because they did not trust Prigozhin, and some documents indicate that Kyiv suspects that the Kremlin is aware of Prigozhin’s communication with Ukrainian intelligence. The Washington Post reported that Prigozhin urged Ukrainian officials to attack Russian forces and revealed the problems that the Russian forces are facing with morale and ammunition stocks. The Washington Post published an interview with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on May 13 about GUR Chief Major General Kyrylo Budanov’s interactions with Prigozhin and his operatives in Africa in which Zelensky did not confirm Ukraine’s contacts with Prigozhin.[2]

The reports of Prigozhin’s offers to cooperate with Ukrainian intelligence triggered a mixed response within Russia. Prigozhin originally responded to Zelensky’s interview on May 14, sarcastically stating that he can “confirm this information” because Wagner “has nothing to hide from foreign special services” and that he and Budanov are “still in Africa.”[3] Prigozhin’s later accused The Washington Post of spreading fake information and claimed that unnamed figures warned him about the efforts to discredit him using fake information.[4] Kremlin Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov dismissed the allegations on May 15 and stated that, although he cannot comment on the information, it “looks like yet another hoax.”[5] Russian milbloggers – including one of Prigozhin’s enemies, former Russian officer Igor Girkin – claimed that they do not believe that Prigozhin would cooperate with Ukrainian intelligence.[6] State Duma Parliamentarian Viktor Sobolev warned that mobilized servicemen who decide to join the ranks of Wagner private military company (PMC) will face 10 to 15 years in prison because Wagner is an illegal armed formation within Russia.[7] It is unclear if Sobolev’s comments were made in response to the allegations, since Sobolev is an avid critic of Prigozhin and the Wagner forces.[8]

Prigozhin’s reported efforts to cooperate with Ukrainian intelligence would have been part of his feud with the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) rather than an attack on Russian President Vladimir Putin. ISW assessed on March 12 that Prigozhin is competing with the Russian MoD for Putin’s favor but had unintentionally alarmed Putin with his military-political ambitions.[9] Prigozhin’s reported outreach to Ukranian intelligence would likely have been part of an effort to win Putin’s favor, in fact, by facilitating a rapid Wagner victory in Bakhmut while harming Russian conventional forces behind the scenes. Prigozhin recently retracted his May 9 comments that indirectly mocked Putin, further indicating that Prigozhin is aware of his dependance on Putin and does not mean to antagonize him.[10]

The allegations are unlikely to cause the Kremlin to remove Prigozhin in the near term but can contribute to efforts to discredit Prigozhin. The Kremlin likely suspects or is aware of Prigozhin’s reported communications with Ukrainian intelligence and likely was not blindsided by The Washington Post report or the leaked US intelligence documents. Russian officials had reportedly threatened Prigozhin with treason if he were to act on his attempt to blackmail the MoD into providing him more ammunition by threatening to withdraw from Bakhmut. The Kremlin is likely preparing mechanisms to discredit Prigozhin as a traitor.[11] Unnamed Kremlin sources revealed that the Russian Presidential Administration is preparing an information operation to publicly discredit Prigozhin but noted that the Kremlin is unlikely to threaten Prigozhin while Wagner forces are on the frontlines.[12] Prigozhin commands the Wagner forces in Donbas, and his removal would disrupt the Russian lines in Bakhmut – a risk that Putin is unlikely to take. The Kremlin is also unable easily to publicly remove and replace Prigozhin as the de facto head of Wagner because Wagner is an independent company and Prigozhin holds no official position in the Russian government. Removing Prigozhin from his control of Wagner would ironically require asserting direct Kremlin control of the mercenary group from which Putin has been at pains to maintain formal distance.

Ukrainian officials acknowledged limited Ukrainian battlefield successes during recent localized counterattacks in and around Bakhmut. Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyar stated on May 15 that the Ukrainian forces made unspecified advances in and around Bakhmut in the past several days. Malyar added that Russian forces are deploying airborne (VDV) forces to defend Bakhmut’s flanks, presumably from other areas of the front.[13] Ukrainian Eastern Group of Forces Commander Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskyi characterized the localized Ukrainian counterattacks as the first successes in Ukraine’s overall defense of Bakhmut and noted that this operation must be perceived as only a partial success.[14] Ukrainian Eastern Group of Forces Spokesperson Colonel Serhiy Cherevaty stated on May 14 that Ukrainian forces advanced 150-600 meters in various directions in the Bakhmut area and that Russian forces continue efforts to complete the capture of Bakhmut and defend the occupied territories.[15]

Russian milbloggers uniformly attacked a proposal for “military censorship,” further indicating that the community is highly motivated to defend its privileged position within the Russian information space. State Duma Deputy Viktor Sobolev proposed on May 15 that military correspondents’ reports about the situation in Ukraine should be subject to “military censorship” and that the lack of censorship has led to the spread of false information and panic.[16] Russian milbloggers widely criticized Sobolev for the supposed illegality and impracticality of the proposal, arguing that "military censorship” would be incongruous with Russia’s need to fill the information space with pro-Russian sources against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine.[17] State Duma Deputy Oleg Matveychev amplified an article by Russian political scientist Pavel Danilin on May 14 accusing the Russian milbloggers of promoting panicky false stories about Russian retreats and problems with the Russian MoD.[18] Danilin suggested that the milbloggers‘ actions constitute acts of high treason and stated that “during the Great Patriotic War, those who [sowed] panic … were put against the wall.”[19] Russian milblogger and Human Rights Council member Alexander “Sasha” Kots refuted Danilin's points and launched a series of critiques against Matveychev that other milbloggers amplified.[20] Russian milbloggers in both instances highlighted their alleged achievements and the importance of the “patriotic segment of Telegram” in bringing attention to acute problems and moving Russia closer to victory.[21]

Select Russian officials have previously called for the censorship of Telegram and the milbloggers, although ISW assesses that Putin is unlikely to approve such a measure because the Kremlin is attempting to use the wider ultranationalist community’s established networks to recruit volunteers and generate social support for the war.[22] The rapid and unified response from milbloggers suggests that the community perceives itself as a unitary civil society entity, one interested in defending its increasingly singular privilege in being able to criticize the conduct of the Russian war in Ukraine despite its internal factions and disagreements.

The Russian MoD claimed that it intercepted a Ukrainian Storm Shadow missile for the first time on May 15.[23] The MoD made this claim on the third day of four days of claimed Ukrainian Storm Shadow strikes against the Russian military assets in Luhansk City, roughly 80-100 kilometers behind the frontline.[24] A Russian milblogger expressed concern that Ukraine’s use of the missile can severely impact the situation on the frontlines because the only way Russian forces can counter the Storm Shadows is to destroy the aircraft carrying the missiles.[25]

The Kremlin has reportedly banned high-ranking officials from resigning during the war in Ukraine, likely in an attempt to maintain stability within domestic security organs, government bodies, and the Russian military command. Independent Russian investigative outlet Vazhnye Isotrii (iStories) reported on May 15 that a former Federal Security Service (FSB) officer and sources close to an unnamed regional governor and the presidential administration stated that the Kremlin threatened civil servants in security organs and government bodies with criminal prosecution for trying to defy the ban.[26] The Kremlin reportedly instituted the ban because many officials wanted to leave their positions after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, although iStories’ sources emphasized that the informal and illegal nature of the ban may allow for exceptions.[27] The Kremlin may be attempting to stop Russian officials from resigning in protest to advance their own objectives. ISW previously reported that former Central Military District (CMD) commander Colonel General Alexander Lapin and Russian Airborne Forces (VDV) commander Colonel General Mikhail Teplinsky reportedly resigned due to intense public criticism and in protest of conditions at the front, respectively.[28] Teplinsky likely used the fallout from his resignation to advocate for a leading military command position in Ukraine, a scenario that the Kremlin may attempt to avoid in the future by applying the reported ban more broadly.[29]

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky met with French President Emmanuel Macron and UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on May 14 and 15 confirming the provision of more Western military aid. The Ukrainian and French governments issued a joint statement on May 15 announcing that France will train and equip “several” Ukrainian battalions with “tens” of armored vehicles and light tanks, including the AMX-10RC.[30] The joint statement reiterated that the French government would continue providing political, financial, humanitarian, and military aid to Ukraine “for as long as it takes.” The UK government confirmed on May 15 that Sunak will announce another round of military aid to Ukraine, including the provision of unspecified long-range attack drones with ranges of over 200 kilometers, and will deliver them to Ukraine over the coming months.[31] Sunak announced that the UK will begin developing a program to train Ukrainian pilots to fly F-16 fighter jets and will begin training an initial cohort of pilots over the summer.

Key Takeaways

• Leaked US intelligence accessed by The Washington Post indicates that Wagner Group financier Yevgeniy Prigozhin offered to disclose the locations of Russian positions to Ukrainian intelligence in exchange for Bakhmut.
• Ukrainian officials acknowledged limited Ukrainian battlefield successes during recent localized counterattacks in and around Bakhmut.
• Russian milbloggers uniformly attacked a proposal for “military censorship,” further indicating that the community is highly motivated to defend its privileged position within the Russian information space.
• The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) claimed that it intercepted a Ukrainian Storm Shadow missile for the first time on May 15.
• The Kremlin has reportedly banned high-ranking officials from resigning during the war in Ukraine, likely in an attempt to maintain stability within domestic security organs, government bodies, and the Russian military command.
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky met with French President Emmanuel Macron and UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on May 14 and 15 confirming the provision of more Western military aid.
• Russian sources claimed that Russian forces captured Masyutivka, Kharkiv Oblast and established a bridgehead on the west bank of the Oskil River, but ISW has observed no visual confirmation of these claims.
• Russian forces continued to launch ground assaults in and around Bakhmut and conducted limited offensive operations near Donetsk City.
• Ukrainian intelligence reported that approximately 152,000 Russian military personnel in southern Ukraine continue defensive efforts ahead of a possible Ukrainian counteroffensive.
• Russian authorities continue efforts to take advantage of migrant labor and incentivize foreigners into contract military service.
• Russian officials and occupation authorities continue to set conditions to forcibly relocate Ukrainians from occupied territories to Russia.
• Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko received a briefing from Belarusian generals on May 15 following recent speculation about his possible illness or death.

We do not report in detail on Russian war crimes because these activities are well-covered in Western media and do not directly affect the military operations we are assessing and forecasting. We will continue to evaluate and report on the effects of these criminal activities on the Ukrainian military and the Ukrainian population and specifically on combat in Ukrainian urban areas. We utterly condemn these Russian violations of the laws of armed conflict, Geneva Conventions, and humanity even though we do not describe them in these reports.

• Russian Main Effort – Eastern Ukraine (comprised of two subordinate main efforts)
• Russian Subordinate Main Effort #1 – Capture the remainder of Luhansk Oblast and push westward into eastern Kharkiv Oblast and encircle northern Donetsk Oblast
• Russian Subordinate Main Effort #2 – Capture the entirety of Donetsk Oblast
• Russian Supporting Effort – Southern Axis
• Russian Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts
• Activities in Russian-occupied areas

Russian Main Effort – Eastern Ukraine

Russian Subordinate Main Effort #1 – Luhansk Oblast (Russian objective: Capture the remainder of Luhansk Oblast and push westward into eastern Kharkiv Oblast and northern Donetsk Oblast)

Russian sources claimed that Russian forces captured Masyutivka, Kharkiv Oblast (13km northeast of Kupyansk) and established a bridgehead on the west (right) bank of the Oskil River.[32] A prominent Russian milblogger claimed that a Russian assault group captured Masyutivka on May 14 and established a bridgehead on the opposite bank of the Oskil River immediately west of the settlement.[33] Other Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian forces conducted a successful raid on Ukrainian positions near Masyutivka and later withdrew, and that reports about the establishment of a Russian bridgehead are unconfirmed.[34] ISW has not yet observed visual confirmation that Russian forces captured Masyutivka or have established positions anywhere on the west (right) bank of the Oskil River. Russian milbloggers argued that the Russian capture of Masyutivka would be tactically insignificant given that Ukrainian forces hold elevated positions in the area and could easily fire on Russian attempts to advance.[35] The Ukrainian General Staff reported on May 15 that Russian forces conducted unsuccessful offensive operations near Masyutivka as well as Synkivka (9km northeast of Kupyansk).[36]

Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces continued reconnaissance activity in the Kreminna area on May 15. The Russian MoD claimed that elements of the 76th Air Assault Division destroyed two Ukrainian sabotage and reconnaissance groups near Dibrova (5km southwest of Kreminna).[37]

Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces conducted a missile strike on Russian rear positions in Luhansk City on May 15.[38] Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces likely used Storm Shadow cruise missiles in order to target the former Luhansk Higher Military Aviation School, although social media sources claimed that Russian forces currently use the school as a base to train Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR) military personnel.[39]

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

Russian forces continued ground assaults in Bakhmut and its outskirts on May 15, while Ukrainian forces are continuing defensive operations in the Bakhmut direction. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces conducted unsuccessful offensive operations within 9km northwest of Bakhmut in the direction of Hryhorivka and Bohdanivka; within 14km southwest of Bakhmut in the direction of Ivanivske and Predtechyne; and in Bakhmut.[40] Ukrainian Eastern Group of Forces Spokesperson Colonel Serhiy Cherevaty stated that Russian and Ukrainian forces engaged in 30 combat clashes in the Bakhmut direction and that Russian forces shelled Ukrainian positions over 300 times.[41] The Russian MoD claimed that units of the 4th Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade (2nd Luhansk People’s Republic Army Corps) are fighting in the vicinity of Ivanivske (6km west of Bakhmut).[42] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces unsuccessfully counterattacked near Bila Hora ( 13km southwest of Bakhmut), Bohdanivka (6km northwest of Bakhmut), and Hryhorivka (9km northwest of Bakhmut).[43] A Wagner Group-affiliated milblogger claimed that Russian units of the 72nd Motorized Rifle Brigade (3rd Army Corps) lost positions southwest of Ivanivske and noted that Ukrainian forces are trying to reach the northwestern outskirts of Klishchiivka (about 7km southwest of Bakhmut).[44] Wagner financier Yevgeny Prigozhin claimed that Wagner mercenaries advanced by 130 meters in Bakhmut and that Ukrainian forces only control 1.6 square kilometers of the city.[45] Prigozhin claimed that Wagner forces advanced in southwestern Bakhmut. A Kremlin-affiliated milblogger claimed that Wagner is focusing on clearing the private residential area in western Bakhmut likely in response to losing positions southwest of the Berkhivs’ke Reservoir.[46] The milblogger claimed that Wagner will attempt to push through the residential area and reach the Bakhmut-Khromove route in the coming days.

Russian forces continued limited offensive operations along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City front on May 15. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces unsuccessfully attacked Ukrainian positions in the Marinka area (approximately 22km southwest of Donetsk City).[47] Russian milbloggers claimed that the 110th Motorized Rifle Brigade (1st Army Corps) is operating in the Nevelske area (18km west of Donetsk City).[48] Ukrainian Mariupol Mayoral Advisor Petro Andryushenko reported that Russian forces are fortifying positions around Mariupol, especially around bridges over the Kalmius and Kalchyk rivers.[49]

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

Ukrainian intelligence reported that approximately 152,000 Russian troops in southern Ukraine continue defensive efforts ahead of a possible Ukrainian counteroffensive.[50] Ukrainian Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) Representative Andriy Chernyak stated on May 15 that Russian forces are not withdrawing from Zaporizhia and Kherson oblasts.[51] The Ukrainian Southern Operational Command reported that Russian forces have deployed an unspecified small missile ship with eight Kalibr missiles to the Sea of Azov for the first time since the start of the war in order to defend the Kerch Strait Bridge.[52]

A Russian source claimed that Russian forces conducted a limited ground attack in western Zaporizhia Oblast on May 15. A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces made incremental advances near Maly Shcherbaky (22km northeast of Vasylivka).[53] ISW is unable to confirm this claim of the attack or advance.

Ukranian forces continue striking areas along critical logistics lines in southern Ukraine. Russian sources, including Zaporizhia Oblast occupation official Vladimir Rogov, accused the Ukrainian forces of using HIMARS to strike Melitopol, Tokmak, and Molochansk (between Melitopol and Tokmak on the T0401 highway), and of using Grad MLRS and other weapons to strike Vasylivka and Polohy.[54] The Ukrainian Southern Operational Command reported that Ukrainian forces conducted three airstrikes against Russian air defense systems and force concentrations in Skadovsk Raion, Kherson Oblast.[55]

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

Russian authorities continue efforts to incentivize migrants into contract military service.[56] Russian President Vladimir Putin approved an amendment to a bill on May 15 decreasing the military service requirement for a simplified path to Russian citizenship from five years including six months in combat to one year.[57] Putin originally signed the bill into law on September 30, 2022, just after the announcement of partial mobilization.[58] Reducing the terms of this original decree less than a year after signing it demonstrates the Kremlin’s desperation to recruit volunteers and avoid partial or general mobilization. The Russian MoD amplified an advertisement for contract service with the Russian forces, stating that recruits only need to be 18 and have completed a general education to be eligible.[59] The advertisement promised a one-time payment of 195,000 rubles (roughly $2,441) and monthly salaries of 204,00 rubles (roughly $2,553) for service in Ukraine. ISW previously assessed that Russian officials disproportionally focus recruitment efforts on migrant communities in Russia.[60]

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

Russian officials and occupation authorities continue to set conditions to forcibly relocate Ukrainians from occupied territories to Russia and consolidate legislative control over the area. The Russian State Duma Committee on State Building and Legislation recommended amendments to the legislation on martial law that include a clause authorizing the forced and controlled movement of citizens from territory with martial law to territory without martial law.[61] The amendments, if adopted, would give additional legal justification for Russian officials to forcibly relocate Ukrainians in occupied territories to Russia. The amendments also impose a punishment of up to 30 days in jail for violating martial law restrictions.[62] The amendments allow the postponement of regional elections in territories under martial law for 30 days, indicating that Russian officials and occupation authorities may fear the informational consequences of publicly preparing to run September regional elections in areas which Russia may lose during a future Ukrainian counteroffensive.[63]

Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) Head Denis Pushilin announced on May 15 that occupied Donetsk Oblast will open 153 summer camps for 16,000 children on June 1.[64] Pushilin also stated that camps in unspecified Russian regions will host 8,300 children from occupied Donetsk Oblast during the summer.[65]

Likely Ukrainian actors attempted to assassinate a senior occupation official in Luhansk City on May 15. Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR) authorities claimed that unspecified actors used an unspecified explosive device in an attempt to kill acting head of the LNR Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) Igor Kornet at a barber shop in Luhansk City.[66] Kornet has served as head of the LNR MVD since 2014.[67] LNR authorities claimed the attack killed one and wounded seven others, including Kornet.[68]

Significant activity in Belarus (ISW assesses that a Russian or Belarusian attack into northern Ukraine in early 2023 is extraordinarily unlikely and has thus restructured this section of the update. It will no longer include counter-indicators for such an offensive.)

ISW will continue to report daily observed Russian and Belarusian military activity in Belarus, but these are not indicators that Russian and Belarusian forces are preparing for an imminent attack on Ukraine from Belarus. ISW will revise this text and its assessment if it observes any unambiguous indicators that Russia or Belarus is preparing to attack northern Ukraine.

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko received a briefing from Belarusian generals on May 15 following recent speculation about his possible illness or death.[69] Lukashenko announced on May 15 that Belarusian forces are on high alert due to the four aircraft crash in Bryansk Oblast.[70] Lukashenko claimed that unspecified but presumably Ukrainian actors shot down the aircraft.

The Belarusian Ministry of Defense reported on May 15 that unspecified Belarusian maneuver elements conducted a company tactical exercise as part of the ongoing combat readiness check.[71]

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.

6. Renewal and realignment in the US–Philippines alliance

Excerpts:

The Balikatan military exercises — held annually between the United States and the Philippines to improve combined planning, combat readiness and interoperability — reinforce the Philippines’ commitment to integrating the US security alliance into its broader regional network. The most recent exercise was the most advanced in history, involving 12,200 US forces, 5400 Filipino forces and a diverse set of multilateral partners.

Despite the commitment to a renewed US–Philippines alliance, its long-term success will largely depend on how the Marcos administration manoeuvres domestic opposition. Various groups including the Filipino–Chinese business community, former president Rodrigo Duterte, and Marcos’ sister oppose an alignment with the US in the face of China. As a result of this, Philippine Foreign Secretary Enrique Manalo expressed in his most recent remarks in Washington a mix of joy and caution within alliance commemorations. For the US–Philippines alliance to succeed and adapt to the realities of the 21st century, it must become stronger, more resilient and wary of domestic opposition.

Renewal and realignment in the US–Philippines alliance | East Asia Forum

eastasiaforum.org · by Narupat Ratanakitt · May 16, 2023

Author: Narupat Rattanakit, American University

On 11 April 2023, a significant ministerial dialogue between the United States and the Philippines took place after a tumultuous period in the alliance under the previous administrations of presidents Rodrigo Duterte and Donald Trump. It followed the largest ever US–Philippines joint military drill. This historic moment demonstrates a renewed US commitment to modernising interoperability with one of its oldest allies in Asia.

