Quotes of the Day:

"Get action. Seize the moment. Man was never intended to become an oyster." 

- Theodore Roosevelt

  "You ask me why I do not write something... I think one's feelings waste themselves in words; they ought all to be distilled into actions and into actions which bring results." 

- Florence Nightingale

"The miracle or the power that elevates the few is to be found in their industry, application and perseverance under the promptings of a brave, determined spirit." 

- Mark Twain

1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, AUGUST 9 (Putin's War's)

2. Ukraine says 9 Russian warplanes destroyed in Crimea blasts

3. US Military ‘Furiously’ Rewriting Nuclear Deterrence to Address Russia and China, STRATCOM Chief Says

4. Taiwan, China and the U.S.: Inside the fight to control the microchips that power your car and computer

5. The Afghanistan Deal that Never Happened

6. Biden says US government knows 'with certainty' that Austin Tice has been held by Syrian government

7. Gary Schroen, Who Led the C.I.A. Into Afghanistan, Dies at 80

8. The Army Is Hunting For More Soldier-Connected Tech

9. Is Russia a State Sponsor of Terror?

10. Intelligence Expert: Is TikTok China's Trojan Horse?

11. What-If DC War Game Maps Huge Toll of a Future US-China War Over Taiwan

12. The Hacking of Starlink Terminals Has Begun

13. The U.S. Navy SEALs Seem Unstoppable for a Reason

1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, AUGUST 9 (Putin's War's)

Maps?graphics: https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-august-9

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, AUGUST 9

Aug 9, 2022 - Press ISW

understandingwar.org

Kateryna Stepanenko, Angela Howard, Katherine Lawlor, Karolina Hird, George Barros, and Frederick W. Kagan

August 9, 7:45 pm ET

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

The Ukrainian General Staff made no mention of Izyum in its 1800 situational report on August 9, nor did other prominent Ukrainian sources despite Western sources’ claims of an ongoing Ukrainian counteroffensive in this area. This silence represents a noteworthy departure from previous Ukrainian coverage of the Kharkiv-Donetsk axis.

Russian and Ukrainian sources reported a series of large explosions deep within Russian-occupied Kherson Oblast and Crimea on August 9, but Ukrainian officials have not claimed responsibility for them as of the time of this publication. Social media users reported witnessing 12 loud explosions at the Saky airbase in Novofedorivka on the Crimean western coast.[1] Social media footage only showed the large cloud of smoke and the aftermath of the incident.[2] Social media footage also showed a large smoke cloud near Novooleksiivka in Henichensk district, in the vicinity of the Kherson Oblast-Crimean border.[3] Advisor to the Kherson Oblast Administration Serhiy Khlan reported that explosions occurred on the Russian ammunition base but noted that there is no official confirmation of Ukrainian involvement in the incident.[4]

The Russian Defense Ministry claimed that several aircraft munitions detonated in the storage areas of the Saky airbase due to poor fire protocol, rejecting reports that Ukrainian strikes or sabotage at the military facility caused the explosions.[5] The Russian Defense Ministry added that the incident did not result in any casualties or damage to Russian aviation equipment. The Russian Health Ministry claimed that five civilians were wounded in the incident, however.[6] Social media footage also showed firefighters extinguishing a burning plane, which also contradicts the original Russian Defense Ministry claim.[7] Russian-appointed Head of Crimea Sergey Aksyenov claimed that Russian officials are only evacuating a few residents in homes near the airbase, but social media footage showed long traffic jams approaching the Crimean bridge and the departure of several minibusses, reportedly with evacuees.[8] Russian propagandist Margarita Simonyan claimed that the incident was a result of sabotage rather than a missile or rocket strike.[9] Russian milbloggers voiced differing opinions regarding the origin of the strike, with some speculating that Ukrainian forces used US-provided long-range army tactical missile systems (ATACMS).[10] Ukrainian forces do not have the ATACMS systems, however.

The Kremlin has little incentive to accuse Ukraine of conducting strikes that caused the damage since such strikes would demonstrate the ineffectiveness of Russian air defense systems, which the Ukrainian sinking of the Moskva had already revealed. ISW does not yet have any basis independently to assess the precise cause of the explosions. The apparent simultaneity of explosions at two distinct facilities likely rules out the official Russian version of accidental fire, but it does not rule out either sabotage or long-range missile strike. Ukraine could have modified its Neptune missiles for land-attack use (as the Russians have done with both anti-shipping and anti-aircraft missiles), but there is no evidence to support this hypothesis at this time.

Russia launched an Iranian satellite into orbit on August 9 that could be used to provide military intelligence on Ukraine. Iranian Space Agency Head Hassan Salariyeh stated that the remote-sensing satellite, Khayyam, has a one-meter camera resolution.[11] Khayyam has already begun broadcasting telemetry data.[12] Iranian officials have denied that another state will have access to satellite feed at any point, but Western intelligence officials have claimed that Russian authorities will maintain access.[13]

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.

Key Takeaways

• Russian forces conducted ground attacks to the southeast of Siversk and around Bakhmut.
• Russian forces conducted ground attacks north of Donetsk City and southwest of Donetsk City near the Zaporizhia-Donetsk Oblast border.
• Several large explosions hit Russian positions near Sevastopol and north of Crimea, but Russia did not blame Ukraine for them and Ukraine has not taken credit for them.
• Russia launched a surveillance satellite for Iran.
• Western media has reported that a Ukrainian counteroffensive is underway near Izyum, but the Ukrainian General Staff was notably completely silent about the area in its evening report.
• Russian sources suggested that recently-formed volunteer battalions are responsible for much of the Izyum sector.
• Ukrainian officials claimed that Russian forces continued to fire artillery systems from the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant.
• Russian officials are continuing to take prominent roles in preparing for the sham referenda in Russian-occupied regions despite Kremlin claims that Russia is not conducting the referenda.

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

• Main Effort—Eastern Ukraine (comprised of one subordinate and two supporting efforts);
• Subordinate Main Effort—Encirclement of Ukrainian Troops in the Cauldron between Izyum and Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts
• Supporting Effort 1—Kharkiv City
• Supporting Effort 2—Southern Axis
• Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts
• Activities in Russian-occupied Areas

Main Effort—Eastern Ukraine

Subordinate Main Effort—Southern Kharkiv, Donetsk, Luhansk Oblasts (Russian objective: Encircle Ukrainian forces in Eastern Ukraine and capture the entirety of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, the claimed territory of Russia’s proxies in Donbas)

The Ukrainian General Staff and local officials reported that Russian forces continued to shell settlements north, west, and south of Izyum and along the Kharkiv-Donetsk Oblast border in the Slovyansk direction on August 9.[14]

Russian forces conducted limited ground attacks east of Siversk on August 9. Ukrainian artillery forced Russian forces to retreat from an attempted ground assault in the Spirne area (13 km southeast of Siversk).[15] Russian forces similarly retreated after a reconnaissance-in-force effort near Ivano-Darivka (10 km southeast of Siversk) following Ukrainian bombardment.[16] Russian troops continued to shell Siversk and nearby settlements and targeted Hryhorivka with an airstrike.[17]

Russian forces conducted several ground attacks in the Bakhmut area on August 9. The Ukrainian General Staff acknowledged that Russian forces led a partially successful advance in the direction of Vershyna (13 km southeast of Bakhmut) as well as failed offensive operations toward Yakovlivka, Bakhmut, and Zaitseve.[18] Ukrainian forces repelled Russian reconnaissance-in-force efforts around Pidhorodne (5 km northeast of Bakhmut), Vesele (10 km northeast of Soledar), Yakovlivka (6 km northeast of Soledar), Soledar, and Bakhmut.[19] Russian media amplified claims from Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR) Deputy Internal Minister Vitaly Kiselev that the LNR’s 6th Cossack Regiment has partially occupied and held portions of the Knauf Gips Donbas gypsum factory southeast of Soledar since an unspecified date.[20] ISW cannot independently verify these claims, however. The UK Ministry of Defense assessed that Russian forces have advanced only about 10 km in the Bakhmut direction over the past 30 days, and these incremental advances along the Bakhmut axis constitute Russia’s most successful front along the Donbas axis.[21] Russian forces continued shelling of and airstrikes on settlements in the Bakhmut direction on August 9.[22]

Russian forces continued ground attacks northwest of Donetsk City on August 9. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces conducted failed offensive operations near Krasnohorivka (16 km north of Donetsk City), Avdiivka (15 km north of Donetsk City), and Pisky (11 km northwest of Donetsk City).[23] Russian milbloggers continued to claim Russian control of Pisky on August 9 but there is insufficient basis to extend the assessed Russian control from central Pisky.[24] DNR officials also claimed unspecified gains in the Avdiivka direction, which ISW cannot confirm.[25] Ukrainian forces neutralized Russian reconnaissance-in-force attempts toward the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border near Velyka Novosilka and Vremivka (75 km west of Donetsk City).[26] Russian-led forces continued to target settlements across southwestern Donetsk with artillery and airstrikes.[27]

Supporting Effort #1—Kharkiv City (Russian objective: Defend ground lines of communication (GLOCs) to Izyum and prevent Ukrainian forces from reaching the Russian border)

Russian forces conducted no confirmed ground assaults near Kharkiv City on August 9. Russian forces continued active fighting along current lines and conducted an airstrike near Verkhniy Saltiv.[28] The Ukrainian General Staff also noted continued Russian UAV aerial reconnaissance operations.[29] Russian forces continued routine shelling of Kharkiv City and surrounding settlements with tanks, tube and rocket artillery, and unspecified missiles.[30]

Supporting Effort #2—Southern Axis (Russian objective: Defend Kherson and Zaporizhia Oblasts against Ukrainian counterattacks)

Russian forces maintained defensive positions along the southern frontline and did not conduct offensive operations on August 9. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces continued to launch airstrikes at Bila Krynytsya and Andriivka, in the vicinity of the Ukrainian bridgehead near the Inhulets River, and on Ukrainian positions in Olhine and Osokorkivka near the Kherson-Dnipropetrovsk Oblast border.[31] Russian forces also conducted aerial reconnaissance in northern Kherson Oblast and continued artillery fire along the line of contact in the region.[32] The Ukrainian Main Military Intelligence (GUR) intercepted a Russian servicemen’s call in which he stated that Russian forces operating in Kherson Oblast do not have enough manpower to conduct an offensive operation.[33] Mykolaiv Oblast officials also reported that Russian forces shelled the outskirts of Mykolaiv City and launched rockets from the Uragan multiple launch rocket systems (MLRS) at Bereznehuvate, approximately 20 km northwest of the Ukrainian bridgehead.[34]

Russian forces are reportedly continuing to neglect the Zaporizhia Oblast frontline in favor of Donetsk and Kherson Oblast efforts. Zaporizhia Oblast Military Administration Head Oleksandr Starukh noted that Russian forces are periodically concentrating forces in Zaporizhia Oblast to redistribute them to Donetsk or Kherson Oblast directions.[35] Starukh added that Ukrainian military command assesses a low risk of Russian offensive operation in Zaporizhia Oblast but specified that combat operations continue at the Zaporizhia-Donetsk Oblast border. The Ukrainian Southern Operational Command did not report any changes in the Russian troop composition in Kherson Oblast on August 9.[36]

Ukrainian officials maintained that Russian forces are continuing to fire using artillery systems situated at the territory of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (NPP). The Ukrainian Southern Operational Command reported that Russian forces fired 80 Grad MLRS rockets at Nikopol from firing positions on the opposite bank of the Kakhovka Reservoir.[37] Starukh stated that Russian forces continue to use the territory of the Zaporizhzhia NPP to shell Nikopol and use the plant as a nuclear shield.[38]

Ukrainian officials and social media users reported several explosions at Russian military bases and ammunition depots across the Southern Axis on August 8 and August 9. Advisor to the Kherson Oblast Administration Serhiy Khlan reported that a Russian ammunition depot suffered secondary explosions for over an hour and a half in Novooleksiivka near Henichensk (approximately 35 km north of the Crimean border).[39] Russian and Ukrainian sources reported a series of explosions at the Russian Saky airbase in occupied Novofedorivka, western Crimean coast.[40] Melitopol Mayor Ivan Fedorov also reported 10 explosions at Russian military bases in the western part of Melitopol.[41] Ukrainian officials have not taken responsibility for the strikes on Russian military infrastructure as of the time of this publication. The Southern Operational Command only confirmed that Ukrainian forces struck Russian positions in Snihurivka (approximately 31 km east of Mykolaiv City) and two command posts in the Berislav and Khersonskyi districts.[42]

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

Kremlin-affiliated outlet Kommersant reported that Russian federal subjects (regions) formed over 40 volunteer battalions, confirming (and/or repeating) ISW’s assessments of Russian regional force generation campaigns.[43] ISW has previously identified that federal subjects formed 41 volunteer battalions and units throughout Russia. Kommersant notably did not report on the formation of the Moscow-based “Sobyaninskyi” Regiment that began recruitment on July 1.[44] Kommersant confirmed that St. Petersburg, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s hometown, is forming three volunteer battalions “Kronstandt,” ”Neva,” and “Pavlovsk” exclusively composed of the city’s residents. St. Petersburg outlet “Fontanka” previously reported that one of the St. Petersburg battalions is an artillery unit.[45] Kommersant identified three new volunteer units from Tomsk, Amur, and Irkutsk Oblasts: Tomsk Oblast is forming the “Troyan” Battalion, Irkutsk Oblast is recruiting for the “Angara” Battalion, and Amur Oblast is expecting to recruit 400-500 volunteers for the “Amurskyi” Motorized Rifle Battalion.