Recent developments have increased the impetus for the alliance’s renewal. Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr has expressed concerns that a military battle between the United States and China over Taiwan will almost certainly entangle the Philippines. The highly contested grey zone of the South China Sea — an area in which China is making aggressive territorial claims and deploying military assets to disputed islands — is causing significant concern among neighbouring countries. These fears have escalated since the China–Philippines standoff at Scarborough Shoal in 2012.

In the context of China’s assertiveness, the United States has reiterated its commitment to the Philippines and its willingness to help defend the nation’s sovereignty in the South China Sea. The US–Philippines Mutual Defense Treaty, which was signed in 1951, serves as the foundation for this commitment, providing for the mutual defence of both countries in the event of an armed attack.

Given the rising geopolitical tensions between the United States and China, Marcos’s call to ‘[evolve] the alliance to make it more responsive to present and emerging challenges’ has been heeded by Manila and Washington. One example of this closer alignment between the two nations are efforts to modernise the US–Philippines alliance. In April 2023, Philippine National Defense Secretary Carlito Galvez and US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin discussed plans to operationalise four new Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement sites, deepening military interoperability between the United States and the Philippines.

The new Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement sites are also expected to support combined training, exercises and other operational activities between US and Philippine armed forces, enabling the countries to effectively respond to shared security challenges. It was made clear that the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement is primarily about the Philippines’ interests, not Taiwan’s. The United States has allocated over US$82 million for projects in these locations, which also aims to support economic growth and job creation in local Philippine communities.

The two countries have made further commitments to building interoperability and cooperation in both conventional and unconventional domains, particularly for disaster relief and maritime security. This includes adopting a security roadmap to guide shared defence modernisation investments and inform the delivery of priority platforms over the next five to ten years.

The US and Philippine defence secretaries recognised the value of collaborating closely with like-minded countries such as Japan, members of the AUKUS trilateral security partnership and ASEAN. The potential to strengthen operational cooperation with partners such as Japan and Australia was recognised, which could include observation and participation in trilateral and multilateral exercises.

Both the United States and the Philippines backed the ASEAN Outlook on the Indo-Pacific in April 2023 and stressed the need for regional alliances and arrangements in maintaining ASEAN’s prominence. The secretaries agreed on the necessity of expanding economic and security cooperation with other Southeast Asian partners through a variety of measures, including joint training and capacity building. But ASEAN’s ineffectiveness over the years, particularly in solving the Myanmar crisis, has increased the likelihood that the Philippines will concentrate more on improving bilateral relations with the United States.

The Balikatan military exercises — held annually between the United States and the Philippines to improve combined planning, combat readiness and interoperability — reinforce the Philippines’ commitment to integrating the US security alliance into its broader regional network. The most recent exercise was the most advanced in history, involving 12,200 US forces, 5400 Filipino forces and a diverse set of multilateral partners.

Despite the commitment to a renewed US–Philippines alliance, its long-term success will largely depend on how the Marcos administration manoeuvres domestic opposition. Various groups including the Filipino–Chinese business community, former president Rodrigo Duterte, and Marcos’ sister oppose an alignment with the US in the face of China. As a result of this, Philippine Foreign Secretary Enrique Manalo expressed in his most recent remarks in Washington a mix of joy and caution within alliance commemorations. For the US–Philippines alliance to succeed and adapt to the realities of the 21st century, it must become stronger, more resilient and wary of domestic opposition.

Narupat Rattanakit is a Fellow in the Pericles Institute, a think tank based at American University.

eastasiaforum.org · by Narupat Ratanakitt · May 16, 2023

7. What Secrets Are in the Leaked Pentagon Documents — and Who Leaked Them?

A very useful compilation of articles about the Discord Leaks.

What Secrets Are in the Leaked Pentagon Documents — and Who Leaked Them?

By Chas Danner, associate editor at Intelligencer

New York Magazine · by Chas Danner · May 14, 2023

Photo: Daniel Slim/AFP via Getty Images

A stunning leak of a cache of classified Pentagon documents appears to be one of the most significant breaches of U.S. intelligence in decades, revealing national-security secrets regarding Ukraine, Russia, Asia, and the Middle East, as well as details about U.S. espionage methods and spying on adversaries and allies. The Pentagon has confirmed the leak’s authenticity, and while the documents had been made available online for more than a year, U.S. officials weren’t aware of the leak until April 6, the day it was reported by the New York Times. The Justice Department quickly opened an investigation, and within a week the FBI arrested the 21-year-old suspected leaker, National Guard airman Jack Teixeira. Below is what we know about the leak and Teixeira thus far, including .

Revelations So Far

Although no news organization or government source has confirmed the accuracy of the information contained in the leaked documents, there is at this point no doubt they are authentic assessments based on U.S. intelligence. Below are some of the key purported revelations from the cache.

.

Wagner Group chief Yevgeniy Prigozhin offered Russian troop locations to Ukraine

The Washington Post reports that in late January, Prigozhin offered to provide Russian troop locations to Ukraine if they withdrew their forces from the fight for Bakhmut, where Wagner Group forces defending the city were taking heavy losses. According to U.S. intel documents in the leak, Prigozhin — a key Kremlin ally who has publicly criticized Russia’s support for Wagner Group fighters — made the offer to contacts in Ukraine’s military intelligence, though it’s not clear what troop positions he offered. Per the Post, Ukrainian officials confirmed that Prigozhin attempted to reach out multiple times, but that they didn’t take it seriously:

Two Ukrainian officials confirmed that Prigozhin has spoken several times to the Ukrainian intelligence directorate, known as HUR. One official said that Prigozhin extended the offer regarding Bakhmut more than once, but that Kyiv rejected it because officials don’t trust Prigozhin and thought his proposals could have been disingenuous. A U.S. official also cautioned that there are similar doubts in Washington about Prigozhin’s intentions. …

Prigohzin has carried on a secret relationship with Ukrainian intelligence that, in addition to phone calls, includes in-person meetings with HUR officers in an unspecified country in Africa, one document states. … The leaked U.S. intelligence shows Prigozhin bemoaning the heavy toll that fighting has taken on his own forces and urging Ukraine to strike harder against Russian troops. According to one document, Prigozhin told a Ukrainian intelligence officer that the Russian military was struggling with ammunition supplies. He advised Ukrainian forces to push forward with an assault on the border of Crimea, which Russia has illegally annexed, while Russian troop morale was low.

.

Ukraine planned covert attacks on Russian forces in Syria

According to the Washington Post, a top-secret document in the leak, based on intel collected by human sources, said that Ukraine made and then abandoned plans to conduct deniable covert attacks on Russian forces inside Syria. They initially planned to arm and train operatives of the Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces to conduct strikes using drones that would target Russia-backed Wagner Group mercenaries in the country. The document also said that Turkey was aware of the effort and tried to limit “potential blowback” on themselves by suggesting the attacks be launched from Kurdish-controlled areas. President Zelenskyy ultimately halted the plans in December, but the intel document suggested the plans could be revived.

.

The U.S. advised Ukraine against defending Bakhmut, but Ukraine didn’t listen

The Washington Post reports that according to one of the documents, earlier this year the U.S. offered Ukraine a bleak assessment of its ability to hold Bakhmut against Russian advances and suggested they withdraw from the city. Ukraine went ahead with the defense of Bakhmut anyway, however.

.

More details about China’s spy balloons

The leaked documents also contained top-secret information about four additional Chinese spy balloons that U.S. intelligence agencies knew about in February, after another one of the balloons flew across the continental U.S. before being shot down. The documents include annotated images, including one taken of the transcontinental balloon apparently taken by a U2 spy plane, pointing out the balloons’ similarities and assessing what they appeared to be equipped with. The Washington Post reports:

The Chinese spy balloon that flew over the United States this year, called Killeen-23 by U.S. intelligence agencies, carried a raft of sensors and antennas the U.S. government still had not identified more than a week after shooting it down, according to a document. … Another balloon flew over a U.S. carrier strike group in a previously unreported incident, and a third crashed in the South China Sea, a second top-secret document stated, though it did not provide specific information for launch dates.

A document produced by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) and dated Feb. 15 — 10 days after the Air Force shot down the balloon that flew over the United States — contains the most detailed government assessment to date of Killeen-23 and two balloons from previous years, labeled Bulger-21 and Accardo-21.

Read the rest of the report here.

.

The U.S. has achieved deep penetration of most Russian security and intelligence services

The New York Times and Washington Post report that the documents indicate the U.S. has gained access to most of Russia’s security and intelligence services and high levels of Russian military command. It has intercepted communications within Russia’s defense ministry; gained insight into the internal planning of Russia’s military-intelligence agency, GRU; and obtained actionable intelligence on Russia’s military capabilities and war plans in Ukraine — many of which the U.S. likely passed along to Kyiv.

.

Russia’s elite special forces have been decimated by the war in Ukraine

The Washington Post reports that classified assessments in the leaked documents indicate that the conflict has gutted Russia’s spetsnaz forces, in large part due to their misuse by Russian commanders, and it may take as long as a decade to build the forces back up again:

Typically, spetsnaz personnel are assigned the sorts of stealthy, high-risk missions — including an apparent order to capture Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky — for which they receive some of the Russian military’s most advanced training. But when Moscow launched its full-scale invasion last year, senior commanders eager to seize momentum and skeptical of their conventional fighters’ prowess deviated from the norm, ordering elite forces into direct combat, according to U.S. intelligence findings and independent analysts who have closely followed spetsnaz deployments.

The rapid depletion of Russia’s commando units, observers say, shifted the war’s dynamic from the outset, severely limiting Moscow’s ability to employ clandestine tactics in support of conventional combat operations. U.S. officials believe that the staggering casualties these units have sustained will render them less effective, not only in Ukraine but also in other parts of the world where Russian forces operate, according to the assessments, which range in date from late 2022 to earlier this year.

.

The FSB accused Russia’s Defense Ministry of “obfuscating Russian casualties in Ukraine”

Per the New York Times, the documents capture “infighting and finger-pointing among Russian agencies responsible for different aspects of the war,” including one report noting a dispute over the actual human cost of the conflict:

In one document, American intelligence officials say that Russia’s main domestic intelligence agency, the Federal Security Service, or F.S.B., has “accused” the country’s Defense Ministry “of obfuscating Russian casualties in Ukraine.” The finding highlights “the continuing reluctance of military officials to convey bad news up the chain of command,” they say.

The entry, dated Feb. 28 in a document with a series of updates about the war in Ukraine and other global hot spots, appears to be based on electronic intercepts collected by American intelligence agencies. … F.S.B. officials, the document says, contend that the ministry’s toll did not include the dead and wounded among the Russian National Guard, the Wagner mercenary force or fighters fielded by Ramzan Kadyrov, the strongman leader of the southern Russian republic of Chechnya.

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The U.S. is spying on top allies, including Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy

One of the leaked documents indicates the U.S. has been surveilling Zelenskyy’s communications, CNN reports:

The U.S. intelligence report, which is sourced to signals intelligence, says that Zelensky in late February “suggested striking Russian deployment locations in Russia’s Rostov Oblast” using unmanned aerial vehicles, since Ukraine does not have long-range weapons capable of reaching that far.

Although it’s not unexpected that the U.S. would be monitoring Ukraine’s leadership, Ukraine has publicly attempted to discredit the disclosures, and Ukrainian officials are reportedly furious about the leaked intel, which has forced Kyiv to make changes to its spring-offensive plans.

The leaked documents also reveal that the U.S. had intercepted recent discussions with South Korean leadership on whether to break policy and provide military aid to Ukraine via an intermediary country. South Korean president Yoon Suk Yeol has since attempted to downplay the breach and the subsequent scandal it has caused in his country.

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The U.S. doubts Ukraine’s spring offensive will make significant gains

U.S. intelligence assessments from early February expressed serious doubt about Ukraine’s ability to take back a great deal of Russian-occupied territory this spring, according to a review of one of the leaked documents by the Washington Post. The upcoming offensive is likely to produce only “modest territorial gains” owing to Ukraine’s lack of equipment, ammunition, and troops, the document said. It also noted that “enduring Ukrainian deficiencies in training and munitions supplies probably will strain progress and exacerbate casualties during the offensive.”

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Russia’s Wagner Group tried to purchase weapons from Turkey through Mali

According to the Washington Post, one of the reports in the leaked documents indicates that, in early February, the Kremlin-backed mercenary force “met with Turkish contacts to purchase weapons and equipment from Turkey for [Wagner’s] efforts in Mali and Ukraine,” and that Mali’s interim president confirmed it could get the arms from Turkey on the group’s behalf. Turkey declined to comment on the allegation when contacted by the Post, but if the assessment is accurate, it could mean the NATO member was covertly supplying weapons to both sides of the Ukraine conflict.

.

Egypt’s president secretly planned to send rockets to Russia

According to a leaked top-secret document from mid-February, Egyptian president Abdel Fattah El-Sisi secretly ordered the production and shipment of as many as 40,000 rockets to Russia, the Washington Post reports. Egypt, a longtime key U.S. ally in the Middle East, has publicly maintained a policy of noninvolvement toward the war in Ukraine, and in a statement to the Post, the foreign ministry suggested that policy has not changed. Regarding the rocket plan, an anonymous U.S. official also told the Post, “We are not aware of any execution of that plan.” It’s not clear how far the plan has progressed, assuming the leaked intel is accurate, nor is it clear how such a move would have impacted the relationship between the U.S. and Egypt.

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Russia almost shot down a U.K. surveillance plane near Ukraine

According to one leaked U.S. military document, British defense minister Ben Wallace told U.K. lawmakers last October that on September 29, two Russian Su-27 fighter jets intercepted and harassed a British RC-135 reconnaissance plane flying in international airspace over the Black Sea. Wallace said one Russian jet had flown within 15 feet of the U.K. plane and another had released a missile from a distance, but Russian defense officials had told him the missile launch was due to a “technical malfunction.” The U.S. military document referred to the incident as a “near shoot down.” British officials have pushed back on the leaked U.S. assessment.

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Russian intelligence officers claimed the United Arab Emirates wanted to help work against the U.S. and U.K.

The Associated Press reports that one document, dated March 9, reported that “In mid-January, FSB officials claimed UAE security service officials and Russia had agreed to work together against US and UK Intelligence agencies, according to newly acquired signals intelligence.” The AP adds that “It’s not clear if there was any such agreement as described in the UAE-Russia document, or whether the alleged FSB claims were intentionally or unintentionally misleading,” and that the UAE has called the claim “categorically false.”

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Russian hackers working with Moscow claimed to have accessed Canada’s natural-gas infrastructure

Another of the leaked documents reveals that, earlier this year, the U.S. intercepted electronic communications between the pro-Russian hacking group Zarya and officers with Russia’s FSB security service in which the hackers said they had breached a Canadian gas-pipeline company and gained access to its control systems. The hackers purportedly shared screenshots of their access with the officers and claimed the breach gave them the ability to “increase valve pressure, disable alarms, and initiate an emergency shutdown of the facility.” The leaked briefing did not identify the Canadian company or the facility. It said the hackers claimed that they did unspecified damage, causing “profit loss” for the company, and that FSB officers told the hackers to maintain their access and await further instructions.

After news of the alleged hack surfaced, the Globe and Mail reported that it was unable to verify the claims and noted that “there is no evidence to date that a natural-gas pipeline company in Canada suffered such an attack, which the Pentagon documents suggest occurred earlier this year.” According to cybersecurity reporter Kim Zetter, “a U.S. government source who closely follows critical infrastructure incidents in the U.S. said they heard chatter a while back that something had occurred at a Canadian gas facility, but was not aware of anyone confirming that any ‘physical impact’ had occurred.”

.

Mossad leaders purportedly encouraged protests against Netanyahu’s judicial overhaul in Israel

According to one of the leaked documents, a March 1 CIA assessment said that, according to intercepted communications, leaders of Israel’s intelligence agency had backed protests against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s controversial attempt to overhaul the country’s judiciary. Mossad leaders “advocated for Mossad officials and Israeli citizens to protest against the new Israeli Government’s proposed judicial reforms, including several explicit calls to action that decried the Israeli government,” the assessment said.

Netanyahu’s power play has triggered mass protests and strikes in Israel, and the backlash recently prompted him to at least temporarily abandon the effort. Israeli officials have denied the leaked assessment. Some Israeli pundits have also suggested that the assessment might have been referring to an open letter supporting the protests sent by former Mossad leaders and/or how the agency’s leadership allowed employees to join the demonstrations, provided they did so only as private citizens.

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Russia’s Wagner Group mercenaries looked into working in Haiti

One late-February report in the leaked documents said the Wagner Group, the notorious Kremlin-backed Russian mercenary force, “planned to discreetly travel to Haiti to assess the potential for contracts with the Haitian government to fight against local gangs.”

It’s not clear how far those plans progressed. The Miami Herald reports that a Haitian government official told the paper “that Prime Minister Ariel Henry has not had any discussions with the Wagner Group or any Russian officials, nor has he sought help from either as part of his request to international partners to deploy a rapid response force to Haiti to help the national police take on gangs.”

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China held secret negotiations with Nicaragua over building a new port in the Caribbean

Another document said that, according to intercepted communications, Nicaragua has been deepening its ties with China since its primary security ally, Russia, became entangled in the Ukraine invasion. Nicaragua and China have conducted negotiations over building a deepwater port in Bluefields, and a Chinese engineering firm purportedly began moving forward with initial plans in the middle of 2022. The U.S. assessment concludes that though Nicaragua still favors Russia, it “probably would consider offering Beijing naval access in exchange for economic investment.”

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As many as 50 British special forces were in Ukraine this year, and U.S. and French special forces were there too

The Guardian reports that a “daily update” slide on the war in Ukraine that is among the leaked documents listed the number of NATO special forces operating inside the country:

According to the files, U.S. officials assessed at the time that of the 97 special forces from Nato countries active in Ukraine, 50 were British. This is considerably higher than the number from the U.S. and France, which were said to have deployed 14 and 15 special forces, respectively. The documents appear to offer a partial snapshot of U.S. military assessments of the state of the war and allies’ support for Ukraine. They do not contain any information about the purpose of the deployments of U.K. or other contingents of special forces.

The U.K. Ministry of Defence declined to comment on the information but has attempted to discredit the accuracy of the leak in a tweet. France has denied the assessment’s claim that there are French soldiers on the ground in Ukraine. ABC News reports that according to a current and former U.S. official, a team of U.S. special-forces troops has been operating out of the American embassy in Kyiv:

Among several duties this team provides is security for VIPs and intelligence assistance to Ukrainian Special Operations Forces, according to the current U.S. official. The official stressed that they are not on the front lines and they are not accompanying Ukrainian troops in Ukraine.

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Serbia, a quasi ally of Russia, agreed to arm Ukraine

“Serbia, one of the only countries in Europe that has refused to sanction Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, agreed to supply arms to Kyiv or has sent them already,” according to a classified Pentagon document reviewed by Reuters. A document dated March 2 for the Joint Chiefs of Staff included a chart showing Serbia either agreed to sending “lethal aid or had supplied it already,” though it declined to train Kyiv’s forces. Serbia’s defense minister denied his government was deliberately supplying Ukraine.

Who leaked the documents and why?

The suspected leaker, Jack Teixeira, is a 21-year-old technology staffer with the Massachusetts Air National Guard’s Intelligence Wing. Teixeira was arrested on April 13 and charged in a federal court in Boston with one count of unauthorized retention and transmission of national defense information, as well as a second count of unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents or material. Both are violations of the Espionage Act.

A pic of Jack Teixeira he posted on social media - released by the NYT pic.twitter.com/IGZGUnN2Wb

— Michael A. Horowitz (@michaelh992) April 13, 2023

The Washington Post initially reported on April 12 that according to members of the small invitation-only Discord chat community where the leaked intel appeared earlier this year, the person who posted them was a “charismatic gun enthusiast” in his early 20s who created the group and apparently worked on a U.S. military base. By the time he was identified as Teixeira by the New York Times, federal agents were already closing in.

Justice Department lawyers, in a court filing released April 27, revealed that Teixeira had attempted to obstruct the federal manhunt for himself, and had made a number of disturbing comments online. Per the Times:

Prosecutors pointedly questioned Airman Teixeira’s overall state of mind, disclosing that he was suspended from high school in 2018 for alarming comments about the use of Molotov cocktails and other weapons, and trawled the internet for information about mass shootings. He engaged in “regular discussions about violence and murder” on the same social media platform, Discord, that he used to post classified information, the filing said, and he surrounded his bed at his parents’ house with firearms and tactical gear.

Teixeira, who comes from a military family, serves in the U.S. Air Force’s 102nd Intelligence Wing, which is part of the Massachusetts Air National Guard based out of Otis Air National Guard Base on Cape Cod. He was arrested on April 13 without incident outside his childhood home in North Dighton, Massachusetts. Investigators quickly zeroed in on Teixeira, who has held top secret clearance since 2021, and according to the criminal complaint filed against him, used his government computer and clearance to search for information about the efforts to identify him.