Kommersant also identified the Russian Defense Ministry, Russian federal subject governments, and existing military units as responsible for supplying and preparing individual volunteer battalions. In the example of the Primorskiy Krai-based “Tigr” Volunteer Battalion, the Russian Pacific Fleet provides recruits with ammunition and body armor, Primorskiy Krai supplies clothes and special equipment such as radios, and the Russian Defense Ministry dispenses weapons. If this pattern of responsibility distribution is common for all federal subjects, then some poorer federal subjects are likely to provide lower quality special equipment than other regions. Kommersant’s interview with an unnamed Russian federal official further suggests that the Russian Defense Ministry or the Kremlin ordered federal subjects to set informational and financial conditions for the establishment of the volunteer units, as ISW assessed on July 13.[46]

Kommersant’s report further showcases the involvement of the Kuban Cossack Host (Army) during the Russian invasion of Ukraine and in its force generation efforts. The report noted that about 1,200 Cossacks are participating in the Russian hostilities in Ukraine. Kommersant reported that Krasnodar Krai formed additional military units called “Zakharia Chepigi” and ”Kuban” based on the Kuban Cossack Host in April and May, respectively. The Union of Cossack Warriors of Russia and Abroad also announced the reorganization of the “Don” Cossack Detachment into a brigade joint with the “Terek” Battalion and composed of “Kuban” and “Yenisey” units. The “Don” Detachment has conducted offensive operations around Velyka Komyshuvakha (southwest of Izyum) since at least April and the “Terek” Battalion recruited additional volunteers ages 20 to 63 from Stavropol Krai and Northern Caucasus.[47] The “Terek” Battalion has already reportedly sent 500 Cossacks to Donbas.[48] “Yermak” and “Tavrida” Cossack units are also reportedly conducting combat operations in Ukraine.

The Kremlin or Russian Defense Ministry are likely exploiting leaders of immigrant and ethnic organizations to generate forces for the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Chairman of the “Society of Central Asian Uzbeks of Perm Krai” Jahongir Jalolov announced that Uzbek nationals living or working in Perm Krai should form the “Amir Timur” Volunteer Battalion in Perm Krai to support Russian forces in Ukraine.[49] Jalolov noted that Uzbeks owe their livelihoods in Russia to the Russian people, and hence should participate in the special military operation. ISW has previously reported that Russian forces have been reportedly recruiting Central Asian immigrants to the Moscow-based “Sobyaninskyi” Regiment in exchange for Russian citizenship and financial compensation.[50]

Russian sources additionally announced a recruitment effort to reinforce the “Russian Legion”—a volunteer battalion currently operating on the Donetsk-Kharkiv Oblast border—as of August 9.[51] The “Russian Legion” is reportedly formed of elements of the Russian Combat Army Reserve (BARS)—an effort aimed to establish an active reserve by recruiting volunteer reservists for three-year contract service.[52] This unit has reportedly fought on the Izyum axis near Pasika, Studenok, and Bohorodychne without rotation for three months.[53] The Russian Legion’s commander reportedly has been fighting in eastern Ukraine since 2014.[54] The tone of the post suggests that regular units of the Russian military have not fought in a significant part of this frontline sector recently, indicating that the Russian military is leveraging recently-formed volunteer units to perform frontline fighting in some areas, as opposed to reinforcing regular military units.

Activity in Russian-occupied Areas (Russian objective: consolidate administrative control of occupied areas; set conditions for potential annexation into the Russian Federation or some other future political arrangement of Moscow’s choosing)

Russian occupation officials are attempting to set conditions for the façade of a normal school year in occupied parts of Ukraine but are likely facing resistance from parents and school officials. The Ukrainian head of the Kherson Regional Administration, Yaroslav Yanushkevych, reported on August 9 that Russian occupation officials in Kherson Oblast are offering parents approximately 4,000 hryvnias a month (about 108 USD) to enroll their children in Russian-run schools for the autumn term.[55] An advisor to Yanushkevych, Serhiy Khlan, reported on August 9 that occupation officials are struggling to find locations to host polling stations for the sham annexation referendum in Kherson and are pressuring schools and school principals to help organize the referendum and to allow schools to be used as polling stations.[56]

Russian officials are increasingly overtly involving themselves in the planned pseudo-referenda that the Kremlin will use to claim that Russia has a legitimate claim to annex occupied Ukrainian territory despite Kremlin Spokesman Dmitrii Peskov’s claim that it is not Russians who are holding the referendum.[57] The Russian governor of Sevastopol in occupied Crimea, Mikhail Razvozhaev, announced on August 9 that Sevastopol officials will monitor the referendum in occupied Zaporizhia Oblast and that Sevastopol organizers are already at work throughout Zaporizhia.[58] The Sevastopol organizers will likely join volunteers and employees from Russian President Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party, who have been assisting occupation administrations and preparing for the sham referendum in occupied Ukrainian territories since April.[59] The Russian-appointed head of the Zaporizhia Occupation Administration, Yevheny Balitsky, announced the beginning of formal preparations for the annexation referendum on August 8 and told Russian media on August 9 that he is “nearly certain” that Zaporizhia will “return to” Russia following the sham referendum.[60] Russian forces occupy about three-quarters of Zaporizhia Oblast’s territory as of August 9, encompassing the homes of about half of the population of the oblast.

Ukraine’s Center for Strategic Communications announced on August 9 that the Kremlin has crossed a “red line” by formally announcing the referendum in Zaporizhia, waging an “aggressive, colonial war” to annex Ukrainian territories seeking the “destruction of Ukraine’s statehood.”[61] The Center urged all residents to resist the occupation and noted that “Russia has made a bet on Melitopol [in Zaporizhia Oblast], not on Kherson” because the Kremlin “understands the inevitability of losing their bridgehead on the right bank of the Dnipro [river].” The Center promised that Ukrainian forces will liberate Zaporizhia, Kherson, and all other occupied territories.

[4] https://www.ukrinform dot .net/rubric-ato/3546789-enemy-ammunition-detonates-near-henichesk.html https://www.ukrinform. dot net/rubric-ato/3546789-enemy-ammunition-detonates-near-henichesk.html; https://www.facebook.com/sergey.khlan/posts/pfbid0x5AvHy3mAh6XVeDEEyyww3...

[11] https://www.irna dot ir/news/84848211

[13]

[33] https://gur dot gov.ua/content/u-nas-tam-mnoho-poter-kak-by-vam-po-televyzoru-ne-rasskazhut-pravdu.html

[43] https://www dot kommersant.ru/doc/5501970

[47] https://life dot ru/p/1511354; https://news dot 1777.ru/85070-kazaki-severnogo-kavkaza-primut-uchastie-v-voennoy-specoperacii-na-ukraine

[48] https://news dot 1777.ru/85070-kazaki-severnogo-kavkaza-primut-uchastie-v-voennoy-specoperacii-na-ukraine

[49] https://vetta dot tv/news/society/permskie-uzbeki-planiruyut-prisoedinitsya-k-spetsoperatsii-na-ukraine/

[57] https://tass dot ru/mezhdunarodnaya-panorama/15421435?; https://tass dot ru/politika/15420573; https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign...

[60] https://tass dot ru/mezhdunarodnaya-panorama/15430851

understandingwar.org

2. Ukraine says 9 Russian warplanes destroyed in Crimea blasts

Ukraine says 9 Russian warplanes destroyed in Crimea blasts

AP · by SUSIE BLANN · August 10, 2022

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukraine said Wednesday that nine Russian warplanes were destroyed in a deadly string of explosions at an air base in Crimea that appeared to be the result of a Ukrainian attack, which would represent a significant escalation in the war.

Russia denied any aircraft were damaged in Tuesday’s blasts — or that any attack took place. But satellite photos clearly showed at least seven fighter planes at the base had been blown up and others probably damaged.

Ukrainian officials stopped short of publicly claiming responsibility for the explosions, while mocking Russia’s explanation that a careless smoker might have caused ammunition at the Saki air base to catch fire and blow up. Analysts also said that explanation doesn’t make sense and that the Ukrainians could have used anti-ship missiles to strike the base.

If Ukrainian forces were, in fact, responsible for the blasts, it would be the first known major attack on a Russian military site on the Crimean Peninsula, which was seized from Ukraine by the Kremlin in 2014. Russian warplanes have used Saki to strike areas in Ukraine’s south.

Crimea holds huge strategic and symbolic significance for both sides. The Kremlin’s demand that Ukraine recognize Crimea as part of Russia has been one of its key conditions for ending the fighting, while Ukraine has vowed to drive the Russians from the peninsula and all other occupied territories.

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The explosions, which killed one person and wounded 14, sent tourists fleeing in panic as plumes of smoke rose over the coastline nearby. Video showed shattered windows and holes in the brickwork of some buildings.

One tourist, Natalia Lipovaya, said that “the earth was gone from under my feet” after the powerful blasts. “I was so scared,” she said.

Sergey Milochinsky, a local resident, recalled hearing a roar and seeing a mushroom cloud from his window. “Everything began to fall around, collapse,” he said.

Crimea’s regional leader, Sergei Aksyonov, said some 250 residents were moved to temporary housing after dozens of apartment buildings were damaged.

Russian authorities sought to downplay the explosions, saying Wednesday that all hotels and beaches were unaffected on the peninsula, which is a popular tourist destination for many Russians. But video posted on social media showed long lines of slowly moving cars on the road to Russia as tourists headed for home.

A Ukrainian presidential adviser, Oleksiy Arestovych, cryptically said that the blasts were either caused by Ukrainian-made long-range weapons or the work of Ukrainian guerrillas operating in Crimea.

A Ukrainian parliament member, Oleksandr Zavitnevich, said the airfield was rendered unusable. He reported on Facebook that it housed fighter jets, tactical reconnaissance aircraft and military transport planes.

Satellite images from Planet Labs PBC taken at midafternoon Wednesday showed some 2 square kilometers (0.75 square mile) of grassland burned at the Saki base. Several craters marked the ground near the tarmac — typically the sign of a powerful explosion. The two runways bore no apparent damage and appeared to still be operational. Some of the fighter jets on the flight line had been moved farther down the runway, compared to images taken Tuesday before the blast.

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The base has been home to the Russian 43rd Independent Naval Assault Air Squadron since Moscow seized Crimea. The squadron flies Sukhoi Su-24s and Sukhoi Su-30s. The base also includes a number of earth-covered bunkers and hangars around its periphery — typically used to house munitions in case of a fire. None appeared damaged.

“Official Kyiv has kept mum about it, but unofficially the military acknowledges that it was a Ukrainian strike,” Ukrainian military analyst Oleh Zhdanov said.

The base is at least 200 kilometers (about 125 miles) from the closest Ukrainian position. Zhdanov suggested that Ukrainian forces could have struck it with Ukrainian or Western-supplied anti-ship missiles that have the necessary range.

The Washington-based Institute for the Study of War said it couldn’t independently determine what caused the explosions but noted that simultaneous blasts in two places at the base probably rule out an accidental fire but not sabotage or a missile attack.

It added: “The Kremlin has little incentive to accuse Ukraine of conducting strikes that caused the damage since such strikes would demonstrate the ineffectiveness of Russian air defense systems.”

During the war, the Kremlin has reported numerous fires and explosions on Russian territory near the Ukrainian border, blaming some of them on Ukrainian strikes. Ukrainian authorities have mostly kept silent about the incidents, preferring to keep the world guessing.

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Neither side has released much information about their own casualties. In his nightly video address Wednesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy claimed nearly 43,000 Russian soldiers had been killed.

Colin Kahl, U.S. undersecretary of defense for policy, estimated Monday that Russian forces have sustained up to 80,000 deaths and injuries in the fighting. He did not break down the figure with an estimate of forces killed or provide a Ukrainian casualty count.

In other developments, Russian forces shelled areas across Ukraine on Tuesday night into Wednesday, including the central region of Dnipropetrovsk, where 13 people were killed, according to the region’s governor, Valentyn Reznichenko.

Reznichenko said the Russians fired at the city of Marganets and a nearby village. Dozens of residential buildings, two schools and several administrative buildings were damaged.

“It was a terrible night,” Reznichenko said. “It’s very hard to take bodies from under debris. We are facing a cruel enemy who engages in daily terror against our cities and villages.”

In Ukraine’s east, where fighting has raged for eight years, a Russian attack on the center of the city of Bakhmut in the Donetsk region killed seven, wounded six and damaged stores, homes and apartment buildings, setting off fires, Ukraine’s prosecutor general said on Telegram. Bakhmut is a key target for Russian forces as they advance on regional hubs.

In the city of Donetsk, which has been under the control of Russia-backed separatists since 2014, Ukrainian shelling hit a brewery, killing one person and wounding two, the separatists’ emergency service said. It said the shelling late Wednesday caused a leak of toxic ammonia and warned people to stay inside and breathe through cotton gauze.

Two residents of the village of Staryi Saltiv in the Kharkiv region in the northeast were killed Wednesday in Russian shelling, police reported.

In the country’s southeast, Moscow’s forces continued shelling the city of Nikopol across the Dnieper River from the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia power station, the biggest nuclear plant in Europe. Ukraine and Russia have accused each other of shelling it, stoking international fears of a catastrophe.

On Wednesday, foreign ministers of the Group of Seven industrialized democracies demanded that Russia immediately hand back full control of the plant to Ukraine. They said they are “profoundly concerned” about the risk of a nuclear accident with far-reaching consequences.

The U.N. Security Council scheduled an open meeting Thursday at Russia’s request on what it claims were Ukrainian attacks on the Zaporizhzhia plant. Rafael Grossi, the International Atomic Energy Agency chief who said last week that the situation at the plant “is completely out of control,” was expected to brief the council.

___

Associated Press writers Ellen Knickmeyer and Michael Biesecker in Washington and Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, contributed to this report.

___

Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

AP · by SUSIE BLANN · August 10, 2022

3. US Military ‘Furiously’ Rewriting Nuclear Deterrence to Address Russia and China, STRATCOM Chief Says

"Deterrence works, until it doesn't." - Sir Lawrence Freedman

So will the furious rewritings be classified? We need to answer the fundamental questions of what deters the leaders of China, Russia, Iran, and north Korea? Does one size fit all? How do we transmit effective deterrence messages?

My thought is we need three types of deterrence: nuclear deterrence, deterrence of conventional attack, and unconventional deterrence.

Does nuclear deterrence deter conventional attacks? Does nuclear deterrence deter activities in the "gray zone?" Does nuclear deterrence contribute to political warfare?

US Military ‘Furiously’ Rewriting Nuclear Deterrence to Address Russia and China, STRATCOM Chief Says

But America’s “expertise is just not what it was at the end of the Cold War,” warns Adm. Chas Richard.

defenseone.com · by Tara Copp

The United States is “furiously” writing a new nuclear deterrence theory that simultaneously faces Russia and China, said the top commander of America’s nuclear arsenal—and needs more Americans working on how to prevent nuclear war.

Officials at U.S. Strategic Command have been responding to how threats from Moscow and Beijing have changed this year, said STRATCOM chief Navy Adm. Chas Richard.

As Russian forces crossed deep into Ukraine this spring, Richard said he delivered the first-ever real-world commander’s assessment on what it was going to take to avoid nuclear war. But China has further complicated the threat, and the admiral made an unusual request to experts assembled at the Space and Missile Defense Symposium in Huntsville, Alabama, on Thursday:

“We have to account for three-party [threats],” Richard said. “That is unprecedented in this nation's history. We have never faced two peer nuclear-capable opponents at the same time, who have to be deterred differently.”

The need for a new deterrence theory comes as institutional expertise on avoiding nuclear war has atrophied, Richard said.

“Even our operational deterrence expertise is just not what it was at the end of the Cold War. So we have to reinvigorate this intellectual effort. And we can start by rewriting deterrence theory, I'll tell you we're furiously doing that out at STRATCOM,” Richard said.

To respond to Russia this spring, the United States launched nuclear command post teams in its E-6 Mercury “Looking Glass” aircraft, which are militarized Boeing 707s, on extended airborne operations. Military leaders also worked to get its other combatant commands on the same page as to how to dampen and corral Russian escalation.

STRATCOM also took steps to evolve past the traditional nuclear deterrence theory of “mutually assured destruction,” which posits that any use of nuclear weapons would result in retaliatory use and total annihilation of all parties—and has prevented nuclear war for almost 75 years.

That’s because early in the invasion, Russian President Vladimir Putin suggested Moscow could respond to any Western defense of Ukraine with nuclear weapons. U.S. officials worry, though don’t expect, that could mean Russia using smaller warheads in limited numbers on specific targets, rather than launching the global thermonuclear war they had feared for decades.

“Moscow is using both implicit and explicit nuclear coercion,” Richard said.“They're trying to exploit a perceived deterrence gap, a threshold below which they mistakenly believe they may be able to employ nuclear weapons,” such as using their tactical, shorter range nukes.

The threats pushed STRATCOM to shift its reaction.

“We've got some better two-party stuff that's actually working quite well in the current crisis that is radically different,” Richard said. “Non-linearity, linkages, chaotic behavior, inability to predict – all attributes that just don't show up in classic deterrence theory.”

“But that's a two-party version,” Richard said. And does not take into account worrisome developments in China’s hypersonics that might carry nuclear warheads, President Xi Jinping’s ambitions toward Taiwan, the lessons Beijing is taking away from Western response to Ukraine, or the possibility that China and Russia may find it advantageous to combine their ambitions and force the United States to face simultaneous nuclear threats.

“Russia and the PRC have the ability to unilaterally, whenever they decide, they can escalate to any level of violence in any domain. They can do it worldwide and they can do it with any instrument of national power. We're just not used to dealing with competitions and confrontations like that,” Richard said.

defenseone.com · by Tara Copp

4. Taiwan, China and the U.S.: Inside the fight to control the microchips that power your car and computer

​This is very much at the heart of strategic competition.

Taiwan, China and the U.S.: Inside the fight to control the microchips that power your car and computer

A new U.S. bill places semiconductors on the front lines of U.S.-China competition.

Lili Pike

China Reporter

August 12, 2022

grid.news · by Lili Pike

In the wake of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) visit to Taiwan, the Chinese military ran its largest-scale exercises in decades and fired missiles near the island, disrupting supply routes for days. Beyond the geopolitical crisis, as hulking container ships dodged the drills, the world got a preview of what might happen to global commerce if a real conflict broke out in the Taiwan Strait.

Hear more from Lili Pike about this story:

The ships leaving Taiwan are carrying precious cargo for the global supply chain — semiconductors, the tiny chips that are at the heart of modern consumer and military electronics, from iPhones to cars, home appliances to missiles. Taiwan has long dominated the production of these powerful chips, supplying the vast majority of the world’s most advanced semiconductors. Any rupture to the supply chain of this critical commodity would send shock waves through the global economy.

That risk was very much in mind when Congress passed a sweeping bipartisan bill to lessen U.S. dependence on foreign chips — a bill signed into law by President Joe Biden on Tuesday. The legislation aims to build more semiconductor factories, or “fabs” in industry lingo, on U.S. shores with the help of $52 billion in subsidies.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) called the Chips and Science Act “one of the most important things we’ve done for America in years, if not decades,” in a speech on Tuesday. Biden, in his remarks, referred to the Ohio plot where Intel is breaking ground on new semiconductor fabs as “a field of dreams.”

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Behind that lofty rhetoric is a core mission for the U.S. that has won bipartisan support: outcompeting China in the 21st century. While China doesn’t dominate chipmaking today, lawmakers are worried about the country’s recent race to catch up. That concern has driven a significant change in the way the U.S. approaches economic development. Instead of letting the market shape the future, a bipartisan group of lawmakers signed on to a law that mirrors China’s own industrial policy. It was China, after all, that decided the semiconductor business was worth government support and put huge sums of money behind the technology. Now the U.S. has — belatedly, many would say — jumped into the game.

This deep investment in building domestic semiconductor supply chains on both sides of the Pacific reflects growing distrust between the two superpowers. It also suggests a profound shift away from globalization. Orville Schell, director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society, said the chips industry was globalized with “no regard to the possible political tensions and conflicts that are inherent in where things are made, and to whom they get traded.” And now, he told Grid, that’s changing: “I think we are at a point of extraordinary inflection, and chips lie right at the center of it.”

Why the U.S. thinks depending on Taiwan’s chips is risky

Taiwan’s semiconductor strength, and U.S. dependence on Taiwan for chips, has become synonymous with four letters: TSMC — the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. TSMC is a semiconductor juggernaut, a company that helped Taiwan produce a staggering 63 percent of global supply of semiconductors in 2020. In one sign of its market dominance, TSMC supplied 92 percent of the most advanced chips in 2019, according to a recent report.

The U.S. invented the microchip, but while it still leads in chip research and design, in 2019 it produced only 13 percent of the global chip total, down from 37 percent in 1990. Apple and other major U.S. companies are now highly dependent on TSMC for the chips that go into iPhones, iPads and various household appliances. TSMC’s critical role in supplying the U.S. was on display during Pelosi’s trip; in a 19-hour visit to Taiwan, she took time to meet with senior TSMC executives.

To understand the risks associated with this dependence, one need only glance at a map. TSMC churns out chips in a set of giant fabs on Taiwan’s west coast — the shores where China would land if it were to invade the island. Some have argued that China’s own dependence on Taiwan for these chips would deter it from attacking — a theory known as the “silicon shield.” But the risk can’t be ruled out, and the consequences would reverberate all over the world.

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“It’s likely that military force used against Taiwan would really be catastrophic for this industry, in ways that we can’t really imagine,” said Paul Triolo, senior vice president for China and technology policy at Albright Stonebridge Group. “At a minimum, it would be hugely disruptive, and then the question would be how long it would take to restore and if it could be restored.”

U.S. officials were candid about this threat as they promoted the chips bill. Speaking at the Aspen Security Forum in July, Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo said, “Our dependence on Taiwan for the sophisticated chips is untenable and unsafe.”

The U.S. has long criticized China’s industrial policy. Now it’s copying it.

The United States’ game plan to address its weakness in semiconductor manufacturing, and its overdependence on Taiwan, appears to have been borrowed from an unexpected place — China.

Like the U.S., China has relied on foreign manufacturers for most of its chip supply. But recently, it has poured government cash into changing that. Boosting domestic output of chips was crystallized as a Chinese government priority back in 2014, with the release of a national plan for the industry. The U.S. Semiconductor Industry Association estimates that China will invest $150 billion in the industry between 2014 and 2030; China’s state-backed “Big Fund” for semiconductor development along with associated local funds had already invested $73 billion as of 2021.

China’s program hasn’t been a full-blown success; for one thing, executives charged with leading the industry’s expansion are under investigation for corruption. But the investments have helped the industry scale up its fab capacity, and they have already produced some breakthroughs. The New York Times reported in July that SMIC, China’s state-owned chip giant, may have created its most advanced chip yet. The tiny transistors that make up the chip were just 7 nanometers in width; any width below 10 nanometers is generally considered advanced (for perspective, a human hair is about 80,000 nanometers wide). A smaller transistor typically enables a faster processing speed or lower energy usage — which are increasingly important as chips are used for more advanced functions like AI.

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The new law seeks to replicate China’s approach before the U.S. falls too far behind. The $52 billion will be directed toward research and manufacturing chips on U.S. soil, with the Commerce Department in charge of allocating the money to companies. The theory is that government investment will help reduce the costs of manufacturing in the U.S., which (as is the case for most sectors) are higher than in Asia.

“Whether the U.S. or Europe are able to bring down the cost to the level of Asia, I think, will be the key, and also the continuous supply of talent, as well as the integrated ecosystem,” said Jason Hsu, a former legislator in Taiwan and senior research fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School — citing the factors that have made Taiwan’s industry so strong. “Bringing back chip manufacturing won’t be an overnight success for the U.S.”

There are already signs of traction: In the week since the bill passed, the U.S. company Micron announced a $40 billion investment to build out U.S. fabs, and the Taiwanese powerhouse TSMC has already started building a fab in Arizona, anticipating the bill’s incentives.

“I think it’s a necessary and essential first step,” said Schell. “To not get the bill would have been a tremendous letdown and really made it look as if the United States was incapable of responding to the challenge that China is now posing.”

Competition — and containment

As the U.S. tries to move ahead with its own chip production, it’s clear that it is also trying to make sure China stays behind.

The new law explicitly states that companies receiving subsidies from the U.S. cannot build advanced chip factories in China. That’s a significant setback for China, which needs foreign expertise to bolster its own industry.

This is only the latest in a series of moves the U.S. has made to stymie China’s development of chips. The U.S. has placed restrictions on exports of semiconductors and related equipment to Chinese tech powerhouses Huawei and SMIC. It has also worked with the Netherlands to block China from acquiring key chipmaking machinery produced by the Dutch company ASML that would allow it to jump-start its production of the smallest, most cutting-edge chips at home.

“The U.S. government is attempting to draw lines around how far Chinese companies can advance in the sector,” Triolo told Grid.

The motivation for the U.S. isn’t just maintaining an edge economically, but militarily as well. For decades, the U.S. has held a military advantage over other countries by leading in a range of advanced technologies. That, in turn, serves as a critical foundation for deterrence, Matthew Turpin, a visiting fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and a former China director of the National Security Council, told Grid. Containing China’s technological advances, he said, is part of that strategy.

“We, in our public statements, dress it up in more diplomatic language, but the reality is that is what we are doing. We view them as a nation-state that is seeking to overturn a liberal rules-based international order and to set up an international order that is more advantageous to their regime type,” he said. “The U.S. sees it as prudent to deny them those kinds of capabilities that would allow them to reach a sort of military parity or military superiority.”

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Biden has also explicitly acknowledged the national security aims of the bill. In his speech on Tuesday, he described a recent visit to the Lockheed Martin factory in Alabama that produces Javelin missiles bound for Ukraine. “It’s crystal clear we need these semiconductors not only for those Javelin missiles but also for weapons systems in the future that are going to be even more reliant on advanced chips,” he said. “Unfortunately, we produce zero percent of these chips now. And China is trying to move way ahead of us and manufacture these sophisticated chips as well.”

The downward spiral of U.S.-China “decoupling”

China, unsurprisingly, hasn’t responded well to the bill. “China is firmly against it,” said Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian. “It is up to the U.S. how it wants to develop itself, but it should by no means create hurdles for normal technological and people-to-people exchanges and cooperation with China, still less deprive China of or undermine China’s legitimate development rights and interests.”

China could retaliate. Big U.S. tech companies like Qualcomm and Nvidia sell semiconductors and associated equipment into the Chinese market. China could block deals with these companies, cutting off a major source of revenue.

Some experts say that this kind of negative spiral may be unavoidable due to the overall deterioration of U.S.-China relations and, on the U.S. side, a growing bipartisan consensus on the need to confront a rising China.

The trend extends beyond semiconductors: The U.S. is pushing for greater domestic reliance and cutting ties with China on several other fronts. The recently passed climate bill allocates $60 billion to boost domestic production of solar panels, wind turbines and battery components — industries that have been increasingly dominated by China.

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Another recent law, the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, has forced U.S. companies to relocate some of their China supply chains. The law deems any product made in Xinjiang to have been produced using Uyghur forced labor, and therefore bans U.S. companies from importing all products and raw materials from the region into the U.S. On China’s side, investments in critical technologies fall under the country’s “Made in China 2025″ policy — which emphasizes domestic production and self-reliance.

These moves are gradually breaking down not only commerce between the U.S. and China, but important pieces of the globalized economy and the geopolitics that were built alongside it. Now the world will have to see — literally and figuratively — where the chips will fall.

Thanks to Lillian Barkley for copy editing this article.

grid.news · by Lili Pike​

5. The Afghanistan Deal that Never Happened

Looking at the entire "negotiation" with the Taliban spanning the past couple of years, It is hard to negotiate when you are negotiating a withdrawal and the enemy knows you want to withdraw at all costs. General McKenzie (and any negotiator) was in a tough position. They had little leverage because the Taliban knew Trump and Biden both wanted out as the primary objective. And by last August we had absolutely no leverage. Our political leaders undercut all negotiating leverage of our diplomacy and military leaders. Not a criticism, just a fact.

The Afghanistan Deal that Never Happened

A Q&A with General Frank McKenzie, one year after his negotiations with the Taliban and the chaotic American withdrawal.

By LARA SELIGMAN

08/11/2022 04:30 AM EDT

Politico

Magazine

A Q&A with General Frank McKenzie, one year after his negotiations with the Taliban and the chaotic American withdrawal.

Marine Gen. Frank McKenzie speaks with journalists in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on May 23, 2021. | Lolita Baldor/AP Photo

08/11/2022 04:30 AM EDT

General Frank McKenzie was on his way to negotiate with the Taliban when he got the call that Kabul had already fallen.