The Associated Press has more on the airman’s role in the military:

Teixeira was a “cyber transport systems specialist,” essentially an IT specialist responsible for military communications networks, including their cabling and hubs. In that role Teixeira would have had a higher level of security clearance because he would have also been tasked with responsibility for ensuring protection for the networks, a defense official told the Associated Press, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

The Post adds that that Teixeira had access to the Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System, an internal Defense Department hub for top-secret information, according a U.S. official.

Members of the private Discord group told the Post the leaker, whom they referred to as “OG,” shared hundreds of posts revealing government secrets over a period of months, initially transcriptions of classified intel he had read and retyped, and then eventually photographs of the original documents. According to the criminal complaint against Teixeira, he told a member of the group that he stopped copying the documents by hand because he was worried someone at work would discover him. The Post reports that that Teixeira seemed to believe it was his responsibility to educate the other members of the Discord group about the world as it truly was:

The gathering spot had been a pandemic refuge, particularly for teen gamers locked in their houses and cut off from their real-world friends. The members swapped memes, offensive jokes and idle chitchat. They watched movies together, joked around and prayed. But OG also lectured them about world affairs and secretive government operations. He wanted to “keep us in the loop,” the member said, and seemed to think that his insider knowledge would offer the others protection from the troubled world around them.

Religion was another topic of interest for the group and Teixeira, but there was a dark side, too:

In a video seen by The Post, [Teixeira] stands at a shooting range, wearing safety glasses and ear coverings and holding a large rifle. He yells a series of racial and antisemitic slurs into the camera, then fires several rounds at a target.

OG had a dark view of the government. The young member said he spoke of the United States, and particularly law enforcement and the intelligence community, as a sinister force that sought to suppress its citizens and keep them in the dark. He ranted about “government overreach.” OG told his online companions that the government hid horrible truths from the public.

The leaks began more than a year ago

The New York Times reports that the suspected leaker, airman Jack Teixeira, apparently began sharing secret intelligence in a 600-member Discord group in February 2022, shortly after the war in Ukraine began. This was a separate, larger Discord group from the one where Teixeira shared secret intel over the winter. Per the Times:

The newly discovered information posted on the larger chat group included details about Russian and Ukrainian casualties, activities of Moscow’s spy agencies and updates on aid being provided to Ukraine. The user claimed to be posting information from the National Security Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency and other intelligence agencies. …

The posts reviewed by The Times appear to be detailed written accounts of the classified documents themselves, and identify which intelligence agency they are from. While it appears that the user likely posted pictures of some documents, those have since been deleted from the chat group.

What are the documents, and how many were leaked?

The Post, in its report on the source of the leaks, said it “reviewed approximately 300 photos of classified documents” as well as text posts that apparently transcribe other intelligence reports. Much of the media coverage has focused on a collection of about 100 documents from the leak. From the Post’s reporting, it appears much more material than that was originally leaked, though most of the documents don’t appear to have been made public. According to the New York Times, there is another collection of documents which the suspected leaker began sharing in another Discord group in February 2022, but it’s not yet clear how many there were.

The surfaced files from the later leak are photographs of briefing documents and slides, mostly prepared in February and March, based on intel collected by the NSA, CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency, DEA, and National Reconnaissance Office (which manages U.S. spy satellites). Markings on the documents indicate that some were cleared for sharing with allies, while others were designated for U.S. eyes only — which was a major clue they came from a American source.

Many of the documents appear to have been prepared for Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, though anyone with a high enough security clearance would have had access to them. It appears the documents in the first tranche of images are likely part of a classified briefing that was folded and removed to somewhere where the pages could be photographed. The New York Times has been able to match up details in the margins of the images with details in photos of the suspected leaker’s family home.

Some of the circulating leaked documents appear to have been doctored, but apparently that was done by pro-Russia propagandists after they were leaked.

How did they come out?

Per what has been reported thus far, the leaks began in February 2022 in a Discord group months ago in a small Discord community called “Thug Shakers Central,” where the creator of the group. Teixeira, began revealing classified intelligence last year. The images of the classified documents he shared with the group eventually spread to other Discord servers in March, then to other social-media sites in early April — at which point they gained the attention of the media and the Pentagon.

Are there more?

It’s not clear if all of the leaked intelligence reports have been shared beyond the two Discord groups where the suspect is currently known to have leaked the information, but many of them clearly have. The documents revealed so far seem to have been prepared no later than early March.

What about the doctored documents?

Some of the documents circulated on social media have been doctored — for instance, to reduce the number of estimated Russian casualties in Ukraine and inflate Ukraine’s estimated losses. But that disinformation effort appears to have been made after the documents were leaked.

How has the Pentagon responded to the breach, and what damage could the leak do?

After becoming aware of the leaked documents, the Pentagon launched an investigation and reportedly imposed a strict clampdown on access to U.S. intelligence. Politico reports that Pentagon officials were greatly distressed by the leak, adding that “experts said the disclosure could be even more damaging than the leak by Edward Snowden ten years ago, particularly because the information is so recent.”

That potential damage is manifold. It might have compromised various intelligence-collection methods and sources, allowing adversaries like Russia and China to evade future U.S. espionage efforts. Information in the documents regarding Ukraine’s military weaknesses may also prove valuable to Russia if the country were not previously aware of that information. But the documents also contain numerous assessments based on U.S. signals intelligence (the spy term for intercepted communications) that targeted friends and foes alike. In addition to the diplomatic fallout, this could prompt allies to shore up their defenses against U.S. surveillance. And as Politico national-security reporter Erin Banco points out, “the leak of such highly classified intelligence raises serious questions about whether the U.S. can be trusted to share and disseminate the intel within the government in a safe and secure way.”

On April 26, the Air Force announced that two commanders in Teixeira’s unit — the commander of the 102nd Intelligence Support Squadron and a detachment commander — had both been suspended “pending further investigation into the unauthorized disclosure of classified information.”

The leak has offered an unparalleled look at U.S. intelligence-gathering efforts

The Washington Post highlights how the leaked documents have shed new light on the ways the U.S. conducts espionage:

Among other secrets, they appear to reveal where the CIA has recruited human agents privy to the closed-door conversations of world leaders; eavesdropping that shows a Russian mercenary outfit tried to acquire weapons from a NATO ally to use against Ukraine; and what kinds of satellite imagery the United States uses to track Russian forces, including an advanced technology that appears barely, if ever, to have been publicly identified.

This post has been updated.

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New York Magazine · by Chas Danner · May 14, 2023

8. To Compete With China on Tech, America Needs to Fix Its Immigration System

So I had a meeting yesterday with my CAPS president with a trade representative (non-government) and I learned a number of interesting things.  

First, is that there are not as many qualified workers to operate the new chip plants that will be built in the US. She said that American officials say that we need to send people to community colleges to train them but she told us that is insufficient and will take far too long. To develop a skilled workforce in chip manufacturing requires training in chip manufacturing. But there are insufficient trainers to do so.  

Second, this is why the 15,000 annual work visas are necessary for Korea. They need to come to the US to train and develop skilled workers. However, this has been held up in Congress. These are work visas and not visas that lead to permanent residency. They will not be taking US jobs but instead helping to develop the US skilled workforce and then return to Korea. The question is why is Congress holding up the authorization?

I learned a number of other things about how foreign industry views America first, onshoring or reshoring of manufacturing, and how the US talks about following the rules based on international order but does not do so itself. It was a very enlightening discussion.

​Excerpts:

There are already signs of progress. The State Department is planning to make it easier for millions of international professionals to renew their visas without having to travel abroad. The department should also relax requirements for the J-1 visa, which requires most holders to return to their home countries and stay there for at least two years before they can return to the United States.

The global contest for talent is too important to hold up these reforms for the sake of an elusive bipartisan immigration grand bargain. Hard though it will be, opening up more pathways for highly skilled workers to enter the United States will be key to preserving and promoting national competitiveness and national security. Without such changes, the promise of the CHIPS and Science Act will remain unfulfilled. The power of the American dream has long allowed the United States to attract the best and the brightest. Washington’s ability to field the best team for the coming geopolitical competition rests on this advantage. The United States cannot afford to lose it.

​

To Compete With China on Tech, America Needs to Fix Its Immigration System

Washington Must Make It Easier to Recruit and Retain Top Talent

By Eric Schmidt

May 16, 2023

Foreign Affairs · by Eric Schmidt · May 16, 2023

When the U.S. Congress passed the CHIPS and Science Act in August 2022, it committed $53 billion to fund semiconductor research and manufacturing in the United States. As a result of this legislation, advanced chip manufacturers have been racing to build new U.S. factories. Since then, however, it has quickly become apparent that fabrication capacity alone will not be enough to make the United States a semiconductor powerhouse. What the country lacks is not raw materials or capital. The main constraint is a shortage of talent.

According to current projections, U.S. semiconductor companies will have 300,000 unfilled vacancies for skilled engineers by 2030. Targeting, training, and recruiting hundreds of thousands of U.S. citizens will be impossible in such a compressed time frame. The only way to meet this demand is to recruit many more skilled workers from abroad. On the face of it, this should not be a problem: the United States has long relied on its companies and universities to attract the world’s best and brightest. Brilliant engineers from all around the world helped me turn Google into a world-leading technology company. But this did not happen because of the U.S. immigration system. It happened in spite of it. For decades, Washington has failed to pass meaningful immigration reform. If the United States wants to remain the world leader in innovation, it can no longer afford to ignore the talent waiting beyond its borders.

As I wrote in Foreign Affairs earlier this year, innovation power—the ability to invent, adopt, and adapt new technologies to advance national power—will determine the future of geopolitics. And this ability to innovate depends, above all, on the strength of a country’s talent pool. U.S. professional sports leagues understand this: basketball and baseball scouts scour the globe to find the best players for their teams. But when it comes to recruiting the world’s top AI scientists and semiconductor engineers, the U.S. immigration system has put up unnecessary barriers. Current restrictions are increasingly putting the United States behind countries with points-based immigration systems like Canada and the United Kingdom, which are aggressively courting advanced tech workers and engineers.

The United States is still the world’s most attractive country for immigrants. Its university system is the envy of the world and its companies lead the world in innovation. But if Washington wants to stay ahead and achieve the promise of the CHIPS and Science Act, it must act to remove the needless complexities to make its immigration system more transparent and create new pathways for the brightest minds to come to the United States.

THE BATTLE FOR BRAINS

While the United States’ dysfunctional system increasingly deters the world’s top scientists, researchers, and entrepreneurs, other countries are proactively recruiting them. China is particularly active in doing so, with direction coming from the very top. In 2021, President Xi Jinping declared that “the competition of today’s world is a competition of human talent and education.” At his instruction, the nation, which suffers from an exodus of talent, began to spend serious money to woo back native-born STEM graduates. Today, Chinese research institutions offer some postdoctoral researchers three times the salaries they could make at a U.S. university. Skilled Chinese engineers and scientists who previously moved abroad to work are being offered powerful incentives to return home.

U.S. allies have significantly stepped up efforts to bring in the best talent, too. Last year, United Kingdom Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced a scheme to target and attract the world’s top 100 young AI researchers. The United Kingdom now has a High Potential Individual visa program, which is specifically aimed at graduates of the world’s top universities. In 2015, Canada created an Express Entry system, which allows high-skilled foreign nationals to become permanent residents in only a year. The results are already showing: between 2016 and 2019 alone, the number of Indian STEM masters students studying in Canada rose by 182 percent. During the same period, the number of Indian students studying in the same fields in the United States dropped 38 percent.

To be able to compete in the decades to come, the U.S. economy needs to attract the high-skilled immigrants who will build the technologies of the future, from large language models to quantum computers. Many talented workers who would like to come to the United States are put off by its complex and restrictive immigration rules. These rules particularly affect foreign students, who currently make up over 70 percent of U.S. graduate students in computer science. International students who wish to remain and contribute to the U.S. economy upon graduation usually seek to do so by applying for an H-1B visa. But H-1B visas are allotted not on a candidate’s relative talent but through an arbitrary lottery that has a success rate as low as 11 percent. A majority of foreign U.S.-trained Ph.D. graduates in artificial intelligence who consider leaving the country cite its immigration system as a main reason. Although U.S. universities continue to train many of the most capable scientists and engineers in the world, it is other countries that are increasingly enjoying the benefits.

60 percent of Republicans and 83 percent of Democrats supported more skilled immigration to the United States.

There is broad bipartisan support for common sense immigration reform. Yesterday, 70 experts and former national security officials published an open letter calling on the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party to attract and retain global STEM talent to maintain U.S. leadership in technology. Last year, in a poll conducted by the Economic Innovation Group Economic Innovation Group, 60 percent of Republicans and 83 percent of Democrats supported more skilled immigration to the United States. Seventy-three percent of the U.S. public favor a visa allowing international graduates in STEM subjects to work in the United States. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have made proposals to increase U.S. competitiveness by attracting more high-skilled foreign workers. But these proposals have been blocked year after year. Last year, there was bipartisan support for making available additional green cards with shorter wait times for STEM Ph.D.’s. Yet ultimately this initiative was stripped from the final National Defense Authorization Act.

Still, there are a variety of ways to make targeted changes with the backing of both parties. Today, for example, even a physics or math Ph.D. from the United States’ best universities—exactly the type of person needed to spur innovation and scientific discovery—has no clear path toward obtaining residency in the country. Congress should begin to address this problem by creating a conditional green card for STEM Ph.D.’s, perhaps with an initial focus on U.S. partner countries. This visa would give recipients permanent residence for two to three years, with an option of extension upon review. There is precedent for creating such a special entry program: conditional green cards have been successfully used for investor visas, and the United States has, at various times, tailored visas toward nationals of allied countries. Perhaps the most notable example of this is the E-3 visa, which applies to specialist workers from Australia, and could be expanded to other nations. This new type of green card would make the immigration process for STEM Ph.D.’s more streamlined and predictable. It would also remove pressure on other visa categories with numerical limits and country caps, as well as allow green card holders to move freely between jobs. At the same time, this new green card should come with sensible restrictions, limiting eligibility to a recognized list of leading research institutions.

THE COMPETITION FOR THE WORLD’S TOP SCIENTISTS

To win the global talent competition, the United States needs to not only retain but also attract global talent. As Harvard political scientist Graham Allison and I have argued, the U.S. government should make a concerted effort to identify and recruit top researchers from across the globe. A special green card for exceptional scientists would allow the United States to maintain its edge in technology and help it confront the great geopolitical challenges of the coming years.

In fact, the U.S. government already has a successful history of using such a strategy in the decades around World War II. In the 1930s and 1940s, the United States succeeded in attracting a whole generation of talent, including such luminaries as Albert Einstein and Enrico Fermi. The two left Nazi Germany and fascist Italy, respectively, before coming to the United States, where their research, along with that of other émigré scientists, was instrumental to the Manhattan Project. Today, Washington needs to do more to attract leading scientists from nonaligned or even hostile countries, even if doing so requires more extensive security screening. The United States missed a major opportunity last year when U.S. President Joe Biden was unable to persuade Congress to waive visa requirements for top Russian engineers and scientists who were seeking to escape President Vladimir Putin’s rule. The United States should also do more to attract Chinese scientists and innovators, who have been a huge boon to the U.S. economy. Since 2000, Chinese STEM Ph.D.’s have created startups valued at over $100 billion. If Washington wants innovators to start their businesses in the United States, rather than in China, it must be more welcoming to Chinese talent. Although much has been made in Washington of the security risks posed by a few foreign researchers who have been accused of intellectual property theft, far greater harm will be done to the country over the long term by keeping out entrepreneurial Chinese scientists.

Washington must also make it easier for the world’s top entrepreneurs to come to the United States. More than half of U.S. companies valued at over $1 billion were founded or co-founded by immigrants. But, unlike in Canada and Australia, there is no designated startup visa for entrepreneurs who want to found a business in the United States. Congress should resurrect an earlier version of the CHIPS and Science Act that would have created a new visa category for startup founders. And that is only the start. Several other visa classes should be created, including ones for foreign nationals of high aptitude who, in return for residency, agree to work for federal or state governments in areas which most need immigration. Similar to pathways to citizenship for those enrolling in the U.S. military, the United States should use new visas to draw exceptional talent into local government.

The power of the American dream has long allowed the United States to attract the best and the brightest.

There are already signs of progress. The State Department is planning to make it easier for millions of international professionals to renew their visas without having to travel abroad. The department should also relax requirements for the J-1 visa, which requires most holders to return to their home countries and stay there for at least two years before they can return to the United States.

The global contest for talent is too important to hold up these reforms for the sake of an elusive bipartisan immigration grand bargain. Hard though it will be, opening up more pathways for highly skilled workers to enter the United States will be key to preserving and promoting national competitiveness and national security. Without such changes, the promise of the CHIPS and Science Act will remain unfulfilled. The power of the American dream has long allowed the United States to attract the best and the brightest. Washington’s ability to field the best team for the coming geopolitical competition rests on this advantage. The United States cannot afford to lose it.

• ERIC SCHMIDT is Chair of the Special Competitive Studies Project and former CEO and Chair of Google. He is a co-author, with Henry Kissinger and Daniel Huttenlocher, of The Age of AI: And Our Human Future.
• MORE BY ERIC SCHMIDT

Foreign Affairs · by Eric Schmidt · May 16, 2023

9. Why America Is Struggling to Stop the Fentanyl Epidemic

Subversion by a foreign power conducting unrestricted warfare perhaps?

Note the requirement for an interagency effort to counter this.

Excerpts:

At the same time, U.S. officials should rethink their own measures against criminal actors involved in the fentanyl business. Given the diversified economic portfolios of Mexican and Chinese criminal networks nowadays, more drug seizures simply will not do. Authorities need to take aim at the traffickers’ entire business empires and try to cut off their revenue streams wholesale, whether that means going after poaching and wildlife trafficking, illegal fishing, or other illicit activities.

That requires bringing on board a wide range of U.S. departments and agencies for a whole-of-government approach, starting with the U.S. intelligence agencies, the Department of State, the Department of Defense, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. By taking a better look at the various offshoots of the fentanyl trade—the wildlife trafficking, the illegal fishing, and so forth—the United States would also get a better picture of the linkages between organized crime and foreign governments, including China. Greater intelligence sharing within the U.S. government would help, as would increasing the role of Fish and Wildlife special agents in joint anti-organized-crime task forces. Alongside this effort, wildlife trafficking should be designated as a predicate offense for wiretap authorizations, which would empower authorities to start gathering intelligence without having to prove a link to other crimes a priori.

To get moving down this path would require a change of mindset, but it would not be particularly costly in absolute or relative terms. It would certainly amount to a fraction of the cost that an out-of-control fentanyl epidemic is already exacting on American lives and communities. Considering what is at stake, only a whole-of-government approach, at home and abroad, will do justice to the magnitude of the crisis.

Why America Is Struggling to Stop the Fentanyl Epidemic

The New Geopolitics of Synthetic Opioids

By Vanda Felbab-Brown

May 15, 2023

Foreign Affairs · by Vanda Felbab-Brown · May 15, 2023

The United States is suffering the deadliest drug epidemic in its history. Overdoses claimed the lives of more than 100,000 Americans between August 2021 and August 2022 alone. Over the span of just a few years, drug deaths have doubled. Most of these overdoses involve fentanyl, which now kills around 200 Americans every day.

To address the crisis, the U.S. government is not only deploying law enforcement to crack down on fentanyl dealers but also taking steps to prevent and treat substance use and the harms it produces. But the continued growth of the fentanyl epidemic makes clear that these measures are not enough. Since all fentanyl used in the United States is produced abroad, stemming the flow of the drug into the country is essential as well.

So far, such supply-side efforts have run aground. For one thing, synthetic opioids such as fentanyl can be produced from a wide array of chemicals, many of which also have legitimate commercial uses. That means restricting the supply of these chemicals is difficult and impractical. What is more, when regulators ban or restrict synthetic opioids or their ingredients, producers simply tweak their recipes.

Less talked about, but just as consequential, are the geopolitical obstacles that make it so hard for the U.S. government to plug the supply channels. Most of the world’s fentanyl and its precursor chemicals come from China or Mexico, countries whose current policies and priorities make effective control of fentanyl production very difficult. U.S. law enforcement cooperation with China, which was limited to begin with, has in recent years collapsed altogether. Absent a reset in U.S.-Chinese relations, that is unlikely to change. The Mexican government, too, has eviscerated law enforcement cooperation with the United States. Although a series of high-level bilateral meetings in April may have opened a path to increased cooperation down the line, it is far from clear if they will lead to substantive action from Mexican authorities.

But there is much more that the Biden administration can do. Washington still has unexplored options at its disposal to induce stronger cooperation from Chinese and Mexican authorities, for instance by combining constructive proposals with the threat of sanctions against state and private actors in those countries. It can also adopt additional intelligence and law enforcement measures of its own, with or without foreign cooperation. It is high time that Washington takes action on this front. If it does not, the record death rates that fentanyl is causing today will be eclipsed by even higher ones tomorrow.