It was Aug. 15, 2021, and the then-commander of U.S. Central Command had watched anxiously for weeks as the group seized provincial capitals across Afghanistan in one of the most stunning guerilla campaigns in modern history.

McKenzie was flying to Doha, Qatar that day to offer the Taliban a deal: Keep your forces outside the capital so the U.S. can evacuate tens of thousands of Americans and Afghans from the city, and we won’t fight you.

But by the time McKenzie landed, the offer was DOA. Taliban fighters were already inside the presidential palace, and Afghanistan’s president, Ashraf Ghani, had fled the city. The Afghan government the United States had worked so hard to keep afloat for 20 years had collapsed in a matter of hours.

McKenzie had to think fast. His mission, to conduct a massive air evacuation from Kabul’s one functioning airport, had not changed. So, on the way to Doha’s Ritz Carlton, he came up with a new proposal. Don’t interfere with the airlift, he told the Taliban’s co-founder, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, and we won’t strike.

The general, who spoke to POLITICO Magazine by video call almost exactly one year after the fall of Kabul, walked away from the meeting with a deal that would allow the U.S. military to control the airport while they undertook the largest air evacuation in U.S. history, flying out more than 120,000 people in the span of two weeks.

But during the meeting, he also made what critics say was a strategic mistake that contributed to what became a chaotic, deadly evacuation: refusing the Taliban’s offer to let the U.S. military secure Afghanistan’s capital city.

McKenzie defended his decision during the interview, noting that he did not believe it was a serious proposal, and in any case securing the city would have required a massive influx of American troops, which could have triggered more fighting with the Taliban.

At the end of the day, the U.S. military didn’t have many good choices.

Does McKenzie think the withdrawal from Afghanistan was a mistake? Yes – but it wasn’t his decision to make.

“My belief is we should have stayed. I believe that everything that happened flowed from that basic decision,” says McKenzie, who retired from the military on April 1. “My recommendation was that we keep a small presence where we could maintain a level of support for the Afghans. That was not the advice that was taken.”

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Seligman: It’s the week before Kabul falls. What is happening? What are you thinking? Set the scene for me.

McKenzie: In the last formal intelligence assessment I sent up on the 8th of August, I said, ‘It is my judgment that Kabul is going to fall.’ I did not think it was going to fall that weekend. I thought it might last a little bit longer, 30 days or so. But I felt Kabul would be surrounded in the immediate short term.

On Thursday or Friday, I got the direction to go to Doha to talk to the Taliban. What we wanted was about a 30-kilometer exclusion zone: You guys stay out of there while we do the evacuation. And if you stay out of there, we will not strike you anywhere in Afghanistan.

I got on the airplane on Sunday morning. While I was on the airplane over, I was getting reports that the Taliban is in downtown Kabul, they’ve actually overrun the city. By the time I met with them, they had significant forces inside the city. So I said, ‘Look, we can still have a solution here. We’re going to conduct an evacuation. If you don’t interfere with the evacuation, we won’t strike.’

Mullah Baradar said, off the cuff, ‘Why don’t you come in and secure the city?’ But that was just not feasible. It would have taken me putting in another division to do that. And I believe that was a flippant remark. And now we know in the fullness of time that Mullah Baradar wasn’t actually speaking for the hard-line Taliban. I don’t know if he could have delivered, even if he was serious about it.

I felt in my best judgment that it wasn’t a genuine offer. And it was not a practical military operation. That’s why they pay me, that’s why I’m there.

By and large, the Taliban were helpful in our departure. They did not oppose us. They did do some external security work. There was a downside of that external security work, and it probably prevented some Afghans from getting to Kabul airport as we would have liked. But that was a risk that I was willing to run.

Seligman: So after Kabul fell, the evacuation began. What happened next?

McKenzie: The next day, Aug. 16 it was my plan to fly to Kabul. But the airfield, the runway, was overrun by people coming in from the south. It took us about 16 hours to bring that under control — a combination of us, the Afghan commandos and the Taliban. We had 400 Taliban fighters beating people with sticks. It’s not what you want, but you’re in the land of bad choices now. It let the commander on the ground regain control of the airfield, and we never lost control again after that. But that was certainly intense.

Seligman: Had you personally warned the president at any point that Afghanistan would almost certainly collapse if U.S. troops left?

McKenzie: I wrote a number of letters over the course of the fall and into the spring, saying if we withdraw our forces precipitously, collapse is likely to occur. I was in a number of meetings with the president, the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the secretary of Defense. We all had an opportunity to express our opinions on that.

It was my opinion that if we went from 2,500 to zero, the government of Afghanistan would not be able to sustain itself and would collapse. It was initially my recommendation that we should stay at 4,500. They went below that. Then it was my recommendation we stay at 2,500.

Seligman: Indefinitely?

McKenzie: Indefinitely. I know the criticism: the Taliban are going to come after you and you’re going to have to beef up your forces. The commander on the ground and I didn’t believe that was necessarily the case. For one thing, at 2,500 we were down to a pretty lean combat capability, not a lot of attack surface there for the Taliban to get at. Two, we would have coupled the 2,500 presence with a strong diplomatic campaign to put pressure on the Taliban.

What would have happened if we stayed at 2,500? It’s just difficult to know that. Here’s what we do know as a matter of history — if you go to zero, they collapse.

Seligman: Why did they collapse? We spent so long training the Afghans and then as soon as we were gone, they fell. How did that happen?

McKenzie: I believe the proximate defeat mechanism was the Doha negotiations [on a peace deal]. I believe that the Afghan government began to believe we were getting ready to leave. As a result, I think it took a lot of the will to fight out them.

Seligman: Do you blame the Trump administration for what happened?

McKenzie: It goes even back beyond that. You can go back to the very beginning of the campaign, when we had an opportunity to get Osama bin Laden in 2001, 2002 and we didn’t do that. The fact that we never satisfactorily solved the problem of safe havens in Pakistan for the Taliban. There are so many things over the 20-year period that contributed to it.

But yes, I believe that the straw that broke the camel’s back and brought it to the conclusion that we saw was the Doha process and the agreements that were reached there.

It’s convenient to blame the military commanders that were there. But it was the government of Afghanistan that failed. The government of the United States also failed.

Seligman: It was a political decision to leave. How much blame should the Biden administration get for the collapse?

McKenzie: Well, I think both administrations wanted to leave Afghanistan, that’s just a fact. But look, that’s a decision presidents get to make. I recommended something different. But they get to make that decision. I don’t get to make that decision. We are where we are as a result of that. They both ultimately wanted out.

Seligman: After the evacuation, did you see a reemergence of al Qaeda or other terrorist elements after we left?

McKenzie: Clearly. It’s very hard to see in Afghanistan after we left. We had 1 or 2 or 3 percent of the intelligence-gathering capability that we had before we left. All our intelligence told us that the Taliban would probably allow space for al Qaeda to reassert itself and at the same time, they’re unable to get rid of ISIS. I think both are going to be entities that are going to grow.

The fact that al Qaeda leader Al-Zawahri was in downtown Kabul should give us pause. It tells you first of all, that the Taliban obviously negotiated the Doha accord in complete bad faith. They said they wouldn’t provide a safe haven for al Qaeda. What’s the definition of a safe haven if it’s not the leader in your capital city?

POLITICO

Politico

6. Biden says US government knows 'with certainty' that Austin Tice has been held by Syrian government

Retired Special Forces officer Roger Carstens has a lot on his plate these days. I hope we can get Autin home safely. Interstly Roger was appointed by Trump and Biden has kept him on which is as it should be when you have a competent person in place who puts the nation above politics. And we can be sure he is putting all his SF training to good use in this job.

Biden says US government knows 'with certainty' that Austin Tice has been held by Syrian government

CNN · by Jennifer Hansler, CNN

(CNN)President Joe Biden on Wednesday declared that the US government knows "with certainty" that American journalist Austin Tice has been held by the Syrian government and called on Damascus to cooperate on efforts to release him after 10 years of captivity.

"We know with certainty that he has been held by the Syrian regime," Biden said in a statement. "We have repeatedly asked the government of Syria to work with us so that we can bring Austin home."

"On the tenth anniversary of his abduction, I am calling on Syria to end this and help us bring him home," the President said, adding that the "Tice family deserves answers, and more importantly, they deserve to be swiftly reunited with Austin."

The government of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad has not publicly acknowledged they are detaining him. Tice, a freelance journalist and Marine Corps veteran, was detained at a checkpoint near Damascus in August 2012 while reporting on the war in Syria.

Debra Tice, Austin's mother, told CNN on Thursday, her son's 41st birthday, she is happy the President mentioned his name and that it is a sign the administration is ready to negotiate his release.

Read More

"I'm just so glad that President Biden has said Austin's name publicly," Debra Tice told CNN's John Berman on "New Day." "I think that it's an indication from the President that the United States government is ready to engage with Syria to bring Austin home."

In a separate statement Wednesday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the administration "will continue to pursue all available avenues to bring Austin home and work tirelessly until we succeed in doing so."

Austin Tice's parents tell CNN they received support from Biden for efforts to get him home

"We continue to demand that Syrian officials fulfill their obligations under the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations to acknowledge the detention of Austin and every other U.S. national held in Syria, a responsibility under international law and an important step in securing their release," Blinken said. Another American, Majd Kamalmaz, was detained at a checkpoint in Damascus in February 2017 and has not been heard from since.

Biden met with Austin Tice's parents, Marc and Debra, in early May. Following that meeting, Marc Tice told CNN's Jake Tapper in an interview on the "The Lead" that Biden told them "he supported the efforts that are underway and other efforts that may create positive movement" to get Austin home.

"One of the efforts underway is pushing to get engagement and engagement that sustained," between the US and Syria, Marc Tice said at the time. The two nations do not have diplomatic relations.

In his statement Wednesday, Blinken said that "Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs Roger Carstens will continue to engage with the Syrian government in close coordination with the White House, Hostage Recovery Fusion Cell, and our team here at the State Department."

Carstens secretly traveled to Damascus and met with Assad regime officials in 2020 under the Trump administration. In May of this year, he met with Abbas Ibrahim, a top Lebanese security official, in Washington "to discuss US citizens who are missing or detained in Syria," State Department spokesperson Ned Price said at the time. Ibrahim, the chief of Lebanon's General Security Directorate, has played a role in securing the release of American detainees in the past, including Sam Goodwin from Syria and Nizar Zikka from Iran.

CNN's Chandelis Duster contributed to this report.

CNN · by Jennifer Hansler, CNN

7. Gary Schroen, Who Led the C.I.A. Into Afghanistan, Dies at 80

An American hero.

Gary Schroen, Who Led the C.I.A. Into Afghanistan, Dies at 80

The New York Times · by Clay Risen · August 10, 2022

Weeks before the troops arrived, he took a small team into the country to prepare for an invasion and begin the hunt for Osama bin Laden.

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The former C.I.A. officer Gary C. Schroen on the NBC News program “Meet the Press” in 2005, speaking about his book “First In: An Insider’s Account of How the C.I.A. Spearheaded the War on Terror in Afghanistan.”

By

Aug. 10, 2022

Gary C. Schroen, a veteran C.I.A. operative who, just weeks after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, led the first team of agents into Afghanistan to prepare for an invasion and begin the hunt for Osama bin Laden and his top lieutenants, died at his home in Alexandria, Va., on Aug. 1, one day after an American missile killed one of the last of those men, Ayman al-Zawahri. He was 80.

His wife, Anne McFadden, said the cause was complications of a fall.

Mr. Schroen spent more than 30 years with the C.I.A., running agents and espionage operations across the Middle East. At 59, he was already 11 days into the agency’s mandatory three-month retirement transition program when terrorists under bin Laden’s command attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

He spent the next few days stewing, frustrated that the skills and knowledge he had spent decades acquiring would go unused at the moment they were most valuable.

Then, late on the night of Sept. 13, he got word that Cofer Black, the director of the agency’s counterterrorist center, wanted to see him the next morning.

“Gary, I want you to take a small team of C.I.A. officers into Afghanistan,” Mr. Black told him, in a conversation that Mr. Schroen recalled in a 2005 book, “First In: An Insider’s Account of How the C.I.A. Spearheaded the War on Terror in Afghanistan,” and in multiple interviews. They were to connect with the Northern Alliance, an organization opposed to the Taliban, and persuade them to cooperate with the Americans.

“You are,” Mr. Black continued, “the best-qualified officer to lead this team.”

Mr. Schroen selected seven men and gathered the weapons, outdoor gear and food they would need. The mission was code-named Jawbreaker. At least one representative from the military was supposed to join them, but the Pentagon pulled out of the mission at the last minute, declaring it too dangerous.

“There was no rescue force,” Bruce Riedel, a former C.I.A. case officer who worked frequently with Mr. Schroen, said in a phone interview. “If they got in trouble, there were no American troops to come rescue them.”

Before Mr. Schroen left for the mission, Mr. Black took him aside.

“I want to make it clear what your real job is,” Mr. Schroen recalled Mr. Black telling him. “Once the Taliban are broken, your job is to find bin Laden, kill him and bring his head back on dry ice.”

They got to Afghanistan on Sept. 26, carrying laptops, satellite phones, instant coffee and $3 million in cash. For the next several weeks, until detachments from the Army’s Delta Force began to arrive, they were the only Americans operating in the country.

Northern Alliance soldiers look down onto a Taliban-controlled village in 2001. Mr. Schroen’s job in Afghanistan was to persuade the Northern Alliance to help the United States fight the Taliban.

Mr. Schroen had longstanding personal ties with the Northern Alliance, going back to his time as the C.I.A. station chief in Islamabad, Pakistan. He distributed money freely to show the seriousness of the coming American assault.

Within days, he had won over the Northern Alliance. By the time more American troops began to arrive, the ground was beginning to shift against the Taliban.

In a statement after Mr. Schroen’s death, William J. Burns, the director of the C.I.A., called him “a legend and inspiration to every Agency officer.”

Gary Charles Schroen was born on Nov. 6, 1941, in East St. Louis, Ill. His father, Emil, was a union electrician, and his mother, Fern (Finch) Schroen, was a homemaker.

Mr. Schroen was married and divorced twice before marrying Ms. McFadden in 2009. In addition to her, he is survived by his daughters, Kate Cowell and Jennifer Schroen. His son, Christopher, died in 2017. His sister, Donna Naylor, died in 2020.

Mr. Schroen joined the military after high school and served with the Army Security Agency, an intelligence unit, for three years. He later attended Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, in the St. Louis suburbs, where he studied English, and where the C.I.A. first approached him. He graduated in 1968 and became a case officer a year later.

He spent his entire career in the Directorate of Operations, shuffling between assignments in the Middle East and at C.I.A. headquarters in Virginia.

He later described, in general terms, the thrill of working in covert operations during the Cold War — and, in specific terms, the wave of negative publicity that followed revelations in the mid-1970s about the C.I.A.’s role in assassinations, coups and other nefarious deeds over the decades.

“I spent two weeks just reading files on the Middle East historical stuff, looking for bad things that had happened,” he said in an interview with the PBS program “Frontline” in 2006. “We all came away really shaken by just this feeling that a lot of people looked at us as a rogue organization.”

By the late 1980s, Mr. Schroen had risen to the top ranks of the agency’s Middle East operations. He served as station chief for Kabul, though for security reasons he had to work out of Pakistan. Although he was often warned not to, he crossed regularly into Afghanistan to meet with mujahedeen rebels, at one point coming under fire from hostile forces.

He spoke fluent Persian and Dari, a dialect of Persian spoken in Afghanistan, and was widely considered the agency’s leading expert on the country — “one of the go-to guys for the region,” Milton Bearden, who served as C.I.A. station chief in Pakistan, said in an interview.

Mr. Schroen returned to the region in the mid-1990s as the station chief in Islamabad, considered one of the agency’s most important postings. Concern about bin Laden and Al Qaeda was growing, and it grew faster after bin Laden orchestrated the attacks on two U.S. embassies in East Africa in 1998.

Mr. Schroen was among the loudest voices within the agency calling for the government to capture or, better yet, kill bin Laden as quickly as possible. Yet a cruise missile attack on his compound in Afghanistan missed him by an hour, and two other planned attacks were called off at the last minute.

Mr. Schroen came back to Washington in 1999 to become the deputy chief for the Near East in the Directorate of Operations. He announced his retirement in mid-2001, shortly before being brought back after Sept. 11.

He remained in Afghanistan for a few weeks after the American invasion began in earnest, in mid-October. He restarted his retirement process and formally left the agency at the end of the year.

At his retirement, he was among the most decorated figures in C.I.A. history.

Mr. Schroen continued to advise the agency as a contractor. He was one of a handful of former C.I.A. officials to openly criticize the decision to invade Iraq, which he felt detracted attention and resources from the fight against Al Qaeda.

“When I came back and heard that Iraq was being mentioned in the earliest moments after 9/11 as what we should attack, I thought, ‘Oh, my God. That can’t be true,’” he told “Frontline.” “‘Clearly bin Laden and his guys are sitting in Afghanistan; that’s where we’ve got to go. Don’t mess with Iraq; this has nothing to do with them.’”

The New York Times · by Clay Risen · August 10, 2022

8. The Army Is Hunting For More Soldier-Connected Tech

​Tech is great. But it can only help the soldier who has the cognitive abilities between his ears. We cannot neglect the education and training of our military personnel. War is still a thinking person;s game. He or she must have the cognitive abilities to exploit the technology. We need to prioritize and resource education and training on the same level we do for tech or all the tech in the world will be for naught.

The Army Is Hunting For More Soldier-Connected Tech

A recent solicitation calls for soldier-centered networking and information technology that will link existing and prototype technologies together.

defenseone.com · by Lauren C. Williams

The Army wants a small business to supply tech that can support and integrate everything from sensors to 5G and augmented reality headsets, in an effort to “optimize the ground soldier’s ability to shoot, move, and communicate”

The Ground Soldier Technology Workflow, Integration, and eXperience—or GS-TWIX—is an effort to link several technologies through both hardware and software, according to a solicitation notice.

The Army first revealed its intentions earlier this year with a request for information that highlighted six elements, including tech that can optimize sensor data; communications, like with the Nett Warrior program; and other ground-based systems needed for displaying information collected by sensors or other means. Other task elements focus on improving the survivability of these systems if exposed to chemical, biological or nuclear attacks, and the tactical implications of using 5G.

GS-TWIX seems to represent a piece of the Army’s ambition to more intricately connect data to troops and decision makers through improved sensors and networking capabilities. It also specifically calls for integration with the Army’s augmented reality headset, the Integrated Visual Augmentation System, which could indicate longer-term plans as the Army works out the system’s future.

“All applications shall be integrated with the software code base and hardware system for either Nett Warrior or IVAS,” the notice states, adding that the contractor must also supply a technical report on Chemical Biological Radiological and Nuclear Defense integration. IVAS is also mentioned in relation to Ground Soldier Systems Integration and Sensored Soldier.

But a final report on the IVAS’s latest test is still pending—as is a final decision on its future.

Douglas Bush, the Army’s chief buyer, declined to give details on whether the system would be fielded in the coming months, but told reporters last month that there are “still some technology issues with regard to the exact technology in the platform that need further improvement.”

“I think we have a good system, it needs further improvement. There's also, because this is a wearable technology, there are kind of human factors engineering aspects of how it is on a soldier that we again learned what—good and bad—in terms of what they liked and what they didn't like and what was, rather than just using the term liked or didn't like, what was most helpful to them in accomplishing their missions,” Bush said, adding that the service secretary has the final say on whether the system will move forward.

The Army plans to submit the system’s final test reports to Congress by early fall and have a decision on IVAS’s future before then, he said.

Submissions for the proposal are due by Aug. 22.

defenseone.com · by Lauren C. Williams​

9. Is Russia a State Sponsor of Terror?

I disagree with my friend Doug Bandow. I think I understand his arguments but I think the Soviet Union was a state sponsor and I think Russia remains so.

That said, I do agree that we do throw around the word terrorism too much.

Is Russia a State Sponsor of Terror? - The American Conservative

The American Conservative · by Doug Bandow · August 11, 2022

War continues to rage between Russia and Ukraine. The latter country is the victim of a terrible act of aggression and already has suffered greatly, with thousands of soldiers dead, millions of civilians displaced, and billions of dollars in damages. The fighting could continue for months or longer.

Kiev remains afloat due to abundant Western aid. President Volodymyr Zelensky has pushed the West for active military intervention, so far unsuccessfully. His latest gambit is to urge the Biden administration to declare Moscow a state sponsor of terrorism.

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There is just one problem with the idea: Russia is not a state sponsor of terrorism.

Of course, the Putin regime is evil, having brutally invaded its neighbor. There was no justification for Russia’s aggression, though allied violations of multiple security assurances and expansion of NATO to Russia’s border help explain his decision. Moscow is a criminal actor. However, that does not mean it is a terrorist state.

Zelensky’s desire to get as much for his country from the West is understandable. In a comparable situation, any American president should do the same. Indeed, when seeking independence the American colonists assiduously lobbied the French monarchy for aid, which turned out to be critical for their victory. (Ironically, Paris’s war with Great Britain ultimately was disastrous for France, bleeding the monarchy financially and thereby contributing to the subsequent French Revolution. More evidence that no good deed goes unpunished, which Washington should bear in mind today.)

The terrorism designation is mostly meaningless, and would apply modest economic sanctions compared to those already imposed. The bill would compromise Russia’s sovereign immunity, but any additional impact likely would be marginal. Secretary of State Antony Blinken made this point: “The costs that have been imposed on Russia by us and by other countries are absolutely in line with the consequences that would follow from designation as a state sponsor of terrorism.” Calling a state or movement “terrorist” is primarily symbolic, a bit of name-calling to discredit the discreditable.

There still might be reason to do so if those designated as terrorists were, in fact, terrorists. However, the label has been repeatedly applied to regimes and movements that had not committed terrorism or long since abandoned the practice—Cuba, North Korea, Yemen (Ansar Allah, or the Houthis), Syria, Sudan, Iraq, and even Iran. In these cases, Washington tagged regimes that it did not like, often for very good reasons. But successive U.S. administrations demonstrated that being called a state sponsor of terrorism has nothing to do with terrorism.

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Indeed, by the current standard, numerous countries could be placed on the state-sponsor-of-terror list, such as Myanmar/Burma, China, Eritrea, Turkmenistan, Pakistan, Rwanda, Nigeria, and Zimbabwe, just to name a few. Several U.S. allies deserve to be on such a list, too: United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Turkey, and Egypt. So does Saudi Arabia, headed by Crown Prince Mohammed “Slice ‘n Dice” bin Salman, notable for murdering and dismembering his critics. The Kingdom is more repressive domestically and has killed more people internationally than even Russia.

By these loose standards, you could even argue that the U.S., whose wars over the last two decades have resulted in far more civilian deaths than anything Russia has done in Ukraine, should go on that same list. After all, Washington aided Saudi Arabia and the UAE in their murderous aggression against Yemen. The Bush II administration invaded Iraq under false pretenses, wrecking the country and triggering a sectarian conflict that consumed hundreds of thousands of civilian lives. America’s U.N. ambassador earlier admitted to the calculated killing of a half million Iraqi children through economic sanctions: “we think the price is worth it,” she infamously declared. Even Vladimir Putin does not speak so coldly about the mass killing of innocents.

The most obvious reason not to put Moscow on the list is to stop misusing a designation originally meant to apply to what most people would understand as terrorism. The practice of terrorism was recognized as a special horror and believed to warrant unique treatment. The label loses its meaning when applied for reasons other than a country’s having sponsored terrorism. It would be better to simply abolish the practice of naming countries state sponsors of terror than to continue diluting the label.

By separating the classification from the act, Washington has turned the label into just another special-interest contest, used to satisfy the clamorous and influential. That reduces the impact of the label, even when it is applied properly.

Republican presidents place Cuba on the list in an attempt to win votes in southern Florida, while Saudi Arabia and UAE, perpetrators of mass war crimes in Yemen, lobby to get the Yemeni Houthis placed on the list. And now there is substantial support on Capitol Hill to override presidential discretion and add Moscow by legislative fiat.

Among the most avid proponents of targeting Russia is Sen. Lindsey Graham, who declared: “To me, Putin is now sitting on top of a state terrorist apparatus.” Graham should know, since he wanted America to intervene in every war he spied—including Iraq, Libya, and Syria. He even spoke positively about attacking North Korea and triggering a nuclear conflict; at least the deaths would be “over there,” he declared, and not in America. Of course, total casualties could be in the hundreds of thousands or even more. Who is the real terrorist?

Including Moscow on the list would have two significant negative impacts on U.S. policy. First, it would harm our relations with other nations that deal with Russia. Graham seems enthused at the possibility of declaring economic war on the entire world, proclaiming: “It means that doing business with Russia, with that designation, gets to be exceedingly hard.” Imbued with hubris from years past, he would treat the rest of the world as a conquered province.

Washington would immediately be crossways with European countries still dealing with Moscow on energy. Moreover, given the refusal of most of the world outside of America, Europe, and U.S. allies in Asia to sanction Moscow—holdouts include such notable states such as China, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, South Africa, and Brazil—Washington could find itself in financial combat almost everywhere. On this issue the Global South would likely stand united. Its members long ago tired of U.S. hypocrisy. Many blame Washington for their current economic difficulties and likely would resist additional restrictions, forcing the Biden administration to decide how many adversaries it is willing to confront at once.

The designation also would make a negotiated settlement to the ongoing war more difficult. After all, who wants to talk to “terrorists”? Even humanitarian accords, such as that reached to move Ukrainian grain to market, would become more difficult to draft and promote. Anyone seeking to make a deal with Moscow would be more vulnerable to the sort of demagoguery routinely employed by Republicans going back to the Bush administration’s dishonest-but-effective campaign for the Iraq invasion. Subsequent exposure of the administration’s manifold and costly lies did not repair the damage done to the reputations of Bush’s political opponents.

Peace often requires making difficult compromises with unsavory people and movements. Yet negotiations with Moscow might be further impeded by the almost complete breakdown in relations if Russia acted on threats to close America’s embassy or break diplomatic relations. Neither happened even during the worst days of the Cold War. However, bilateral ties continue to fray. In Ukraine, U.S. officials have claimed credit for killing Russian generals and sinking Russian ships. They have stated that their goal is to weaken Moscow; to that end, they have labelled President Vladimir Putin a war criminal and called for his ouster. Calling him a terrorist, the worst designation in Washington’s official vocabulary, would push him even further toward fully rupturing the U.S.-Russian relationship.

Some advocates of applying the terrorism designation to Russia seem oblivious to the practical consequences of such an act. In their view, it is just another way to exhibit solidarity with Kiev. But Congress could achieve that by passing a resolution. The president could issue a proclamation of eternal friendship. Unfortunately, designating Russia a terrorist state would further drain the concept of meaning and make it harder to negotiate an end to the conflict. The only people who would benefit are those in the West who hope to fight Russia to the last Ukrainian, irrespective of the devastating consequences for Ukraine.

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Finally, it is important for Americans to reclaim their political and legislative processes from outsiders seeking to capture U.S. policy. Acting as if he were a Senate colleague of Graham’s, Ukraine’s Zelensky in June declared “the urgent need to enshrine [the terrorism designation] legally.” Doing so might be in Kiev’s interest, but America’s interest is what the president and Congress both should be defending.

Zelensky has bravely rallied his country to resist Russia’s invasion. However, his political demands have overstepped the boundaries for any sovereign state. Graham and his colleagues should think first of America when making U.S. policy.

Russia committed a grave crime by invading Ukraine. Washington has appropriately aided Ukraine in its defense. However, Moscow is no more a terrorist state than many of Washington’s allies. A terrorist designation should be restricted to terrorists. The Biden administration should seek to expand, not contract, opportunities to end the conflict in Ukraine.

The American Conservative · by Doug Bandow · August 11, 2022

10. Intelligence Expert: Is TikTok China's Trojan Horse?

​Food for thought. Every American kid seems connected to Tik Tok. What are the implications?