MADE IN CHINA

U.S. officials have long understood that cutting off fentanyl production at its source means cutting it off in China. Since 2015, they have pushed Beijing to tighten controls on fentanyl-class drugs and to get serious about enforcing them. Initially, those efforts seemed to bear fruit. In 2019, China began to place restrictions on the entire class of synthetic opioids, and it has since extended those laws to the main precursor chemicals used in synthetic opioid production. For a while, the United States and China even worked together on a drug busts. In 2019, Chinese authorities in Hebei Province used U.S. intelligence to arrest and convict nine traffickers for mailing fentanyl straight to consumers and dealers in the United States.

Since then, however, Chinese traffickers have evaded controls by rerouting their operations through Mexico. Unlike drugs such as methamphetamine, which remain firmly in the hands of Chinese organized crime syndicates, the production chain for fentanyl often starts with small and middle-level players in the country’s chemical and pharmaceutical industries, including the odd mom-and-pop outfit. These seemingly legitimate businesses ship fentanyl precursors to Chinese or Mexican drug cartels. The cartels synthesize the chemicals into finished fentanyl and then move it onto the U.S. market.

It is hard for outsiders to get a clear view of the current state of China’s domestic drug enforcement. But there have been no high-profile Chinese prosecutions since the 2019 trial in Hebei; neither does Beijing appear to be doing anything to stem the flow of precursor chemicals to Mexican cartels. This inaction is no accident. The arrests in Hebei took place when Beijing still hoped for a broader thaw in relations with Washington. As that hope has eroded, so has China’s willingness to coordinate with U.S. authorities on the opioid front.

The Chinese government rarely takes action against the top echelons of crime syndicates.

Put simply, Beijing thinks of counternarcotics collaboration as downstream from its geostrategic relations. Unlike the U.S. government, which seeks to delink the issue from geopolitics, China views the fentanyl crisis through the lens of its growing rivalry with the United States. It did so even before last year’s visit by then U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan, after which China formally ended all law enforcement cooperation with the United States. U.S. punitive measures against China, such as sanctions and indictments, are unlikely to change this. Even in Southeast Asia and the Pacific, where Beijing takes drug trafficking very seriously, its engagement with foreign authorities tends to be highly selective, self-serving, and subordinated to its geopolitical interests.

At home and abroad, the Chinese government rarely takes action against the top echelons of crime syndicates unless they infringe on a narrow set of core state interests. These criminal groups provide a variety of services to legal businesses, including to firms with ties to government officials and the Chinese Communist Party. Efforts to better regulate precursor chemicals and fentanyl analogs are also hampered by systemic corruption and the incentive structures within which Chinese officials operate.

Taken together, these conditions leave plenty of room for Chinese criminal networks to expand their scope and reach, including in the Americas. There are signs that Chinese fishing vessels in Latin American waters sometimes carry drugs and precursor chemicals. What is clear is that Chinese actors play a significant role in laundering money for Mexican cartels through informal financial and trade networks. Of particular note is the rise of payment in kind: in exchange for drug precursors, Mexican cartels provide Chinese traffickers with coveted black-market products, especially timber and protected wildlife. The potential damage to economic sustainability, food security, and global biodiversity is severe—not to mention the potential for the global spread of zoonotic diseases.

STUCK IN THE FIFTIES

Although relations with Mexico have not deteriorated to the same degree, U.S. drug policy there faces serious obstacles as well. The collapse of the rule of law in Mexico goes far beyond the human toll of its drug war, which has killed more than 30,000 Mexicans every year since 2017—not counting the more than 112,000 people that went missing during the same period. In addition to controlling the drug trade, the cartels have expanded their extortion rackets and have come to dominate even parts of the country’s formal economy. They now have a hand in agriculture, fisheries, logging, mining, and the water supply. Their assault on state power and civil society has taken on new, more brazen forms, too, including increasingly aggressive attempts to influence elections and infiltrate state institutions.

Upon taking office in 2018, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador pledged that he would address the spiraling crisis with “hugs, not bullets.” By this, he meant social and economic measures to better address the structural forces driving many young people into the hands of the cartels. But besides creating a new National Guard—the latest in a long series of haphazard institutional reshuffles in the Mexican security forces—López Obrador has never articulated any clear vision of how to stabilize the situation in the shorter term.

The Mexican government’s hope, it seems, is that if it lets the cartels duke it out among themselves, they will eventually reach a balance of forces and the violence will subside. But the conflict that is causing much of the bloodshed—a brutal war for primacy between the Sinaloa Cartel and its main rival, the Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación—has not abated. If anything, it has intensified and spread to other parts of Latin America, even as far as Chile.

More drug seizures simply will not solve the problem.

To make matters worse, Mexico has systematically hollowed out cooperation with U.S. law enforcement. López Obrador blames U.S. pressure on the cartels for fanning the violence, and his 1950s vision of politics and foreign affairs revolves around limiting any non-economic U.S. presence in his country. In 2020, when the United States arrested Salvador Cienfuegos, Mexico’s former secretary of defense, for colluding with a vicious drug cartel, López Obrador threatened to expel all U.S. law enforcement personnel and end all cooperation with U.S. authorities. Washington bent backward to assuage him, handing Cienfuegos back to Mexico, where he was promptly acquitted. But the Mexican government has since passed a national-security law that further hobbles cooperation with U.S. agents. In March, López Obrador started claiming that no fentanyl is cooked in Mexico, a falsehood roundly debunked not just by the U.S. Justice Department but also by parts of his own government. In recent weeks, he once again threatened to expel U.S. agents from Mexico.

With the Mexican government also threatening to withdraw from the Mérida Initiative, a bilateral framework for security cooperation that had been in place since December 2008, the U.S. government worked hard to negotiate a successor agreement. Mexican officials, however, have interpreted the new framework very narrowly: the United States should reduce domestic drug demand, arrest more Mexican fugitives on U.S. soil, and keep weapons and illicit money from flowing south into Mexico, while Mexico does what it wants on its side of the border without letting the United States in on it.

The Mexican government has offered only limited and intermittent cooperation ever since. Whereas Mexican authorities have kept the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in a deep freeze on their territory, they have allowed for occasional intelligence sharing and have at times worked with the investigative branch of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Ultimately, however, the Mexican government is not taking on the criminal groups and their fentanyl trade. Instead, as a recent Reuters investigation revealed, it is cooking its reports about fentanyl lab busts to placate Washington. In any case, the Trump administration taught Mexico a valuable, albeit unfortunate, lesson: the United States will give up on a wide range of interests as long as Mexico suppresses migration flows to the U.S. border. The Biden administration has not reversed that lesson.

CLOSING THE FLOODGATES

At present, the odds of getting more cooperation from either China or Mexico in the fight against the fentanyl trade are slim. But Washington must keep on trying. When it comes to Beijing, U.S. diplomats should play to its desire to be a global counternarcotics leader in the eyes of the world. China likes to project an image of being tough on drugs. But it has come under fire from countries in Southeast Asia for the steady flow of Chinese methamphetamine precursors into the region, which has set off a devastating drug epidemic. The United States could team up with these countries, as well as with Australia and New Zealand, to pressure China in multilateral forums. Concerted calls on Beijing to take action against synthetic drugs, implement better monitoring systems even for dual-use nonscheduled chemicals, and set best practices for its chemical firms could finally induce China to act.

Among the best practices the United States and others should push for are self-regulation systems to detect and police suspicious activities and “know your customers” policies. It should continue demanding that China take down websites that illegally sell synthetic opioids to Americans or to Mexican criminal groups. And it should encourage China to adopt more robust anti-money-laundering standards in its banking and financial systems and trading practices. Washington can underpin such requests with the threat of sanctions. Punitive measures could include cutting off noncompliant Chinese firms from the U.S. market and targeting prominent pharmaceutical and chemical industry officials. U.S. law enforcement, meanwhile, should indict as many Chinese traffickers and their companies as possible.

In Mexico, too, U.S. policy can still make a difference, although not all current proposals are workable. U.S. politicians, such as South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, have recommended that the U.S. government designate Mexican cartels as foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs) on top of their current designation as transnational criminal organizations. Doing so would open the door to more intelligence gathering and even to U.S. military strikes on fentanyl labs. But the number of realistic targets would be limited, and striking them would not hobble the cartels for long. Nor would the FTO designation add anything to the regime of sanctions and financial intelligence tools already in place. In fact, it would only complicate U.S. policies in Mexico.

Instead, the United States could intensify border inspections, even at the risk of substantially slowing down the legal trade and causing serious problems for perishable Mexican agricultural exports. Ideally, U.S.-Mexico law enforcement cooperation would be robust enough to keep legal border crossings efficient and enable joint inspections far from the border. But if Mexico refuses to act as a reliable partner, the United States should intensify border inspections on its own initiative.

The economic cost of the opioid epidemic—to leave aside its immeasurable human toll—is simply too enormous to countenance inaction. In 2020, estimates put that cost at nearly $1.5 trillion. In contrast, in 2019, U.S. goods and services trade with Mexico totaled only $677.3 billion, with imports from Mexico at $387.8 billion. As with China, Washington should develop packages of leverage to underwrite its demands, including indictment portfolios against Mexican officials and politicians who sabotage cooperation with the United States. Instead of shying away from holding to account criminal officials such as Cienfuegos, the former Mexican defense minister, the United States should be arresting more of them.

HIT THEM WHERE IT HURTS

At the same time, U.S. officials should rethink their own measures against criminal actors involved in the fentanyl business. Given the diversified economic portfolios of Mexican and Chinese criminal networks nowadays, more drug seizures simply will not do. Authorities need to take aim at the traffickers’ entire business empires and try to cut off their revenue streams wholesale, whether that means going after poaching and wildlife trafficking, illegal fishing, or other illicit activities.

That requires bringing on board a wide range of U.S. departments and agencies for a whole-of-government approach, starting with the U.S. intelligence agencies, the Department of State, the Department of Defense, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. By taking a better look at the various offshoots of the fentanyl trade—the wildlife trafficking, the illegal fishing, and so forth—the United States would also get a better picture of the linkages between organized crime and foreign governments, including China. Greater intelligence sharing within the U.S. government would help, as would increasing the role of Fish and Wildlife special agents in joint anti-organized-crime task forces. Alongside this effort, wildlife trafficking should be designated as a predicate offense for wiretap authorizations, which would empower authorities to start gathering intelligence without having to prove a link to other crimes a priori.

To get moving down this path would require a change of mindset, but it would not be particularly costly in absolute or relative terms. It would certainly amount to a fraction of the cost that an out-of-control fentanyl epidemic is already exacting on American lives and communities. Considering what is at stake, only a whole-of-government approach, at home and abroad, will do justice to the magnitude of the crisis.

• VANDA FELBAB-BROWN is Director of the Initiative on Nonstate Armed Actors and a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution.
• MORE BY VANDA FELBAB-BROWN

Foreign Affairs · by Vanda Felbab-Brown · May 15, 2023

10. Fill the Job of National Cyber Director, Lawmakers Urge Biden

Fill the Job of National Cyber Director, Lawmakers Urge Biden

The previous director left nearly three months ago, just before the administration released its national cyber strategy.

defenseone.com · by Chris Riotta

In a Thursday letter to President Joe Biden, the co-chairs of the Cyberspace Solarium Commission urged the White House to nominate a permanent national cyber director, warning that an extended vacancy of the position may "lead to a lessening of the stature of the office."

Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, and Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wisc., said in the letter that they are "extremely concerned that the three-month delay (and counting) in nominating a candidate" may also hinder the implementation of the national cyber strategy released in March. Former National Cyber Director Chris Inglis announced his retirement from government in February after serving nearly two years as the first person to ever fill the cabinet-level role.

The lawmakers also called on the White House to nominate Acting National Cyber Director Kemba Walden, who assumed her role following Inglis' departure, describing her as a "proven, forward-thinking leader who can seamlessly step into the permanent position today."

"We believe the answer to this vacancy is at the ready," the letter said. "Ms. Walden’s prior experiences in government and industry give her unique insight into protecting critical infrastructure and fostering public-private collaboration, key pillars of the National Cybersecurity Strategy."

The 35-page strategy, released under the acting national cyber director just a month after Inglis' departure, faces major implementation challenges, experts have told Defense One sister publication FCW, from a depleted cyber workforce to a lack of consistent federal funding and information sharing between the federal government and industry.

The strategy seeks to fundamentally shift accountability for cyber resiliency onto major software providers and features plans for a "collective operational defense" between federal civilian executive branch agencies.

When the strategy was released, Walden told reporters that the “biggest, most capable and best-positioned actors in our digital ecosystem can and should shoulder a greater share of the burden for managing cyber risk and keeping us all safe.”

Walden previously served as the inaugural principal deputy national cyber director, and before that was assistant general counsel for Microsoft's Digital Crimes Unit. She also served as a co-chair of a White House ransomware task force working group and spent a decade at the Department of Homeland Security.

"The coordination across the federal government is of the size and scope that demands the leadership of a Senate-confirmed NCD," the letter said.

The White House has not indicated when it plans to announce a nomination for the vacant national cyber director role.

defenseone.com · by Chris Riotta

​11. Introducing the Army Data Corps and Data Warfare Regiment—Restructuring the Army to Win in 2040

Some people will be on the ground floor of establishing the lineage and honors of the new corps and regiment. They will write the history. Some day StarShip Troopers will be looking back at this inflection point in history when the new regiment was established.

Introducing the Army Data Corps and Data Warfare Regiment—Restructuring the Army to Win in 2040 - Modern War Institute

mwi.usma.edu · by Matthew Moellering, André Michell, Taylor Michell · May 16, 2023

Editor’s note: Army Futures Command’s Directorate of Concepts, in cooperation with the Modern War Institute, recently held the “Army in 2040” essay contest. Participants were given the following prompt: With AI maturing, autonomous systems and robotics becoming more prevalent on the battlefield, and battlefield transparency increasing, how should Army forces operate, equip, organize, and array the battlefield 2040 to overcome those challenges? This essay was selected as the runner-up.

The accelerating maturation of artificial intelligence will shatter current notions of the character of war. Recent strategic guidance from the National Security Council, Department of Defense, and Secretary of the Army highlights the Army’s organizational commitment to leading global AI development. By the year 2040, next-generation AI-enabled systems will radically obfuscate the battlefield, disrupt traditional ideas of power, and fundamentally alter war. AI is the primordial technology guiding this change during the information age. To win in 2040, the Army must organize its forces and develop the necessary infrastructure to enhance cooperation with a civilian sector that has outpaced it in AI development.

As Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley said at the West Point class of 2022 graduation, AI has the potential to revolutionize the character of war. Most radically this technological revolution has the potential to alter where and how wars are fought. The battlefield in 2040 will encroach upon the homeland and extend beyond the forward line of troops as information warfare becomes tightly integrated with combat operations. Increasingly effective methods of weaponizing information provide a new avenue for adversaries to practice Sun Tzu’s “supreme art of war”—“to subdue an enemy without fighting.” Beyond a dynamic battlefield, AI offers an asymmetric capability for underestimated, or underfunded adversaries that can disrupt traditional notions of air or naval supremacy. An unmanned underwater system or unmanned aerial system will provide localized air or undersea superiority that negates or extends the previous sources of military power from highly advanced aircraft or ships. The Army of 2040 will contend with a broader, more obfuscated battlefield and more dynamic enemy capabilities than ever seen before. The current data landscape of ad hoc organizations provides capabilities at inappropriate echelons with poorly aligned authorities and responsibilities. The Army will only ensure its operational ability to fight in this data-rich environment by synchronizing its data workforce with the authorities and structures commensurate to its role in future military operations. A Data Warfare Regiment, consisting of both operational data science teams and an Army Data Corps is necessary to synchronize federal resources and develop the national AI infrastructure to win in 2040.

Warfare Disrupted

Modern conflicts such as the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War and the ongoing war triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have demonstrated the devastating effectiveness of AI on today’s battlefields and proven the willingness of other countries to use these tools in conflict. Unmanned, AI-enabled weapons such as the TB2 Bayraktar have been effective against both Armenian and Russian armored formations, making combined arms maneuver more expensive and difficult. At the same time, operational planning tools like Project Maven have enabled American planners to more effectively target and eliminate enemy forces. These weapons and systems point to a growing tidal wave of technological innovation primed to disrupt how we wage war.

Skeptics point to unreliable effects from military applications of these technologies across diverse battlefields to question the importance of committing to restructuring the Army to lead AI development. Their arguments are buoyed by inappropriate and inefficient applications of a nascent technology. Consider how the use of unmanned systems might mirror the adoption of the machine gun during the industrial revolution. Fifty years before the machine gun contributed to the most deadly battles seen up to that point in human history, the weapon system was widely fielded in the Franco-Prussian War. It was initially applied as a form of artillery, arrayed within artillery batteries, and had limited effects during the war. It took revolutionary reorganization of infantry forces and reconsideration of modern maneuver to fully take advantage of automatic weapons’ devastating effects. AI-enabled systems are prone to similar misuse today by an Army too often criticized for preparing to fight yesterday’s war tomorrow.

As the US Army of 2040 plans to be more autonomous, and China prepares to become the world’s preeminent AI superpower by 2027, the Army must consider successful applications of autonomous and AI-enabled systems like the Bayraktar and Project Maven for effective competition with China. Although some units have utilized AI, the current organizational structure is insufficient to fulfill the unique requirements of an AI-enabled Army of 2040, optimized for Multi-Domain Operations. AI demands massive amounts of data and a specially educated workforce for its effective implementation. As disruptive as this technology might be, preparing for it has proven difficult but highly effective. By identifying opportunities in existing data-rich environments, soldiers have been laying the groundwork for a reorganized Army arrayed to take advantage of immediate benefits for AI-enabled systems and weapons at the intersection of intelligence and operations.

Operational Data Science Teams on the Battlefield

There are several examples of success in force structure modification in recent history. During the post-9/11 wars, JSOC synchronized intelligence and operations planners to enable faster, more effective operations. As the amount of data collected and the complexity of analysis both increase, traditional intelligence functions have needed support from statisticians and complex systems to accomplish commanders’ objectives in combat. Largely, this support has been unavailable and large amounts of data that can drive intelligence is frequently underutilized.

Operations research systems analysts have a long history of providing support for the Army’s statistical modeling and economics analysis needs. Some trained in machine learning have even served on operational data science teams during various missions, within special operations units, and on staff at echelons at and above brigade. Due to their diverse skill sets and backgrounds though, operational research systems analysts with the skills to operationalize intelligence with modern AI techniques are rare and lack the organizational support for a career in the Army. There have been exceptional success stories and individual dynamic leaders have had an outsized impact, but these successes are not sufficiently scalable or ubiquitous to offer success on the battlefield of 2040. The Army requires new structures for leaders to be successful on the AI-enabled battlefield of 2040.

The Engineer Branch: A Model

When considering structures for an AI work force many have looked to the Army’s cyber, signal, and intelligence branches. The Engineer Regiment provides a better framework for the scale and scope of the capabilities gap the Army must fill, making a strong case for the establishment of a Data Warfare Regiment. A key characteristic in both the Engineer Regiment and the proposed Data Warfare Regiment is the distinction between operational units and the corps that focuses on public works. Imitating the Engineer Regiment would enable coherent integration with operational units, collaboration with industry, and rapid domestic modernization, all of which would better equip the United States to compete with foreign powers. The Army Corps of Engineers’ mission—to “deliver vital engineering solutions, in collaboration with our partners, to secure our Nation, energize the economy, and reduce disaster risk”—resonates with the Army’s needs for AI development. The Data Warfare Regiment can use the Engineer Regiment as a guide in education, disaster response, and relationship building with industry.

The Army Corps of Engineers was founded in 1802 in conjunction with the United States Military Academy and brought “science into government.” Education became tightly intertwined with the Corps of Engineers’ mission as the superintendent of the US Military Academy was an engineer officer up until 1866. Engineer officers are not only required to get a master’s degree for career progression, but are also encouraged to receive education in nine engineer-specific additional skill identifiers and to pursue professional engineering licenses. This closely resembles the Army’s initial approach to AI talent development and management. While the value placed on graduate education has spread to the rest of the branches within the Army, the Army itself has yet to institutionalize graduate education in technical fields. The Air Force created the Air Force Institute of Technology to ensure “technical and professional continuing education.” The Navy created the Naval Postgraduate School to deliver “emerging capabilities at speed and scale.” Because the Army does not have a comparable education infrastructure, setting up Army-led higher education focused on AI and related technologies would be the first charge of the Army Data Corps. The Army Data Corps, in a similar spirit to the Corps of Engineers, would then look to build tools to improve AI robustness and fairness, and to secure the home front against AI-enabled attacks from our adversaries.

The Data Warfare Regiment

Winning on the obfuscated, dynamic battlefield of 2040 will require a multifaceted approach to organizing technologically advanced units. It may seem paradoxical to describe the AI-enabled battlefield of 2040 as obfuscated as the Army prepares to be more data-oriented, equipped with advanced analytics and operating with increased situational understanding. As we prepare to fight large-scale combat operations, however, our data-reliant, AI-enabled systems will be challenged to keep up with the limitations imposed by denied, degraded, intermittent, and limited combat networks. When data is therefore sparse or unavailable, it will either incapacitate a system or leave the unavailable data to be imputed by advanced analytics. These analytics come to uninterpretable predictions, communicated in probabilities that people struggle to understand. Furthermore, building AI-enabled combat systems greatly increases their complexity and breadth. An AI-enabled combat system will be infinitely more complex than its modern counterparts, will be vulnerable to confidentiality and integrity attacks from near-peer adversaries’ cyber forces, and will spread the battlefield deep into the strategic support area.

The Data Warfare Regiment would serve in the conflict zone—the area of ongoing kinetic operations—through data warfare teams and on the homeland through the Army Data Corps. This organization mirrors the previously described Engineer Regiment in its integration with operational units and collaboration with technological pioneers at home. By maintaining a presence with industry, the Army positions itself to leverage our national advantage in AI. Positions within operational units provide operational relevance for future applications of these technologies. This structure further provides the flexibility for service members to build successful, fulfilling careers in this field.

The data warfare team enshrines the ad hoc operational data science teams created over the last two decades into structures attached to each operational unit. An AI-enabled battlefield necessitates an organization at the edge to maintain, build, and employ AI models and autonomous systems. While AI offers automation and efficiency benefits, it requires significant training and an openness to new ideas and methods. In an organization with high turnover that struggles to maintain systems beyond a single commander’s tenure, a data warfare team will be able to customize and tailor solutions for commanders and their staffs. This tighter integration of technologists and warfighters will build trust in critical systems institutionalizing a support function specifically for operationalizing data.

On the dynamic, highly dispersed battlefield of 2040, small units will simultaneously be critical to mission success and incredibly vulnerable. While the Army is already capable of massing effects on enemy targets with devastating effectiveness, it will similarly need to mass information to drive operations. Modern data science and AI-enabled systems are reliant on large, networked services provided by cloud service providers. This has enabled private companies to adopt work-from-everywhere policies as the computing resources are similarly dispersed. As the battlefield expands, the need for localized support to operational units will become even more important. Should the battlefield of 2040 have even a fraction of the sensors predicted, the amount of data generated will be too great to reliably transmit over combat networks. To effectively adapt AI for the environments the Army will fight in, technologists will need to be integrated directly with the units they support. The data warfare team will have the personnel and capabilities to operate mobile data centers that support local AI and autonomous systems.

The Army Data Corps protects the home front by contributing to national security priorities and providing a local home for Army technologists to collaborate with industry partners. In this organization, service members can enrich their military careers with educational assignments within academia and our nation’s critical industries. In 2040, this organization will be tightly coupled with the highly successful and influential open-source software and AI development community. By contributing to open-source systems, the Army Data Corps will strengthen a sometimes strained relationship with the tech industry. The Air Force’s contribution to DevSecOps demonstrates the potential for an Army Data Corps to support software solutions that bolster the security and resilience of national infrastructure. Contributing to the tools Americans rely on for their information infrastructure supports a competitive economy and ensures American companies can continue to compete at home and abroad.

Assignments within the Army Data Corps would serve two functions for a service member’s career. Firstly, it would allow technologists to hone their skills in support of national security objectives. This combination of technical challenge and meaningful work will be highly effective in retaining the talent the Army seeks to attract and maintain through 2040. Secondly, it will enable service members to refresh skills in a rapidly evolving field by collaborating with already established organizations like the Army’s software and AI factories. These experiences will in turn prepare service members to support data warfare teams with fresh ideas and new methods to help the Army continue to fight and win our nation’s wars. Active involvement with the broader tech community could also inspire support from unaligned communities like Bellingcat and other hacktivist organizations in future conflicts.

Reorganizing for Tomorrow’s War

The changing character of war requires the Army to reorganize its forces to prioritize structures that enable data and decision dominance at the speed of relevancy. Anticipating a radically extended battlefield, the Army will need to mass information to drive operations. This will bring AI and software engineers onto the battlefield in a new way. The Data Warfare Regiment will provide a career path for these individuals and support the nation’s growing reliance on information infrastructure. Collaboration with the tech industry at home will provide a democratic alternative to our adversaries’ autocratic employment of AI-enabled systems while supporting the decision dominance of our Army.

Captain Matthew Moellering, US Army, currently serves in the second cohort of Army Artificial Intelligence Scholars at Carnegie Mellon University. He is pursuing a master of information systems management / business intelligence and data analytics from Heinz College. He is a Special Forces officer with deployments to the Middle East and Afghanistan. He graduated from the United States Military Academy with a bachelor of science in mathematics in 2014.

Captain André Michell, US Army, serves as a data engineer at the Army Artificial Intelligence Integration Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania after completing the inaugural class of the Army Artificial Intelligence Scholars program at Carnegie Mellon University. Michell is an infantry officer who has served as a mortar and heavy weapons platoon leader in 1st Battalion, 27th Infantry Regiment. He holds a BS in computer science from the United States Military Academy and an MS in computational data science from Carnegie Mellon University.

Captain Taylor Michell, US Army, serves as a data scientist at the Army Artificial Intelligence Integration Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania after completing the inaugural class of the Army Artificial Intelligence Scholars program at Carnegie Mellon University. Michell is an engineer officer who has served as a sapper platoon leader in the 65th Brigade Engineer Battalion. She holds a BS in chemical engineering with a minor in grand strategy from the United States Military Academy and an MS in information systems management with a focus in business intelligence and data analytics from Carnegie Mellon University.

The views expressed are those of the authors and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.

Image credit: Master Sgt. David Eichaker, US Air National Guard

mwi.usma.edu · by Matthew Moellering, André Michell, Taylor Michell · May 16, 2023

12. Studying US Warfighting Tactics For 30 Years, China Plans To Disrupt US Air Force's 'Kill Chain' & Deflate Its Military

I am sure the only real experts on US military doctrine are those who write the doctrine and Chinese researchers who read and study it.

Fortunately we have a counter. - Perhaps our doctrine is part of the greatest deception operation in history.

Attributed to a German following WWII: “The reason the American Army does so well in wartime, is that war is chaos, and the American Army practices it on a daily basis."  

Attributed to the Soviets: "One of the serious problems in planning against American doctrine is that the Americans do not read their manuals nor do they feel any obligation to follow their doctrine."

Studying US Warfighting Tactics For 30 Years, China Plans To Disrupt US Air Force's 'Kill Chain' & Deflate Its Military

eurasiantimes.com · by Parth Satam · May 14, 2023

In a war with China, the US Air Force (USAF) needs to “make robust” all elements of its ‘kill chains’ that guide ordnance from target identification to engagement since that is what the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) will disrupt at various stages.

This was the common consensus reached by experts and serving retired senior USAF Generals at a webinar held by the Mitchell Institute of Aerospace Studies (MIAS).

Former USAF deputy chief of staff for operations, Lt Gen Joseph Guastella, now a senior fellow at MIAS; commander of the 57th Wing Brig Gen Richard Goodman; and MIAS senior resident fellow Heather Penny also noted a poor ratio of fifth to fourth generation fighters where the former should be available in sufficient quantities as the latter is “not survivable” in today’s high-end fight.

What Are Kill Chains?

The kill chain is the sequence of processes from target acquisition to engagement/firing, where until the ordnance is released, it involves target identification, “fixing,” and target tracking.

They have corresponding platforms performing each of these functions. These involve intelligence-surveillance-reconnaissance (ISR) drones, airborne early warning aircraft (AEW), satellites, command and control (C2) centers, and even ground troops.

Penny writes in a separate report that China aims to destroy, deceive, or confuse this “information” gathering and decision-making architecture/network rather than solely destroying enemy forces.

File Image: J-20 Stealth Aircraft

In a presentation, Penny explained how the Chinese, after having closely studied US warfighting style for three decades – would look at hitting each element in the kill chain and disable the entire system.

Notably, China learned from Operation Desert Storm in the early 1990s how the US completely disabled the Iraqi military in a matter of days, with little to no loss to themselves.

Attack ‘Systems’ Of Systems

China can also attack components of US military kill chains with electronic warfare, where it jams, for instance, the Link 16 data links that link nearly every US air and ground asset.

Thus preventing the flow of this “information” between various systems is sufficient to “disrupt” the kill chain that will be preparing to fire on Chinese targets.

For instance, shooting down large AEW&C aircraft like the E-3 Sentry will force USAF and US Navy fighters to adapt or introduce ad hoc workarounds, slowing down the “tempo” of American operations and speed of the kill chain.

It is worrisome that China has already moved in this direction (of strengthening its own kill chain elements) with the WZ-8 high-speed strategic reconnaissance drone. China might use the fast-flying high-altitude drone to complement the existing kill chain by plotting its location and help coordinate other units to form an anti-ship raid against it.

It’s a different matter that the WZ-8 has long been concluded to be a reverse-engineered version of the Lockheed Skunk Works D-21 from the 1960s.

File Image: F-35

Penny specifically said having large numbers of the B-21 Raider and the F-35 Lightning II was vital, given their stealth and electronic intelligence (ELINT) capabilities, and not to repeat the mistake of the B-2 Spirit and F-22 Raptor.

Despite considerable investment, the two aircraft were only built in small quantities, which are inadequate against the tens of thousands of possible targets in a Pacific air campaign.

The EurAsian Times had previously touched upon this emerging Chinese doctrine of “intelligentized” warfare, which has significantly influenced the design of its military and, to a great extent, possible tactics and manner in which platforms like the J-20 would be employed.

US Too Wants To Target Chinese Kill Chains

But even more interesting is that the USAF itself has been considering attacking China’s kill chains, as was admitted by Pacific Air Forces commander General Kenneth Wilsbach in a March 14, 2022, seminar at MIAS.

This was also the same famous event where Wilsbach admitted they were “relatively impressed” with the J-20 and how it was being flown “professionally” after making the stunning revelation that the F-35 and the Chinese stealth fighter had encountered one another over the East China Sea (ECS).

It was while expanding upon the KJ-500 Airborne Early Warning and Control (AEW&C) aircraft that can guide the 200 kilometers range PL-15 beyond visual range (BVR) missile fired from the J-20 that he revealed the USAF’s tactical thinking.

“Some of their very long-range air-to-air missiles (PL-15) are aided by that KJ-500. Being able to interrupt that kill chain is something that interests me greatly,” Wilsbach had said.

• The author can be reached at [email protected]
• Follow EurAsian Times on Google News

eurasiantimes.com · by Parth Satam · May 14, 2023

13. Hypersonics, Nukes Top House Lawmaker’s Priorities List

Because this is money for congressional districts. WHat congressman will advocate for priorities for irregular warfare? Just saying.

Hypersonics, Nukes Top House Lawmaker’s Priorities List

But markups at Doug Lamborn’s HASC strategic forces panel are on hold amid threats to force a U.S. default.

defenseone.com · by Audrey Decker

Hypersonic missiles and nuclear weapons will get top priority when the House Armed Services committee’s strategic forces panel finally gets to mark up the 2024 defense-policy bill, according to the subcommittee’s chairman.

HASC markups are on hold while GOP lawmakers seek federal budget cuts by threatening to force the U.S. renege on its debts.

Rep. Doug Lamborn, a Republican whose district is based in Colorado Springs, said his biggest concern ahead of the markup, which was supposed to kick off on Thursday, is the top-line number.

Lamborn said he’s “disappointed” the defense policy bill is delayed but “understands” why Congress needs to concentrate on the debt ceiling first.

“Getting that top-line number, I think, is critical because if that number is reduced as part of a negotiation with the Senate and the White House, I would be very concerned that that would lead to cuts in capabilities in the future,” he told Defense One in an interview.

A GOP-forced default on outstanding debts would hurt national security in various ways, according to a host of leaders, including the defense secretary, Joint Chiefs chairman, the director of national intelligence, the Air Force secretary, and more.

If the Pentagon’s top-line number does change, Lamborn said he’s confident programs in the strategic forces portfolio would be in a safe position as “everyone involved” is aware of the need for the Space Force to be fully funded. However, the committees that focus on bigger items, like ships, aircraft, and munitions, might run into some problems, he said.

“Because we have consensus in the community and with the administration, and I think even the Senate, I think the Space Force is in a good position,” Lamborn said.

As chairman of the committee, Lamborn said his top priority is the Pentagon's hypersonics programs. The pace of development is “way too slow,” and he’s looking to increase funding in the defense policy bill, the National Defense Authorization Act, for “different testing capabilities and facilities” to hopefully accelerate schedules, Lamborn said.

In addition to offensive hypersonic missiles, Lamborn said his committee is adding language calling for a “very active” and robust schedule to field systems that can defend against hypersonics.

The Pentagon confirmed last week that Ukraine recently used a Patriot missile system to take out a Russian hypersonic missile, the Kinzhal.

However, Lamborn said the scenario in Ukraine doesn’t mean the U.S. could do the same against a Chinese hypersonic missile.

“Russia has a history of exaggerating their capabilities. It may have been a primitive—that is, an older-generation hypersonic weapon that a Patriot would be fully capable of intercepting,” he said.

Another priority for the chairman is keeping the Pentagon’s nuclear triad—bombers, submarines, and intercontinental ballistic missiles—on track. There’s concern that “we're starting to lose the cushion that we have in any of these programs,” Lamborn said.

A major problem for U.S. nuclear programs is plutonium-pit production, Lamborn said. Plutonium pits are part of the fission-fusion chain that creates a thermonuclear explosion.“I'm concerned that we have some possible delays coming up in pit production. And I know that the people running different aspects of the program have contingency plans in place, but I hope it doesn't come to the point where we have to start looking at contingencies,” he said.

While Congress monitors the Pentagon’s nuke programs, Lamborn said there will be bipartisan agreement in the NDAA to keep funding research and development for the Navy’s nuclear Sea-Launched Cruise Missile, despite multiple attempts from the Biden administration to kill the program, with the goal of “ultimately fielding SLCM-N.”

For the committee's space portfolio, Lamborn said he’s focused on ensuring that the Space Force has the “maximum launch capacity as a country that we can, both in the short term and long term.”

Now three years since the Space Force was created, Lamborn said he’s happy with the newest service’s progress but there’s “a little ways to go” as he’s heard complaints from industry that there’s still too much red tape when a company wants to work with the Space Force.

Lawmakers are also “very frustrated” with the service’s overclassification of information, Lamborn said, which makes it difficult to share information with the government, industry, partners and allies—and explain the Space Force’s “critical needs" to the public.

It’s hard to legislate a cultural change, but “the next best thing we can do is to highlight the need to be more open while walking that fine line of not divulging proprietary information to the other side,” he said.

defenseone.com · by Audrey Decker

14. Can the World Make an Electric Car Battery Without China?

Please go to the link to view the excellent  graphics: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/05/16/business/china-ev-battery.html

Can the World Make an Electric Car Battery Without China?

By Agnes Chang and Keith BradsherMay 16, 2023

The New York Times · by Keith Bradsher · May 16, 2023

It is one of the defining competitions of our age: The countries that can make batteries for electric cars will reap decades of economic and geopolitical advantages.

The only winner so far is China.

Despite billions in Western investment, China is so far ahead — mining rare minerals, training engineers and building huge factories — that the rest of the world may take decades to catch up.

Even by 2030, China will make more than twice as many batteries as every other country combined, according to estimates from Benchmark Minerals, a consulting group.

Here’s how China controls each step of lithium-ion battery production, from getting the raw materials out of the ground to making the cars, and why these advantages are likely to last.

China controls essential rare minerals

Source: CRU Group Note: Data for 2022

Electric cars use about six times more rare minerals than conventional cars because of the battery, and China gets to decide who gets the minerals first and at what price.

Although China has few underground deposits of the essential ingredients, it has pursued a long-term strategy to buy its way into a cheap and steady supply. Chinese companies, relying on state assistance, acquired stakes in mining companies on five continents.

China owns most of the cobalt mines in Congo, which has the majority of the world’s supply of this scarce material needed for the most common type of battery. American companies failed to keep up and even sold mines to their Chinese counterparts.

As a result, China controls 41 percent of the world’s cobalt mining, and the most mining for lithium, which carries a battery’s electric charge.

Source: CRU Group, U.S.G.S. Note: Data for 2022

Global supplies of nickel, manganese and graphite are much larger and batteries use only a fraction. But China’s steady supply of these minerals still gives it an advantage. China’s investments in Indonesia will help it become the largest controller of nickel by 2027, according to forecasts by CRU Group, a consulting firm.

Graphite is mostly mined in China. U.S. producers synthesize graphite at much greater cost.

Western countries also own mines abroad, and are trying to catch up with China. But they have been more reluctant to put money into countries with unstable governments or poor labor practices. And they have been slow to ramp up their own production.

A new mine can take more than 20 years to reach full production. Although the United States is investing to tap its significant lithium reserves, the effort has run into a host of local and environmental concerns.

The world relies on China to process minerals

Source: CRU Group Note: Data for 2022

Regardless of who mines the minerals, nearly everything is shipped to China to be refined into battery-grade materials.

Once ore is taken from the ground, it is usually pulverized and then treated with heat and chemicals to isolate the mineral compounds. The process is wasteful: Cobalt generates about 860 pounds of waste rock for each pound of refined cobalt powder.

Refining needs huge amounts of energy. Battery minerals require three to four times as much energy to make as steel or copper. The preferred form of lithium, for example, needs to be heated, steamed and dried. Supported by the government with cheap land and energy, Chinese companies have been able to refine minerals at larger volume and lower cost than everyone else. This has caused refineries elsewhere to close.

Refining also often causes pollution, and Chinese refineries benefit from less stringent environmental regulations. Grinding graphite causes air pollution. Processing nickel generates toxic waste, which must be disposed of in special structures in the ocean or underground. Experts say that using more sustainable methods to process battery minerals drives up costs.

Today the United States has little processing capability. A refinery typically takes two to five years to build. Training workers and adjusting equipment can take additional time. Australia’s first lithium refinery, which has some Chinese ownership, was approved in 2016 but failed to produce battery-grade lithium until last year.

China makes most of the parts that go in a battery

Sources: IEA, Yano Research Institute Note: Data for 2021

China became the largest battery producer partly by figuring out how to make battery components efficiently and at lower cost.

The most important component is the cathode, which is the battery’s positive terminal. Of all battery materials, cathodes are the most difficult and energy intensive to make. Until the last several months, the most common cathode used a combination of nickel, cobalt and manganese, also known as NMC cathodes. This formula allows a battery to store a lot of electricity in a small space, providing an electric car with longer range.

China has invested in a cheaper alternative that has now taken half the cathode market. Known as LFP, for lithium iron phosphate, these cathodes use widely available iron and phosphate instead of nickel, manganese and cobalt.

For western countries, LFP is an opportunity to bypass bottlenecks in the mineral supply. But China produces almost all the world’s LFP.

Source: CRU Group Note: Data for “NMC cathodes” category includes NMC, NCA, NMCA; “LFP cathodes” includes LFP, LMFP. Data for 2022.

Today the United States makes only about 1 percent of the world’s cathodes, all of which are NMC. American companies are interested in LFP, but they must team up with Chinese companies that have the experience producing it.

Chinese companies make most of the battery’s other components. They dominate the production of anodes, the negative end of a battery. China also sells the most separators, a layer that goes between the cathode and anode to prevent short-circuiting. Electrolytes, made of mostly lithium salts and solvent, are needed for conductivity, and the top four electrolyte producers in the world are Chinese.

China makes the most batteries and the most cars

Source: IEA Note: Data for 2021. Graphic depicts cylindrical cells used by many U.S. car brands.

China has the most electric cars on the road and nearly all of them use Chinese-made batteries. In 2015, Beijing enacted policies to block foreign rivals and raise consumer demand. Chinese battery manufacturers like CATL and BYD grew at the expense of their Japanese and South Korean competitors and became the largest in the world.

Eight years later, the Biden administration is now pursuing a similar strategy to foster battery development in the United States.

But in a business with huge capital costs and thin profit margins, Chinese companies have a big head start after years of state funding and experience.

Battery assembly is complex and technical. To make one, cathode and anode materials are attached to thin metal sheets each about one-fifth the thickness of a human hair. These are then stacked with separators, moistened with electrolytes, and rolled up. The entire process needs to take place in rooms that minimize air particles and moisture.

China can build battery factories at nearly half the cost of countries in North America or Europe, according to Heiner Heimes, a professor at RWTH Aachen University in Germany. The main reasons: Labor costs are lower, and there are more equipment manufacturers in China.

Source: IEA Note: Data for 2021

American investors remain wary about putting money into electric vehicles. Traditional cars are still very profitable, American workers need to be trained in new skills, and U.S. government incentives to help the E.V. industry could disappear with the next presidential election cycle.

China has spent more than $130 billion on research incentives, government contracts and consumer subsidies, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Electric car buyers in China get tax rebates, cheaper vehicle registration, preferential parking and access to an extensive charging network. China’s investments have allowed the country to lead the world in production, equipment and product design.

Experts say it is next to impossible for any other country to become self-reliant in the battery supply chain, no matter if it has cheaper labor or finds other global partners. Companies anywhere in the world will look to form partnerships with Chinese manufacturers to enter or expand in the industry.

“There is no way anybody is going to become successful in electric vehicles without having some type of cooperation with China, either directly or indirectly,” said Scott Kennedy, a senior adviser at C.S.I.S.

The New York Times · by Keith Bradsher · May 16, 2023

15. Thinking Beyond the Taiwan Strait

An interesting statement here - the "juice of the Allied victory."