Intelligence Expert: Is TikTok China's Trojan Horse?

Newsweek · by Michael Lammbrau · August 8, 2022

On June 28, 2022, U.S. FCC commissioner Brendan Carr called on "Apple and Google to remove TikTok from their app stores for its pattern of surreptitious data practices" in a letter to the two tech companies. He states "TikTok is not just another video app. That's the sheep's clothing. It harvests swaths of sensitive data that new reports show are being accessed in Beijing." As managing director of a cyber security company with a whitepaper focused on TikTok and a former intelligence professor, this announcement falls in line with other behavior exhibited by China and begs the question: is TikTok a trojan horse?

New reports by Buzzfeed and Internet 2.0 reveal that TikTok has the capability to function as a sophisticated collection and surveillance tool that records extensive amounts of personally identifiable information for the Chinese government. Why does this theory stand up to scrutiny? One reason is that data collected in the U.S. has repeatedly been available in China.

On June 30, TikTok responded in a letter to the U.S. Senators admitting, "Employees outside the U.S., including China-based employees, can have access to TikTok U.S. user data." This is not a surprising revelation in a time without privacy. Institutions like the ACLU in 2020 advocated for Chinese apps TikTok and WeChat to exist on U.S. app stores despite the banning of every major U.S. tech firm in China. The ACLU continues to champion the cause of China and criticize the Biden Administration citing free speech protection. The administration's position is not a surprise considering Biden himself made declarations on the campaign trail in 2020 identifying TikTok as a "matter of genuine concern" since the "Chinese operation" had "Access to over 100 million young people particularly in the United States of America."

China has banned all major U.S. tech firms for years, from Google to Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Reddit and Snapchat. Even Winnie the Pooh is not safe from censorship, suffering eternal banishment from China internet for his striking resemblance to Xi Jinping. China has expelled or imprisoned foreign journalists and professionals accusing them of espionage.

These actions, along with the data collection practices through TikTok, plant the seed that China is waging an all-out war on U.S. media, corporations, academic institutions and even game companies. When the CCP brutally suppressed and destroyed democratic institutions, organizations and citizens of Hong Kong, anyone who supported the Hong Kong Freedom Protests was attacked, including game companies, the television show South Park and even the Houston Rockets GM Daryl Morey was sacked.

Mark Kern, one of the designers for Blizzard, stated, "We are in a situation where unlimited Communist money dictates our American values. We censor our games for China, we censor our movies for China. Now, game companies are silencing voices for freedom and democracy."

China and Russia Bans

In the Spring of 2022, Russia banned Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Radio Free Europe, the BBC and other news services. Companies in the U.S. responded by banning Russian state media from their platforms: YouTube removed the RT news channel, DirectTV removed RT America and Apple deleted the RT news app.

Recently, in the first face-to-face meeting between U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, Blinken told reporters, "We are concerned about the PRC's alignment with Russia." He stated that he did not think China was behaving in a neutral way as it had supported Russia in the United Nations and "amplified Russian propaganda."

It is clear the Chinese government's actions have a history of misalignment with their stated desires to productively contribute to the global order. The reports of U.S. data collected from TikTok being available in China are simply the latest example. If the U.S. government, as a matter of national security, does not ban TikTok from the U.S. market and U.S. devices, the United States Department of Defense and other U.S. departments need to pick up where it left off and ban the use of TikTok on government and personal devices. TikTok is proving itself to be more than an application. TikTok has the capability for surveillance and influence line-of-effort funded and supported by the Chinese government (and its friends). If U.S. leadership is concerned with influence operations, botnets, misinformation and disinformation campaigns by other foreign governments, why wouldn't they remove the trojan horse that can allow an enemy in the front door?

Newsweek · by Michael Lammbrau · August 8, 2022​

11. What-If DC War Game Maps Huge Toll of a Future US-China War Over Taiwan

This should be thoroughly studied. Graphics and video at the link

What-If DC War Game Maps Huge Toll of a Future US-China War Over Taiwan

A think-tank exercise with former Pentagon officials foresees grim results.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-08-09/what-if-war-game-for-a-us-china-conflict-sees-a-heavy-toll?utm_source=pocket_mylist

Tony Capaccio

August 9, 2022 at 9:30 AM GMT+9

As China waged extensive military exercises off of Taiwan last week, a group of American defense experts in Washington was focused on their own simulation of an eventual — but for now entirely hypothetical — US-China war over the island.

The unofficial what-if game is being conducted on the fifth floor of an office building not far from the White House, and it posits a US military response to a Chinese invasion in 2026. Even though the participants bring an American perspective, they are finding that a US-Taiwan victory, if there is one, could come at a huge cost.

“The results are showing that under most — though not all — scenarios, Taiwan can repel an invasion,” said Mark Cancian, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, where the war games are being held. “However, the cost will be very high to the Taiwanese infrastructure and economy and to US forces in the Pacific.”

In sessions that will run through September, retired US generals and Navy officers and former Pentagon officials hunch like chess players over tabletops along with analysts from the CSIS think tank. They move forces depicted as blue and red boxes and small wooden squares over maps of the Western Pacific and Taiwan. The results will be released to the public in December.

Warplanes of the Eastern Theater Command of the Chinese People's Liberation Army PLA conduct operations during joint combat training exercises around Taiwan, on Aug. 7.Photographer: Gong Yulong/Xinhua /Getty Images

The not-necessarily-so assumption used in most of the scenarios: China invades Taiwan to force unification with the self-governed island, and the US decides to intervene heavily with its military. Also assumed but far from certain: Japan grants expanded rights to use US bases located on its territory, while stopping short of intervening directly unless Japanese land is attacked. Nuclear weapons aren’t used in the scenarios, and the weapons available are based on capabilities the nations have demonstrated or have concrete plans to deploy by 2026. 

China’s test-firing of missiles in recent days in response to US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan underscored a Chinese capability that’s already assumed in the gameplay.

In 18 of the 22 rounds of the game played to this point, Chinese missiles sink a large part of the US and Japanese surface fleet and destroy “hundreds of aircraft on the ground,” according to Cancian, a former White House defense budget analyst and retired US Marine. “However, allied air and naval counterattacks hammer the exposed Chinese amphibious and surface fleet, eventually sinking about 150 ships.”

Chinese and U.S. Forces Could Clash Over Taiwan

Taiwan’s outlying islands would likely be among the first targets of an invasion

Sources: The Chinese Invasion Threat, Natural Earth, International Institute for Strategic Studies; U.S. Department of Defense, GlobalSecurity.org

“The reason for the high US losses is that the United States cannot conduct a systematic campaign to take down Chinese defenses before moving in close,” he said. “The United States must send forces to attack the Chinese fleet, especially the amphibious ships, before establishing air or maritime superiority,” he said. “To get a sense of the scale of the losses, in our last game iteration, the United States lost over 900 fighter/attack aircraft in a four-week conflict. That’s about half the Navy and Air Force inventory.” 

The Chinese missile force “is devastating while the inventory lasts” so US submarines and bombers with long-range missiles “are particularly important,” he said. “For the Taiwanese, anti-ship missiles are important, surface ships and aircraft less so.” Surface ships “have a hard time surviving as long as the Chinese have long-range missiles available,” Cancian said.

The game players haven’t made any estimates so far on the number of lives that would be lost or the sweeping economic impact of such a conflict between the US and China, the world’s two largest economies.

Earlier: Taiwan Faces Urgent Fighter Pilot Shortage as Xi Tests Defenses

Taiwan’s defense capabilities are an especially important part of the calculations, because its forces would be responsible for blunting and containing Chinese landings from the south — a scenario played out in the simulation.

“The success or failure of the ground war depends entirely on the Taiwanese forces,” Cancian said. “In all game iterations so far, the Chinese could establish a beachhead but in most circumstances cannot expand it. The attrition of their amphibious fleet limits the forces they can deploy and sustain. In a few instances, the Chinese were able to hold part of the island but not conquer the entire island.”

Taiwan’s Best Landing Sites Are Well Defended

Sources: The Chinese Invasion Threat, NASA, OpenStreetMap contributors, Natural Earth, Google Earth

Anti-ship missiles — US-made Harpoons and Taiwanese-made weapons that the island democracy fields — would play a large role in the early destruction of the Chinese amphibious landing force, while Taiwan’s Navy and half of its air force would be destroyed in the first days of the conflict, according to the modeling so far.

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“Taiwan is a large island, and its army is not small,” said Eric Heginbotham, a principal research scientist at the MIT Center for International Studies in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who’s participating in the war game. “But from a qualitative standpoint, Taiwan’s army is not at all what it should be, and we have built that into the game. The transition to an all-volunteer military has been botched, and although conscripts remain an important component, the conscripts serve only four months.”

Perhaps the most disconcerting takeaway for Washington: The high-cost sequences conducted so far aren’t even the most challenging hypotheticals.

Chinese People's Liberation Army Air Force personnel marching Guangshui, Hubei, in 2017.Source: AFP/Getty Images

“We have not run the most pessimistic scenarios, where China might conquer the entire island,” Cancian said.

He said the four remaining rounds of the war games will “investigate some alternative scenarios — like the US delaying its support for Taiwan, strict Japanese neutrality and a pessimistic scenario that gives China a variety of advantages.”

David Ochmanek, a Rand Corp. senior defense researcher and former US deputy assistant defense secretary, said a CSIS exercise he participated in was “well-run and credibly adjudicated.” Ochmanek, who has participated in dozens of China-US war games, both unclassified and classified, said, “It basically replicated the results of other games that I’ve played that were set in the same time epoch and used the same basic scenario.” 

As China waged extensive military exercises off of Taiwan last week, a group of American defense experts in Washington was focused on their own simulation of an eventual — but for now entirely hypothetical — US-China war over the island.

The unofficial what-if game is being conducted on the fifth floor of an office building not far from the White House, and it posits a US military response to a Chinese invasion in 2026. Even though the participants bring an American perspective, they are finding that a US-Taiwan victory, if there is one, could come at a huge cost.

“The results are showing that under most — though not all — scenarios, Taiwan can repel an invasion,” said Mark Cancian, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, where the war games are being held. “However, the cost will be very high to the Taiwanese infrastructure and economy and to US forces in the Pacific.”

In sessions that will run through September, retired US generals and Navy officers and former Pentagon officials hunch like chess players over tabletops along with analysts from the CSIS think tank. They move forces depicted as blue and red boxes and small wooden squares over maps of the Western Pacific and Taiwan. The results will be released to the public in December.

Warplanes of the Eastern Theater Command of the Chinese People's Liberation Army PLA conduct operations during joint combat training exercises around Taiwan, on Aug. 7.Photographer: Gong Yulong/Xinhua /Getty Images

The not-necessarily-so assumption used in most of the scenarios: China invades Taiwan to force unification with the self-governed island, and the US decides to intervene heavily with its military. Also assumed but far from certain: Japan grants expanded rights to use US bases located on its territory, while stopping short of intervening directly unless Japanese land is attacked. Nuclear weapons aren’t used in the scenarios, and the weapons available are based on capabilities the nations have demonstrated or have concrete plans to deploy by 2026. 

China’s test-firing of missiles in recent days in response to US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan underscored a Chinese capability that’s already assumed in the gameplay.

In 18 of the 22 rounds of the game played to this point, Chinese missiles sink a large part of the US and Japanese surface fleet and destroy “hundreds of aircraft on the ground,” according to Cancian, a former White House defense budget analyst and retired US Marine. “However, allied air and naval counterattacks hammer the exposed Chinese amphibious and surface fleet, eventually sinking about 150 ships.”

Chinese and U.S. Forces Could Clash Over Taiwan

Taiwan’s outlying islands would likely be among the first targets of an invasion

Sources: The Chinese Invasion Threat, Natural Earth, International Institute for Strategic Studies; U.S. Department of Defense, GlobalSecurity.org

“The reason for the high US losses is that the United States cannot conduct a systematic campaign to take down Chinese defenses before moving in close,” he said. “The United States must send forces to attack the Chinese fleet, especially the amphibious ships, before establishing air or maritime superiority,” he said. “To get a sense of the scale of the losses, in our last game iteration, the United States lost over 900 fighter/attack aircraft in a four-week conflict. That’s about half the Navy and Air Force inventory.” 

The Chinese missile force “is devastating while the inventory lasts” so US submarines and bombers with long-range missiles “are particularly important,” he said. “For the Taiwanese, anti-ship missiles are important, surface ships and aircraft less so.” Surface ships “have a hard time surviving as long as the Chinese have long-range missiles available,” Cancian said.

The game players haven’t made any estimates so far on the number of lives that would be lost or the sweeping economic impact of such a conflict between the US and China, the world’s two largest economies.

Earlier: Taiwan Faces Urgent Fighter Pilot Shortage as Xi Tests Defenses

Taiwan’s defense capabilities are an especially important part of the calculations, because its forces would be responsible for blunting and containing Chinese landings from the south — a scenario played out in the simulation.

“The success or failure of the ground war depends entirely on the Taiwanese forces,” Cancian said. “In all game iterations so far, the Chinese could establish a beachhead but in most circumstances cannot expand it. The attrition of their amphibious fleet limits the forces they can deploy and sustain. In a few instances, the Chinese were able to hold part of the island but not conquer the entire island.”

Taiwan’s Best Landing Sites Are Well Defended

Sources: The Chinese Invasion Threat, NASA, OpenStreetMap contributors, Natural Earth, Google Earth

Anti-ship missiles — US-made Harpoons and Taiwanese-made weapons that the island democracy fields — would play a large role in the early destruction of the Chinese amphibious landing force, while Taiwan’s Navy and half of its air force would be destroyed in the first days of the conflict, according to the modeling so far.

The latest in global politics

Get insight from reporters around the world in the Balance of Power newsletter.

Email

Sign Up

By submitting my information, I agree to the Privacy Policy and Terms of Service and to receive offers and promotions from Bloomberg.

“Taiwan is a large island, and its army is not small,” said Eric Heginbotham, a principal research scientist at the MIT Center for International Studies in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who’s participating in the war game. “But from a qualitative standpoint, Taiwan’s army is not at all what it should be, and we have built that into the game. The transition to an all-volunteer military has been botched, and although conscripts remain an important component, the conscripts serve only four months.”