Excerpts:

The world is still running on the juice of the Allied victory. Allies in the form of Soviet Russia and riven China preferred to withdraw into their own communist designs rather than participate meaningfully in the international economic and security system. In the interim between the end of World War II and the emergence of outward-looking regimes in Moscow and Beijing, the world built up a vast and overwhelmingly accepted economic, legal and security infrastructure for global commerce and interaction.

However, the existing world order has fueled China’s meteoric ascendency as a global industrial and economic power, largely with the acquiescence and even encouragement of the U.S. If anything, the PRC prefers to entwine itself into this existing order, reaping its benefits and cherry-picking its rules while displacing the U.S. as its ultimate arbiter, rather than trying to build one from scratch or construct an alternate reality, as the Soviet Union tried to do. The Belt and Road Initiative is more formidable in essence than existence; it can best be seen as a hedge against open ocean vulnerability by building more defensible land-based trade routes, an expensive and uncertain process.

The U.S. must look to the kinds of military forces it will need to maintain a world order that, despite overheated reports, would still prefer overall to move along the established and profitable lines that currently exist to the benefit of most.

Thinking Beyond the Taiwan Strait

Deterring China may start with Taiwan, but the U.S. must take a long-term view with a global perspective

Michael Puttré May 9, 2023

discoursemagazine.com · by Michael Puttré · May 9, 2023

This is post 4 of 5 in the series “The Future of the World Order”

Scholars, journalists and other contributors discuss the future of the U.S.-led, liberal-democratic world order, how it might change in the future and the various threats against it.

The silver lining of the Russo-Ukraine conflict, if there can be such a thing, is that it’s given the West early warning that the taboo against great-power war is gone. The long peace of the post-World War II era is over, and the world seems only one incident away from another general war. This dawning realization has also brought the potential for a U.S. conflict with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) into sharper focus.

President Xi Jinping can only be discomfited by the sudden spotlight on his oft-spoken (if generally softly rendered) ambitions to “resolve” the issue of Taiwan and establish Chinese sovereignty over the South China Sea and other littoral regions washing the “first island chain.” The big stick of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is evidently not yet ready, and now the U.S. and its allies are taking heightened interest in the Chinese Communist Party’s military ambitions in preparation for its centenary celebration of itself in 2049. This was not the plan, and Xi has only his “no-limits” partner Vladimir Putin to thank for the unwelcome attention.

However, Taiwan and even the Indo-Pacific are only part of the equation. Given that the Chinese Communist Party probably will not survive a failed attack on Taiwan, the attempt will not be made unless it is absolutely certain to succeed. While the U.S. should take now whatever steps are necessary to supply Taiwan prior to an invasion attempt, and to support it and rally allies in the event of one, this should be only one aspect of how it prepares for the new world order and coexistence with China.

War in the Margins

Hal Brands, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, wrote in a July 2022 report that the U.S. is preparing for the wrong kind of war: a short, decisive one focused on the Taiwan Strait. Rather, he said, such a war would most likely sprawl geographically and take much longer to resolve than both belligerents expect.

“Much of the current debate focuses on how the United States could weather the early hours, days, and weeks of a potential conflict,” Brands wrote, adding that this was understandable given the PLA’s weapons and its geographic advantage. “Most modern great-power clashes have been long wars, lasting months or years rather than days or weeks. And as great-power wars go long, they frequently get bigger, messier, and harder to untangle.”

This is all true. However, with both sides focusing on Taiwan so intently, the PRC may perceive that the risk of seizing the island by direct assault is too large to undertake, particularly if the U.S. appears committed to its defense. Rather than a long war that flares up around the world after an initial encounter in the Taiwan Strait, the U.S. needs to consider conflicts with China that may occur globally even without a Taiwan clash.

The U.S. may indeed be able to deter the PRC from making an all-or-nothing wager on Taiwan, but it will still have to exist in a world where the PRC is able to flex its muscles in other ways and exude its charm. This is actually the best possible outcome, and even a desirable one, considering risks of nuclear escalation. Yet it will require a strategic focus and deftness that has been lacking in U.S. policy of late.

The emerging U.S. political and military consensus on ramping up munitions production and military deployments to the Pacific reflects awareness of—and even willingness to counter—the PRC’s threats against Taiwan. But it also showcases the tendency of Western democracies to pursue issues of the moment rather than long-term strategy. Given that the PRC evidently excels at the latter, how can the U.S. use its advantages of resilience, adaptability and position to remain competitive, if not dominant, for the rest of the 21st century?

There are two aspects to this question. First, what can be done in the short term to counter China? And second, what long-term military capabilities will the U.S. need to compete and hopefully coexist with China without abdicating its place at (or at least near) the head of the table?

What Have You Done for Me Lately?

The U.S. should attend to its alliances and partnerships globally in order to maintain its preeminent position as a world power and to forestall Chinese gains. Since China’s ambition is to be the preeminent world power, there are no corners of the world in which it is not interested. Many of these interests are economic in nature or involve access to raw materials. Others are simply opportunities to expand the PRC’s footprint in regions that may have strategic value in the future.

The U.S. has a network of sovereign or leased bases, along with basing agreements, around the world that give it global reach. It maintains military transport and refueling aircraft and support ship fleets that remain unparalleled in the world. This logistics network not only enables staging areas for military and humanitarian operations, it provides materials handling and depot services for ships and aircraft. This combination of facilities and equipment not only enables the U.S. to respond to crises as it chooses, but it is also indispensable in joint operations with allies, which mostly do not possess such capabilities in abundance.

The Chinese are trying to achieve this capability as well. Soft power and logistics go hand in hand. Air- and sea-transport capabilities not only enable forces to operate in far-flung corners of the world, but also allow a country to maintain a relationship with the base’s host, particularly when it is in need. If the U.S. is complacent, negligent or even arrogant in its dealings with allies and other countries on which it depends for resources or real estate, the PRC will be along presently with gifts and handshakes.

Blake Herzinger, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a U.S. Naval Reserve officer, co-authored a brief for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy stating that the PRC was likely to build on its current facility in Djibouti (essentially its only overseas naval base) to expand its ability to protect its interests in the Gulf of Aden, the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf. The base on the Horn of Africa was established in 2017 to support the PLA navy’s contribution to international forces combating Somali pirates.

“In addition to housing intelligence collection equipment, the base was expanded to accommodate the PLAN’s aircraft carriers and amphibious assault ships—capabilities that are unnecessary for combating piracy and were added well after the specter of that threat had receded,” Herzinger wrote. “The PLAN’s interest in acquiring operational footholds in the Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf regions suggests that the Djibouti base will not be the last.”

A recent Rand Corp. report said that China’s motives for securing overseas bases are tied more directly to protecting its own interests, particularly economic ones, than to provoking the U.S. At the same time, China’s efforts to acquire overseas bases support its ambitions as a rising military power on a global scale and could spark “peripheral wars” involving both superpowers. Such conflicts are not likely to remain peripheral for long.

The U.S. should be extremely careful about opposing Chinese efforts to establish bases because such opposition could itself cause instability. Rather, America should remain attentive to its existing and potential friends in a given region while developing capabilities to counter the threats posed by a PLA regional base. This entails expanded deployments of air defense, anti-ship and strike missile systems in addition to signals intelligence gathering.

A controversial aspect of the United States’ relationships with alliance partners and hosts of facilities and personnel is that they’re contingent on the U.S. human rights agenda, which is mainly driven by domestic politics. When campaigning for president, Joe Biden famously reprimanded Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman over the latter’s alleged involvement in the murder of regime critic Jamal Khashoggi. The resulting cooling of U.S.-Saudi relations has potentially opened the door for greater Chinese involvement in the Middle East, with ramifications for diplomatic leverage, arms sales and basing of forces.

China very specifically makes its diplomatic initiatives with no such humanitarian strings attached (though economic strings are another matter). For example, China was quick to the scene with material and very visible assistance for the Pacific nation of Tonga when the island was hit by a volcanic eruption and tsunami in January 2022. China followed up in May with a visit by its foreign minister, who said, “China’s diplomacy maintains the principle of mutual respect, the tradition of non-interference in internal affairs, and the goal of mutual benefit and win-win results.”

In the 21st-century competition for global influence, there are no “backyards” that can be taken for granted. If the PRC must be dissuaded from its notion that it is entitled to a backyard in the first island chain, the U.S. should remember that it cannot afford to neglect regions it has come to take for granted or see as irrelevant. Chinese diplomats and PLA assets are sure to fill the vacuum and nourish resentments toward the existing world order.

It’s a Small World, But I Wouldn’t Want to Run It

One of the advantages of keeping the Taiwan Strait from boiling over is that staying focused on Taiwan constrains China’s ability to deploy its power overseas. The U.S. has an existing infrastructure of bases and facilities at its disposal. Furthermore, it has cooperated with regional militaries in exercises and even military operations since the end of World War II. The PLA is only in the nascent stages of following suit.

The world is still running on the juice of the Allied victory. Allies in the form of Soviet Russia and riven China preferred to withdraw into their own communist designs rather than participate meaningfully in the international economic and security system. In the interim between the end of World War II and the emergence of outward-looking regimes in Moscow and Beijing, the world built up a vast and overwhelmingly accepted economic, legal and security infrastructure for global commerce and interaction.

However, the existing world order has fueled China’s meteoric ascendency as a global industrial and economic power, largely with the acquiescence and even encouragement of the U.S. If anything, the PRC prefers to entwine itself into this existing order, reaping its benefits and cherry-picking its rules while displacing the U.S. as its ultimate arbiter, rather than trying to build one from scratch or construct an alternate reality, as the Soviet Union tried to do. The Belt and Road Initiative is more formidable in essence than existence; it can best be seen as a hedge against open ocean vulnerability by building more defensible land-based trade routes, an expensive and uncertain process.

The U.S. must look to the kinds of military forces it will need to maintain a world order that, despite overheated reports, would still prefer overall to move along the established and profitable lines that currently exist to the benefit of most.

America Rules the Waves, But for How Long?

In the meantime, the existing order leaves the PRC’s trade and resource lifelines vulnerable to U.S. action, particularly on the high seas. This vulnerability constricts China’s options with regard to Taiwan and the South China Sea, where it has been able to ignore the rules-based order successfully so far. Furthermore, America and its allies can punish the regime into nonexistence with a long-war approach in the aftermath of even a successful conquest of Taiwan, essentially eliminating Chinese trade by sea in a modern-day air and submarine campaign.

This absolute trump card could slip through America’s fingers, however, if it cannot get a grip on its lack of manufacturing capacity. The West, and the U.S. in particular, has convinced itself that an information and services economy is in every way preferable to an industrial one. This may have been true in the days before the most industrialized economy in the world became capable of putting a hypersonic missile on our production choke points. That time has come.

In a long-war sense, the most difficult problem the U.S. has to address is shipbuilding. In February, U.S. Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro said China now has a larger fleet than America, and it is deploying that fleet globally. The basing and port call agreements China’s diplomacy and economics are forging all over the world enable and support these deployments. Current U.S. plans project to have 350 ships deployed by 2045, with a smaller fleet in the interim as older hulls are retired. The PRC navy is expected to have about 500 warships by that time. While numbers are not everything, quantity has a quality all its own.

The situation is even more dire in the merchant marine. According to the Asia Times, “China built 44.2% of the world’s merchant fleet last year, followed by South Korea at 32.4% and Japan at 17.6%. In contrast, the data shows that the U.S. built only 0.053% of the world’s total merchant fleet in 2022.”

The PRC has a tremendous shipbuilding industry and merchant marine that could easily be pressed into military service. Cruisers, submarines, container ships, tankers: All have military utility. Naval analysts have pointed out that the PRC has 19 major shipyards to America’s seven. And just one of China’s facilities, Jiangnan Dao near Shanghai, reportedly has a capacity equal to all U.S. shipyards combined.

To make matters worse, the U.S. Navy has clogged its slipways with expensive, time-consuming and disappointing designs, such as the littoral combat ship and Zumwalt-class destroyers, in pursuit of exotic technologies that have proven essentially fruitless. The USS Gerald R. Ford, reportedly the most expensive ship ever built, is late and, not surprisingly, over budget. Nevertheless, carrier aviation and operations form the backbone of U.S. naval power projection and represent a bastion of sea superiority, for now.

Expanding U.S. shipbuilding capacity is not something that will be either politically popular or economically attractive. Nor will the changes that need to be made to Pentagon development and procurement culture. However, the U.S. does have the advantage of being friendly with a large number of nations that possess significant manufacturing and shipbuilding capacities. It is even allied with some.

While we wait for U.S. capacity to revive, the Department of Defense should avail itself of the capacity of its friends and allies through contracts. America generally avoids procuring ships, planes and tanks from foreign sources, although it happens. The littoral combat ship debacle has prompted the Navy to tap Italy for its replacement frigate design. It will be an Italy-produced hull with U.S. weapons and sensors. This is a model that could be used for any number of required types of ships, planes or other platforms that would otherwise be prevented by lack of domestic manufacturing capacity.

One of the benefits of sitting atop the world order is that you have many friends, allies and stakeholders willing to help you maintain your position if you are willing to give them a piece of the action. America should not forget to exude its own charm.

discoursemagazine.com · by Michael Puttré · May 9, 2023

16.  In race with China, SOCOM must leverage private equity, say experts and VCs

In race with China, SOCOM must leverage private equity, say experts and VCs - Breaking Defense

“We are witnessing a cultural shift. Engineers want to work on problems for the DoD. We’re going to have an explosion of defense technology. Capital is following the engineers and following DoD opening of the aperture who want innovation,” said Alex Moore, partner at 8VC.

breakingdefense.com · by Andrew White · May 15, 2023

Demonstrators operate non-GPS enabled positioning, navigation and timing technology during a technical experimentation at Muscatatuck Urban Training Center, Ind., March 28, 2018. (Photo by U.S. Air Force Master Sgt. Barry Loo)

SOF WEEK 2023 — If US Special Operations Command wants to keep up with its counterparts in China, it’s got to leverage private equity to speed the integration of commercial tech, a panel of VCs and experts warned.

Addressing USSOCOM’s commander, Gen. Bryan Fenton, and delegates at the inaugural SOF Week conference in Tampa, Fla., last week, the panel described how the commercial market and small-medium enterprises (SMEs) continue to drive hi-tech development in defense, particularly in the areas of artificial intelligence, cyber and autonomy — all tech special operations forces needs to stay on the cutting edge.

“VCs are critical to this,” Joseph Felter, director of the Gordian Knot Center for National Security Innovation at Stanford University urged before suggesting commercial investment in US defense was “incomparable” to that of China.

Thomas Tull, founder and chairman of the US Innovative Technology Fund, said, “We can stand around and complain, but every day we do nothing, we are losing ground on our adversaries,”

And David Spirk, senior counselor at Palantir and former USSOCOM Chief Data Officer added, “If we can’t slow them down, we can accelerate ourselves.”

One issue, another panelist said, was the current high-cost of being a defense-focused SME.

“It still takes a billion dollars to ‘IPO’ a defense company. I want to get that down to $100 million and get more of these Anduril and Palantir type companies who have thousands of engineers and get the end-product to the Department of Defense,” said Alex Moore, partner at 8VC.

“We are witnessing a cultural shift. Engineers want to work on problems for the DoD. We’re going to have an explosion of defense technology. Capital is following the engineers and following DoD opening of the aperture who want innovation,” Moore stressed.

Chairman of BridgingVoice, Peter Bloom said “small companies” must “reach scale to be effective” in support of the DoD. He also suggested some kind of DoD mentoring program could encourage these types of SMEs to grow.

“It would be really helpful for these small companies and no cost to DoD,” Bloom said.

Finally, Spirk also discussed how USSOCOM could assign SOF operators approaching the end of their career to SMEs to help them to “product match and understand real requirements and not what they’ve seen in the movies.”

One real-world example of the advantage commercial tech can provide, the panelists said, was how quickly the Ukrainian military has adopted “low end” tech that’s “good enough” to fight Russian troops more effectively.

The VCs highlighted space-based image intelligence (IMINT) and low earth orbit satellite communications in particular, suggesting USSOCOM should own and operate its own cheap and low-tech SATCOM network to benefit from organic voice, data, IMINT and signals intellitegence capability instead of relying upon larger, more slow-moving government agencies.

“Ukraine is absorbing the commercial space market as quickly as possible. We should use them as an example to understand how small companies can work with big ones on a war footing.

“Ukraine is going straight to these companies and getting imagery immediately instead of going through national agencies,” Bloom added. (Earlier in the week, USSOCOM acquisition executive Jim Smith said the command was working with the Space Development Agency on “SOF-peculiar” satellite payloads.)

Private capital could also be used to build the capability of international partners and allies, Spirk said — an idea reiterated by Tull, who said “going alone” in VC investment in defense would be difficult. Specifically, Tull highlighted cooperation with the ‘Five Eyes’ intelligence-sharing partners of the US, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and UK as well as Japan, South Korea and India.

Organizationally, Bloom suggested every US DoD Geographic Combatant Command (GCC) should have a Chief Technology Officer like Central Command’s Schuyler Moore.

“CENTCOM is the first GCC to have a CTO to act as a translator between technology and business. This can be easily extended to other GCCs at no cost,” Bloom said.

breakingdefense.com · by Andrew White · May 15, 2023

17. Simple Sabotage 2.0: the Threat of Pro-Russian Civil Resistance in Ukraine

​As an aside, we contributed a translation of the OSS SImple Sabotage Manual last year. While the equipment and techniques are of course dated the concepts and ideas remain applicable if adapted to modern technology and equipment. 

For the Glorious Ukrainian Resistance

By Charles T. Pinck

https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/glorious-ukrainian-resistance

​

Simple Sabotage 2.0: the Threat of Pro-Russian Civil Resistance in Ukraine – Irregular Warfare Center

irregularwarfarecenter.org

May 12, 2023

Simple Sabotage 2.0: the Threat of Pro-Russian Civil Resistance in Ukraine

Sandor Fabian PH.D. – IWC Chair, Engagements

Kevin Stringer PH.D. – IWC Chair, Education

Andrew Liflyandchick – IWC Analyst

Download a PDF of this publication by clicking the icon.

Resistance is an asymmetric tool that can be used by an underdog to fight against an oppressor or a foreign military occupation. However, the Russo-Ukrainian War has demonstrated that this concept can also be used by an occupying force. As part of the Irregular Warfare Center’s (hereafter, IWC) ongoing mission to illuminate and address irregular threats posed to the U.S. and its allies and partners, the Center recently obtained and translated a Russian handbook designed to instruct pro-Russian Ukrainian citizens on how to resist the Ukrainian government; something that is especially relevant in recently recaptured territories. As a primer prior to the publication of the actual translation of the Pro-Russian Civil Resistance Handbook, this article provides context for and a short analysis of the document. It also highlights the surprising connection the handbook shares with sabotage tactics used by U.S. intelligence during WWII.

Visit the “Translations” page to request access to the translation.

After Russia invaded and illegally annexed Crimea in 2014, many Eastern-European countries were forced to revise their approaches to national defense. In response to these changes, several countries developed and implemented the Total Defense Strategy, a defense concept that relies on the combination of both conventional defense and resistance in occupied territories. The latter places responsibility on each individual citizen to resist an occupier through either violent or non-violent means. Russia’s unilateral invasion of Ukraine in 2022 put this concept to the test, and, as a result, has proven that total defense is an indispensable tool for weaker countries preparing resilience and resistance capabilities against a much stronger foe.

The Russian resistance handbook translated by the IWC provides valuable insights into what tactics, techniques, and procedures Russians might use to foment resistance in Ukraine-held territories. Understanding these efforts is vital for not only Ukraine but also for other countries in the region facing potential Russian aggression. Georgia, Moldova, Latvia, and Estonia might be particularly vulnerable to similar campaigns. Acknowledging the existence of pro-Russian resistance tactics, techniques, and procedures and examining their characteristics is critical for building societal resilience and developing effective countermeasures against similar Russian activities.

On 11 November 2022, Ukrainian troops entered the city of Kherson. This ended an eight-month-long Russian occupation marked by brutality, fear, and repression. While many Ukrainians rushed to the streets to greet the troops whom they saw as their liberators, others were not as supportive. For residents who had supported the Russian invasion, actively collaborated with occupation forces, and/or bought into the constant waves of Russian propaganda, the return of Kherson to Ukrainian control came with risks to personal safety. Perceived collaborators faced the possibility of vigilante attacks from their fellow citizens or investigations and detention by Ukrainian intelligence.

Devising a strategy for reintegrating citizens who may still hold pro-Russian sentiments is one of the primary challenges in the process of rebuilding the formerly occupied territories. Ukraine already possesses an administrative vehicle that can assist in the coordination of such efforts in its Ministry for the Reintegration of the Temporarily Occupied Territories. However, recovery from the social divides caused by the occupation will require the establishment of clear legal definitions of what constitutes collaboration and with what severity and strictness it should be punished. Loose definitions leading to overzealous and inconsistent prosecution could lead to resentment and create opportunities for Russian influence operations to stir civil resistance.

The Russian civil resistance handbook is designed to provide guidance, detailed information, and inspiration for pro-Russian Ukrainian citizens. The document is organized into a propaganda section and 14 thematical, pamphlet-like sections mostly organized around occupational specialties that are deemed to be the most effective in hampering Ukrainian government efforts. These occupations range from government employees to medical professionals to even religious figures such as priests. The handbook’s suggestions focus on low risk “simple sabotage” actions that any member of society can participate in without the need for organization and coordination. As the handbook notes, “every single one of you can provide an effective resistance to the American puppets and bring us closer to the end of the special military operation.”

Central to the messaging contained in the propaganda section of the handbook is the idea that potential saboteurs are part of something larger than themselves—that they are part of a movement of like-minded people, even if they might never come into contact. This idea is pursued in the handbook from the very first line by addressing Ukrainian citizens as “our dear brothers and sisters” and by emphasizing that “the greatest treasure for Russia is her wonderful multi-national people.” These are phrases designed to elicit instant recognition among population groups previously exposed to Russian government messaging, and directly echo the July 2021 article written by Russian President Vladimir Putin, titled “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians.” In this article, which has since then been used by Russian sources as a justification for the invasion of Ukraine, President Putin argues that Russians and Ukrainians have always been a unified people and that the illegitimate Ukrainian government, controlled by the West, is seeking to divide them. This logic also forms the basis for Russian efforts to frame the invasion of Ukraine as a liberation—something that Russian sympathizers are, in the handbook, encouraged to support through sabotaging their workplace.

As the Russo-Ukraine War goes on, the lack of innovation in Russia when it comes to modern military and strategic thought has become increasingly apparent. Russian military leadership is increasingly relying on WWII and Cold War experiences as a basis for planning, with little success. While many of these strategies are being taken from the Soviet playbook, this resistance handbook shows that past strategies from other countries, including the U.S., its allies, and partners, can also be considered fair game.

In 1944, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the precursor to the Central Intelligence Agency, began the covert distribution of a manual titled the “Simple Sabotage Field Manual.” This manual, which was declassified and made public in 2008, had the purpose of serving as a guide for “citizen-saboteurs” living in territories occupied by the Axis powers and that might be sympathetic to U.S. goals. The manual gives instructions on how to sabotage enemy industrial, military, and government functions and, by extension, how to create “a constant and tangible drag on the war effort of the enemy.” The OSS believed that when done on a large scale, simple sabotage has a noticeable impact on enemy war capabilities and morale.Over 75 years later, the tactics contained in the OSS manual are once again being distributed during an ongoing war. This time, however, the source is a Russian civil resistance handbook, and the new target audience is pro-Russia sympathizers in Ukraine.

While many of the tactics encountered within the Russian handbook are directly borrowed from the OSS manual, the approach the Russian authors have taken to distribution is different in a way that better reflects the modern environment. The director of the OSS during WWII, William “Wild Bill” Donovan, held the view that the Simple Sabotage Field Manual should only be distributed selectively and with great caution. Only small parts of it could be used in pamphlets and radio broadcasts, and even then, only at the discretion of the theatre commander.

The Russian authors take a different track. Their handbook takes advantage of the power that social media platforms such as Telegram provide to disseminate the instructions and propaganda in the handbook to the widest possible audience. According to the OSS manual, simple sabotage is a method that relies on large numbers of voluntary saboteurs to achieve its objectives. With social media serving as a force multiplier, previously limited simple sabotage campaigns have the potential to be a much more effective and powerful strategy than before.

However, an important caveat to note is that because the origin of the handbook is a newly created social media account made expressly for the purpose of anonymous distribution, the degree of its connection to the Russian (or any other) government cannot be established. While many pro-Kremlin propagandists, bloggers, and social media influencers work directly or indirectly with the Russian state, others might create and disseminate material on their own initiative. Yet, these unclear origins did not prevent the handbook from being picked up and reposted by major Russian war bloggers with connections to Kremlin propaganda networks, such as Boris Rozhin, who has over 800,000 subscribers on Telegram. This gave the handbook a significantly higher visibility and reach than would have been possible unaided while allowing the original authors to maintain plausible deniability. In July 2022, the handbook was also highlighted by Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense as an example of “Kremlin propaganda.”

In conclusion, regaining control over its sovereign territory from the occupier might not mean the end of hostilities for Ukraine. Pro-Russian sentiments among members of society, combined with effective Russian information operations, can create favorable conditions for Russian-supported civil resistance to occur. The Pro-Russian Civil Resistance Handbook serves as both a propaganda product and a tactical manual for pro-Russian sympathizers in Ukraine on how to resist the Ukrainian government’s reintegration efforts. Understanding the Russian tactics, techniques, and procedures described in this translated document can help practitioners and policy makers to accurately assess and mitigate this potential threat. It is especially relevant to countries that have historically been the target of Russian influence and information operations, including those with significant ethnic Russian minorities, such as Estonia and Latvia, and those currently facing a partial Russian occupation, such as Georgia and Moldova.

The IWC will continue its efforts to illuminate similar documents and make their translations available to interested parties. The translation of the Pro-Russian Civil Resistance Handbook, along with additional notes on origins and context, will soon be available to researchers and practitioners on request through the IWC’s website.

irregularwarfarecenter.org

18. How Beijing Forces Uyghurs to Pick Cotton

Excerpts:

What are the lessons for policymakers? The first is that forced cotton picking continues despite Beijing’s claims. Second, ILO indicators as currently formulated can be circumvented on the ground: While camp detainees have reported abusive and securitized work environments, work conditions of transferred laborers may not be exploitative enough to raise red flags during an inspection. Third, the national security rationale behind Xinjiang’s labor programs means a boycott of Xinjiang products may not be as effective as it was for Uzbekistan. A global campaign boycotting Uzbek cotton between 2011 and 2021 ultimately succeeded because it dented elites’ economic profits.

By contrast, Beijing has singled out Western companies that publicly renounce the use of Xinjiang cotton with nationwide boycotts, and in 2021 enacted a counter-sanctions law penalizing businesses that comply with Western sanctions. This doubling-down is enabled by China’s economic heft, but also by the national security framing of Xinjiang’s full employment mandate. In light of this, asking businesses to decouple out of sheer “moral responsibility” seems futile.

Much now depends on the actions of legislators and policymakers. To combat Uyghur forced labor effectively, international efforts must be multilateral, coordinated, and long-term. The EU’s proposed forced labor ban must be designed to accurately conceptualize, measure and counter Xinjiang’s brand of state-sponsored forced labor. The 11-indicator ILO framework requires urgent adaptation. If these measures are not taken swiftly, consumers around the world are liable to become complicit in Beijing’s strategy of slow genocide in the region.

How Beijing Forces Uyghurs to Pick Cotton

Coercive labor is getting less visible, but more intense.

By Adrian Zenz, a senior fellow in China studies at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation in Washington.

Foreign Policy · by Adrian Zenz · May 16, 2023

Beijing has repeatedly claimed that there is “no forced labor” in Xinjiang. But now, as the European Union debates a ban on products made with forced labor, the evidence has just gotten stronger.

My new research on Xinjiang’s cotton production—the first such research published in a peer-reviewed academic journal—shows that coercive labor transfers for seasonal agricultural work such as cotton picking have continued through at least 2022 and remain part of Xinjiang’s official Five-Year Plan for 2021-25. Economic incentives for this practice persist despite partial mechanization: State media reports from 2022 confirm that the premium-grade long staple cotton grown in southern Xinjiang still cannot be harvested by machines.

Labor transfers subject Uyghurs to state-assigned work placements. They often separate them from their families and communities, subjecting them to intensive surveillance, long work hours, and mandatory political indoctrination and Chinese language classes in the evenings.

When mass forced labor in Xinjiang’s cotton industry was first uncovered more than two years ago, the U.S. government banned cotton imports from the region within a month. Then Congress passed the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act in late 2021, banning all imports from Xinjiang on the presumption of forced labor unless businesses can prove otherwise. After slow initial enforcement, imports from Xinjiang are reportedly down 90 percent since the law took effect in June 2022. Xinjiang supplies more than one-fifth of the world’s cotton. This makes the textile and garment industries highly exposed to forced Uyghur labor.

This year, the EU seeks to follow suit—but my research finds that if the proposed legislation is not updated to target Xinjiang specifically, cotton contaminated with forced labor will still find its way into global supply chains.

While the campaign of mass internment in Xinjiang has somewhat abated, forced labor programs have intensified. In their own words, top Chinese officials have confirmed that “full employment” in Xinjiang is not just about economic development but constitutes a political mandate that the state sees as key to China’s national security. In secret speeches, Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping has stated that large numbers of unemployed persons are liable to “provoke trouble.” In confidential remarks, Xinjiang officials bluntly argue that rural idlers “make trouble out of nothing,” adding that alleviating deep poverty is “an economic issue as well as a political issue.” However, many Uyghurs were successful entrepreneurs until the state curtailed their movements and even detained them for having contacts abroad.

Previously unpublished internal state documents, provided at the Xinjiang Police Files website, shed light on Xinjiang’s most coercive phase of employment provision. They indicate that state efforts to compel Uyghurs into poverty alleviation measures further intensified after the mass internments peaked in 2018. Documents issued in 2019 found these efforts falling short of required goals, sternly warning officials of “severe” repercussions for not achieving mandated poverty alleviation and employment outcomes. Regions compiled lists of “lazy persons” deemed to have insufficient “inner motivation,” some as old as 77 years. One internal directive stipulated that “lazy persons, drunkards, and other persons with insufficient inner motivation” would need to be subjected to “repeated . . . thought education” until this produced “obvious results.” Students and persons older than 60 years old were made to pick crops including cotton, vegetables, tomatoes, and peppers. Local governments were instructed to organize centralized child care for toddlers so that their mothers could be subjected to seasonal agricultural labor.

In China, such urgent top-down directives are not ignored. Much like overzealous implementation of China’s zero-COVID policies, the resulting pressures on local officials are severe, often leading to over-fulfillment of goals through heavy-handed enforcement.

The evidence further shows that increased mechanization fuels forced labor, rather than reducing it. Mechanized harvesting requires converting smallholder plots into large, contiguous plantations. The ensuing large-scale collective land transfers force Uyghur farmers to surrender their land usage rights to large private or state-owned entities. These farmers are then subjected to state-arranged labor transfers—typically low-skilled manual work in nearby factories or sweatshops. Hence, even where cotton is harvested mechanically, its production often results in more forced labor, not less.

Beijing’s multiple systems of forced labor are still poorly understood, which can seriously impair the crafting of effective policy. Even seasoned experts and policymakers at times conflate labor transfers with camp-linked forced labor, or believe them to be concentrated in a few sectors, such as cotton or polysilicon. In reality, most forced labor in the region is unrelated to the camps. The bigger factor is coercive labor transfers, which are implemented as part of Xi’s campaign to eradicate absolute poverty. These affect almost all forms of low-skill work, regardless of sector.

The forced transfer of Uyghurs into seasonal labor, such as cotton picking, operates separately from the reeducation camps—although the new research shows several prisons continue to operate cotton-ginning factories, and camp labor is used in textile and garment production. Instead, the state uses transfers of so-called surplus laborers to coerce Uyghurs into state-mandated work placements, including seasonal agricultural work. Those who fail to comply are liable to be labeled “extremists,” a charge that usually lands Uyghurs in reeducation camps.

Since 2021, under Xinjiang’s new party secretary Ma Xingrui, coercive labor risks are , even as some lower-security camps have closed. Xinjiang has recently increased both vocational training and employment requirements, and is pushing transferred Uyghurs into higher-skilled sectors under the mantra of “high-quality development.” Over time, this means that sectors previously unlikely to involve forced labor are now increasingly at risk. Under Xinjiang’s last Five-Year Plan, covering 2016-20, state documents mandated that at least one person per household must work, often against their will. The new Five-Year Plan for 2021-25 adds a “full employment” requirement, whereby all persons able to work must work.

Other state documents reveal plans to ensure that forced labor placements are permanent. In 2021, Xinjiang sent 400,000 cadres to investigate the incomes of 12 million rural households through an “early prevention, early intervention, early assistance” campaign, which identified 774,000 households for “real-time monitoring.” That year, the number of transferred laborers in Xinjiang reached a record high. The mobilization of new rural populations into such programs raises coercive risks dramatically. Even Chinese academic research has shown that a large portion of Uyghurs who resist labor transfers are women with caretaking responsibilities for young children or for the elderly. The new evidence shows that the state forces even elderly Uyghurs to pick cotton or perform seasonal agricultural work.

Unfortunately, the international community is ill-prepared to counter Xinjiang’s growing forced labor problem. State-sponsored forced labor not linked to prisons or internment camps is poorly understood. There are almost no academic publications analyzing this, and—perhaps worse—no dedicated indicators to measure it.

As a result, policy initiatives designed to counter forced labor may not succeed. The European Union’s proposed forced labor legislation—being negotiated this year in the European Parliament—is mainly designed to address company-based, rather than state-sponsored, forced labor. This is because the law relies on 11 indicators of forced labor published by the International Labor Organization (ILO). Developed in 2012, these ILO indicators statically measure coercion linked to specific workplaces, as well as recruitment practices based on deception or debt bondage. In Xinjiang, however, the taint of forced labor affects the entire region. Worse, factories across Asia use inputs from Xinjiang, especially cotton products, as Xinjiang now produces more than 90 percent of China’s cotton.

To fill this gap, my research compares coercive recruitment in Uzbekistan and Xinjiang, two post-communist regions with labor-intensive cotton industries. For decades, until 2021, Uzbeks were drafted into coercive labor to pick cotton. The way forced recruitment worked on the ground is surprisingly similar. Uzbekistan and Xinjiang both maintained a coercive surveillance state with strong, centralized decision-making structures and unprecedented abilities to mobilize populations through armies of local officials. Both regions systematically incentivize and commandeer relevant economic actors (private and state enterprises), then leverage their grassroots resources to mobilize workers at the community level. In both cases, forced labor transfers into cotton picking are achieved through a whole-of-government, whole-of-society approach. Aside from seasonal agricultural labor transfers, Xinjiang subjects large numbers of ethnic minorities to longer-term labor transfers in factories.

To detect and measure these forms of forced labor is far from easy. Company-based forced labor can be measured in specific times and places. By contrast, noninternment state-sponsored forced labor applies its coercive pressures mostly during the initial recruitment, training, and transfer stages. The resulting work contexts may not look much different from a normal workplace. Companies accepting Uyghur workers may feature security features common to most work environments in Xinjiang, such as fences, walls, or entrance/exit controls.

This may explain why China was willing, in August 2022, to ratify ILO conventions banning the use of forced labor. To understand and evaluate the dynamic, whole-of-society nature of state-led coercive work placements, international inspectors would have to conduct extensive fieldwork in relevant rural settings—something impossible in Xinjiang. While under the previous party secretary Chen Quanguo, labor transfers involved intense mobilization campaigns and were therefore more visible, the system is gradually becoming more institutionalized under his successor, Ma.

Several of the ILO’s 11 indicators capture labor coercion in Uzbekistan, where the primary motivation for forced recruitment was economic: Cheap labor for cotton harvesting benefited the kleptocratic elites. While Uyghurs are paid much less than their Han Chinese counterparts, Xinjiang’s labor schemes are mainly driven by political mandates to shift Uyghurs into full employment. Xi himself said that when ethnic minorities work in factories, they are less likely to commit actions of “religious extremism” and more likely to assimilate into Han Chinese language and culture. This means that efforts to detect forced Uyghur labor have to look beyond economic exploitation.

What are the lessons for policymakers? The first is that forced cotton picking continues despite Beijing’s claims. Second, ILO indicators as currently formulated can be circumvented on the ground: While camp detainees have reported abusive and securitized work environments, work conditions of transferred laborers may not be exploitative enough to raise red flags during an inspection. Third, the national security rationale behind Xinjiang’s labor programs means a boycott of Xinjiang products may not be as effective as it was for Uzbekistan. A global campaign boycotting Uzbek cotton between 2011 and 2021 ultimately succeeded because it dented elites’ economic profits.

By contrast, Beijing has singled out Western companies that publicly renounce the use of Xinjiang cotton with nationwide boycotts, and in 2021 enacted a counter-sanctions law penalizing businesses that comply with Western sanctions. This doubling-down is enabled by China’s economic heft, but also by the national security framing of Xinjiang’s full employment mandate. In light of this, asking businesses to decouple out of sheer “moral responsibility” seems futile.

Much now depends on the actions of legislators and policymakers. To combat Uyghur forced labor effectively, international efforts must be multilateral, coordinated, and long-term. The EU’s proposed forced labor ban must be designed to accurately conceptualize, measure and counter Xinjiang’s brand of state-sponsored forced labor. The 11-indicator ILO framework requires urgent adaptation. If these measures are not taken swiftly, consumers around the world are liable to become complicit in Beijing’s strategy of slow genocide in the region.

Foreign Policy · by Adrian Zenz · May 16, 2023

19. How to Succeed in the Foreign-Policy Blob

Yes. We should reflect on what we are leaving our successors. Are we leaving things in a better place for them?

Conclusion:

Congratulations, class of 2023! You have achieved much, but the real challenges lie ahead of you. The bad news is that my generation has left you a vast array of problems with few easy solutions and with confidence in public institutions at an all-time low. The good news, such as it is, is that it won’t be hard to do better than we did. As you begin (or resume) your professional careers, one of your missions is to make your task easier. My generation has left ample room for improvement. Good luck!

How to Succeed in the Foreign-Policy Blob

Some graduation advice for aspiring members of the foreign-policy establishment in the class of 2023.

Walt-Steve-foreign-policy-columnist20

Stephen M. Walt

By Stephen M. Walt, a columnist at Foreign Policy and the Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at Harvard University.

Foreign Policy · by Stephen M. Walt · May 15, 2023

It’s graduation time at a lot of colleges and universities, and students are collecting their diplomas and heading off to begin their professional lives. Families are kvelling about the graduates’ achievements and heaving sighs of relief as tuition payments come to an end. My master’s students have been dropping by in recent weeks to ask my advice on how to succeed in the next phase of their careers. Although I’d like to give them an edge over students from other schools, it is fairer to share what I told them with the rest of you.

But first, a caveat. I never had the opportunity to serve in government myself and it’s been decades since I spent a year as a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment and another at the Brookings Institution. You are therefore free to discount my suggestions, or rely instead on advice from experienced insiders. That said, I have spent a fair bit of time interacting with current and former government officials and fellows at assorted think tanks, and I’ve sent a lot of students off to careers in the Blob (or its foreign counterparts). I also spent a fair bit of time over the past few years researching its folkways and habits of mind. Here’s what I think I’ve learned about succeeding in the Blob.

1. Develop a genuine area of expertise. Academics who complete a Ph.D. tend to specialize in a particular area, but master’s students and undergraduates usually don’t have time to master a specific policy issue. Once you start working, however, you should try to develop deep expertise in some critical policy domain. You don’t have to become the world’s foremost authority on it (although that’s obviously desirable if you can pull it off), but you do want to be someone whose views on some important issue(s) are respected and sought out by others. It can be a broad topic (e.g., “economic sanctions”) or a narrower one (e.g., “nuclear forensics,” “human rights conditions in the Horn of Africa”), but ideally it will be an area that some number of people think is important and one in which you become a go-to person.

Developing real expertise serves two purposes. First, it will give you greater confidence: Weighing in on how to address a problem is easier when you have a deep knowledge of the subject matter and aren’t simply winging it. Second, and equally important, it will establish you as a serious policy professional, not just as somebody who managed to earn a degree. And you certainly don’t want to get a reputation for being a clever bullshitter who doesn’t really know what you’re talking about. For all these reasons, work hard at mastering at least one important policy domain.

Relatedly, you also need to learn the policy machinery that guides actions in the domain in which you are working so that you can develop “actionable items” that have some chance of being adopted. Is your subject one in which Congress is critical and legislative action is required, or can it be addressed primarily through the executive branch? Are there interest groups whose support will be critical to success? Who are the likely opponents and how can their influence be negated? It’s easy to offer lofty prescriptions about “what needs to be done” (I do it all the time in this column), but you’ll be more effective (and valuable) if you learn how the machinery of government really works and can translate your good ideas into concrete actions.

2. Be reliable. Raw talent is valuable, but it is even more valuable to develop a reputation for getting things done well and on time. The world is full of people who never seem to meet a deadline and whose work is error-prone and has to be checked by others. People who aren’t like that—the folks who keep their heads down and get the job done—invariably stand out. If you’re asked to produce a report, an op-ed, some talking points, a cost-benefit analysis, a set of PowerPoint slides, or whatever, and it has to be done by Friday, then do your damnedest to meet that deadline. Over the course of a career, doors keep opening to people who don’t fumble the ball, who show up on time, and who deliver a quality product more or less on schedule. Your superiors will keep coming back to you if you’re reliable; if you’re not, they’ll go elsewhere. Or as Sherlock Holmes advised, “Genius is the infinite capacity for taking pains.”