Perhaps the most disconcerting takeaway for Washington: The high-cost sequences conducted so far aren’t even the most challenging hypotheticals.

Chinese People's Liberation Army Air Force personnel marching Guangshui, Hubei, in 2017.Source: AFP/Getty Images

“We have not run the most pessimistic scenarios, where China might conquer the entire island,” Cancian said.

He said the four remaining rounds of the war games will “investigate some alternative scenarios — like the US delaying its support for Taiwan, strict Japanese neutrality and a pessimistic scenario that gives China a variety of advantages.”

David Ochmanek, a Rand Corp. senior defense researcher and former US deputy assistant defense secretary, said a CSIS exercise he participated in was “well-run and credibly adjudicated.” Ochmanek, who has participated in dozens of China-US war games, both unclassified and classified, said, “It basically replicated the results of other games that I’ve played that were set in the same time epoch and used the same basic scenario.” 

The keys to “any good game are to get knowledgeable players who can faithfully and creatively simulate what their nation’s forces would do and to get adjudicators — umpires, essentially — who can credibly assess the outcomes of engagements and battles,” Ochmanek said.

War games are played frequently by governments and outside organizations worldwide. But instructions to the participants in the CSIS project say that although the Pentagon “has conducted many such war games, they are all classified. As a result, information in the public domain is extremely limited. This project will fill that gap in public knowledge and thereby encourage discussion about US force structure and policies.”

The keys to “any good game are to get knowledgeable players who can faithfully and creatively simulate what their nation’s forces would do and to get adjudicators — umpires, essentially — who can credibly assess the outcomes of engagements and battles,” Ochmanek said.

War games are played frequently by governments and outside organizations worldwide. But instructions to the participants in the CSIS project say that although the Pentagon “has conducted many such war games, they are all classified. As a result, information in the public domain is extremely limited. This project will fill that gap in public knowledge and thereby encourage discussion about US force structure and policies.”

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This should be thoroughly studied. Graphics and video at the link

What-If DC War Game Maps Huge Toll of a Future US-China War Over Taiwan

A think-tank exercise with former Pentagon officials foresees grim results.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-08-09/what-if-war-game-for-a-us-china-conflict-sees-a-heavy-toll?utm_source=pocket_mylist

Tony Capaccio

August 9, 2022 at 9:30 AM GMT+9

As China waged extensive military exercises off of Taiwan last week, a group of American defense experts in Washington was focused on their own simulation of an eventual — but for now entirely hypothetical — US-China war over the island.

The unofficial what-if game is being conducted on the fifth floor of an office building not far from the White House, and it posits a US military response to a Chinese invasion in 2026. Even though the participants bring an American perspective, they are finding that a US-Taiwan victory, if there is one, could come at a huge cost.

“The results are showing that under most — though not all — scenarios, Taiwan can repel an invasion,” said Mark Cancian, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, where the war games are being held. “However, the cost will be very high to the Taiwanese infrastructure and economy and to US forces in the Pacific.”

In sessions that will run through September, retired US generals and Navy officers and former Pentagon officials hunch like chess players over tabletops along with analysts from the CSIS think tank. They move forces depicted as blue and red boxes and small wooden squares over maps of the Western Pacific and Taiwan. The results will be released to the public in December.

Warplanes of the Eastern Theater Command of the Chinese People's Liberation Army PLA conduct operations during joint combat training exercises around Taiwan, on Aug. 7.Photographer: Gong Yulong/Xinhua /Getty Images

The not-necessarily-so assumption used in most of the scenarios: China invades Taiwan to force unification with the self-governed island, and the US decides to intervene heavily with its military. Also assumed but far from certain: Japan grants expanded rights to use US bases located on its territory, while stopping short of intervening directly unless Japanese land is attacked. Nuclear weapons aren’t used in the scenarios, and the weapons available are based on capabilities the nations have demonstrated or have concrete plans to deploy by 2026. 

China’s test-firing of missiles in recent days in response to US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan underscored a Chinese capability that’s already assumed in the gameplay.

In 18 of the 22 rounds of the game played to this point, Chinese missiles sink a large part of the US and Japanese surface fleet and destroy “hundreds of aircraft on the ground,” according to Cancian, a former White House defense budget analyst and retired US Marine. “However, allied air and naval counterattacks hammer the exposed Chinese amphibious and surface fleet, eventually sinking about 150 ships.”

Chinese and U.S. Forces Could Clash Over Taiwan

Taiwan’s outlying islands would likely be among the first targets of an invasion

Sources: The Chinese Invasion Threat, Natural Earth, International Institute for Strategic Studies; U.S. Department of Defense, GlobalSecurity.org

“The reason for the high US losses is that the United States cannot conduct a systematic campaign to take down Chinese defenses before moving in close,” he said. “The United States must send forces to attack the Chinese fleet, especially the amphibious ships, before establishing air or maritime superiority,” he said. “To get a sense of the scale of the losses, in our last game iteration, the United States lost over 900 fighter/attack aircraft in a four-week conflict. That’s about half the Navy and Air Force inventory.” 

The Chinese missile force “is devastating while the inventory lasts” so US submarines and bombers with long-range missiles “are particularly important,” he said. “For the Taiwanese, anti-ship missiles are important, surface ships and aircraft less so.” Surface ships “have a hard time surviving as long as the Chinese have long-range missiles available,” Cancian said.

The game players haven’t made any estimates so far on the number of lives that would be lost or the sweeping economic impact of such a conflict between the US and China, the world’s two largest economies.

Earlier: Taiwan Faces Urgent Fighter Pilot Shortage as Xi Tests Defenses

Taiwan’s defense capabilities are an especially important part of the calculations, because its forces would be responsible for blunting and containing Chinese landings from the south — a scenario played out in the simulation.

“The success or failure of the ground war depends entirely on the Taiwanese forces,” Cancian said. “In all game iterations so far, the Chinese could establish a beachhead but in most circumstances cannot expand it. The attrition of their amphibious fleet limits the forces they can deploy and sustain. In a few instances, the Chinese were able to hold part of the island but not conquer the entire island.”

Taiwan’s Best Landing Sites Are Well Defended

Sources: The Chinese Invasion Threat, NASA, OpenStreetMap contributors, Natural Earth, Google Earth

Anti-ship missiles — US-made Harpoons and Taiwanese-made weapons that the island democracy fields — would play a large role in the early destruction of the Chinese amphibious landing force, while Taiwan’s Navy and half of its air force would be destroyed in the first days of the conflict, according to the modeling so far.

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“Taiwan is a large island, and its army is not small,” said Eric Heginbotham, a principal research scientist at the MIT Center for International Studies in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who’s participating in the war game. “But from a qualitative standpoint, Taiwan’s army is not at all what it should be, and we have built that into the game. The transition to an all-volunteer military has been botched, and although conscripts remain an important component, the conscripts serve only four months.”

Perhaps the most disconcerting takeaway for Washington: The high-cost sequences conducted so far aren’t even the most challenging hypotheticals.

Chinese People's Liberation Army Air Force personnel marching Guangshui, Hubei, in 2017.Source: AFP/Getty Images

“We have not run the most pessimistic scenarios, where China might conquer the entire island,” Cancian said.

He said the four remaining rounds of the war games will “investigate some alternative scenarios — like the US delaying its support for Taiwan, strict Japanese neutrality and a pessimistic scenario that gives China a variety of advantages.”

David Ochmanek, a Rand Corp. senior defense researcher and former US deputy assistant defense secretary, said a CSIS exercise he participated in was “well-run and credibly adjudicated.” Ochmanek, who has participated in dozens of China-US war games, both unclassified and classified, said, “It basically replicated the results of other games that I’ve played that were set in the same time epoch and used the same basic scenario.” 

As China waged extensive military exercises off of Taiwan last week, a group of American defense experts in Washington was focused on their own simulation of an eventual — but for now entirely hypothetical — US-China war over the island.

The unofficial what-if game is being conducted on the fifth floor of an office building not far from the White House, and it posits a US military response to a Chinese invasion in 2026. Even though the participants bring an American perspective, they are finding that a US-Taiwan victory, if there is one, could come at a huge cost.

“The results are showing that under most — though not all — scenarios, Taiwan can repel an invasion,” said Mark Cancian, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, where the war games are being held. “However, the cost will be very high to the Taiwanese infrastructure and economy and to US forces in the Pacific.”

In sessions that will run through September, retired US generals and Navy officers and former Pentagon officials hunch like chess players over tabletops along with analysts from the CSIS think tank. They move forces depicted as blue and red boxes and small wooden squares over maps of the Western Pacific and Taiwan. The results will be released to the public in December.

Warplanes of the Eastern Theater Command of the Chinese People's Liberation Army PLA conduct operations during joint combat training exercises around Taiwan, on Aug. 7.Photographer: Gong Yulong/Xinhua /Getty Images

The not-necessarily-so assumption used in most of the scenarios: China invades Taiwan to force unification with the self-governed island, and the US decides to intervene heavily with its military. Also assumed but far from certain: Japan grants expanded rights to use US bases located on its territory, while stopping short of intervening directly unless Japanese land is attacked. Nuclear weapons aren’t used in the scenarios, and the weapons available are based on capabilities the nations have demonstrated or have concrete plans to deploy by 2026. 

China’s test-firing of missiles in recent days in response to US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan underscored a Chinese capability that’s already assumed in the gameplay.

In 18 of the 22 rounds of the game played to this point, Chinese missiles sink a large part of the US and Japanese surface fleet and destroy “hundreds of aircraft on the ground,” according to Cancian, a former White House defense budget analyst and retired US Marine. “However, allied air and naval counterattacks hammer the exposed Chinese amphibious and surface fleet, eventually sinking about 150 ships.”

Chinese and U.S. Forces Could Clash Over Taiwan

Taiwan’s outlying islands would likely be among the first targets of an invasion

Sources: The Chinese Invasion Threat, Natural Earth, International Institute for Strategic Studies; U.S. Department of Defense, GlobalSecurity.org

“The reason for the high US losses is that the United States cannot conduct a systematic campaign to take down Chinese defenses before moving in close,” he said. “The United States must send forces to attack the Chinese fleet, especially the amphibious ships, before establishing air or maritime superiority,” he said. “To get a sense of the scale of the losses, in our last game iteration, the United States lost over 900 fighter/attack aircraft in a four-week conflict. That’s about half the Navy and Air Force inventory.” 

The Chinese missile force “is devastating while the inventory lasts” so US submarines and bombers with long-range missiles “are particularly important,” he said. “For the Taiwanese, anti-ship missiles are important, surface ships and aircraft less so.” Surface ships “have a hard time surviving as long as the Chinese have long-range missiles available,” Cancian said.

The game players haven’t made any estimates so far on the number of lives that would be lost or the sweeping economic impact of such a conflict between the US and China, the world’s two largest economies.

Earlier: Taiwan Faces Urgent Fighter Pilot Shortage as Xi Tests Defenses

Taiwan’s defense capabilities are an especially important part of the calculations, because its forces would be responsible for blunting and containing Chinese landings from the south — a scenario played out in the simulation.

“The success or failure of the ground war depends entirely on the Taiwanese forces,” Cancian said. “In all game iterations so far, the Chinese could establish a beachhead but in most circumstances cannot expand it. The attrition of their amphibious fleet limits the forces they can deploy and sustain. In a few instances, the Chinese were able to hold part of the island but not conquer the entire island.”

Taiwan’s Best Landing Sites Are Well Defended

Sources: The Chinese Invasion Threat, NASA, OpenStreetMap contributors, Natural Earth, Google Earth

Anti-ship missiles — US-made Harpoons and Taiwanese-made weapons that the island democracy fields — would play a large role in the early destruction of the Chinese amphibious landing force, while Taiwan’s Navy and half of its air force would be destroyed in the first days of the conflict, according to the modeling so far.

The latest in global politics

Get insight from reporters around the world in the Balance of Power newsletter.

Email

Sign Up

By submitting my information, I agree to the Privacy Policy and Terms of Service and to receive offers and promotions from Bloomberg.

“Taiwan is a large island, and its army is not small,” said Eric Heginbotham, a principal research scientist at the MIT Center for International Studies in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who’s participating in the war game. “But from a qualitative standpoint, Taiwan’s army is not at all what it should be, and we have built that into the game. The transition to an all-volunteer military has been botched, and although conscripts remain an important component, the conscripts serve only four months.”

Perhaps the most disconcerting takeaway for Washington: The high-cost sequences conducted so far aren’t even the most challenging hypotheticals.

Chinese People's Liberation Army Air Force personnel marching Guangshui, Hubei, in 2017.Source: AFP/Getty Images

“We have not run the most pessimistic scenarios, where China might conquer the entire island,” Cancian said.

He said the four remaining rounds of the war games will “investigate some alternative scenarios — like the US delaying its support for Taiwan, strict Japanese neutrality and a pessimistic scenario that gives China a variety of advantages.”

David Ochmanek, a Rand Corp. senior defense researcher and former US deputy assistant defense secretary, said a CSIS exercise he participated in was “well-run and credibly adjudicated.” Ochmanek, who has participated in dozens of China-US war games, both unclassified and classified, said, “It basically replicated the results of other games that I’ve played that were set in the same time epoch and used the same basic scenario.” 

The keys to “any good game are to get knowledgeable players who can faithfully and creatively simulate what their nation’s forces would do and to get adjudicators — umpires, essentially — who can credibly assess the outcomes of engagements and battles,” Ochmanek said.

War games are played frequently by governments and outside organizations worldwide. But instructions to the participants in the CSIS project say that although the Pentagon “has conducted many such war games, they are all classified. As a result, information in the public domain is extremely limited. This project will fill that gap in public knowledge and thereby encourage discussion about US force structure and policies.”

The keys to “any good game are to get knowledgeable players who can faithfully and creatively simulate what their nation’s forces would do and to get adjudicators — umpires, essentially — who can credibly assess the outcomes of engagements and battles,” Ochmanek said.