There’s a corollary to this piece of advice: Learning to set priorities and manage your schedule is also a valuable skill. One reason otherwise smart and hardworking people get a reputation for sloppiness or chronic lateness is an inability to keep their own workload within reasonable bounds. This goal can be hard to achieve if your boss keeps piling it on, but learning to say no to some things and doing the remaining things well can be a key to success.

3. Be a mensch, not a jerk. I know, there are lots of successful foreign-policy VIPs who are difficult, vain, demanding, self-absorbed, and narcissistic—and you may be tempted to think you have to be an egocentric jerk to rise to the top. But I’d argue that most of these arrogant and abusive individuals succeeded in spite of their character flaws and not because of them. To take but one example, the late Richard Holbrooke was an immensely talented, idealistic, ambitious, and energetic statesman, but his abrasive personality probably cost him as many opportunities as it created. By contrast, people like Brent Scowcroft or William Perry rose to the top and are now revered because they managed to be both effective leaders and decent human beings.

Among other things, it’s a good idea to treat your peers as respectfully as you treat your superiors. Early in one’s career, there is a natural inclination to suck up to people who are higher up the food chain and to view people at your level as rivals who need to be elbowed aside. Resist this urge. People who are beginning their careers at the same time that you are will be part of your world for as long as you both stay in the business, and getting ahead at someone else’s expense will just solidify your reputation as someone who’s not a team player and cannot be trusted. If you act this way, over time more and more people will be looking for a chance to knife you in return.

You want to be one of those people who others are eager to work with, because they know you’ll tell the truth, make everyone else on the team work better, and won’t double-cross them or try to hog all the credit. This principle doesn’t mean you can’t defend your own views vigorously and disagree with others—indeed, there’s something wrong if you never take a position that angers anyone—but there’s a difference between a respectful but serious policy disagreement and behaving in an underhanded and assaholic way. Being a jerk won’t necessarily derail your career (alas, proof of that sad fact is all around us), but it will make it more of an uphill fight.

One more thing: Being part of a professional network is a real asset, and you’ll want to develop your own set of (mostly) like-minded professional colleagues. Ideally, your network will include people who will tell you when you’re wrong, when your work is slipping, or when they think you’re headed in the wrong direction. You don’t necessarily have to take their advice, of course, but sometimes the best thing a friend can do is tell us when we’re heading off a nearby precipice. In my own case, I’ve benefited enormously from colleagues who pushed me to rethink what I was doing and helped me avoid a misstep.

4. Manage your personal life intelligently. I can’t begin to tell you who (or if) you should marry, how you should raise your kids (if you have them), where you ought to live, or all those other nonprofessional things that will have a profound impact on your life. Plus, life sometimes springs unhappy surprises on us: accidents, serious illness, or personal tragedies of different sorts. Experience and observation have taught me that what is going on in our personal lives inevitably affects our ability to succeed professionally, not to mention one’s overall level of satisfaction and contentment. My advice, therefore, is that you should devote at least as much attention to managing your personal life as you devote to your work. For example, having a partner and friends who believe in what you are doing and think your work is important is a huge asset, even if they aren’t in the business themselves or if they sometimes disagree with your views on some policy issues. I wish I could provide a foolproof formula for a successful personal life; the best I can do is urge you not to neglect it.

5. Know what lines you won’t cross. The foreign-policy community is a loose network of people and organizations with lots of overlapping connections. Because success depends a lot on who you know and what they think of you, there’s enormous pressure for conformity and some risk if you challenge taboos or stray outside the lines of the prevailing consensus. The good news is that some of the orthodoxies that have crippled U.S. foreign policy in recent decades are now being questioned more openly, and there’s a bit more latitude to question these shibboleths today. The Blob is not quite as uniform as it used to be, and that’s a positive development in general and an opportunity for those who are entering it.

Even so, you’re eventually going to find yourself in situations where you’re uncomfortable with the arguments being offered, the conclusions being reached, the policies being adopted, and the results being obtained, but where you lack the power or authority to change things. Sometimes it will make sense to compromise, or even to grit one’s teeth and go along, but you do need to decide what things you won’t do and what actions you will not support under any circumstances.

This advice may sound quaint in an era where moral principle is in short supply, political integrity is a rare virtue, and naked hypocrisy is the main currency of political life. But there is nothing inevitable about this condition, and those of you who are now entering into public service have the power to change these norms over time. Remember that public service is ultimately not about adding lines to your resume but about trying to make the world a better place. If you ever begin to feel that what you are doing is part of the problem and not part of the solution, it’s time to get out and do something different.

Congratulations, class of 2023! You have achieved much, but the real challenges lie ahead of you. The bad news is that my generation has left you a vast array of problems with few easy solutions and with confidence in public institutions at an all-time low. The good news, such as it is, is that it won’t be hard to do better than we did. As you begin (or resume) your professional careers, one of your missions is to make your task easier. My generation has left ample room for improvement. Good luck!

Foreign Policy · by Stephen M. Walt · May 15, 2023

20. AC-130J Ghostrider Could Get Huge Upgrade From AESA Radar

AC-130J Ghostrider Could Get Huge Upgrade From AESA Radar

An active electronically scanned array radar would allow AC-130Js to independently engage targets in any weather and at greater distances.

BY

JOSEPH TREVITHICK, TYLER ROGOWAY

|

UPDATED MAY 15, 2023 7:47 PM EDT

thedrive.com · by Joseph Trevithick, Tyler Rogoway · May 15, 2023

The U.S. Air Force plans to test an AC-130J Ghostrider gunship equipped with an active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar. Adding an AESA would give these aircraft a valuable tool for spotting, tracking, and engaging targets, especially in bad weather and at extended ranges. The radar could perform more general intelligence-gathering and provide improved situational awareness, along with other functions, as well.

The forthcoming AC-130 AESA testing was highlighted during a briefing last week by members of U.S. Special Operations Command's (SOCOM) Program Executive Office for Fixed Wing aircraft (PEO-FW), which The War Zone, among others, attended. That event was held as part of an annual special operations-focused conference now called SOF Week.

An AC-130J Ghostrider. USAF

"We have a tech demo coming up, where we've got a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement [CRADA] to do an AESA radar on an AC-130 gunship," one of the representatives from PEO-FW said. The testing will help SOCOM "see what capabilities that can help us bring to the fight."

A CRADA is a process wherein the U.S. military partners with a private company or research institution on a particular project, but without a traditional contract award. CRADAs typically involve various degrees of sharing of resources and the results of any testing in lieu of a typical exchange of funds.

What specific AESA SOCOM plans to test on the AC-130J is not currently known. This is, of course, not the first time SOCOM, together with the Air Force, has looked into equipped AC-130s with a radar of this general type.

In 2015, SOCOM revealed that it had been testing the AN/ASQ-236 Dragon's Eye radar pod on its gunships as part of an earlier CRADA. The pod was flight tested on at least one AC-130 mounted on a pylon under the right wing.

An AN/ASQ-236 Dragon's Eye radar pod under the wing of an AC-130 gunship. USAF

The AN/ASQ-236 features an AESA radar that is capable of rotating left and right along the pod's center axis. It has a synthetic aperture functionality that is said to be sensitive enough to generate near photo-quality radar maps and to spot shallow-buried objects, such as improvised explosive devices and individuals in dugouts. It also has a GMTI capability that is reportedly able to track moving vehicles and ships. The complete pod has the ability to geo-locate targets that the radar spots and systems required to keep everything cool.

SOCOM and the Air Force ultimately determined Dragon's Eye, at least in the form available at the time, to be unsuitable for use on the AC-130. The exact reasons for this remain unclear.

“The AC-130J does not have a sensor system that enables adverse weather engagements by detecting and tracking targets obscured by weather, smoke and haze or obscurants,” according to the Pentagon's Office of the Director of Operational Test and Evaluation's annual report for the 2016 Fiscal Year. “Earlier efforts to integrate an AN/ASQ-236 radar pod were unsuccessful.”

Dragon's Eye is currently primarily carried by Air Force F-15E Strike Eagles and F-16C/D Viper combat jets, though it has also been tested on other platforms, in addition to the AC-130, like the B-52 bomber.

A picture of an F-15E Strike Eagle with an arrow pointing to the Dragon's Eye radar pod on its centerline pylon. USAF

A new variant or derivative of Dragon's Eye, or another podded AESA radar, mounted under the wing or using an add-on pylon installed on the AC-130J's right-side rear paratrooper doors might still be an option. The left-side door on the Ghostrider is already taken up with the aircraft's 105mm howitzer.

An example of a modified C-130 rear paratrooper door with an add-on pylon with a pod attached. via ThinkDefence.co.uk

Other podded AESA radars with still significant synthetic aperture and/or GMTI functionality do exist, including ones small enough to be mounted on drones. Some of these, such as the AN/ZPY-5 Vehicle and Dismount Exploitation Radar (VADER) and IMSAR NSP-series, are in U.S. military service now or have otherwise been evaluated already by SOCOM.

A US Army MC-12S Enhanced Medium Altitude Reconnaissance and Surveillance System-VADER (EMARSS-V) aircraft. Its podded AN/ZPY-5 radar is seen under the central fuselage. Bill Word/FlickrCC

A radar using some other kind of mounting arrangement could be another possibility. For example, earlier this year, Marshall Aerospace in the United Kingdom unveiled a roll-on/roll-off palletized AESA radar system for C-130-series aircraft that uses conformal antennas installed in modified rear paratrooper doors.

A portion of Marshall Aerospace's palletized radar system for use on C-130-series aircraft. Marshall Aerospace

A number of older AC-130 variants had a sensor called Black Crow, which included an antenna inside a dome, installed on the left side of the 'cheek' area. Black Crow was designed to pick up electrical impulses generated by the spark plugs in trucks and other vehicles with internal combustion engines. This could be an ideal location for a side-facing AESA radar on the AC-130J, but it would come at an aerodynamic penalty, which really is nothing new for the bristling AC-130.

A Vietnam War-era picture showing the Black Crow sensor on an AC-130A gunship. USAF

The same sensor installation arrangement stuck around long after the war ended. USAF

Regardless, compared to older mechanically-scanned types, AESA radars offer significant benefits. This includes being typically able to spot objects of interest, even those with low radar cross-sections, faster and do so with greater precision and fidelity. AESAs also generally have very fast scanning and return rates, and can perform multiple functions near-simultaneously.

In addition, AESAs have improved resistance to radiofrequency jamming. With no need for a mechanical assembly to steer the antenna, systems that can often be very complex in their own right, radars of this type are more reliable, too.

The improved capabilities AESAs would offer at their core have further benefits when combined with other kinds of functionality, including synthetic aperture mapping and imaging and ground-moving target indicator (GMTI) modes.

The feed from an AN/ZPY-5 VADER radar as an example of AESA GMTI functionality overlaid on top of a topographical map. DHS

Compared to the electro-optical and infrared full-motion video cameras already found on the Air Force's AC-130Js, an AESA radar is also capable of functioning in any weather and of 'seeing' through dense smoke, dust, and other obscurants. This includes modern chemical smokescreens specifically developed to defeat optical and infrared sensors.

The Ghostrider's existing cameras do have various low-light-level and thermal capabilities, though an AESA can also work at night just the same as day. AESAs have the additional benefit of being immune to optical dazzlers and infrared interference, which are an increasing issue on the battlefield, as well.

Altogether, a modern AESA with a good field of view could be particularly useful on an AC-130 gunship for targeting and more general intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR). But depending on how deeply integrated such a system would become into the AC-130J's complex mission systems suite, it could prove even more valuable.

A SAR image sample from a brochure for the IMSAR NSP-5 radar. IMSAR

The AESA radar would also spot targets for further investigation using the AC-130J's other sensors, or vice versa. This, in turn, could improve the ability of the aircraft's crew to positively identify targets rapidly, including in very bad weather and in dense urban or otherwise complex environments. Paired with advanced software algorithms and advanced back-end processing, these systems can automatically spot targets or patterns of interest and alert operators as to their proposed classification and location.

Once targets are found and identified, an AESA radar can be very valuable for helping AC-130J crews actually engage them, especially at stand-off ranges. As it stands now, Ghostriders rely heavily on off-board platforms to make the most of their longer-range munitions, such as the GBU-39/B Small Diameter Bomb (SDB) and its laser-guided variant that can hit moving targets, although the latter needs something nearby lasing the target directly to do so. The standard SDB, which can only be used against fixed threats, has a stated maximum range of more than 40 nautical miles.

The Ghostrider is already in line to receive the much-improved GBU-53/B StormBreaker, which has a new multi-mode seeker system that gives it the ability to engage moving targets over its entire range without laser designation occuring. You can read all about StormBreaker here. A true self-contained ability to engage moving targets at stand-off ranges in any weather, which the AC-130J does not have now, would be a major capability boost by itself. An AESA would make this possible by providing the initial targeting and datalink updates for StormBreaker.

The AC-130J's need for longer-range target acquisition capabilities is only set to increase as its arsenal gains ever more capable precision-guided munitions able to hit targets further and further away. During SOF Week 2023, SOCOM's PEO-FW also highlighted interest specifically in adding new stand-off strike capabilities through the acquisition of small and miniature "cruise missiles" for use on the Ghostrider and other aircraft.

An AC-130J in the anechoic chamber at Edwards AFB. (USAF)

"Miniature" in this instance would be something small enough to fit inside a standardized Common Launch Tube (CLT). "Small" refers to larger designs that would be launched via a more traditional pylon or something like the Air Force's Rapid Dragon palletized munitions system. Smaller and lower-cost air-to-surface munitions with stand-in, if not stand-off range have been of interest to SOCOM and the Air Force for some years now.

An AESA radar could be used to help direct the AC-130J's 30mm automatic cannon and 105mm howitzer during shorter-range engagements, too. This would give the gunships another way to engage threats with those weapons even through cloud cover, smoke, or heavy dust.

An AC-130J Ghostrider with its 30mm automatic cannon, at left, and its 105mm howizter, at right, visible. USAF

Advanced mission systems, potentially leveraging artificial intelligence and machine learning technology, could be used to fuse data from multiple sensors on the Ghostrider in various ways to further improve its overall targeting and ISR capabilities. The aforementioned help in automating target recognition and categorization could be especially useful for gunship crews. SOCOM is already exploring the possibility of adding artificial intelligence-driven targeting and other capabilities onto the AC-130J, as well as other aircraft, in the future.

Depending on the type of AESA and its capabilities, how it is mounted, and especially how deeply it is integrated into the AC-130J's mission systems, it could potentially be used in a secondary role to provide additional threat warning, electronic attack, and general situational awareness. Such capabilities could be further integrated into the AC-130J's already extensive and still-expanding electronic warfare systems. Beyond helping to detect incoming threats along with other onboard systems, it could be used as a very powerful electronic warfare emitter, helping to protect the AC-130J but also working in an offensive EW capacity as a secondary capability set.

Improving the AC-130J's ability to spot and track targets at extended ranges, as well as its intelligence-gathering, situational awareness, and even self-protection capabilities, could be especially important in the coming years. For decades now, gunships like the Ghostrider have been primarily employed in counter-terrorism and other lower-end combat operations in largely permissive airspace.

An AC-130J Ghostrider takes off at Yokota Air Base, Japan, on Nov. 16, 2022, during exercise Keen Sword 23. USAF

With the U.S. military's ongoing shift in focus to preparing for higher-end fights, with a specific eye toward a potential conflict with China in the Pacific, there are growing questions about what the future might hold for gunships like the AC-130, in general. One possibility, which would be further enabled by the addition of an AESA radar, could be the more localized use of the AC-130J for force protection missions of austere outposts — such as on islands — on the outer edges of the enemy's anti-access capabilities.

Being able to detect anything of interest for many miles around an island and leveraging its high-end communications and self-protection suites in the process, an AC-130 could provide an inner layer of awareness for U.S. forces in remote locales. Its ability to kill any of those targets and at a distance gives it all that much more relevance.

Once again, it all depends on how this capability evolves. To start, if just a basic GMTI and SAR functionality can be had, that would be a big leap in itself. But more robust abilities could soon follow.

So, while the results of this new round of testing of an AESA on the AC-130J remain to be seen, adding this kind of radar to the Ghostrider would make great sense. Coupled with other potential upgrades and new weaponry, the radar could be an important addition to help ensure the relevance of these gunships in future higher-end scenarios.

Contact the author: joe@thedrive.com, tyler@thedrive.com

thedrive.com · by Joseph Trevithick, Tyler Rogoway · May 15, 2023

21. ‘The Diplomat’ vs. Reality

Interesting conclusion. Will Netflix' "The Diplomat" be the "Top Gun" for the Foreign Service? Will the numbers taking the Foreign Service exam increase in the near future?

I downloaded and binge watched the entire series on my iPad on my flight to Korea last month. I enjoyed the show.

‘The Diplomat’ vs. Reality

The New York Times · by Lauren Jackson · May 14, 2023

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Keri Russell as Kate Wyler in “The Diplomat.”Credit...Alex Bailey/Netflix

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May 14, 2023

The allure of an ambassador’s life is obvious: wielding government power and throwing parties for influential people in a far-flung location. “The Diplomat,” which premiered last month on Netflix, highlights the glamour while omitting the drudgery of the job — the memos, press engagements and red tape.

In the show, Keri Russell plays a U.S. ambassador to Britain named Kate Wyler, who spends her days managing international crises with quippy retorts. She lives in a mansion, is photographed for Vogue and is married to a former ambassador, played by Rufus Sewell.

“The Diplomat” was Netflix’s most popular show in recent weeks, and U.S. ambassadors around the world are watching. It transforms diplomatic doublespeak into a smooth script, but does it accurately reflect the job? New York Times bureau chiefs and correspondents around the world asked ambassadors how well the show represented their work.

“We’re not as tough as the military, nor as cunningly cool as intelligence operatives,” John Feeley, a former U.S. ambassador to Panama, told my colleague Damien Cave. “So to have Keri Russell and Rufus Sewell have sex and call it a diplomatic rapprochement? Well, heck. I’ll take it. But it’s a fantasy.”

Here’s what other ambassadors told my colleagues working in Mexico, Australia, China and elsewhere:

What the show gets wrong

Part of the fun of “The Diplomat,” as with any workplace show, comes when it departs from reality. The ambassadors we spoke with were quick to point out discrepancies, both big (the lack of a Senate confirmation hearing) and small (Kate’s use of a cellphone in the office).

“I have a different memory of the confirmation process,” Rahm Emanuel, the U.S. ambassador to Japan, told my colleague Motoko Rich. “The show may get the diplomatic life right, but their grasp of American politics and the U.S. Senate? Not so right.”

Here’s what else they said the show got wrong:

The ambassador’s use of military jets: “Yeah, right, I wish,” said Richard Buangan, the U.S. ambassador to Mongolia. “Most ambassadors would fly commercial to our posts like everyone else. We must be excellent stewards of U.S. taxpayer money.”

The rejoinders and banter: “Hyperbolic, unrealistic, amusing,” said Carlos Pascual, a former U.S. ambassador to Mexico and Ukraine. “The speeches every diplomat wants to give his or her boss. Eloquence that saves the world. Not exactly the daily course of business.”

A Vogue photo shoot: Multiple former ambassadors said the racks of outfits in the show were unrealistic. “Who’s paying for all these clothes?” wondered Vicki Huddleston, a former U.S. ambassador to Mali and Madagascar. Huddleston did once pose for a photo shoot — for The Times. In the photograph that accompanies the article, Huddleston said, she wore her own dress.

And the lavish breakfasts in the ambassador’s residence? “I don’t eat breakfast,” Emanuel said.

What the show gets right

Multiple ambassadors said the relationship between Kate and her No. 2 in the embassy, the deputy chief of mission, was accurate — along with the show’s use of the acronym D.C.M.

Emanuel’s office is next to that of his deputy chief, Raymond Greene, he said, so they pop in and out all day long. “Ray is often the first phone call or text at 6 a.m. and, somewhere around 9 p.m., also the last,” Emanuel said. “And also 1,000 times between.”

Here’s what else the show gets right:

A sprawling staff managing everything: “You really don’t have control of your life,” Emanuel said. “There’s parts of your life that gets cut up, chopped up, and everybody has a piece of it, and all of us are Type A personalities that like control.”

The packed suitcase: “I laughed out loud during the scene where Ambassador Wyler freaked out after her household staff packed her suitcase, everything neat and tightly folded,” Buangan said. “When my household staff packed my suitcase for my first trip up country, I freaked out, too. I’m not used to others touching my things.”

The gender dynamics: “Women leaders who watch and learn before making changes, as opposed to the male ‘marking their territory’ approach,” Roberta Jacobson, a former U.S. ambassador to Mexico, said. “She’s smart, funny, pushes back on some of the nonsense and is a fast learner — traits essential for any ambassador and perhaps more so for a woman.”

Some said they hoped the show would be good marketing for attracting recruits.

“‘Top Gun’ drove enlistments and interest in military aviation in the ’80s,” Feeley said. “I’m hopeful that ‘The Diplomat’ drives interest in foreign affairs and diplomacy despite its evident Hollywood veneer.”

Keith Bradsher, Steven Erlanger, Natalie Kitroeff, David Pierson and Dionne Searcey contributed reporting.

​

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Foundation for Defense of Democracies

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com