War games are played frequently by governments and outside organizations worldwide. But instructions to the participants in the CSIS project say that although the Pentagon “has conducted many such war games, they are all classified. As a result, information in the public domain is extremely limited. This project will fill that gap in public knowledge and thereby encourage discussion about US force structure and policies.”

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12. The Hacking of Starlink Terminals Has Begun

I think we have been waiting for this to happen. Should be no surprise.

The Hacking of Starlink Terminals Has Begun

It cost a researcher only $25 worth of parts to create a tool that allows custom code to run on the satellite dishes.

MATT BURGESSSECURITYAUG 10, 2022 10:00 AM

Wired · by Condé Nast · August 10, 2022

Since 2018, Elon Musk’s Starlink has launched more than 3,000 small satellites into orbit. This satellite network beams internet connections to hard-to-reach locations on Earth and has been a vital source of connectivity during Russia’s war in Ukraine. Thousands more satellites are planned for launch as the industry booms. Now, like any emerging technology, those satellite components are being hacked.

Today, Lennert Wouters, a security researcher at the Belgian university KU Leuven, will reveal one of the first security breakdowns of Starlink’s user terminals, the satellite dishes (dubbed Dishy McFlatface) that are positioned on people’s homes and buildings. At the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas, Wouters will detail how a series of hardware vulnerabilities allow attackers to access the Starlink system and run custom code on the devices.

To access the satellite dish’s software, Wouters physically stripped down a dish he purchased and created a custom hacking tool that can be attached to the Starlink dish. The hacking tool, a custom circuit board known as a modchip, uses off-the-shelf parts that cost around $25. Once attached to the Starlink dish, the homemade printed circuit board (PCB) is able to launch a fault injection attack—temporarily shorting the system—to help bypass Starlink’s security protections. This “glitch” allows Wouters to get into previously locked parts of the Starlink system.

Wouters is now making his hacking tool open source on GitHub, including some of the details needed to launch the attack. “As an attacker, let’s say you wanted to attack the satellite itself,” Wouters explains, “You could try to build your own system that allows you to talk to the satellite, but that’s quite difficult. So if you want to attack the satellites, you would like to go through the user terminal as that likely makes your life easier.”

The researcher notified Starlink of the flaws last year and the company paid Wouters through its bug bounty scheme for identifying the vulnerabilities. Wouters says that while SpaceX has issued an update to make the attack harder (he changed the modchip in response), the underlying issue can’t be fixed unless the company creates a new version of the main chip. All existing user terminals are vulnerable, Wouters says.

Starlink says it plans to release a “public update” following Wouters’ presentation at Black Hat this afternoon, but declined to share any details about that update with WIRED prior to publication.

Starlink’s internet system is made up of three major parts. First, there are the satellites that move in low Earth orbit, around 340 miles above the surface, and beam down connections to the surface. The satellites communicate with two systems on Earth: gateways that send internet connections up to the satellites, and the Dishy McFlatface dishes people can buy. Wouters’ research focuses on these user terminals, which originally were round, but newer models are rectangular.

There have been multiple teardowns of Starlink’s user terminals since the company started selling them. Engineers on YouTube have opened up their terminals, exposing their components and how they work. Others discuss the technical specs on Reddit. However, Wouters, who previously created hardware that can unlock a Tesla in 90 seconds, looked at the security of the terminal and its chips. “The user terminal was definitely designed by capable people,” Wouters says.

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His attacks against the user terminal involved multiple stages and technical measures before he finally created the now open source circuit board that can be used to glitch the dish. Broadly, the attack using the custom circuit board works by bypassing signature verification security checks, which look to prove that the system is launching correctly and hasn’t been tampered with. “We’re using this to accurately time when to inject the glitch,” Wouters says.

Starting in May 2021, Wouters began testing the Starlink system, getting 268-Mbps download speeds and 49-Mbps upload speeds on his university building’s roof. Then it was time to open the device up. Using a combination of a “heat gun, prying tools, isopropyl alcohol, and a lot of patience,” he was able to remove the large metal cover from the dish and access its internal components.

Photograph: Lennert Wouters

Under the 59-cm diameter hood is a large PCB that houses a system-on-chip, including a custom quad-core ARM Cortex-A53 processor, the architecture of which isn’t publicly documented, making it harder to hack. Among other items on the board are radio frequency equipment, power over ethernet systems, and a GPS receiver. Opening up the dish allowed Wouters to understand how it boots up and download its firmware.

To design the modchip, Wouters scanned the Starlink dish and created the design to fit over the existing Starlink board. The modchip requires soldering to the existing Starlink PCB and connecting it using a few wires. The modchip itself is made up of a Raspberry Pi microcontroller, flash storage, electronic switches, and a voltage regulator. When creating the user terminal’s board, Starlink engineers printed “Made on Earth by humans” across it. Wouters’ modchip reads: “Glitched on Earth by humans.”

To get access to the dish’s software, Wouters used his custom system to bypass security protections by using the voltage fault injection attack. When the Starlink dish is turning on, it uses a series of different bootloader stages. Wouters’ attack runs the glitch against the first bootloader, known as the ROM bootloader, which is burned onto the system-on-chip and can’t be updated. The attack then deploys patched firmware on later bootloaders, which allows him to take control of the dish.

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“From a high-level view, there are two obvious things that you could try to attack: the signature verification or the hash verification,” Wouters says. The glitch works against the signature verification process. “Normally you want to avoid shorts,” he says. “In this case we do it on purpose.”

Initially, Wouters attempted to glitch the chip at the end of its boot cycle—when the Linux operating system has fully loaded—but ultimately found it easier to cause the glitch at the start of the boot. This way was more reliable, Wouters says. To get the glitch to work, he says, he had to stop decoupling capacitors, which are used to smooth out the power supply, from operating. Essentially, the attack disables the decoupling capacitors, runs the glitch to bypass the security protections, and then enables the decoupling capacitors.

This process allows the researcher to run a patched version of Starlink’s firmware during the boot cycle and ultimately allows access to its underlying systems. In response to the research, Wouters says, Starlink offered him researcher-level access to the device’s software, although he says he declined as he had gone too deep with the work and wanted to build the modchip. (During testing, he hung the modified dish out of this research lab’s window and used a plastic bag as a makeshift waterproofing system.)

Starlink also issued a firmware update, Wouters says, that makes the attack harder, but not impossible, to execute. Anyone wanting to break into the dish in this way would have to put a lot of time and effort into doing so. While the attack isn’t as devastating as being able to take down satellite systems or connectivity, Wouters says it can be used to learn more about how the Starlink network operates.

“What I am working on now is communicating with the backend servers,” Wouters explains. Despite making the details of the modchip available for download on Github, Wouters does not have any plans to sell finished modchips, nor is he providing people with patched user terminal firmware or the exact details of the glitch he used.

As an increasing amount of satellites are launched—Amazon, OneWeb, Boeing, Telesat, and SpaceX are creating their own constellations—their security will come under greater scrutiny. In addition to providing homes with internet connections, the systems can also help to get ships online, and play a role in critical infrastructure. Malicious hackers have already shown that satellite internet systems are a target. As Russian troops invaded Ukraine, alleged Russian military hackers targeted the Via-Sat satellite system, deploying wiper malware that bricked people’s routers and knocked them offline. Around 30,000 internet connections in Europe were disrupted, including more than 5,000 wind turbines.

“I think it’s important to assess how secure these systems are because they are critical infrastructure,” Wouters says. “I don’t think it's very far-fetched that certain people would try to do this type of attack because it is quite easy to get access to a dish like this.”

Wired · by Condé Nast · August 10, 2022

13. The U.S. Navy SEALs Seem Unstoppable for a Reason

1945 is on a roll with SOF tribute this week.

The U.S. Navy SEALs Seem Unstoppable for a Reason

19fortyfive.com · by Steve Balestrieri · August 9, 2022

America’s special operators, from the Army’s Green Berets and Rangers to the Air Force’s Combat Controllers, Special Reconnaissance, and Para-Rescue to the Marine Corps Raiders and the Navy’s SEAL Teams, are all unique.

They have different selection, assessment, and training criteria. But the tenets of each unit are remarkably similar. They want physically fit, self-confident operators who can think on their feet under incredibly stressful conditions and will never, ever quit.

The Navy’s SEALs are probably the most well-known of any of America’s special warriors. In the past two or so decades, they’ve been the subject of countless books, films, television shows, and news stories. In fact, Hollywood is currently preparing to tell the story of another SEAL hero who gave his life to protect his countrymen and team members.

While SEAL Teams can operate anywhere, from desert environments, jungles, mountains, and even Arctic terrain, the SEAL’s (which stands for Sea, Air, and Land Teams) primary mission is that of maritime. They come from and return to the sea.

History of the Navy’s SEAL Teams

The Navy’s SEAL legacy, like the Army’s Special Forces, stems from the bloody fighting of World War II. With the U.S. island-hopping campaign across the Pacific against the Japanese highlighted the need to reconnoiter and clear beach obstacles as well as reefs, the Navy began the Frogman program.

These large-scale amphibious operations were new, and the military was learning on the job. The Frogmen turned into the Underwater Demolition Teams (UDT). These and the Maritime Unit of the OSS are the forerunners of today’s SEAL Teams. They cleared beaches across the Pacific and in France for the Normandy (D-Day) invasion.

Korean War and Airborne Insertion Techniques of the 1950s

Underwater Demolition Teams in Korea fought throughout the conflict, especially clearing the way for the landings at Inchon in 1950. As early as 1951, UDT officers were convinced that airborne operations should be incorporated into UDT training.

After selected teams attended the Army’s jump school at Ft. Benning, it would later become a regular occurrence to see SEALs mixed among the Army’s troops during jump training. In 1959, UDTs joined the 77th (later the 7th) Special Forces Group for advanced airborne training and would reciprocate with SCUBA training for the Green Berets. It began a long fruitful partnership with Army Special Forces that would continue when the UDTs transitioned into SEAL Teams.

SEALS and Special Forces also had a close relationship in Okinawa, training in airborne operations and various SCUBA techniques.

These relationships would serve both units well in the upcoming war in Vietnam.

SEAL Team Six. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

The “Men With Green Faces” in Vietnam

SEALs were sent to Vietnam in 1962 to train with and fight alongside our South Vietnamese allies.

SEAL platoons, usually operating autonomously from SEAL Teams One and Two, carried out day and night ambushes, hit-and-run raids, reconnaissance patrols, and special intelligence collection operations. The Viet Cong called them the “men with green faces” because of the face camouflage they used.

SEALS and Special Forces were part of the Military Assistance Command – Vietnam, Studies and Observations Group (MACV-SOG) and often just shortened to SOG. The casualty rates for SOG personnel were over 100 percent. In all, 46 SEALS died in service during the Vietnam War. Three SEALS, Lieutenant Bob Kerrey, Lieutenant Tom Norris, and EM2 Mike Thornton, were awarded the Medal of Honor during the war.

SEAL Teams From Grenada to the GWOT

SEAL platoons served with distinction during the invasion of Grenada (Operation Urgent Fury), the operation to oust Panamian dictator Manuel Noriega (Operation Just Cause), and the First Gulf War.

As part of the new Special Operations Command (SOCOM), all of the special forces units in the U.S., as well as our allied partner nations, worked together under a joint unified command that ensured joint interoperability during the Global War on Terror (GWOT) after 9/11. SEALs brought the war to the terrorists from the seas to the mountains of Afghanistan to the arid land in Iraq.

In April of 2009, SEALs rescued Captain Phillips of the freighter ship Maersk Alabama.

In May of 2011, the CIA pinpointed the location of al-Qaeda head Usama bin Laden in a large house in Pakistan. Members of SEAL Team Six (DEVGRU) conducted a raid deep inside of Pakistan, eliminated bin Laden and several of his followers, and exfilled back to Afghanistan without a loss of their own.

SEAL Training … Not For the Faint of Heart

The training to become a Navy SEAL is long and tough; the SEALs like to say that theirs is the toughest training for any special operator in the U.S. military.

The first gate for candidate SEALs is the famous BUD/S training that encompasses 24 weeks of intense physical activity. During “Hell Week”, candidates are kept awake for nearly the entire 5 ½ days of training, where they are cold, wet, and exhausted. This is the area where most of the DORs (drop on request) occur. After that, potential SEALs must complete the Combat Diving and Land Warfare phases of training.

From there, a further 27 weeks of training, which includes Jump School and then SEAL Qualification Training, ensues. At the end of it, successful candidates will receive the coveted SEAL Trident and then be assigned to a SEAL platoon.

The graduation numbers, however, are a small percentage of those who volunteer. As one of the “truths” of all the special forces, “SOF can’t be mass produced.”

SEAL medics, like their Special Forces counterparts, are arguably the most valued members of each platoon. As with other units in the SOCOM community, SEALs often operate far from conventional support. And SEAL medics are the lifeline for U.S. and host nation partner forces.

SEALs used to attend the Army’s Special Forces Medical Sergeants’ Course, but now have their own outstanding training, the Tactical Combat Critical Care (TCCC) and Prolonged Field Care (PFC) training under the auspices of the Tactical Medical Cell (TMC).

All SEALs and SWCC operators must complete the Special Operations Tactical Medic (SOTM) course. SOTM is a 28-week course that consists of four phases. The course covers everything and anything related to TCCC and PFC, including IV Therapy, Dive Medicine, Prehospital Trauma Life Support (PHTLS), and Trauma, Airway, and Patient Assessment.

From the small teams of frogmen and UDTs of WWII, Navy SEALs continue to serve our nations interests in all four corners of the globe. As their motto says, “The Only Easy Day Was Yesterday.”

Steve Balestrieri is a 1945 National Security Columnist. He served as a US Army Special Forces NCO, and Warrant Officer before injuries forced his early separation. In addition to writing for 19fortyfive.com and other military news organizations, he has covered the NFL for PatsFans.com for over 11 years. His work was regularly featured in the Millbury-Sutton Chronicle and Grafton News newspapers in Massachusetts.

19fortyfive.com · by Steve Balestrieri · August 9, 2022

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Senior Fellow, Foundation for Defense of Democracies

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Senior Advisor, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

VIDEO "WHEREBY" Link: https://whereby.com/david-maxwell

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com